December 1984

The Quebec Court of Appeals ruled that the French-only provision of Bill 101, which mandated that French be the sole official language of Quebec, ran contrary to Quebec’s Bill of Rights. Pro-independence activists responded with graffiti and violence, including several bomb threats and fire bombings around downtown Montreal.

September 1989

SSMU spent $30,000 renovating Gertrude’s, renaming it Gert’s Pub.

March 1995

The SSMU presidential debate plunged into absurdity. One candidate suggested that professors’ grants [should] be used for providing jobs to students and that all the staff in the McGill administration [should] be fired and replaced. His opponent argued that faculties should be responsible for deciding budget cuts. The final candidate wanted to rename the SSMU building the “Kurt Cobain Youth Drop-out Centre,” and spend half of SSMU’s budget before resigning, with the third item on his platform being his resignation.

November 1996

The SSMU General Assembly voted in favour of a one-day strike in reaction to the Quebec government’s plan to cut $770 million from provincial education funding.

September 1999

McGill considered entering a controversial 11-year partnership deal with The Coca-Cola company, ditching PepsiCo. However, concerned about becoming reliant on corporate financing and being associated with the company’s less than favourable reputation, McGill students voted against the deal in a referendum.

January 2000

The SSMU building was robbed. Thieves made off with $74 in cash and $2,000 worth of bus passes.

September 2000

In the year prior, SSMU asked The McGill Daily to give up 230 square feet of its office space in order to create an accessible entrance on the ground floor of the SSMU building. The Daily claimed that SSMU was trying to evict them as part of a campaign to suppress the free press and refused to move. Over the summer, SSMU changed the locks on the Daily’s offices, and legal battle ensued.

January 2001

Two McGill professors testified against gay marriage before the federal court. Students responded by demonstrating for LGBTQ+ rights.

March 2003

The Daily published an open letter calling SSMU presidential candidate Saeed Fotuhi a “schmuck.” Believing this jeopardized his candidacy, Fotuhi printed stickers reading “slanderous and biased” and put them on Daily newsstands around campus, some of which were in full view of polling stations. He was subsequently disqualified from the race.

March 2010

As per SSMU’s electoral by-laws, which stated that students cannot hold an editorial position while campaigning for a motion, 10 editors at The McGill Tribune resigned in order to help run a fee levy campaign. The Tribune became independent from SSMU following the Winter semester referendum.

January 2013

A water pipe burst on a Docteur-Penfield Avenue construction site, sending mass floods down McTavish Street. Flood Girl became famous following a campus-viral YouTube video.

October 2017

Someone posing as a Cafe Santropol employee robbed the Arts Undergraduate Society’s student-run convenience store, SNAX, of $1,000.

December 2017

Former McGill student Conrad Gaysford was sentenced to 12 months of house arrest after assaulting fellow McGill student Kathryn Leci, who was an undergraduate student in engineering at the time. In 2015, Gaysford physically assaulted Leci, causing permanent brain damage and her withdrawal from McGill for a year. Following several delays in the legal procedure and lack of a response from McGill administration, Leci filed a civil lawsuit against Gaysford in May 2017.

January 2018

Canadian police raided McGill Associate Professor Ishiang Shih’s house as part of an investigation into his alleged theft of military technology from the United States. His brother Yi-Chi Shih, adjunct professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, was also arrested in the FBI’s 10-year investigation.

A previous version of this article incorrectly stated that the SNAX robbery was done by someone posing as a milkman. In fact, the thief was pretending to be a Cafe Santropol employee delivering coffee. The _Tribune_ regrets this error.