There are no lesbian bars in Montreal. That is, there aren’t any right now. There certainly have been — Julia A. Podmore notes that  approximately thirty bars, cafés, and restaurants, four bookstores, and nine community offices existed for lesbians between 1973 and 1995. There are currently a few recurring lesbian parties each month, including L Nights put on by the L News, Où sont les femmes? from Lez Spread the Word (LSTW), and some more low-key events at NDQ such as Jeudi Velvet and LSD: Lesbian Speed Dating. The Montreal “golden age” of lesbian nightlife in the eighties and nineties feels very far away from our current social landscape. In a city with a solid track record for lesbian nightlife, and a large lesbian population, it’s worth asking — why are there no lesbian bars in Montreal? What is our social history? What kind of social spaces do we want and need right now? Drawing from interviews, articles, and a thick stack of comments on a post I made in a queer facebook group, I make the following calls to lesbian action: to claim lesbian space, host more chill parties, make more lesbian friends, find a butch mentor, read more queer history, and please someone open a lesbian bathhouse in Montreal.

In a city with a solid track record for lesbian nightlife, and a large lesbian population, it’s worth asking — why are there no lesbian bars in Montreal? What is our social history? What kind of social spaces do we want and need right now?

Intro to contemporary queer lesbianism

Before delving in, I should clarify what exactly I mean by “lesbian.” The traditional answer is “homosexual women,” but lesbian is and has been a contested identity category for decades. There is a certain strand of lesbian culture that flourished in the 1960s-80s which was, and continues to be, mostly white, cis-normative and sometimes blatantly transphobic, and which therefore left many queer women and trans and non-binary people out of its communities and political movements. As a result of this, and other changes in queer politics and theory, there has been a move away from the term in the past few decades, towards an embrace of queer identity as a whole. However, there seems to be a recent reclamation of lesbian identity that remembers the good and ditches the bad, considering and welcoming difference and fluidity within itself while maintaining some meaningful distinction from a broader category of queerness. These words also have different meaning in anglophone and francophone circles — Florence Gagnon from LSTW suggested to me that while ‘queer’ is a popular term in English,  francophone women and non binary folks still tend to identify as ‘lesbian.’

“Lesbian,” as used by myself and everyone I quote or whose work I cite here, refers to any woman or non-binary person who is interested in dating other women and non-binary people, regardless of who else they are interested in dating. In light of the transphobic views on the word lesbian that exist, I would like to state clearly that trans women are women, and that when I use the word woman throughout this article I am referring to trans women as well as cisgender women. Lesbian is a self-claimed identity which can be claimed along with a variety of others, and many people choose not to use it. To position my sexuality as the author, briefly — I am a queer woman who also identifies often as butch, bi, and lesbian.

Lesbianism is explained and felt differently by different lesbians — who might also identify as queer, bisexual, trans, non-binary, two-spirit, genderfluid, asexual, etc. — but it exists, persists, and motivates a common desire for lesbian-specific gatherings and spaces. “Dyke Drama,” a post by Estelle Davis on the Cosmic Wyrm Rat blog, was written in direct response to lesbophobia within the Montreal queer scene last year. I’ll quote her here, but you should just read the full piece: “Lesbianism is, as far as I understand, a catch-all term for diverse sets of social, political, and sexual practices of love amongst women. […] How the fuck did TERFs [trans-exclusionary radical feminists] make us forget about the Combahee River Collective? Or Audre Lorde? Or Gays and Lesbians support the Miners? Or Act UP? Or Julia Serano? Monique Wittig? Or the countless marginalized women organizing everyday for our lives?” Lesbianism invokes diverse histories, practices, and desires. It can be powerful if we allow it to be: a means of calling up radical solidarity among queer women and non-binary folks; a generative branch of queer thought, culture, history and politics.

Lesbianism invokes diverse histories, practices, and desires. It can be powerful if we allow it to be: a means of calling up radical solidarity among queer women and non-binary folks; a generative branch of queer thought, culture, history and politics.

A brief history of public lesbian space in Montreal

It might seem strange to focus on bars as a site of lesbian identity formation and community building, especially considering that there are literally none in the city right now. However, looking back at the lesbian history of Montreal, it is clear that bars have been a critical component of lesbian culture for decades, intimately linked with the political, personal, and social projects of lesbians in all their transformations through history. Julie Podmore and Line Chamberland are two scholars who have documented this history extensively, and I draw mainly on Podmore’s 2006 article “Gone ‘underground’? Lesbian visibility and the consolidation of queer space in Montréal” as well as my Skype interview with her, and Chamberland’s 1993 article “Remembering Lesbian Bars: Montreal, 1955-1975,” in the next few sections. Podmore argues that while bars have been a controversial site of lesbian identity formation, they are anchors around which lesbian communities form. Conversations I had with folks about the current lesbian landscape confirm this idea: if we want lesbian solidarity and identity to exist, we need gathering places. We also need places to make out, hook up, and dance the ways we want to. I hope this small historical review can give a bit of background to what lesbian space is, has been and could be in the future.

A discussion of racial dynamics and the experiences of trans women are noticeably absent in the research I did on the history of lesbian space in Montreal, and I do not have the personal experience to speak to these realities. This is also part of the systemic whitewashing and trans erasure within queer and lesbian discourse and history in Quebec and Canada. This erasure does not mean that those histories do not exist. I intend to pursue further research in these areas, and apologize for their absence here.

Fifties and sixties: Butch/femme lesbians and the early bar scene

In the 1950s, the heart of lesbian social life in Montreal were the bars, pool halls, and cabarets of the Red Light District. These spaces, such as the cabaret Ponts de Paris, were mixed — mainly heterosexual spaces which mainly francophone, working class lesbians appropriated for their own use. Lesbians would claim sections of the space for themselves, either according to venue policies or wherever they could find it. They were often rough, harmful spaces for lesbians, who were under threat of voyeurism and violence from both police and heterosexual men. As a result, many lesbians, particularly those disinterested in claiming butch/femme identities and those outside the working class, did not visit these spaces. Still, they were the first spaces of lesbian social visibility, and a critical space of empowerment and collective identity building for working class lesbians. In the 1992 documentary Forbidden Love by Lynne Fernie & Aerlyn Weissman, interviewee Nairobi recalls being one of the only black women (and indeed women of colour) in lesbian bars at this time, while there were many more black women in straight clubs. While she does not mention racism towards her in these spaces, the absence of women of colour suggests that racism limited access to lesbian spaces, and points to the whiteness of lesbian bar culture at this time. Chamberland notes that this lesbian ‘bar scene’ continued to exist into the 1960s.

Seventies: The lesbian underground

In 1969, homosexuality was decriminalized in Canada and in the late 1960s, BabyFace Disco, the first lesbians-only bar, opened in what is now the Simone de Beauvoir institute of Concordia University. Lesbian bars in this era established dress and etiquette codes, trying to make the places ‘respectable’ enough to avoid trouble with the police. Chamberland describes lesbian bars of this era as being unofficially segregated by class. In Quebec at the time, this also meant segregation by language, with anglophones dominating the upper class. Furthermore, there was tension between younger, second-wave feminist lesbians and older butch/femme lesbians, even as they shared social space. Despite these differences, the increase in social space available to lesbians of all backgrounds meant that lesbians could now begin to cross these divides. This facilitated greater political engagement, as lesbians united to boycott lesbian bar Chez Madame Arthur to protest harassment by bar staff in 1974, and to protest the police raid of nearby Chez Jilly in 1976. However, as Gregorio Paulo explains in his unpublished dissertation on lesbian feminist organizing in the 1970s, organizations such as Montréal Gay Women were opposed to this ‘bar scene’ altogether, viewing it as a site of continued patriarchal oppression. This group was active in the boycott of Chez Madame Arthur.

Mixed gay and lesbian clubs also started opening during the 1970s. In an interview with Viviane Namaste, Michelle de Ville, a trans woman and “the first door bitch of Montréal,” described her exclusion from gay male clubs in the 1970s, but the freedom of the Lime Light Disco, and later The Glace; both spaces were open to all genders and to both people of colour and white people. I am not sure of the level of inclusion for trans lesbians in women-only bars at this time, which demonstrates the importance of these early mixed queer spaces.

Eighties: The “golden age” of lesbian bars

The 1980s were the “golden age” of lesbian bars in Montreal. These bars were women-owned, women-only, and closely linked with the second-wave lesbian feminism that was gaining popularity at the time. One tactic in protecting lesbian space was a high level of gender segregation, though I am not certain to what extent this resulted in trans exclusion and gender essentialism. These bars, including Labyris, Lilith, and L’Exit were surrounded by lesbian bookstores, cafes, community organizations, and households in the Plateau Mont Royal. Podmore argues that this conscious development of a lesbian neighbourhood enabled a lesbian culture to thrive throughout the decade. There were lesbian magazines for sale in local grocery stores, and multiple bars within walking distance.

Conversations I had with folks about the current lesbian landscape confirm this idea: if we want lesbian solidarity and identity to exist, we need gathering places. We also need places to make out, hook up, and dance the ways we want to.

Nineties: Emergence of the queer scene

The nineties again marked a period of great change for lesbians and queers in Montreal. The AIDS/HIV crisis and ongoing police raids of queer spaces led previously segregated queer populations to come together in solidarity. Of particular significance was the Sex Garage raid of 1990. One in a series of mixed queer parties — which were still rare at this point — the Sex Garage party was raided by police, who then beat and arrested many partygoers. In response, queers performed a sit-in in front of Beaudry metro station, and later a kiss-in in front of police station 25. The kiss-in was intended to pressure police into discussing police brutality and dropping charges, but resulted in even greater brutality. Later, an internal investigation of the police’s actions was launched and most charges were dropped. The events united and politicized the queer community in the city.

At the same time, the geography of queer territory was shifting in Montreal. Gay bars, pushed out of the downtown core, started settling into what is now the Gay Village. This area developed as the site of growing queer consciousness, commerce, and political organizing, and as the Plateau began to rapidly gentrify, lesbian bars started closing on St. Denis and opening in the Village. An article in the first issue of LSTW magazine lists over a dozen which opened during this decade, many with truly excellent names such as Tabou, Klytz, and G-Spot. Magnolia is remembered as one of the greats. However, most of these spaces were very short-lived, and the number declined steadily over time. This period also saw a rise in popularity of ‘women’s nights’ in gay male and mixed queer spaces (including gay bathhouses), and sporadic parties for queer women in other venues.  Lesbian and mixed bars in the Village were more like nightclubs than sit-down spaces, encouraging a different kind of lesbian sociality.

The new millenium

In 1998, an article was published in the local queer Fugues magazine with a very similar question as the one this article poses — where have all the lesbian bars gone? Since the early 2000s there has been an explosion of queer party series, including Cruise Contrôle, Faggity Ass Fridays, No Pants No Problem, LIP, and Q-Team, and a few geared more toward lesbians, including POMPe and Meow Mix. The Village continued to represent a primarily gay male space, with Mile End increasingly becoming a queer residential and social space. That being said, the Village was home to le Drugstore, a vital lesbian party spot until 2014. Royal Phoenix, open from 2011-2014, was located in the Mile End and was a beloved queer bar despite its short lifespan. From what I’ve heard, its closure was due to run-of-the-mill managerial changes, rather than signifying a greater change in the queer social scene. The closure of both of these bars at the same time was a loss that still echoes through Montreal’s lesbian communities.

Where are the lesbians now?

Along with the history sketched above, there are two big trends over the past 20 years that have had an effect on the current lesbian social landscape: first, the increasing acceptance of lesbians within straight social space, and second, the growth of online communication, media production, and dating apps as means of lesbian socializing. Other things have stayed the same — ‘lesbian’ is still a useful, powerful, and generative word for us to claim and mobilize around, and gentrification is still a problem. I recently had the opportunity to interview Florence Gagnon, the founder of Lez Spread the Word (LSTW), a Montreal-based collective which produces and promotes lesbian culture and events across the country. Gagnon was inspired to start LSTW in 2013, upon realizing that most of the lesbian culture she consumed was coming from the States. While there were a number of parties at the time, there was no lesbian media production or popular cultural icons from Quebec. After a few successful years of online community building, they noticed that the party scene was beginning to run thin. LSTW decided to try to fill the gap, and started their Ou sont les femmes? event series, which is ongoing and consistently well-attended by a diverse age set. “Online media is important, but you need parties to keep any sense of community,” Florence says, “They’re my favourite part of what we do.” LSTW also uses their events to lend visibility to new collectives, artists and projects, such as next month’s party featuring “The Woman Power” collective.

While Montreal has no ‘official’ lesbian bars, Notre Dame des Quilles, popularly known as NDQ, is about as close as we get. An unassuming neighbourhood bar in Little Italy, its owners and staff have turned it into an “unofficial queer bar” which hosts a variety of DJ sets and events throughout the month. I spoke to Tasha, the bar’s manager, about Montreal’s “lesbian renaissance” and how NDQ fits into it. Regarding its unofficial queer status, Tasha explained that it comes down to the priorities and attitudes of the staff. They keep prices low, kick out anyone who’s harassing customers, prioritize queer artists and event hosts, and generally “make the bar the sort of place we’d want to go to.” They are also committed to the “queer women/lesbian renaissance,” and always looking (!!) for new event ideas, artists, and DJs. They host the weekly happy hour event Jeudi velvet, “a night celebrating gay, lesbian, bisexual and queer sisterhood,” open to all, which offers a relaxed alternative to the dance party set. They also host Lesbian Speed Dating nights, organized by Catherine Colas.

Colas spent years attending queer dance parties and organizing after-hours parties (not queer but queer-inclusive) before realizing that half the people present were straight, and no one was getting to know each other outside of aggressive sexual encounters. While these parties can be a good time, she wanted to foster a space for queers that was a little bit different. And as a recent transplant to Montreal, she remembers that “it’s hard to find queers when you move to the city… Our communities tend to be closed off and you have to look certain ways and go to certain places to be visible as a queer woman.” You have to register in advance to attend LSD, and its likely that no one is going to register that isn’t lesbian, so “you don’t have to exhaust yourself trying to figure out if people are straight or not.” Colas explained to me that she pays attention to who signs up, and actively prioritizes the participation of people of colour. “It’s important that everyone can find people that they identify with,” and this includes sharing racial, gendered, and linguistic identities. I asked if there were any events she knew of that were specifically for lesbian people of colour, and while she raved about the Vogue Balls, Cousins parties, and other queer events which celebrate and center queer people of colour, neither she nor any other interviewees knew of any geared toward lesbians. In the meantime, LSD is wildly successful as a place to both find dates and make new friendships. Colas says that it’s basically her lesbian event dream come true. She doesn’t take part in the dating but meets cool new local lesbians every time.

Colas spent years attending queer dance parties and organizing after-hours parties (not queer but queer-inclusive) before realizing that half the people present were straight, and no one was getting to know each other outside of aggressive sexual encounters. While these parties can be a good time, she wanted to foster a space for queers that was a little bit different.

Most of the queer and lesbian event series listed in this article were or are organized by individuals or by small, informal collectives. Laura Boo hosted POMPe monthly for 5 years, and now holds the parties just twice a year. She said that “throwing queer parties is not particularly profitable but it is very labour-intensive. And Montreal is always a bit of a hustle if you want to survive. Eventually my other hustles took more and more time and the parties had to take a back seat.” The work of organizing rotating events is very different from than the work of managing a bar or club, both much more fluid and much less stable.

Finding space for these events is another obstacle. Every organizer I spoke to emphasized that in creating a lesbian social space, prioritizing the safety of their guests is critical. This means, primarily, having the ability to kick people out if they’re harassing or harming other attendees. Ensuring the right to control access to the space often requires renting out the venue, and of course, this costs money. As a result, some lesbian events have cover fees for entry; the cover for LSTW events has been noted as a major barrier to access. Colas half-joked that “it’s fucked up that we need to pay to make connections with people. Like, people should pay us to come to their parties.” As Boo explained, with increasing gentrification, “bars are under so much pressure from new condo neighbors to be quiet, which in turn causes more police presence and city crackdown on liquor licenses. […] Venues get priced out of neighbourhoods the same way that residents do.” The lack of safe, accessible physical spaces available for lesbians and other queer people to occupy is a systemic problem, highlighting the continued economic precarity of queer people, both individually and collectively, in the city.

Visibility and the glitchy gaydar

So gentrification pushed lesbian bars out of the Plateau and into the Village, and then gentrification pushed them out of the Village, and continues to limit their existence. It’s worth noting, however, that many bars which cater to gay men have remained open through this gentrification process. Podmore spoke to me about some of the common explanations for this. There’s the simple answer that men still collectively have more disposable income than women and non-binary people, and can keep their bars afloat more easily. There’s also the argument that many queer women and non-binary people are caring for children or taking on other responsibilities, and cannot go out as frequently. So, while queer culture becomes more accepted in the mainstream, the effects of gentrification still negatively impact queer women and non-binary people more than men, as they continue to struggle against patriarchal labour inequalities.

Others argue that maybe lesbians aren’t looking for bars as social spaces, and are rather seeking out some other type of gathering space. The LSTW collective nearly opened a lesbian bar in Montréal just a few years ago. Gagnon explained that the collective was concerned that with a specifically lesbian target clientele, there wouldn’t be enough demand to keep a bar open through long Montréal winters. In her experience as an organizer, “women just can’t go out every night of the week.” Podmore suggests that gay men have a collective sexual culture that keeps the bar scene relevant across boundaries of age, race, and class, while lesbians form community in more diverse and separate ways. Tasha from NDQ pointed out that “bars have never really been welcoming spaces for women,” suggesting that it’s no big surprise that lesbian bars aren’t so popular.

There are many stereotypes about the domesticity of lesbians, yet as made clear by the experiences of organisers, it is evident that lesbians do have a different relationship to public spaces than gay men. Perhaps women and non-binary folks have been socialised not to see the public as inherently theirs, as it is so often an unsafe space for them, irrespective of their sexuality.

In thinking about lesbian spaces it is worth considering the ways in which different spaces are set up to meet different goals. The events I’ve addressed so far in this piece are centred on meeting other lesbians, on forming connections. The lines between wanting to build community and wanting a place to express lesbian sexuality seem blurred. Can we not have it all? Part of the stereotype about the domesticity of lesbians is the idea that they are less likely to pursue casual encounters in an intentional and recurring manner, yet many of the lesbians I spoke to for this piece expressed frustration over the lack of a lesbian bathhouse or cruising space. Within gay male culture the practice of cruising, i.e. engaging with strangers in public spaces for casual sex, is widely established and actively promoted. Bathhouses have long existed as spaces for gay men to have casual encounters, yet how to arrange the same for lesbians? The same questions as event organising come up: who has the time and resources to organise such an event? How to ensure that such a space is safe? Would enough lesbians go?

Of course, other important spaces of lesbian community building exist outside of bars, parties, cafes, or hypothetical bathhouses. Podmore told me stories about women’s sports teams as lesbian spaces, which exist both formally and informally. Queer clubs at universities facilitate lesbian meetups. Intergenerational relationships form through archive work, networks such as Lesbians Who Tech, and artistic communities and events like the Massimadi Montréal Festival des filmes et des arts LGBTQ afro. I have certainly only scratched the surface of a wide variety of means through which people build lesbian relationships, friendships, communities and collective identities.  

So, there are no lesbian bars in Montreal. We exist in a different lesbian moment from the butch/femme era, the eighties’ golden age, and the queer activism of the nineties. Looking at this history, the fluidity of lesbian identity and space is apparent. The lack of bars is not necessarily a crisis, but we need to consider the effects of this lack of permanent, claimed, accessible social space. Podmore echoed the thoughts of many lonely lesbians with bad gaydar when she pointed out that lesbian spaces are critical in order for us to be “visible to each other.” As Colas argues, lesbians are not always “visible” by their appearance — not every lesbian wants to get an undercut and a septum piercing. The act of carving out and holding that space is also significant, and Colas is proud and a little protective of her role as host of LSD. “Years in the music community have me tired of white men, and women, taking over spaces that I have a right to.”

Lesbian social space exists within a shifting and messy network of queer spaces, women’s spaces, gay spaces, and straight spaces. Podmore and others I’ve spoken to have noted the ease with which lesbian space is appropriated by others. Fanie De La Fresne mentioned on Facebook that “it seems like queer/lesbian spaces are much more frequented by straight people than are the gay spaces (is it just me?), and tend to lose their lesbian and/or queer specificity more quickly.” There’s a careful balance between being inclusive and losing the specificity and safety of the space.
My conversations with Tasha, Colas, and Gagnon suggest that we can create lesbian space in a way which welcomes anyone who wants to claim, celebrate, embody, and support lesbianism, while requesting that those who do not claim this identity do their partying elsewhere. There is room for fluid difference, separate space, and multiple cultures within queer scenes and communities. Besides, it’s really very nice to be able to turn off your glitchy gaydar and assume that everyone around you is lesbian sometimes.

This article was edited at 18:33 on March 7th, 2018 for clarity.

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A history of exploitation

Floor fellows are upper-year students who live in McGill residences, offering support and guidance to first-year students making the transition to university life. In recent years, the precarity of floor fellows’ position has come to light, as decisions about their working conditions, duties, and rights have repeatedly been made without their input.

This represents a major achievement for students and union organizers who have been working for more equitable working conditions for nearly three years.

The most notable cases of this include the 2008-2009 Director of Residences’ attempt to change the residence alcohol policy from harm-reduction to zero-tolerance, which directly contradicts floor fellows’ collective values. In the 2012 winter semester, two floor fellows were dismissed for taking part in 6party, an occupation of the then-Deputy Provost’s office in opposition to the McGill administration’s attempt to override the student referenda defending the existence of CKUT and the Quebec Public Interest Research Group (QPIRG). In the fall of 2013, the residence leadership structure was reorganized to the detriment of floor fellow support systems, with no input from floor fellows themselves.

Furthermore, while floor fellows receive room and board as part of their position, they are not paid for the extensive and highly taxing work.

Negotiations with McGill

Motivated by these factors, and seeking a voice in negotiating their labour and living conditions, floor fellows voted to unionize in May 2014, forming “Unit B” of AMUSE. Since then, they have been in constant negotiations with McGill’s administration to develop a collective agreement defining their rights and responsibilities as university employees.

In recent years, the precarity of floor fellows’ position has come to light, as decisions about their working conditions, duties, and rights have repeatedly been made without their input.

In December 2016, the two parties reached a consensus on the terms of the collective agreement, and planned to formalize it after confirming the decision with their respective constituents. However, come January, the McGill administration backed out of the agreement. This was frustrating for floor fellows, who had been working towards a collective agreement for years. Alex Levesque, a floor fellow of two years and the Building Steward at New Rez, described his experience of this incident in an interview with The Daily.

“I was definitely very excited when I heard that something had been agreed upon,” said Levesque, “especially because, normally, when something’s agreed upon at bargaining, it’s pretty set. I was starting to get a little wary in January, when I hadn’t heard anything, but was definitely very disappointed, very frustrated, when we found out in January that they had backed out. It was so ridiculous and unheard of.”

In response to the administration’s actions, the floor fellows filed an injunction against McGill demanding immediate payment for those floor fellows who wished to be involved, in accordance with Quebec labour laws.

“I was starting to get a little wary in January, when I hadn’t heard anything, but was definitely very disappointed, very frustrated, when we found out in January that they had backed out. It was so ridiculous and unheard of.”

For the past three years, many floor fellows have been keeping time sheets of their active work hours, and filing for “back pay” through the Quebec Commission des normes, de l’équité, de la santé et de la sécurité du travail (CNESST). If the injunction were successful, McGill would be required to pay floor fellows for their documented hours of work.

A tentative agreement

This month, with the court date approaching, the McGill administration offered to settle the injunction, meaning that the two parties would agree on a compromise rather than bring the case to a judge. Informal negotiations took place last week on March 22 and 23, and resulted in a tentative agreement between representatives of the floor fellow union and McGill.

Isabelle Oke, current Vice President of floor fellows at AMUSE, was part of the recent settlement negotiations. She explained that, according to the tentative agreement, former floor fellows will be partially compensated for the work which they filed for back pay. This year’s floor fellows would be paid a “lump sum” for their hours this year, and in the new collective agreement, McGill is offering a $13.15/hour wage.

“Floor fellows have a base of 13 hours per week that they’re compensated for without having to provide time sheets,” explained Oke. “Any hour above that, they have a time sheet system.”

This year’s floor fellows would be paid a “lump sum” for their hours this year, and in the new collective agreement, McGill is offering a $13.15/hour wage.

The major difference between the collective agreement that was rejected in January and the one currently on the table is that floor fellows will now be required to pay McGill for their food and housing. However, as Oke explained, “the Quebec Ministry of Labour sets the maximum amount that employees can be asked to pay for these things if they live where they work. So that would be $54.16 a week that Floor Fellows would have to pay back to the university.”

Thus, they will be paid more for their work than they pay for food and housing.

Preserving core values

However, despite the focus on equitable pay, however, many floor fellows told The Daily that monetary compensation is not the issue at the core of their collective bargaining initiative. Graham Kasper, a floor fellow at La Citadelle and a member of the Unit B Grievance Committee, explained that “a lot of people I’ve mentioned it to […] immediately jump to ‘We want money!’ And that’s really not why we unionized. It was to protect our core values, to protect our working space, and the things that floor fellows have, over the years, gradually built into their culture.”

“The Quebec Ministry of Labour sets the maximum amount that employees can be asked to pay for these things if they live where they work. So that would be $54.16 a week that Floor Fellows would have to pay back to the university.”

These values have been further challenged in the bargaining process, as former floorfellow and current Bargaining Committee member Vithushon Thayalan said: “Working with the others to preserve the core ideas that make the job what it is has proven to be surprisingly difficult in the bargaining room […] It was really disheartening to be told in training and throughout the year the importance of the work we were doing and how we were doing it, and then to go to bargaining with McGill where that same importance did not carry over, or at least that was the way it felt.”

Moving forward

In April, all current floor fellows, as well as former floor fellows who filed back pay claims, will have the opportunity to vote on the official adoption of the collective agreement. This time, the McGill administration will not have the opportunity to vote it down at the last minute. If the agreement is passed, this will certainly be an important step forward for Unit B; however, the implementation of this agreement remains uncertain.

“It was to protect our core values, to protect our working space, and the things that floor fellows have, over the years, gradually built into their culture.”

As AMUSE President Claire Michela said, “We don’t know how this is going to work, going forward. What are the problems going to be with the collective agreement? What are the things we like about it, what are the things […] that we’ll want to see changed next time? So it’s totally new territory […] but it’s definitely exciting!”

Phoebe Colby, a floorfellow at New Rez and a member of the union’s Grievance Committee, also expressed optimism. She hopes that observing the bargaining process “is encouraging to people – that you can create new structures within communities, and community action has pretty tangible, real effects sometimes.”

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While most of our courses at McGill critically examine these practices, and some encourage alternative anthropological practices, our classrooms often perpetuate the very colonial relationships and ideologies that anthropology tries to destabilize and critique. My peers and I identify colonialism in our studies as the privileging of white people and white ideologies to the detriment of Indigenous people and people of colour, and the marginalization of their ideas. In anthropology, this often manifests as the study of historically and contemporarily colonized peoples using Western methodologies and theoretical frameworks. It also shows up when we talk about colonialism as part of the history of anthropology, in order to ignore the fact that colonial ideologies and attitudes persist in present practices. We as students, as well as our professors and administration, perpetuate colonialism through our silence and our failure to challenge the status quo. When we don’t question why most readings on the syllabus are by white men, or the ways that racialized students are made to feel uncomfortable and excluded in our classrooms, we further ingrain these practices as the normal, natural way of the academic world. This is the meaning of “structural colonialism.”

“In believing they could find the key to man’s behaviour, [anthropologists] have, like the churches, become forerunners of destruction.”

While “decolonizing anthropology” is a catchy slogan for our goal, I’m wary of diluting the real meaning of “decolonization.” As Eve Tuck and K. Wayne Yang write, “Decolonization brings about the repatriation of Indigenous land and life; it is not a metaphor for other things we want to do to improve our societies and schools.” In the case of McGill, decolonization means returning stolen land to the Kanien’kehá:ka and Anishnaabe people. Recognizing and respecting that, I maintain that it’s important to agitate for an anthropology that allows Indigenous and other peoples from colonized countries to speak for themselves. Indigenous scholar and critical anthropologist Kim Tallbear explained to me in an interview that she would define “decolonial anthropology” as “the actual practice of anthropology in the service of anticolonialism.” While “colonialism” means literally stealing land from Indigenous peoples, it also can refer to the ways white supremacy has structured our language, our knowledge, and our sense of self. As such, I continue to use the language of “decolonization” while acknowledging that no matter how much we work towards making McGill’s anthropology program diverse and inclusive, we can never really decolonize this institution as long as it stands on stolen Indigenous land.

Métis anthropologist Zoe Todd argues that “The academy is anthropology’s ‘human error:’ the white supremacist, Imperial human dimensions of the academy itself prevent the re-imagining of disciplines like anthropology.” Therefore, the “classroom colonialism” explored in this article has as much to do with how the university works as it does with how anthropology works. Through this article, I hope to make these colonial practices visible, and encourage the whole of the McGill community toward anticolonial action in our academic spaces.

We can never really decolonize this institution as long as it stands on stolen Indigenous land.

The “I”s in this article refer to Meara, but Marcelle contributed greatly to both the writing and thinking behind this piece, and we therefore conceive of it as a shared piece. Both of us are current or former McGill anthropology students. I (Meara), as a white settler student from Alberta, have not directly experienced the marginalization that my friends and classmates of colour have described to me – in my studies, or elsewhere. While it is by no means the place of white or settler students to take leadership roles in decolonial projects, it is also unacceptable for us to remain silent on the issue. My intention in writing this article is to continue the work, which has been led by Indigenous and people of colour for decades, of making colonialism visible in our academic spaces. Everything in this article is owing to these scholars and to the folks generous enough to share their stories and thoughts in interviews.

Politics of the canon

There are certain anthropologists and scholars that every anthro student ‘needs to know’ by graduation: Malinowski, Boas, Geertz, Mead, Evans-Pritchard, Foucault, Fanon, Marx, Butler; in short, “the canon.” These scholars have had large impacts on how the discipline of anthropology has developed, and need to be studied in order for us to understand where contemporary theories and practices originate. However, it’s important that we think critically about who we read and who else we might be ignoring. Sara Ahmed, a feminist cultural studies scholar, addresses the politics of the canon on her blog, Feminist Killjoys, as it works through our collective “citational practices.” The thrust of her argument is that if we continue to center our academic work around mostly white, mostly male scholars, these scholars will retain the power to guide our academic disciplines. They become easier to access, more relevant to contemporary research, and slip easily into the canon. If, instead, we challenge ourselves to reference and think with scholars who have been marginalized through racism and sexism, we can deconstruct hierarchies of power in the academy and challenge the notion of canonical texts altogether.

If we continue to center our academic work around mostly white, mostly male scholars, these scholars will retain the power to guide our academic disciplines.

One example of a critical approach to the canon is that of McGill professor Gretchen Bakke, who taught me an anthropology theory course in 2016. In a recent interview, she argued that when studying canonical texts, instead of uncritical acceptance, it’s important that students learn to analyze how these texts are in conversation with others in the field. This allows us to trace not just how anthropology as a discipline changes and transforms, but what political, theoretical, social, and geographical contexts shaped its transformation. Further, it allows us to see what texts were not canonized, and how some theoretical moves were made at the expense of others. As Tallbear explained to me, “because anthropology has had the self-reflexive moment, and has had feminist anthropology and people of colour anthropology and Indigenous anthropology, in the world I run in, it has incorporated those critiques into the canon. It’s still marginal, but at least it hasn’t written it out of the canon in the way that, say, the biological sciences don’t incorporate their histories of failure around race.” Both Bakke and Tallbear reveal that the anthropological canon is changeable and changing, and that we must ask ourselves why some voices still remain marginal to the conversation.

Politics of the classroom

Who is included in the canon, on our syllabus, and in our faculty has implications not just for the discipline as a whole, but in the lives of my friends and classmates at McGill. Several classmates – all women of colour – have shared stories with me of being made to feel that they are not legitimate students of anthropology, and that their identities and their knowledge don’t belong in anthropology classrooms.

Marie*, a U3 international development student, started her degree in anthropology but soon became frustrated and disillusioned by the colonial dynamics of the discipline (though she says that international development is not much better). As a Black African woman, she could not see her identity or experiences reflected in either her professors or the authors of her course texts. Black African women were not presented as anthropologists, despite the fact that Black Africans are often the subjects of anthropological study in canonical texts. Of course, there are plenty of Black African anthropologists, such as Clara Fayorsey, Kwesi Kwaa Prah, and Maxwell Owusu, but none have been taught in any of Marie’s or my classes, while plenty of white Euro-American anthropologists are centered in the discipline.

Black African women were not presented as anthropologists, despite the fact that Black Africans are often the subjects of anthropological study in canonical texts.

Messaouda*, a recent McGill graduate with a major in anthropology, is of mixed race background, identifying as both North African and Mexican, and experienced explicit discrimination from a professor. At the start of her final semester, she realized that she was missing a required course for which she didn’t have the prerequisites. The student asked to take the prerequisite course concurrently with the required course, explaining her need to graduate that semester. She explained how so very few students who, like her, grew up in foster care graduate university.

Still, both the professor and the department head refused her request. Thankfully, the Dean of Students approved her enrollment. But before starting the course, she visited the professor who had originally refused her entry. “The professor told me that ‘people like me’ were lucky to be at McGill, and that I should take advantage of the precious time I got in the classroom. The professor said that this might be my only chance to experience an education like this, and that I should be grateful and not want to rush the experience.”

“Through repetition of the sentence that ‘someone like me’ should appreciate my time in university, she condescendingly implied that I would surely never be equipped to do research, so again, I’d better simply enjoy the time I have as a student. I felt horrible throughout the entire encounter, some moments were so insulting and difficult to endure; I remember squeezing my phone and holding back my tears. I was shocked and angered, particularly by the phrase ‘people like you;’ was the professor referring to my skin colour? My persistence in academia despite my status, my class, my past as a child in care? Which angle of my Otherness, of my deviance in relation to a predominantly privileged white anthropology department personnel was this professor really referring to?”

“I was shocked and angered, particularly by the phrase ‘people like you;’ was the professor referring to my skin colour?”

Bekkie*, a South Korean anthropology student raised in Canada, noticed in both anthropology and other Arts disciplines that many of her professors and classmates valued her contributions to the class as a “case-study,” but not as a theorist: “A lot of professors expect their white students to elaborate on the theoretical side, asking questions about readings and whatnot. Where, for a student of colour to speak out and be taken seriously, it’s more powerful to come from their experience rather than like, ‘my critique of this thing…’” She went on to say, “when I wrote an essay about my own story, I felt like [professors were] more fascinated than when I introduced an idea of doing something which was more academic or theoretical. I don’t know whether to take that as my advantage, or as a kind of fetishization of the Other.”

This apparent anthropological fetishization of the Other prevents Bekkie and other students of colour from being recognized as fully capable theorists and intellectuals beyond their stories about culturally exotic “life experience.” While this is likely a phenomenon in many disciplines, it is particularly troubling in anthropology, where the field’s colonial tradition is characterized by white anthropologists studying communities of colour. Bekkie described the long-term repercussions of this academic fetishization: “My personal identity was actually quite shifted – to think that I’m this, that I’m a case study. And in many senses it’s better to be a case study, [because that’s what’s validated by the system].”

“To think that I’m this, that I’m a case study.”

Messaouda and Bekkie both argued that the unequal power relationship between professors and students is central to the maintenance of structural colonialism in universities. For example, Bekkie described a professor who introduced the scholar Paul Farmer as an example of an anthropologist doing ethically responsible, relevant anthropological work. When a student questioned this, making an argument that Farmer’s project is actually an example of colonial “white saviour complex,” the teacher quickly shut down the critique. Bekkie explained that it’s difficult, both intellectually and practically, to challenge the theoretical frameworks that your professor brings into the classroom. Even assuming that your professor values independent thought, doing research and theoretical work to craft critical arguments, rather than just regurgitating what you’ve already been taught, is more than many students have time or energy for. We are, then, rewarded for agreeing with our professors, and maintaining the status quo. We could say that professors operate in their classrooms like canonized scholars do in our citational webs – their ideas, legitimized by the academic institution, guide and limit the theoretical and political boundaries of the course.

This dynamic was clearly demonstrated in an anthropology class I was attending at the beginning of this semester. On the first day of classes, the film Of the North by Dominic Gagnon was shown. The film is a compilation of “found footage” uploaded to YouTube, all depicting people and places in Northern Canada. Many Indigenous artists and activists have accused the film’s director of blatantly perpetuating a racist stereotype of the Inuit as drunks, and, after much public agitation, the Montreal International Documentary Festival (RIDM) officially apologized for including it in their 2015 festival. Our class discussion, however, engaged with the film as a “controversial” art piece rather than explicitly addressing the troubling political and social climate that produced this film and is reproduced by it. After Gagnon came in to speak about his film, many students voiced their discomfort and outrage, but critical engagement with the film or the discussion with Gagnon was not encouraged or given space by the professor. This event demonstrated once again the power of our professors in guiding and limiting the theoretical and political limits of discussion.

Visions and schemes for decolonial anthropologies

If we’ve decided that something needs to change, and we’ve decided that that change might be called ‘decolonizing,’ we next need to ask: what might a decolonial anthropology look like at McGill? And who needs to do what to make decolonial anthropology a reality on our campus? Do professors have to change the ways they teach? Does the administration need to change their policies? Do students need to speak up a little louder? Do we need protests? Calm conversations in board rooms? I would say yes, we need all of those things.

A group of McGill anthropology undergraduate and graduate students have started a working group this semester intent on doing what we can to support decolonial scholarship and pedagogy in our department. This could take a number of different forms, so we’re currently reaching out to other groups and individuals on campus who have a stake in and a perspective on (de)colonial practices at Mcgill. This seems like an overwhelming project, especially considering the final reality that we are still on unceded Kanien’kehá:ka and Anishnaabe land. Still, there are hundreds of small steps that we can and must take to confront the structural colonialism of our department and our university. We can start by learning from students organizing around decolonial academia on campuses in England, South Africa, and Alberta::

The students’ union at SOAS, the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London, despite the institution’s fairly imperialist name, is a group committed to decolonization in many spheres of life at their university. The union’s 2016-2017 “Decolonizing SOAS: Confronting the white Institution” campaign aims to increase critical conversation about the school’s racial inequalities and colonial structures, paying particular focus to the politics of the canon in their courses. They demand that “the majority of the philosophers on our courses are from the Global South or it’s diaspora. SOAS’s focus is on Asia and Africa and therefore the foundations of its theories should be presented by Asian or African philosophers (or the diaspora).” Further, they demand that “If white philosophers are required, [they must be approached] from a critical standpoint.” To this end, they’ve set up a working group between students, faculty, staff and administration to discuss how these goals will be achieved.

And who needs to do what to make decolonial anthropology a reality on our campus?

At the University of Cape Town (UCT) in 2015, a student campaign formed around the slogan “Rhodes Must Fall,” a call to remove the statue of Cecil Rhodes, an early British imperialist, from UCT campus. The campaign was confrontational from the outset, and it worked. Rose, a member of Rhodes Must Fall’s Oxford University chapter, reports: “On March 9, 2015, a student threw a bucket of human faeces on the statue, and participated in a toyi-toyi dance with other protesters. Gaining both media attention and support, a swift vote saw the removal of the statue one month later. It was a victory in the fight for the decolonisation of education in South Africa.” This action grew into an ongoing movement, described on the group’s Facebook page as “A student, staff, and worker movement mobilising against institutional white supremacist capitalist patriarchy for the complete decolonization of UCT.” It sparked similar movements at universities around South Africa and at the University of Oxford in England. All of the campaigns are ongoing, involving actions both diplomatic and militant, symbolic and material.

A third inspiring example is the Native Studies Course Requirement Group at the University of Alberta. Following the University of Winnipeg and Lakehead University in Ontario, students and professors at the University of Alberta are calling for one course in the Native Studies department to be a requirement for all university undergraduates. They’ve circulated a petition, and they’re continuing to hold panels and consultations with various stakeholders.

“If white philosophers are required, [they must be approached] from a critical standpoint.”

Here at McGill, the Provost’s Task Force on Indigenous Studies and Indigenous Education is conducting research and drafting proposals for initiatives that might better support Indigenous students as well as promote Indigenous education in various academic programs. Their recommendations will doubtless be relevant to the anthropology department, as well as all students and professors at McGill, but the official institutional response to structural colonialism will not dismantle the system. As illustrated in the examples above, there are things that we, as students, as well as our professors, can and must do in our individual practices and as organized collectives to challenge colonial academic practices at McGill.

A clear first step, according to McGill professor Eduardo Kohn, is to directly confront the lack of racial diversity in the anthropology faculty. Kohn holds that diversifying faculty is key, since once they’re hired, professors have a lot of freedom within their courses. Marcelle and Bekkie echoed the need for diverse professorships. Marcelle explained that it’s the “multiplicity of voices” that makes anthropology powerful, and that this must include not only racial diversity but people from “all walks of life.” The faculty has been pressing for better gender equity in recent years, but anthropology professors are keenly aware that the majority of the faculty is still white. Kohn offered a couple explanations for this. First, he acknowledged the structural barriers for people of colour in the academic world – like racialized poverty, the school-to-prison pipeline, and lack of role models – which translate into fewer scholars of colour eligible for faculty positions. However, there is also a dynamic more specific to McGill: the department’s job postings are for very “specialized hires,” seeking scholars with particular academic interests and assets. Often, Kohn explained, the specializations are ones which are not primarily engaged with by scholars of colour. The factors which lead to racial divisions of research/labor are complex and beyond the scope of McGill, but is something which must be recognized when developing hiring practices. The McGill administration prefers specialized hires rather than “casting a wide net,” because it takes less work and holds less risk. According to a 2016 SSMU report on equity in the hiring of McGill academic staff, “There is a lack of commitment, formalized practice, and transparency in regards to employment equity at McGill.” Further, the report notes that “Equity at McGill has largely focused on women (and by proxy, white women) as opposed to other identity categories,” at the expense of racialized academics.

Often, Kohn explained, the specializations are ones which are not primarily engaged with by scholars of colour.

Second, we need to start more explicitly discussing the political contexts and implications of our studies. What we read, how we discuss it, what research we do, and what theories we promote are caught up in real-world struggles for justice and liberty. In her book, Native American DNA, Kim Tallbear describes research as a political tool, through which knowledge is collected and mobilized to either promote or undermine the needs and desires of communities of people. This reminded me of a course I took with professor Colin Scott, which focused on the historical, cultural and political contexts of Indigenous projects for self-determination. We read texts with explicitly political engagements, and carried this into our conversations and assignments. It made visible the connections between research, theory and politics in our own studies.

Marcelle argued that the anthropology faculty, both individually and collectively, needs to be more open about discussing personal and collective politics in academic settings. Then, rather than overlooking the political and ideological assumptions we’re working within, the political entanglements of our education can be openly discussed and debated. When I mentioned this to Eduardo Kohn, he noted that political and ideological engagements must be handled carefully, to ensure that classrooms remain welcome spaces for conversation; spaces of ‘play,’ and not political dogma. So, while we must address and grapple with our politics in educational spaces, we also must, as Marcelle said, “be more aware […] when you say something, pay attention to who you’re excluding.”

Is it possible to decolonize our discipline’s canon while still providing students with the necessary context to understand contemporary conversations? As Kohn noted, anthropology professors at McGill have a lot of freedom in determining their own syllabi; a freedom that it might not be beneficial to take away by pushing for external regulation of course curriculum. It’ll come down to a combination of factors: more diverse readings, more transparency about political ideology, better hiring equity and professor diversity, and more student input on syllabi.

“When you say something, pay attention to who you’re excluding.”

Another essential practice is consciously creating more equitable, antiracist classroom practices. Treating students equally is not a passive act. Working within an intellectual and institutional context of racial inequality, both students and professors must actively work to make sure that students of colour are not fetishized, marginalized, and written out of the discipline. For white students, this means questioning the ways in which we take up space in the classroom, questioning the whiteness of the curriculum, and actively validating and supporting the contributions made in classes by students of colour. It means calling out our professors when they do or say things which oppress or silence our classmates and marginalized communities. Bekkie emphasized the role of language in classroom power dynamics: “the conversation is in English, which deters a lot of English as a second language speakers from speaking out. Even me, I’ve been speaking English for twelve years, and I’m usually pretty confident, but in classes I’ll just like choke up completely. […] When I’ve talked to a lot of other people about it, they feel similarly, that they can’t articulate enough.” While it’s not practical to decenter English as the language of discussion, making space for alternative means of communication in classrooms and assignments has been identified by both Marcelle and Bekkie as critical to overcoming colonial academic standards. Their suggestions include allowing students to do readings or assignments in languages other than French or English when possible, and making space for students to complete assignments with images, videos, presentations, and creative writing.

“Even me, I’ve been speaking English for twelve years, and I’m usually pretty confident, but in classes I’ll just like choke up completely.”

Lastly, we cannot discount the power of direct action and making a fuss. If, in trying to work within the system, we discover that those in power cling to it too tightly to consider reform, there is value in taking and using the power we have to fight for the university we want. Demonstrations, art, theatre, writing, sit-ins, and popular education are all tools available to us. While the focus is and should always remain on decolonization for the sake of colonized peoples, we all benefit when structural colonialism is challenged. As Marcelle said, “let us accept and examine the complexity that many minority students find themselves in. If we allow their stories, their intuitions, and responses to lead the dialogue, we can find ourselves guiding academic knowledge towards new theoretical insights.”

If you are interested in getting involved with, or staying informed about, the anthropology student working group mentioned above, email me, Meara, at meara.kirwin@mail.mcgill.ca. We’re very open to feedback, involvement and ideas for collaboration from both within and beyond the department and the university.

*Names have been changed

An earlier version of this piece stated that there is no equity office in the McGill administration and no equity training for search committees. In fact, McGill has both.

The Daily regrets the error.

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