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Off the Board, Opinion

Missed connections: Exchange can be isolating

by Emma Carr on

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Before I left for my exchange term at the University of Edinburgh last winter, I sat in Leacock 132, half-listening to a mandatory safety presentation, when one line caught my attention: “This is going to be the best five months of your life.” The idea terrified me: I was by no means hoping to peak at 20. Still, there was a part of me that wanted to believe this fantasy. Only two months later, I found myself sitting on the edge of my squeaky twin bed at four a.m., jet-lagged and teary-eyed, praying that the presenter was just being hyperbolic.

When I first settled in Edinburgh, I wasn’t consumed by excitement or post-arrival jitters. Instead, I felt an overwhelming pressure to have “the greatest time of my life,” without being entirely sure what that entailed. I spent my hours of free time in the middle of the night, courtesy of jet-lag, reading personal essays written by students claiming that studying abroad was life-changing. I scrolled through my fellow travellers’ polished Facebook albums of far-off places. From my late-night research, I deduced that, for everyone else, exchange was as exhilarating and wondrous as advertized. I felt obligated to live a similarly exciting, adventurous, and problem-free existence during my own exchange term, and was disappointed in myself for failing to do so.

Adjusting to my new and temporary life in Edinburgh was difficult. Yes, I spent time exploring the city, meeting new people, planning adventures, and traveling around the countryside. But, I also navigated a foreign healthcare system with a fever, slept on suspect mattresses in derelict hostels, and spent many nights alone in my bedroom. Though I had predicted the early adjustment period would be a challenge, nearly half-way through my program, I was still nostalgic for my familiar life back at McGill, and felt isolated without my usual support networks. At a particularly sensitive moment, I found myself welling up after receiving a Facebook invitation to an event in Montreal, and I lamented giving up a comfortable semester back at McGill. Every time I expressed frustration and defeat, I worried that I would come across as unappreciative to people back home, and I was concerned that I was not taking advantage of all the opportunities available to me.

Things did become easier over time. I became more content spending time alone, and Edinburgh became less foreign to me. Ultimately, I have come to appreciate that my bouts of vulnerability and loneliness were just as formative as my other adventures abroad. I expected to have the best time of my life while still achieving some sort of personal growth, but these ambitions were incompatible: It would be impossible to challenge myself without facing any obstacles. In the absence of close friendships, I ventured to become more independent, and, by the end of the semester, undertook a solo trip to the west coast of Scotland.

Was my exchange term in Edinburgh the best five months of my life? I hope not. In fact, I have never felt more relieved to return to a recognizable routine as the moment my plane touched down in my hometown of Chelsea, New York. But, when I reminisce with people back home about my travels, the hardships fade to the background, and I find myself feeling a little nostalgic for Edinburgh’s grey skies and my solo adventures.

Commentary, Opinion

Identity crises and queer history months

by Jacob Sailer on

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October is Queer History Month at McGill, the first event of its kind at a Canadian university. It aims to explore and expand on the boundaries of heteronormativity through educational initiatives and celebrations: A four-week tangle in the complex web of queer identity.

I came into my own sexuality with an unusual sense of animosity toward events like pride parades and queer history months. My identity felt pigeonholed by events like pride, walled in by the confines of what constitutes ‘gay pride’.

I’m gay. At least, I think I am. I’ll say queer for now—I’m young. I haven’t told my parents. They are two of the most loving and accepting people I have ever met, but I never got around to telling them. I assume they know: We fly a pride flag on our deck year-round. I probably would have taken it down myself were I three or four years younger and carrying the same weight of self-doubt and anxiety.

I am forever conscious of being ‘gay enough,’ a phrase that I drag around like a ball-and-chain of internal insecurities. When I came out to my best friend in eighth grade, she didn’t believe me. It seemed that all the boys around me neatly fit into a category, while I was neither gay enough, masculine enough, nor proud enough. But it got easier. I  kissed a boy; I gossiped about crushes with the girls in my English class; I watched Brokeback Mountain in my room by myself. I developed little ‘tells’ over time. I don’t know if they came naturally, but I started to fit the bill. I even internally rejoiced when one of my roommates told me that he got a specific ‘vibe’ from me during the first few days of our living together. I felt victorious, like I had finally found the proof I was looking for.

There seems to be a stale cultural attitude toward LGBTQ+ expression. I used to experience mass queer pride as focused entirely on the grandeur of celebration, ignoring the larger reasons for why such a month is necessary. It felt like too commercialized a festivity—a mass-produced bastardization of an existing cultural identity. In trying to elevate the queer community, those on its outskirts fall to the wayside.

Celebrations of queer pride need to ground themselves in history, especially in Montreal. 75 per cent of Montreal’s LGBTQ+ community experience bullying for their sexuality; the Sex Garage riots are a lasting stain on the city’s acceptance of the queer identity. Recognition of Montreal’s checkered history of queerness means not only celebrating, but also informing and including.

McGill would need 10 more queer history month celebrations to fully capture the queer community’s rich and diverse culture. So, I’m taking this time to recognize the shapes, voices, faces, feelings, and experiences of this rich and diverse community; but, also, to take a step back, to take time and let queerness be. Too often, the queer identity is walled in; too often, queerness is reduced to a TV segment about a pride parade or rainbow face-paint on cheekbones. This is a disservice to its diversity. This October, let those exploring their own identities come forward and share what they will. I’m taking a break from asking questions; I’m putting on my rainbow underwear and smiling at everyone I see on the sidewalk.

Religious neutrality isn't neutral
Commentary, Opinion

Religious neutrality isn’t neutral

by Mo Rajji on

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On Oct. 1, Quebec elected 74 members of the Coalition Avenir du Québec (CAQ) to the National Assembly, giving the party a majority mandate. The CAQ campaigned on a platform of reducing immigration, restructuring government institutions, and maintaining ‘religious neutrality.’ Discussions about religious neutrality are not new in Quebec: In 2013, the Parti Québécois government proposed the Quebec Values Charter, which would have banned religious symbols like turbans, hijabs, and kippahs for swaths of public employees, had they not been voted out of government before the bill could be passed. In contrast, the CAQ’s proposal to ban ‘ostentatious’ religious symbols for those in positions of authority might seem mild, but it has the same flaw: Eradicating religion to create social progress is a false equivalence. While removing the power of any one religious view from government gives freedom to those who come from different backgrounds, the erasure of religion from public life is an entirely different matter.

While the CAQ’s policy ostensibly applies to all religious symbols, they have put non-Christian accoutrements on the forefront of the platform. The party has stated they will not be removing the crucifix in the National Assembly. Secularism does not mean abolishing religion from the public sphere, but rather removing religion from the decision-making process of the government. This is not what the CAQ hopes to achieve: They do not plan to remove religious influence from government, but, rather, to remove non-Christian iconography from public view. This duplicity not unique to the CAQ: In 2017, the Parti Libéral du Québec (PLQ) introduced Bill 62, banning the wearing of face-covering while giving or receiving public services, and 68 per cent of Canadians outside of Quebec support similar niqab bans in their own provinces.

The CAQ’s move to ban overt religious symbols follows a long history in Quebec of anti-Semitism and racism. The CAQ’s plan will ban the hijab, the Jewish kippah, and the Sikh turban. Critics of the CAQ have focused on how this will affect hijabi women because of both the precedent set by Bill 62 and remarks from CAQ leader François Legault about how he believes religious symbols like the hijab represent sexism. Yet, there are hijabi and niqabi women in Quebec who fear that these ‘anti-sexist’ bans will not only remove Muslim women’s liberty of choice, but will also punish them by removing them from their jobs if they do not comply. The CAQ’s proposal does not protect the rights of women; instead, it co-opts feminist ideas to further racist and religiously intolerant agendas.

Religion has provided answers to the question of human morality and informed much of our modern culture and belief systems. Religious movements have both helped and hurt the quest for the amelioration of humanity, reflecting the complexity of people and how we relate to one another. Removing religion from the public sphere will not end bigotry, nor will it create an egalitarian utopia. It will generate a void in which human uncertainties cannot be assuaged by a transcendent purpose. Religion is not its own entity, but an extension of humanity: Identifying religion alone as the cause of social dysfunction fails to evaluate larger systems of inequality.

McGill, News

Consent McGill offers sexual violence education and support

by Christina Bédard on

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McGill University hosted its fifth annual Consent McGill Campaign Sept. 24-Oct. 5, addressing the topics of consent, healthy relationships, and sexual violence in a series of on-campus events. The campaign is the annual initiative of the Office for Sexual Violence Response, Support, and Education (O-SVRSE), an administrative body tasked with educating the McGill community about sexual harassment and supporting survivors.

This year, the campaign featured trauma-sensitive yoga sessions, a movie screening of Pariah (2011) followed by a discussion in honour of McGill’s first Queer History Month, and a performance of the play Don’t Read the Comments, which explores the ambiguity surrounding consent and sexuality. O-SVRSE hosted multiple workshops in which participants learned about consent culture, acquired tools for responding to sexual violence disclosures, and received  instruction on how to become active bystanders.

Bianca Tétrault and Émilie Marcotte, campaign coordinators and sexual violence advisors at O-SVRSE, are striving to develop new methods to support the recovery of sexual assault survivors at McGill.

“Along with other centres of resources, we are looking at creating more material, [such as] tool kits for faculty members and staff to address and respond to disclosures of sexual violence and problematic behaviours in the classrooms, from either students or professors,” Tétrault said.

The closing event of the campaign, the Panel on Sexual Harassment and the Law in a University Context, featured an all-female panel discussion of the reporting mechanisms available to members of the McGill community seeking healing and justice. Tétrault and Marcotte brought together McGill General Counsel Line Thibault, Julie Dumontier from the Commission on Human Rights and Youth Rights (CDPDJ), Lili Luisa Lepore from the Commission for Standards, Equity, Health and Safety at Work (CNESST), and Sophie Lamarre from the Office of the Director of Criminal and Penal Prosecutions.

McGill’s Policy against Sexual Violence provides a framework for people to address sexual misconduct by disclosing, seeking support, or reporting incidents for the purpose of an investigation. However, following criticisms from students and professors over a lack of accessibility, the university is currently in the process of improving its response by launching a committee on student-teacher relationships and has hired a special investigator to oversee sexual violence complaints. During the discussion, Thibault underlined the ways in which McGill’s legal policies already support individuals seeking legal action with regard to sexual violence.

According to Thibault, the University’s policy is designed to favour victims of sexual assault by requiring a lower standard of evidence for initiating institutional action than is necessary for sexual assault cases processed by the Canadian legal system.

“McGill’s Commission use[s] a method called the ‘valence of probability,’ which means the University applies its policy at a much lower threshold [of proof],” Thibault said. “If the event [more] likely than not occurred, [McGill University] will act.”

The Quebec Charter Of Human Rights and Freedoms categorizes sexual harassment as a form of discrimination, which is defined as “any conduct that manifests itself through unwanted words or actions that are offensive or degrading for the victim.” According to Dumontier, since the charter protects fundamental rights, it applies to all aspects of life, meaning that the CDPDJ, a body of the Quebec government mandated to advise the public on conducting investigations with respect to human and youth rights complaints, has jurisdiction in most instances of sexual harassment.

“The Charter prohibits all forms of harassment in all interactions,” Dumontier said. “Therefore, the Commission can protect anyone within the university’s walls. However, it’s still McGill’s responsibility to make sure you are safe and free of harassment.”

Science & Technology

Soup & Science: Heart beats, virus breach, the universe’s history, and environmental sustainability

by Tina Giordano, Morgan Sweeney, Navneet Kaur, Zoe Doran on

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Held at the beginning of every semester in Redpath Library, Soup and Science is an event unique to McGill during which professors from various science departments summarize their research in a series of three minute presentations. Coincidentally, the event also serves soup. The McGill Tribune sent writers to cover the Fall 2018 edition of Soup & Science, Sept 17-21. These are some of their favourite presentations.

 

Monday

Tina Giordano

Contributor

At the beginning of his presentation, Gil Bub associate professor in the Physiology department of Physiology posed a question to his audience: “Is the heart more like a forest fire or a spiral?”

Bub answered this query by granting audience members a glimpse into his research on the dynamics of excitable cell networks found in both the heart and the brain. In his talk, he compared a properly functioning heart to a forest fire, in which  the fire starts, expands, and—after a period of recuperation—gives space for life to regrow. Similarly, the interconnected cells of a heart spread out, followed by a period of recovery before the next beat. Sometimes, however, the heart malfunctions and acts more like a cyclone, moving in a spiral; although these spirals presented via video were beautiful, they can be detrimental to one’s health.

In response, Bub’s lab is investigating how the use of optogenetics—using light signals to control and monitor cells—could control this spiralling activity. Luckily, a healthy heart is more like a forest fire. Bub’s research is helping to get to the heart of this complex phenomenon.

 

Tuesday

Morgan Sweeney

Contributor

Parasitic collections of genetic material that reproduce so violently they wreak havoc on the body are like something out of a science fiction movie. Luckily, Mike Strauss from the Anatomy and Cell Biology department is looking at the molecular mechanism of infection and trying to figure out how viruses work. More specifically, Strauss’ lab plans to analyze how viral RNA is able to pass through the cellular membrane.  

To do this, Strauss and his team use an electron microscope to create a projection image, a two-dimensional recreation of the subject under study. To isolate the virus, they mark it with a fluorescent dye and then use a laser to cut a tiny area for the microscope to survey. After taking different samples, they can then reconstruct a three-dimensional image of the part of the cell containing the virus. High-tech precision is key when dealing with these little guys—the average virus measures 0.0000002 meters, so there isn’t a lot of room for error.

 

Thursday

Navneet Kaur

Contributor

Cynthia Chiang, associate professor in the Physics department, captivated her audience with a presentation on observational cosmology, or the study of the structure and evolution of the universe. Using state-of-the-art machinery in the form of a specialized telescope, Chiang’s research focuses on measuring redshifted 21-centimetre emissions of neutral hydrogen as well as the temperature and polarization of the cosmic background.

In discussing her explorations of the universe, Chiang revealed how she can tune a radio telescope to analyze the glow of hydrogen atoms and ‘listen’ to the history of the universe:

Using the fact that hydrogen atoms naturally glow at radio frequencies, researchers can hear the history by tuning radio telescopes to frequencies that match these hydrogen glow frequencies. Such an approach enables scientists to journey through the history of time in a matter of minutes.

Hearing a woman physicist explore daunting terrains and make ground-breaking discoveries while the sex ratio in the sciences remains concerning was an inspiration to  many in the room.

 

Friday

Zoe Doran

Contributor

Yann le Polain de Waroux, assistant professor in the Geography department, discussed the expansion of agricultural frontiers in Gran Chaco, a region between Argentina, Paraguay, and Bolivia that experiences extreme rates of deforestation.

“[Agricultural frontiers can be] envisioned as places where agriculture is expanding over other uses,” le Polain de Waroux said.

Le Polain de Waroux’s research explores responses to deforestation in Gran Chaco by analyzing its biophysical characteristics, social actors, and the people’s relationship to the land. Using this data, he was able to explore how small communities living in these forests responded to large companies’ agricultural expansion.

The expansion of agriculture into the wilderness crucially strengthens the economy in the region but, when these frontiers begin to harm the biodiversity and carbon sequestration of the surrounding forests, environmental conflicts inevitably arise.  

As le Polain de Waroux’s work emphasizes, much of the complexity of environmental issues, including deforestation and conservation, arises from the extremely subjective nature of sustainability: The most sustainable choice varies depending on the stakeholder. For the agricultural frontier in the Grand Chacho, the contrasting narratives of conservationists, agricultural corporations, and small communities illuminate the complexity of sustainable development.

McGill, News

Shag Shop reopens at McGill to service students

by Kyle Dewsnap on

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The Shag Shop, Healthy McGill’s sexual and reproductive health store, has reopened as of Oct 1. Students can now order contraceptives, sex toys, and menstrual products online and pick them up at the Brown Student Services building. Daneese Rao, U3 History and Lead Peer Educator at Healthy McGill, encourages students to take advantage of their easy and discreet ordering process.

“We know that university students have sex,” Rao said.

Rao is right: McGill students are having sex. In a survey conducted in 2016 by McGill Student Services, over ¾ of students responded that they were sexually active. However, the same survey found that roughly 20 per cent of those students were using ineffective means of contraception, like the pull-out  method. Rao believes that the Shag Shop is a space for these sexually active students to discuss their options.

“Sexual health is relevant to students, because there’s so much that we don’t know,” Rao said. “When we start talking about things that are kind of taboo, [Shag Shop employees] will try to talk about these things in a friendly, anti-oppressive, and non-directional way. We want people to know that this is a safe space to come and talk about these products, and to order and try out these things.”

The physical shop closed down in 2014 to allow for the construction of an accessible entrance to the First Peoples’ House. Since then, Emily Shallhorn, Associate Director of Student Services (Wellness and Outreach) at McGill, has tried to make the online ordering process as easy and discreet as possible.

“Students can pick up their items at the Brown Building […where] they’ll receive a nondescript brown bag and they pay for it,” Shallhorn said. “The person that’s ringing up the payment never sees what’s in the bag, and the items aren’t listed on the invoice. If they pay using Visa or Mastercard, their statement will only read ‘McGill Student Services.’”

To preserve buyer anonymity, Healthy McGill was unable to tell The McGill Tribune where exactly students can pick up their orders.

The Shag Shop stocks both sexual and reproductive health products that may be hard to find elsewhere, such as a wide selection of condom sizes and eco-friendly menstrual products. Because the store is not-for-profit, their merchandise is sold at near-warehouse prices. For example, a $99 strap-on toy is currently being sold at the Shag Shop for only $20.

While the Shop hopes to attract as many students as possible, their pick-up only delivery model makes their store inaccessible to some. Fortunately, the new Rossy Student Wellness Hub will include a physical storefront. The Rossy Hub is currently under-construction and is scheduled to be completed by Fall 2019.

According to Janice Ireland, Senior Administrative Coordinator at Healthy McGill, the plans to reopen a brick-and-mortar location have been in the making since the closure in 2014.

“It’s always been on the table to reopen the space online to replace the physical space,” Ireland said. “We recognize that this is a service that students appreciate and often need. With the survey, [students] suggested the idea of pop-up shops to fill in the gap until we get a permanent space [….] We’re trying to make that happen.”

The Rossy Hub hopes to promote the roles of prevention and awareness in student well-being, and peer health educators like Rao believe that the Shag Shop will play a crucial role by teaching students about safer sex practices.

“Part of what we do at the Shag Shop is normalize that there are different kinds of sex and sexuality,” Rao said. “Sex doesn’t just mean heterosexual sex with two cisgendered partners. Sex can be solo, same-sex, polyamorous; we want to cater to a broad audience and to make sure everyone is represented in these products.”

Student Life

Montreal’s greatest foes

by Mary Keith on

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McGill and Concordia have the perfect ingredients for a legendary rivalry: Close proximity, a shared language, sports programs, and bright students. Both universities’ students appreciate the struggle of attending competitive anglophone institutions in a bilingual city, Montreal’s wonderfully cheap rent, and the survival techniques to weather harsh, long winters. Despite these similarities, students choose to focus on the universities’ differences, particularly in academics and athletics, to create a competitive atmosphere.

Each university offers something distinct—McGill, founded in 1821, is a well-established institution with a prestigious history, while Concordia, founded in 1974, focuses on innovation and creativity within its student body. Concordia hosts a greater number of arts-oriented programs such as journalism, painting and drawing, and sculpture—none of which McGill offers. McGill, meanwhile, spreads its attention around faculties to a higher degree than Concordia. To Chris Liang, McGill U3 Arts, the difference in academic offerings—not some great disparity in intelligence—helps explain why some students end up at McGill while others choose Concordia.

“McGill students continue to put that higher standard on Concordia kids and label them as ‘stupid,’” Liang said. “But, at the end of the day many students choose Concordia over McGill based on the programs they offer.”

The reasons students choose between McGill and Concordia are diverse, but both universities’ environments can influence their students’ views and perspectives in the long-run. Antony Dagger, former Concordia student and current 102.3FM radio host, produced two videos that asked McGill and Concordia students the same questions and observed their responses. In one question, “Would you rather have $100,000 or a 4.0 GPA?” McGill students unanimously chose the perfect GPA, rationalizing that academic success would hopefully lead to an income of more than $100,000, while most Concordia students chose the $100,000. Dagger took note of the different approaches the two student bodies took in answering.

“At McGill, [students] took two minutes to think about it. At Concordia, they didn’t care, they would rather just have the $100,000,” Dagger said.

In the realm of sports, meanwhile, Concordia has a clear advantage. For the past few years, McGill has consistently lost the Shaughnessy Cup to Concordia, a trophy awarded to the winner of the annual football game. Meanwhile, men and women’s ice hockey results have been less decisive. Some sports have even leaned McGill’s way. With stadiums only miles apart, the Martlets and Redmen usually get to play in front of their biggest crowds when facing the Concordia Stingers.

The McGill-Concordia rivalry is all about identity. According to Dagger, this feeling of individuality allows students to feel a sense of attachment to their respective universities.

“At the end of the day, students just want to be proud to be a part of their schools,” Dagger said.  

Such pride makes students competitive beyond the classroom and the sports field.

“The rivalry will continue to persist, no matter what we challenge each other at,” Liang said.  “We are some of the best universities in Montreal and we continuously try to challenge each other in different academic, sports, and social activities, so we will continue to be competitive with them no matter the activity.”

The McGill-Concordia rivalry will continue to persist for generations, as it has since Concordia’s inception 44 years ago. Compared to other rivalries, ours is relatively young—which leaves plenty of room for new tales and traditions.

Science & Technology

The REM: Too good to be true?

by Tina Giordano on

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With the sweltering heat of a Friday afternoon combined with yet another traffic jam on the Champlain bridge, almost any price might be considered worth paying for quicker and more accessible transportation. The Réseau express métropolitain (REM), also known as the Montreal light-rail network, aims to provide a solution to Montreal’s congestion by December 2020.

With a projected budget of $6.3 billion, the REM will be a 67-kilometre fully automated public electric rail system linking the South Shore, the West Island, the airport, the North Shore, the Deux-Montagnes line, and downtown Montreal. Proponents toute the project for its environmental benefits, although members of the public, architectural experts, and environmentalists have critiqued the haste with which it has been pushed through approval and implementation.

Nonetheless, the consensus is that building some form of transit system is important for the long-term energy sustainability of cities. A report also suggests that an increased reliance on public transit could help Quebec’s economy by allowing the province to reallocate funds from oil consumption to job creation.

“Usually, public transport, whether it is a bus or a tramway, uses less energy than cars,” Richard Shearmur, Director of the School of Urban Planning, said.

However, as much as public transportation might appear to be an obvious solution to reducing carbon emissions, building a new transit system still has environmental repercussions. As a rule of thumb, steps to make transportation more efficient tend to encourage more of it.

“Every study that has ever looked at traffic over the last seventy years has shown that when there is extra road capacity, new people actually get into their cars,” Shearmur said. “People that wouldn’t usually drive into town [tend] to come into the city.”

Furthermore, in addition to the debate among experts over the increased carbon emissions caused by transit systems, environmentalists question whether the municipal government has done its due diligence when considering the ecological impact of the REM project in particular. The project would involve cutting 20 hectares of trees and shrubs containing the largest heron nesting colony on the West Island.

“[The REM project]  has been very divisive because it has been imposed [on the city] rather than consulted about,” Shearmur said. “What we need is legitimate consultations [between environmental experts and city planners] where real alternatives are considered.”  

Proper consultation is a crucial part of any large-scale project with implications for the surrounding wildlife and their habitats. Critics suggest that the REM project has not undergone adequate analysis. The province’s environmental review agency, the Bureau d’audiences publiques sur l’environnement (BAPE), concluded in Jan. 2017 that the project lacks key information on its costs and environmental effects while contributing little to public transport availability.

“[There] needs to be qualified, non-political people [in] a balanced committee to make a decision,” Avi Friedman, professor in the School of Architecture, said.

In response to the outcry from environmentalists about a lack of appropriate consultation, the city of Montreal promises to plant 250,000 trees to offset the CO2 emissions of this project, 100,000 of which have already been planted. Nevertheless, environmentalists are in the process of appealing to the Quebec courts to halt the process in order to allow for ‘meaningful’ hearings on the project.

Out on the Town, Student Life

Saving the Farine Five Roses sign

by Leyla Moy on

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Since 1948, the glowing Farine Five Roses sign has been a fixture of the Montreal skyline: A series of neon letters that greets cars approaching from the Southwest District. What began as a simple advertisement for Ogilvie flour, later Five Roses, has become a prominent part of Montreal’s iconography and one of its most treasured landmarks. The sign spotlights the forgotten industrial past of the district surrounding the Lachine canal, which, at one point, held the largest concentration of industrial buildings in Canada. At the same time, the sign has been the subject of hundreds of photographs taken by tourists and locals alike and has become a Montreal landmark. An ongoing art project by Concordia Communications Professor Matt Soar and his collaborators highlights the past and present of this enduring city icon.

Throughout its existence, the sign has gone through just two major changes, no small feat considering the heft of the 15-foot steel letters. After Quebec’s Bill 101 passed in 1977, limiting non-French words on signage across the province, owners eliminated the English translation ‘Flour’ formerly placed below ‘Farine / Five Roses.’ The ‘Five Roses’ line was permitted because of Bill 101’s exception for English brand names. After the brand changed ownership in 2007, the sign was turned off, seemingly for good. Then, resistance rose on social media and was soon backed by advocacy groups including Heritage Montreal. The public response inspired Soar to start a blog to crystallize the effort and preserve the landmark.

Soar—who also founded Logo Cities, which keeps record of the many high-rise logos that mark the Montreal skyline—examines the relationship between  hypercommercialism and signage. Hypercommercialism is the idea that advertizing increasingly seeps into every area of our daily lives. In gathering and researching advertisements for his work, Soar discovered the remarkable social and personal power of the iconography that saturates urban environments.

“What became abundantly clear was not only do we have hypercommercialism […], but when people see, commune with, and touch old signs, it sparks memories,” Soar said. “They act as lightning rods for local memories.”

With this in mind, Soar expanded the reach of his project, which first emerged as the “Save Farine Five Roses” blog, to chronicle the drama surrounding the sign’s possible removal. His new objective was to preserve the landmark in the public’s memory. For example, his photoshopped anagrams of the 15 letters, called ‘Farinagrams,’ generated more interest than simple news aggregation. Though Smuckers, the new owner of the Five Roses brand, ultimately relented to public pressure and committed to restoring and maintaining the sign at significant cost months later, the blog remains active. The Farine Five Roses project has been running since 2009 despite the fading threat of the sign’s demolition. Today, it continues to document updates as well as modern homages to the sign, such as Five Roses tattoos and costumes. By examining how the sign continues to influence culture, Soar showcases the new meaning that the sign has taken on in the eyes of Montrealers.

“I suppose I’m holding on to two contradictory ideas,” Soar said. “The critical idea of there being too much advertizing, but [also the idea] that some signs are worth thinking about and worth saving.”

According to Soar, a rewarding part of the project has been hearing stories that tie the sign into the living city beneath it. People remember the Five Roses sign in the background of their childhoods and their lives as students and young adults; for years, it has been there to greet them on their return from outside the urban centre. Montreal’s iconic signage becomes embedded in the city’s visual culture and, in many ways, synonymous with it. Soar notes that this coalescence is evidenced by our drive to preserve symbols originally meant merely for brand promotion. This is because we draw memories and construct meaning under the ever-present glow of signage.

“The sign [has been both present and in flux…], reflecting economic developments, [as well as] cultural and commercial ones,” Soar said.

The changes to the Five Roses sign reflect the changing nature of branding alongside the tensions between anglophone and francophone Montrealers. But, its lasting presence is a testament to the city’s collective and individual connection with those 15 neon letters that have stood watch over Montreal for 70 years—and, hopefully, will for many more to come.

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