For many of my Canadian peers, the phrase “51st state” earns an eye-roll, no doubt in response to U.S. President Trump’s ceaseless political and economic antagonism. Yet, growing up in Washington, DC, “51st state” was a rallying cry, a call for the enfranchisement of the city’s over 700,000 residents who[Read More…]
Opinion
Opinions from our editorial board and contributors.
A welcome until it wasn’t: The double standard of Quebec’s secularism
Montreal’s city hall recently took down a welcome sign in its lobby that portrayed a woman in a hijab, less than a year after its installation. This decision comes amid a series of changes implemented under Quebec’s Bill 21 and the continued movement towards secularization—the separation of public institutions from[Read More…]
Term limits on elected officials infringe on democracy
In advance of the upcoming election, Canadians are haunted by a seemingly innocent quandary—do term limits break democracy? But let’s start with a different question, one you probably know the answer to: How long can any given Canadian prime minister govern? If you answered, “Until they’re voted out or resign,”[Read More…]
McGill condemns everything but genocide
After an academic year marked by Israel’s intensified genocide in Gaza and heightened campus dissent, McGill has not only failed in its responsibility to preserve student safety and educational democracy: It has intensified hostilities by vilifying the Palestinian liberation movement. On March 27, a strike motion submitted by two McGill[Read More…]
The final edit
As you rifle through The Tribune’s final issue, I implore you to consider a heavy, urgent, and tender word: Responsibility. For the past academic year, student revolutionaries took on the responsibility to spearhead movements for Indigenous sovereignty and Palestinian liberation, fought against increasing conservatism and fascism across North America, and[Read More…]
Students, you must strike for Palestine. No justice, no class.
On March 3, 2025, Students for Palestine’s Honour and Resistance (SPHR) at McGill submitted a motion to the Students’ Society of McGill University (SSMU) Speaker, calling for a three-day student strike in support of Palestinian liberation. Accordingly, SSMU hosted a Special Strike General Assembly (SGA) on March 27, during which[Read More…]
Duolingo claims to teach everyone—but does it really?
Duolingo’s very name—rooted in the Latin “duo” (two) and “lingua” (language)—champions multilingualism, which seems fitting considering the function of the app as a language-learning tool. Yet, ironically, Duolingo’s design choices often speak only one language: The language of exclusivity. In a generation where technology shapes our daily lives, the design[Read More…]
The accent they mock, the voice I carry
Some of my earliest memories are of the way my mother sang me to sleep—soft vowels, careful consonants, and an accent I never thought twice about. Yet, I’ve sat in rooms where that accent—the one that raised me—was mocked. In my high school, classmates exaggerated syllables they didn’t understand. On[Read More…]
‘Flora’ and the price of digital discipline
When the smartphone was invented, to have access to such a coveted—and expensive—piece of technology was an extreme privilege. Now, the smartphone is virtually ubiquitous—with over 90 per cent of Canadians owning one—and 21st-century users must confront a new problem: How to stop using it. Phantom buzz, obsessive notification-checking, and[Read More…]
McGill, it shouldn’t take bodies to believe Indigenous voices
During the 2023 provincial election, Manitoba’s Progressive Conservative (PC) government refused to support a search of the Prairie Green landfill, which local police suspected contained the remains of several missing Indigenous women. This week, investigators found remains of Marcedes Myran on the site, proving that the calls for an investigation[Read More…]
