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a, Letters to the Editor, Opinion

Letter: Motion Regarding Support for the Kahtihon’tia:kwenio at the SSMU GA

by Ashley Dawn Louise Bach on

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On the motion regarding support of the Kahtihon’tia:kwenio

Indigenous students at McGill University suffer from underrepresentation and, consequently, misrepresentation. Stereotypes, prejudice, and systemic racism are just the beginning of complex Indigenous relations at McGill. With only 230 Indigenous students attending the university, consultation with Indigenous students is simply overlooked. As coordinator of the Indigenous Student Alliance (ISA), I am obliged to change that. The Motion Regarding Support of the Kahtihon’tia:kwenio has forced me to publicly address the lack of Indigenous student consultation and the ramifications of these actions.

The motion is certainly complex. Some resolutions in the motion, for example, requiring the Students’ Society of McGill University (SSMU) to lobby McGill’s administration to listen to Indigenous voices, hint at similar goals that Indigenous groups on campus have been working towards for years. But the motion, which was described as being created with “extensive consultation with Indigenous women,” never asked for the ISA’s input or the input of the Indigenous Education Advisor or the First Peoples’ House. SSMU’s Indigenous Affairs Coordinator had advised the motion movers to consult Indigenous students first. They declined to.

Indigenous peoples are not homogenous; we are politically pluralistic and represent a diversity of perspectives. For example, in Fall 2015, a handful of student groups hosted events with Kahentinetha Horn. Some members of the ISA felt it was necessary to ask these groups to invite additional Indigenous speakers because Kahentinetha Horn is a radical Indigenous speaker who often claims to represent all Indigenous peoples. The student groups simply did not know Kahentinetha Horn’s history and did not think to ask Indigenous students on campus if it was appropriate to invite her.

Kahentinetha Horn is a driving force behind the development of the motion and is the author of the notice of seizure sent to McGill in September. The motion movers referenced the notice as an important reason for their motion; however, Kahentinetha Horn has produced controversial works previously, without the support of the Longhouse of Kahnawake, and her notice of eviction was no exception. In my own experience, the eviction notice raised concern amongst uninformed students who saw the notice as a legal threat from hostile natives. Of course the intention of the notice was to give the air of legal significance, but being issued by just one community member of the Mohawk Nation does not actually give it any weight. Had the motion movers consulted the ISA or First Peoples’ House, Indigenous students would have been able to explain these nuances non-community members might overlook. Consultation with the community would be even better, and ISA could have pointed them in the right direction.

The motion’s resolutions also contained troubling points of action. The Kahtihon’tia:kwenio are not, to my knowledge, students at McGill, and yet the resolution asks SSMU to “support [them]… through methods including, but not limited to: Education, publicity, funds, and material support.” The resolutions include no mention of consultation with Indigenous students, Indigenous services on campus, and, most importantly, the communities the Kahtihon’tia:kwenio are from. The motion movers explained they were told it was “not their place to consult with [the women’s] community,” which may be true, but is also rather suspicious given that Kahentinetha Horn has not received much community support on this issue and Six Nations has been pursuing litigation against the federal government on the loan repayment for quite some time.

In sum, this motion was made without consultation with Indigenous students and relies upon a controversial Indigenous figure’s statements, which are not backed by her community. Its resolutions bring up important points on hearing Indigenous voices but the motion movers excluded most of those voices in the first place. Had Indigenous students and administrators in the university been approached before the motion was made, we would have had a chance to explain the controversy behind the notice of eviction and make the motion more appropriate. After the motion was postponed, I had a chance to talk with the motion movers, and we agreed to discuss and work together on the motion and similar motions in the future. I hope this situation serves as a learning point for the university and will encourage future consultation with Indigenous students on Indigenous issues.

 

a, McGill, News, SSMU

McGill Principal Suzanne Fortier responds to failed BDS motion

by Laura Hanrahan on

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The passage of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) motion at the Students’ Society of McGill University (SSMU) Winter 2016 General Assembly (GA), and its subsequent failure in an online ratification period, has garnered a variety of reactions among the McGill community—including the administration’s condemnation of the university’s participation in the BDS movement. 

The motion, brought forward by petition and initially passed at the GA, proposed a mandate for SSMU to support campaigns associated with the BDS movement through the office of the vice-president (VP) External, and specifically outlined a need to divest from corporations the supporters of the movement considered complicit in the occupation of the Palestinian territories. 

McGill Principal Suzanne Fortier released a statement following the release of the online ratification results, explaining the university’s position on the BDS movement.

“The BDS movement, which among other things, calls for universities to cut ties with Israeli universities, flies in the face of the tolerance and respect we cherish as values fundamental to a university,” Fortier wrote. “It proposes actions that are contrary to the principles of academic freedom, equity, inclusiveness and the exchange of views and ideas in responsible, open discourse.”

Laura Khoury, U2 Engineering, an organizer of McGill BDS Action Network—the group responsible for bringing the motion forward—expressed dismay with Fortier’s letter.

“It was extremely disappointing to see Principal Fortier, through her statement, delegitimize the voices of more than 2,000 students without attempting to understand their concerns,” Khoury wrote in an email to the Tribune.

The motion specifically referenced McGill’s investments in companies operating in Israeli settlements, including Mizrahi-Tefahot Bank and Re/Max real estate. Principal Fortier’s statement did not address those investments, focusing rather on the implications of divesting from Israeli universities.

“It is frustrating that the statement did not address the actual text of the motion,” Khoury wrote. “The lack of acknowledgement of these existing financial ties to international corporations that clearly demonstrate social injury toward Palestinians on a daily basis is an active stance to be complicit in the illegal Israeli occupation.”

According to McGill’s Internal Relations Director Doug Sweet, it is impossible to ignore the fact that boycotts from academic institutions are a central part of the BDS movement as a whole.

“Principal Fortier’s statement was consistent with the university’s position on the BDS movement in its entirety, which includes an academic boycott of Israeli academics and scholars, and their institutions,” Sweet wrote in an email to the Tribune. “[The] McGill administration has been on the record as being steadfastly opposed to this movement [….] You cannot isolate just one component of the movement and seek support for it that way.”

Khoury cited financial pressures as the suspected primary reason for the university’s steadfast opposition to BDS.

“It is important to realize that the reaction by the University has clearly come from outside financial pressure and is not based on principled research,” Khoury wrote.

Sweet alluded to the divisive effect that the motion has had on the McGill community, and on alumni in particular. 

“As you can imagine with an issue as divisive as this, and an alumni base as large and widespread as McGill’s, alumni reaction has been quite diverse, as it has been for our Faculty members, students and staff,” Sweet explained. “Some agree with the stance taken by Principal Fortier; some don’t. As it is the case with every issue, we listen to all members of our community and take their concerns – some of which can be polar opposites–to heart.”

One such alumna, Jodie Katz (BA ’97), vehemently disagreed with the university’s participation in the BDS movement.

“I was appalled and shocked by the SSMU verdict [regarding] BDS two weeks ago, and further revolted by the mail—which I received moments after the vote came through my social media feeds—asking me to please donate to the school which I now believe to be tainted and tarnished,” Katz wrote in an email to the Tribune. “Confused by the actions that transpired at the SSMU vote, I am so saddened that my beloved school is now a thorn in my side.”

According to Katz, the motion has the potential to misrepresent the student population as a whole. 

“Every student at McGill should be fairly represented,” Katz explained. “The BDS movement reeks of propaganda and unrealistic perspectives [….] As a Jew, we must stand with Israel and we must all become more educated about the treatment of Palestinians by all nations and make proper informed perspectives. Calling something an ‘apartheid state’ with little initiative other than calling on a boycott is irresponsible.”

When asked if the failed online ratification would change her perspective on making donations to McGill, Katz did not dissent.

“I will have to reconsider but right now the answer is no,” Katz wrote. “I am encouraged by McGill’s response and Principal Fortier’s email but it’s ‘already out there’ making us look as bad as the schools who do not denounce.”

According to Khoury, despite the motion’s failure, the McGill BDS Action Network will continue its efforts on campus. 

“The McGill BDS Action network will continue to organize around BDS because there is an obvious marginalization of Palestinian students and their allies at McGill,” Khoury wrote. “In moments like these it is important to look at the history of McGill’s institutional positions on social movements. 

Khoury justified the continuation of BDS Action by drawing parallels to both Canada’s and McGill’s reactions to the divestment movement around South Africa in the 1980s.

“Both the Canadian government and McGill were complicit in South African apartheid and initially refused to join the international movement to divest,” Khoury wrote. “There is historical proof that people in positions of power have been in the wrong before and are generally pressured by financial powers rather than moral, principled reasoning. It is only until the social pressure from students, faculty, and alumni outweighs McGill’s financial interests that the university will have to change its stance.”

In response, Sweet stated that the university will maintain its position on the BDS movement.

“The university administration’s position on BDS is clear, and has been since this issue was first raised on campus in 2007,” Sweet wrote. “We will reiterate it as necessary.”

In light of the controversy surrounding the BDS motion, during its Feb. 24 Council meeting, SSMU Council passed a motion to put forward a question during the Winter Referendum which, if passed, would create a GA Steering Committee, composed of the SSMU president, VP (University Affairs), speaker of council, four councillors and a third Executive member to be chosen by a vote of the Council, who will decide if the content of a potential GA motion is too divisive or external to SSMU’s mandate to be debated and voted on by students. The question additionally outlines that the GA Steering Committee’s ruling can be overturned by a two-thirds majority.

“The requirement that positions on external political issues be adopted by a two-thirds vote would ensure that the adoption of external positions comes with the support of a significant portion of the Membership,” the motion reads.

a, Science & Technology

Exploring the world of math

by Clare Lyle on

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The fast-paced world of finance has always been filled with big numbers. Astronomical numbers. Mind-bogglingly huge numbers that inspire the question: How does this much money even exist? Investors turned to mathematicians for help answering this question. Thus, quantitative finance was born. Simply, quantitative finance is a math-intensive subfield that lets investment firms use computational methods to gain insight into markets.

Sebastian Dragnea is a McGill alumnus currently working as a quantitative analyst, known as a ‘quant,’ at Morgan Stanley, an investment banking firm. He graduated from McGill in 2014 with a joint honours degree in Mathematics and Computer Science. The decision to enter quantitative finance was, for him, natural.

“I liked both sides [of the program],” Dragnea explained. “I enjoyed programming and I enjoyed the math [….] So I wanted a job that combined both of those and the best field I found that combined [them] was quantitative finance. What I found at Morgan Stanley was that I was doing a lot of programming, but also doing math, and also applying a third field of finance, which involved different ways of looking at data.”

Despite working at one of the best-known investment banks in the world, Dragnea only took one finance course at McGill.

“That’s pretty common in quantitative finance,” Dragnea explained. “If you come in with a strong background in data analysis or applied math or programming, that’s all the skills you need, and then you can learn finance on the job.”

This is because the required skills and expectations from a quantitative analyst differ wildly from those of more stereotypical Wolf-of-Wall Street-style investment bankers, whose intensive schedules are infamous.

Projected growth from 2014 to 2024 in mathematical sciences careers was 28 per cent

“A typical workday starts somewhere between 7:30 and 8:00 [a.m.],” Dragnea explained. “I’ll check the [financial] news in the morning, make sure all of our software is working and implement any updates. Then, while the markets are open we have shorter term and longer term projects.”

Short-term projects include tasks like doing research for traders on bonds, or looking at particular funds. At the end of the day, after the market closes, a quant might work on longer-term projects to answer questions that can have a major impact on future success. 

“‘How do we automatically price this security?’” Dragnea said. “That can be anything from short term feed analysis to an idea of research-style questions: What’s the data? What can we infer from this? Okay, this is a strategy we should employ. What’s an algorithm that can implement this?’” 

But the biggest challenge of working in finance, Dragnea explained, is that it’s complicated.

“I’d say the biggest surprise was how much of an imperfect world it is in finance,” Dragnea said. “In physics, a lot of the problems you’re solving have very fundamentally true solutions which are correct all the time, whereas in finance you end up with a lot of approximations, and doing your best in an imperfect world.”

On the other end of the spectrum are the researchers who are seeking to push the boundaries of what is theoretically possible. Especially in more applied fields like computer science and combinatorics, the distinction between academia and industry is growing increasingly fuzzy. Currently a PhD candidate at Carnegie Mellon University, Nicolas Resch graduated from McGill in 2015, and has since been doing research in interactive computation and coding theory.

“I’m studying theoretical computer science, [which is] a mathematical framework for computation,” Resch said. “This lets us design more efficient algorithms [to create better computer programs] and understand the limits of computation, [to understand what computer programs can’t do].”

Our ability to express problems mathematically—and then solve those problems—is what has allowed humanity to travel to outer space, to fly, and to communicate almost instantaneously across the globe.

Experts in sought-after fields like machine learning frequently straddle the line between universities and corporations; a chief example is Andrew Ng, who co-founded Coursera and is both an associate professor at Stanford and chief scientist at Baidu; the equivalent of Google in China. This type of work often involves communication between two individuals on a channel, a process known as ‘interactive communication.’

“The goal is to come up with ways for two people to talk back and forth over a channel even if the channel sometimes distorts what they’re saying,” Resch said.

Even though this is theoretical computer science, people communicate over noisy channels every day. Memory registers are struck by cosmic rays, 1s are mistakenly flipped to 0s in transistors, and hardware is misconfigured on networks.

“[One area I’m working in] is called ‘knowledge-preserving interactive coding,’” said Resch. “The idea is you have two people—called, as always, Alice and Bob—who want to talk back and forth in a noisy environment so some of their messages are being corrupted. The […] requirement is that they don’t reveal anything that they know that they wouldn’t have revealed in non-noisy environment.”

Although this sounds a bit abstract, it’s something that people do in their own interactions every day. Resch compares this to a student taking a test. If a teacher gives the student a problem to solve, the teacher wants to be sure that the student is able to solve the first problem before moving onto the next; however, in a noisy communicative environment, the teacher may be tricked into thinking the student solved the problem when he or she really didn’t. 

Compared to the lucrative salaries available in industry, the incentive to enter academia is usually more personal. Spending five or more years trying to solve a single problem requires both a passion for the subject, and an immense quantity of patience.

Enrollment numbers in the school of computer science at McGill has exploded, increasing from 138 to 465 declared majors in the last 5 years

“I guess I just really like learning math, so I wanted an excuse to learn about all of the topics that I found interesting,” Resch said. “I figured I would spend a lot of time reading about math regardless of what I was doing, so I might as well try to get a degree out it. I also really like research, so it seemed like a PhD program would be ideal for me. And I guess my dream at the moment is to become a professor, so a PhD is really a must.”

Although mathematics has a reputation for being abstract and removed from the real world, its students, like Resch and Dragnea, find in it a beauty and a powerful ability to describe the world, from finding patterns in economic markets to describing how information is transmitted. Numbers and structures are everywhere, and mathematics can give us the power to make sense of them. Perhaps those high school math classes were intended to do more than combat grade inflation—the proof is left as an exercise to the reader.

a, Opinion

Gendered policies must avoid crossing line into paternalism

by Emma Avery on

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Part of working towards true gender equality, whatever that looks like, is creating policies to help dismantle institutional practices that give men an advantage over women. This can be a controversial and contentious process, but is necessary in eliminating subconscious, institutionalized sexism. The challenge, however, is that in working towards gender equality, society cannot just simply say that women get exactly the same policies as men: Women and men are inherently different biologically, and always will be. This may be stating the obvious, but it means that in some cases, different policies are required for different genders. This is the fine line between equality and paternalism.

Historically, gendered policies often meant paternalism. Women couldn’t vote, own property, or hold certain jobs, to name a few. Today, these lines are being drawn in new policy arenas, such as healthcare. In light of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) recent recommendation that all women not on birth control should not consume alcohol, and a UK company’s recent decision to pioneer a “period policy,” it is apparent that certain solutions venture too far into the field of a woman’s personal discretion.

While perhaps well-intentioned, the CDC’s recommendation stirred resentment about paternalistic undertones for implying that women couldn’t make such decisions for themselves. If the recommendations had been framed differently, such as by outlining risks in detail so that women would be able to make informed decisions for themselves, there might not have been such backlash. But when a gendered policy is framed in a way that leaves a woman’s personal discretion out of the picture, it feels much more like paternalism than a friendly PSA.

A period policy would exacerbate the challenges women already face in managing pregnancy and maternity leave with their careers.

A “period policy,” however, opens up a whole new set of problems. Bex Baxter, director of a Bristol-based company called Coexist, along with Alexandra Pope, a women’s leadership coach, is exploring ways to implement a policy to destigmatize menstruation and allow women to take time off or work more flexibly while menstruating. Baxter herself takes a day and a half off every month, and is quoted in the Guardian as saying that “there is a misconception that taking time off makes a business unproductive—actually it is about synchronising work with the natural cycles of the body.” She states she is much more productive in the days following her period. While extreme menstrual pain is a real issue that can be debilitating for some women, some gynecologists argue that the focus should instead be on actually treating this chronic pain.

Like the CDC’s recommendations, Baxter’s ideas are no doubt well-intentioned; however, they have too much potential to feed into notions of female incompetencey. At worst, if introduced in more companies, they might lead to women being denied important tasks or time-consuming promotions, or being resented for receiving ‘special treatment.’ A period policy would exacerbate the challenges women already face in managing pregnancy and maternity leave with their careers.

As women, we want to achieve equal opportunities for success without receiving “special treatment;” however, we shouldn’t have to feel ashamed of warranting different healthcare policies under certain circumstances. The problem is that the very policies that people such as Pope promote also further the divide between genders. In attempting to make society more accepting of biological differences between males and females, these policies feed into unsubstantiated notions that women are weaker than their male counterparts, or too emotional and incompetent for certain jobs. It’s hard to imagine that the US Republicans would feel any more comfortable with the idea of Hillary Clinton in office if she could take a day off every month to attune her duties to the power of her cycle, regardless of the state of affairs worldwide. It’s not hard to think of a number of other jobs that would also find such a policy worrisome.

To mitigate gender inequality in the workplace, employers and legislators could explore ways to balance maternal leave with paternal leave. Giving women time off every month too closely resembles sheltering women from things they were supposedly incapable of. As such, the risk of a ‘period policy’ still being perceived this way is too great. While it may be hard to walk the line between equal opportunity and paternalism, it is important to allow for personal discretion in individual matters. Employers and legislators should instead focus on improving healthcare for women suffering from chronic menstrual pain, or increasing support for birth control and abortions if they are concerned about fetal alcohol spectrum disorders. Improved education and funding for women’s health would cater to biological differences without limiting a woman’s opportunities or personal discretion in the workplace or in society.

 

 

Emma Avery is a second year anthropology and urban systems student at McGill. Her favourite television show is (still) The Office. She is passionate about soccer, dogs, and St-Viateur bagels.

 

@McGillTribOp | [email protected]

 

 

 

 
a, Features

Diversity unravelled

by Mayaz Alam on

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Growing up, I always knew I was different. As a Bangladeshi citizen who was born in Indonesia, I was atypical. As someone who attended the same international school for 11 years—where international schools are notorious for the amount of year to year turnover they see in their student bodies—I wasn’t /normal/. In many ways, that was the point of going to an international school. Everyone was different, yet differences were celebrated and diversity enriched both the learning and life experiences I had as a child.

Despite this, I rejected the idea that I was South Asian. Throughout my childhood I wanted to rid myself of my Bangladeshi identity. I had never lived there and I didn’t identify with many of the things that made someone ‘Bangladeshi.’ I don’t have an accent, I act ‘westernised,’ and I have very few coethnic friends.

I came to McGill because, among other things, I wanted to go to an internationally renowned university with a diverse student body. Looking back on my decision to come here, I feel as though I wanted to recreate my experiences that I had while going to an international school. Each undergraduate student that attends McGill comes in with a certain degree of naiveté. I was no different.

Deadpool
a, Arts & Entertainment, Film and TV

Pop rhetoric: Deadpool and the R-rated bandwagon a downhill ride

by Tanveer Ahmed on

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This is an age where an R-rated movie can make north of $150 million in a weekend in the United States alone. Deadpool not only smashed countless records, but also had the highest-grossing opening weekend of any R-rated film in the United States. This massive success has fans and studios jumping onto the R-rated bandwagon, calling for not only adaptations of mature properties to film, but also giving formerly kid-ified material and R-rated twist. But this impulsive reaction might not be the right strategy. 

Deadpool’s success can be attributed to many different things. Firstly, it has a huge, passionate fanbase that floods every comic book convention in costumes. This passion isn’t something that other adult-oriented properties such as The Punisher can boast. Past attempts are a clear indication of this as Watchmen, a venerated cult graphic novel-turned-movie, garnered barely more than $100 million domestically in its entire run. Other examples include the Blade trilogy, which earned a combined $200 million or the two Punisher films that made $33 million and $8 million, respectively. 

Perhaps a bigger reason for the hype created by Deadpool was its ingenious advertising campaign. From its announcement, the publicity department was bang-on with posters and videos reminding the audience of the upcoming release of the film. Add to that the self-aware nature of the social media engagement by the perfectly-cast Ryan Reynolds and you have arguably the best marketing job ever done for a movie. The faithful portrayal lured in fans of the source material while the constant influx of publicity for the film sparked the interest of general audiences. This kind of perfect storm cannot be brewed by any other property than this due to the unique fourth-wall-breaking nature of this particular character. Studios and audiences may be mis-attributing the success of this film to its rating rather than the immense work put into marketing it. 

The argument has been made for producing films with characters that have generally had a PG-13 rating as R-rated flicks. Many have called for Batman or Wolverine to be portrayed in the brutally violent fashion that certain comic books have. This approach however makes little sense for studios or general audiences who are not comic fanatics. Both of these characters have illustrious reputations in animation aimed at children, with Batman appearing in more than 60 different shows while Wolverine has had his own steady presence since the ’90s X-Men animated series. These characters have ingrained themselves into people’s childhoods to the point that they are considered idols and heroes. Representing them as ultra-violent characters is not only a betrayal of the source material, but also an unfair proposition for the younger audience who would normally be looking forward to such films. Furthermore, these studios want all demographics possible heading to the box office to ensure massive box office success. This proposition alienates a large audience to the disadvantage of studios; it’s a lose-lose scenario.

Deadpool is a wonderful anomaly in a sea of formulaic comic-book movies, but it would be foolish to conclude that the film is anything beyond that. Attempting to cash in on its success would only render it a flash in the pan. Hollywood and audiences have to realize that such a change of pace was required in the first place due to the predictable nature of the movie climate today; modelling future releases after Deadpool will only perpetuate this problem. Let it remain the breath of fresh air that it is instead of stuffing up the room with similar content.

Exhibit
a, Arts & Entertainment, Books, Music

Port Symphonies pays tribute to the “Queen of Crime”

by Miray Eroglu on

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Pointe-à-Callière Museum’s 22nd edition of Port Symphonies, featuring composer and trombonist Scott Thomson, honoured the achievements of Agatha Christie, the famed murder-mystery novelist. The concert was held in Old Montréal at Place-Royale Square, next to the Pointe-à-Callière Museum, where a current exhibition, Investigating Agatha Christie brings to light Christie’s many interests, from literature to archaeology. The exhibition paints a portrait of the woman behind the novels. For Agatha Christie fans, Investigating Agatha Christie, which includes mementos from Christie’s childhood, marriages, and life spent abroad, is a must-see as it provides the context for the purpose behind this year’s Port Symphonies concert. Together, these elements pay homage to the life and legacy of Agatha Christie and offer alternate modes in which to honour the “Queen of Crime.”

Port Symphonies opened to the sound of bagpipes and drums performed in the middle of Place Royale Square. It was not long before the space was filled with onlookers who gathered to watch the performers and hear the boats, including tugboats and ships, blow their horns in unison. What began as an initially unusual arrangement of sound came together in an interesting medley of music through the combination of the bagpipes, trains and boat horns at different pitches. Thomson’s passion for improvisation is evident in the structure of Port Symphonies as the sounds combine together in surprising and interesting ways.

The performance had a feeling of spontaneity, as the crowd gathered to listen at different points of the concert, and could be enjoyed by everyone not only at Place-Royale but throughout the surrounding area of the museum and Old Port. The sonorous tone of the horns from the boats filled the air with a resonant sound that enveloped the square. Members of the audience filmed the location and recorded the music, producing a sweeping panorama of the view looking out to the boats in the river. In this manner, the concert was unique in that there was not a single performer, nor was the performance limited to a precise location, but features a variety of elements assembled to create a cohesive sound. The spectacle was framed by the scenic location, the charming beauty of Old Montreal beside the luminous skyline, and the harbour dotted with boats. Port Symphonies was truly an immersive experience for onlookers to join together and wait in anticipation for what the next sound arrangement will be.

As the boat horns echoed one another, it seemed as if the sounds were in communication with each other, each responding in a different octave. The performance, about half an hour in duration, was framed by the sound of bagpipes, creating a sense of unity. The noise of the boats, bagpipes and locomotives throughout the symphony was reminiscent of the excitement and drama of Christie’s mystery novels. In particular, the sound of the train horn brings to mind one of Christie’s most celebrated novels, Murder on the Orient Express, published in 1934. 

Port Symphonies allowed the audience to experience their environment in another way. Sound is central to the performance, and it offers an intriguing manner in which to honour the “Queen of Crime.” As the sounds mixed together in curious and compelling ways, they mimicked the precision with which Christie developed the plot of her mystery novels. In this way, Port Symphonies delighted not only Agatha Christie fans and music enthusiasts, but remained open for everyone to come together and enjoy.

Investigating Agatha Christie is at the Pointe-à-Callière Museum (350 Place Royale) until April 17.

a, Student Life

Dear McGill house hunter

by Hailey MacKinnon on

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This year marks my fourth year at McGill, and my fourth different living situation: One year in residence and three years in three different apartments. As someone who has made many avoidable mistakes when it comes to housing, I feel it is my duty to pass on the wisdom I’ve acquired over multiple years of bad apartments and unreliable landlords. Perhaps the following are mistakes that you will only learn from if you make them yourself, but if I can prevent at least one person from living in a creaky basement bedroom with no windows and a landlord who is ‘on business’ for two months, then I feel I have made the world a somewhat better place. 

Tip #1: Be patient. If you haven’t signed a lease yet, you’re likely already doing something right. Often the leases that come up in January and February are the more expensive ones, which may lead to regret once you see all the apartments that become available in March and April. While it can seem that everyone has already figured out accommodations for the following year, don’t feel pressured to sign the first apartment you see just for the sake of keeping up with your peers. In fact, if you don’t feel like finding a summer subletter, the nicest apartment I’ve lived in was one I found in August with a September lease, and many nice apartments’ leases don’t start until June or July. 

Tip #2: Do not settle for a ‘less-than’ apartment. If you feel iffy about an apartment the first or second time you see it, chances are you’re going to be even more disappointed when you move in, and its novelty has worn off. If you’re bitter about bedroom sizes, this will likely fester. If the rooms are dark and dingy, it will only become more noticeable come winter. If it feels damp when the dryer is on, keep looking. There are better options out there. 

Tip #3: Think about the practicalities. When I was first house hunting, my only criteria was that I wanted my apartment to have a big living room and to be relatively close to campus. This kind of tunnel vision led me to gloss over all the aspects of a place that actually make it liveable. For example, do the toilets flush properly? Does your bedroom have a window to let sunlight in? Does the sink’s drain get clogged? Tiny annoyances like these can add up, and make daily life a pain. 

Tip #4: Use your resources to choose a suitable landlord. Importantly, this means knowing how to weed out the bad ones. Did you know McGill actually has a ‘burn-book’  of bad landlords? The complaints binder, which can be found in McGill’s Off-Campus Housing Office, lists landlords with whom students have had bad experiences. A landlord who is too busy to respond to calls or texts is a landlord you should skip. It’s useful to consult both former tenants about their opinions, as well as meet the landlord yourself in order to make an informed decision. Keep this in mind as there is nothing worse than the combination of a broken toilet and a landlord who is ‘extremely busy’ for weeks at a time.

Tip #5: Be informed about the finders fee. You’ve probably heard by now that if the landlord asks you to pay an extra fee for the apartment, or if the former tenants require you to buy their furniture in order to secure the lease, that this is illegal. But myself and many people I know have bought the furniture because we thought it was a good deal for getting furnishing quickly and cheaply. In fact, this couldn’t be further from the truth. Often, former tenants will try to make a profit by getting rid of their old, tarnished furniture to eager students. But remember that you can get nice furniture for way cheaper by using McGill’s classified ads, the McGill Free & For Sale group, or Craigslist. Come the end of April or the end of August, many people are in the process of moving out and are trying to get of their furniture in a hurry and will sell it for almost nothing. This is your best bet for furnishing your apartment quickly and easily—don’t be fooled by the seeming ease of other options. 

a, Science & Technology

McGill professor wins top Canadian science award

by Daniel Galef on

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Professor Victoria Kaspi, astrophysicist in McGill University’s Department of Physics and Director of the McGill Space Institute, was awarded the Gerhard Herzberg Canada Gold Medal for Science and Engineering, the nation’s top scientific honour, last month. Kaspi is one of the world’s leading experts on neutron stars, tiny stellar remnants which are only about the size of Montreal yet weigh about twice the mass of the Sun. Neutron stars are what is left when a star explodes into a supernova, but the remnants are are not massive enough to collapse into a black hole.

Kaspi also studies the fascinating subspecies of neutron stars, such as pulsars and magnetars. Pulsars are spinning neutron stars with very strong magnetic fields which shoot radiation from their poles. If the pulsar’s rotational and magnetic poles are oriented just right, the beam of radiation sweeps through Earth like the rays from a lighthouse, and scientists can detect short bursts of radio, X-rays, or even visible light at regular intervals as the poles sweep around again. This is how pulsars were first discovered in the 1960s, when the perfectly uniform unexplained periodic pulses of energy led scientists to label the phenomenon ‘LGM’ for ‘Little Green Men.’

Kaspi is also the first woman ever to win the Herzberg Prize, an accomplishment made all the more notable by the widespread gender biases and disproportionate representation in the Canadian scientific and academic spheres. Growing up in Texas and in Israel, she recalls among her inspirations her older brother and a biography of the landmark physicist and Nobel laureate Marie Curie. Her plans for the future are many and varied. The Herzberg Prize comes with a minimum grant of $1 million, which Kaspi already has earmarked for what’s important.

“I will put it primarily to training undergraduate, MSc and PhD students, as well as post-doctoral scholars,” Kaspi explained.

Her most recent project is the Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment (CHIME) telescope, currently under construction in British Columbia. CHIME is a revolutionary type of telescope, called a radio telescope, that is hoped to offer a lot of new information on pulsars and other radio-emitting bodies. 

“CHIME has a truly novel design,” Kaspi said. “No moving parts! […] Moreover, it will have 2048 antennas and a massive software correlator that allows it to ‘point’ in different directions all in software.”

This will be extremely advantageous over current designs that can only focus on where the massive dish is physically pointed.

Right now, both the CHIME project and Kaspi are setting their sights toward perhaps the most puzzling new mystery in astronomy: Fast Radio Bursts (FRB). These ultra-quick blasts of low-frequency radiation have only just started to get noticed in the last few years, and astronomers are far from an answer. A few proposed theories involve magnetar hyperflares (immensely powerful bursts of energy put off by strongly charged neutron stars), interactions between black holes and neutron stars, or pulsars collapsing into black holes—a hypothesized event called a ‘blitzar.’

And at the forefront of this mystery has been Kaspi. She estimates that as many as 10,000 detectable—but unrecorded—FRBs occur in our sky every day. In 2014 she helped determine that the bizarre FRBs likely originate from outside the Milky Way Galaxy entirely. In the coming years, Kaspi and her researchers, with the help of the new technology they are developing, may well solve this mystery for good.

“I think there is a revolution in radio astronomy going on, and the field is extremely promising for the study of pulsars,” Kaspi said. “From CHIME to FAST [China’s under-construction 500-metre radio telescope, which will be the largest and most precise ever built] to the foreseen Square Kilometre Array, the future of the field is very bright.”

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McGill sells Redpath properties for $20.6 million

by Regina Wung on

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During the February Senate meeting, Christopher Manfredi, provost and vice-principal (VP) (Academic) announced the sale of a portion of McGill-owned land, resulting in an unanticipated $20.6 million in revenue for the university. Known as the Redpath properties and located to the west of campus near Guy Street and Dr. Penfield Avenue, the land was originally received as a donation to the university. Before its sale, the Redpath properties served as a minor source of income for McGill, as the housing units built on the land regularly paid rent to the university. The rent for the properties this year would have been between $750,000 and $900,000.

Faculty of Arts Senator, John Galaty, cited concerns related to the university auctioning off assets in order to offset its deficit.
“Here you have […] $20 million in relationship to a $10 million deficit,” Galaty said. “It’s moved a significant amount of money from the asset column over to the […] revenues being taken in by the university so we can pay our bills [….] Most of the downtown of Montreal used to belong to McGill, and one wonders, ‘If we’d only kept it and leased it rather than sold it, we’d probably be better off.’”

Manfredi assured the McGill Senate that this decision was unique and not part of a larger strategy to pay bills; however, he also conceded that the university may choose to sell other properties in the future as a method to fund different projects, including the proposed acquisition of the Royal Victoria Hospital (RVH) site by McGill.

“There is no strategy to sell property in order to pay our bills,” said Manfredi. “If we were to undertake [the RVH] project, one of the ways in which McGill might finance its share would be by looking at some of our non-strategic real estate assets on the periphery of the campus and converting those into cash that would then be reinvested into the [RVH] site, if we go down that road.”

VP (Administration and Finance) Michael Di Grappa also attested to the fact that there were no current plans to sell any of McGill’s other properties, refuting Galaty’s notion that the university was employing a strategy of selling capital to pay back debts.

“This was not an attempt to sell assets in order to pay for operating deficits or anything like that,” Di Grappa said. “With respect to the specific sale of the Redpath properties, that’s a case of an emphyteutic lease on land —[a lease] on which condominiums were built [….] The university [was] the owner of the land and [it collected] a rent for the use of the land from the owners of the condos.”
The lease for houses on the Redpath properties was created in the 1970s and included a formula for resetting rent prices every 20 years. In 2014, an offer was made to the university when the rent was being recalculated.

“The owners were faced with an issue where, in roughly 30 years, the land and whatever was built on it was reverted back to McGill,” Di Grappa said. “The owners of the condos approached us because we were negotiating the increase in rent from 2014, and they made an offer to buy the land so they wouldn’t have to pay rent for [a certain] number of years.”
According to Di Grappa, from McGill’s perspective, keeping the land was not an ideal option because it could not profitably be used for university-related purposes.

“It is not a strategic property,” said Di Grappa. “[It is] not as if we could use it for another campus or another classroom, and it would be a waste to use it for student residences because the condos would fetch a higher value and [the university] would only be able to have 85 units there.”

Di Grappa defended the university’s decision to sell the land.

“In calculating the amounts we would derive in the 30 or so years from this emphyteutic lease versus the amount they would give us up front, we thought it was in the best interests of the university to take this particular deal,” Di Grappa said. “The sale was very satisfactory for the university because we have very pressing needs. The owners were very happy; they have the freedom to do what they wish with the land.”

The revenues from the sale of the Redpath properties will be invested in a sustainability project.

“That particular sale has actually allowed us to make a provision in our budgeting […] to support a very important project in sustainability sciences, where we’ll be making a $10 million investment over the next five years,” Manfredi said. “We’re able to do that because of that kind of extraordinary revenue.”

As for McGill’s other properties, including lands on the South Shore and Macdonald campus, Di Grappa maintained that the university intends to keep these.

“There are no plans to dispose of any of that other space,” he said.

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