The Centre for Social Transformation hosted Beyond Fares in partnership with Climate Justice Montreal.
As she was leaving Concordia’s downtown campus library at 6 p.m. on Thursday, fourth-year anthropology major Maya Robitaille-Lopez noticed a crowd behind the SHIFT: Centre for Social Transformation glass doors. Her interest was piqued by the conference taking place inside, and she decided to join.
On Nov. 28, SHIFT hosted the event Beyond Fares: Building Climate-Resilient, People-Centered Transit Systems in collaboration with Climate Justice Montreal.
The event drew an audience interested in exploring the intersection of public transit, climate justice, and community empowerment.
“Unlikely allyship is fundamental to social transformation,” said SHIFT coordinator Richenda Grazette. “We try to get people from different fields of work together in everything we do. This includes academics, activists, and community members coming together to share ideas and challenge each other.”
The evening celebrated the launch of Rage climatique’s newspaper Transport for All! and featured seven speakers from diverse backgrounds. Conversations centered on creating equitable transit systems that prioritize people and the planet. The blend of perspectives highlighted SHIFT’s commitment to fostering interdisciplinary dialogue.
The center uses university research resources to support community-based groups to discuss institutional change and policy reform. For example, SHIFT has facilitated a discussion between the Gina Cody School of Engineering and Tka:nios, a Kahnawake-based Indigenous food software hub.
Panels included director and professor at Concordia Institute for Information Systems Engineering (CIISE), Chun Wang’s discussion on urban mobility, Climate Justice Montreal members on advocating for fare-free transit, Nicolas Chevalier and two other anonymous Rage Climatique representatives on transport decommodification, CIISE graduate student Alexander Ireland on urban air mobility, and public scholar and PhD candidate Sarah Farahdel on sustainability frameworks.
Researchers and activists approached the conversation from contrasting angles, reflecting a deliberate design by SHIFT to spark debate.
The different perspectives on the reasons behind unequal access to public transit clashed. The researchers’ speech emphasized technology as a positive driver of change, while activists framed the issue as rooted in systemic problems like capitalism.
“They were talking different languages, approaching from different perspectives, which isn’t bad, as you can enrich each other’s views,” said Said Apale, a regular attendee of SHIFT events.
Activists sat at the center of the room, while researchers lined the periphery.
“I’ve never been exposed to this environment before,” admitted Wang. “I learned a lot, especially about how different perspectives can co-exist.”
Audience engagement was a hallmark of the event, with hands hesitantly rising and falling during the Q-and-A.
“It’s not about having one voice but about fostering more conversations,” commented Robitaille-Lopez.
Apale commented on the perceived apoliticism of certain researchers, contrasting it with the activism on display.
“The divide is interesting from the researchers’ academic very high-level view a sense of technology as positive bringing change and the activists who look at it more as the problem,” he said.
In all of their events, the centre tries to get people from different fields of work together.
“I think maybe there is dissent, maybe there is [a] difference, maybe there’s challenging each other,” said Grazette. “But that is, ultimately, healthy. If we just didn’t ask questions and we didn’t challenge each other, we wouldn’t be moving anything forward.”
By staging an interdisciplinary dialogue between unlikely allies, the event reminded attendees that meaningful transformation requires both dissent and unity.
“I think it made people think, made people rethink their assumptions,” Apale said, reflecting on the event. “For the researchers anyway, some of them said there’s stuff they have to act on, and for the activists, I think it brings a question of, ‘How are you going to actually affect some of this change?’”
