Author: Simon-Feisthauer Fournet

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Concordia Farmers’ Market is back for the fall semester

Farmers’ Market at the Loyola Campus. LUCAS MARSH/THE CONCORDIAN

The market wants to promote sustainability by offering local and organic food to Concordia students

The Concordia Farmers’ Market made its comeback on both campuses for the fall semester. 

Until the last week of October, vendors will offer local and organic products to students. The market takes place from 4 to 7 p.m. on Wednesdays at Loyola and on Thursdays at the downtown campus. 

Lacey Boudreau, one of the coordinators for the Farmers’ Market, explained that it started as one of the many projects within the Concordia Food Coalition. Founded in 2013, the Food Coalition aims to promote a more sustainable food system at Concordia. 

“It’s one of the pieces of the puzzle that we’re trying to put together for a new food enterprise,” said Boudreau. “We want to give students the opportunity to have very direct access to local organic food every week.”

In front of the F.C. Smith Building at Loyola and the J.W. McConnell Building downtown, local vendors from the neighbouring area sell their organic products. Among them are the vendors from Co-op CultivAction, a food cooperative that is part of the Concordia Food Coalition. 

Caleb Woolcott, a member of CultivAction, said the co-op provides food from its mixed diverse vegetable garden with the goal of making fresh local produce accessible to all. 

Through their community-supported agriculture program, people can order baskets at the beginning of the season and come to the Farmers’ Market to pick up fresh vegetables every week. Vegetables are sourced locally from their garden that six staff members are responsible for, along with volunteers and interns. 

A part of the garden also serves for the development of permaculture gardening techniques and is used by students to learn and practice sustainable agriculture.

“Urban agriculture, a lot of it is about community engagement, and there is a really wonderful community around the garden,” said Woolcott. 

Nico Schutte, co-founding member, explained CultivAction’s main goal is to work on food sovereignty within the University. 

“We’re trying to have a circular food economy in Concordia,” said Schutte. “The idea is to divest in the international factory farm food system that clearly does not feed the majority of people and only contributes to climate change.”

Though the market closes in November to reopen next summer, the team hopes to be active during the winter semester.

“There is the possibility of some pop-up holiday markets that we’ve been talking about or different things happening throughout the winter until we start again next summer,” said Boudreau.

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Le Frigo Vert Collective Reopens for the School Year

CATHERINE REYNOLDS/The Concordian

The Concordia anti-capitalist space Le Frigo Vert reopens its doors to the student community

With the start of the new school year, the food collective Le Frigo Vert (LFV) at Concordia’s downtown campus has reopened its doors to students. The collective’s main focus is to offer affordable food, alternative health services and a community space that every Concordia student body can access. 

The collective was founded 25 years ago and strives to be anti-capitalist, anti-colonial and anti-oppression, partnering with activist groups across Montreal all while not prioritizing their bottom line. 

Sarah Mohammed, a collective member, explained that LFV functions as a non-hierarchical worker-run organization. Instead of having set positions and responsibilities, Mohammed added that LFV members have many different roles within the collective.

During its 25 years of existence, LFV has had to constantly reinvent itself to fit the evolving needs of students.

“It went from a big grocery situation to becoming a not-for-profit, then began offering all kinds of extra products and we realized we were moving away from our mandate because there were more ‘fancy’ things, and we had to really check in with ourselves and really return to the roots,” Mohammed said. “We are always trying to keep in mind the needs of the student community which are changing all the time.”

Hunter Cubitt-Cooke, collective member. CATHERINE REYNOLDS/The Concordian

Hunter Cubitt-Cooke has been a collective member at LFV for almost eight years. Cubitt-Cooke was originally drawn to the collective for its mandate to offer accessible and affordable services to students. 

“Everything about our mandate I really like, I can totally be myself completely,” Cubitt-Cooke said. “I get to bring all of myself and different skills into one place.” 

Through LFV, Cubitt-Cooke is able to use their professional skills as a herbalist to serve students in need, regardless of their financial capabilities.  

“I really align with the values of Frigo and I care about what we do,” they explained. “I wanted to be able to make herbology accessible not only to rich people — which is most herb clients — so for me that’s a way I can do that here.”

Jessie Dzambu has been a collective member at LFV for over a year. Dzambu discovered LFV during the pandemic through the food baskets they offered and decided to join them.

“I just really liked everything that they stand for,” said Dzambu. “I appreciate that they’re anti-capitalist and I really think that there is a lack of public spaces where you can just be except for the library these days. I really like that people can just come here and you don’t have to pay anything, it is a spot for people to just exist.”

Despite the services LFV has to offer, not many Concordia students are aware of its existence. 

LFV will be hosting a reopening event on Sept. 22 where food and drinks will be offered from 2-7 p.m. 

“We’re trying to create a bit more awareness for newer people,” said Mohammed. “Even though we’ve been around for [nearly] 30 years we still have people coming in saying ‘oh we never knew about you.’ And as it is the beginning of the school year we wanted to just host an event to bring everybody together, make our presence known.”

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Space Concordia flies to Poland for European Rover Challenge

Space Concordia competed at the European Rover Challenge, an international space and robotics event in Kielce, Poland. Photo courtesy of Space Concordia.

Space Concordia competes in the eighth edition of the European Rover Challenge in Poland

Last weekend, Space Concordia (SC) competed in the 2022 edition of the European Rover Challenge (ERC), an international space and robotics event based on real-life scenarios from European Space Agency and NASA missions. The event is centred around technological developments for space exploration, the ultimate goal of the ERC being to eventually become a benchmark and test trial for planetary robotic activities. 

The competition allows teams from all over the world to present their mobile robot designs and compete against each other. 

SC is dedicated to the development of space technology and is organized into four divisions: robotics, rocketry, spacecraft and space health. The student organization was founded in 2010 and has since grown to over 150 members at Concordia.

From Sept. 9 to 11, the Robotics team travelled to Kielce, Poland, to test out its own Rover robot in a Martian-like environment.

This year’s ERC was held on the world’s largest artificial Martian track in the Kielce University of Technology. Eleven people from Space Concordia joined the competition in-person. 

The team ran into some complications that limited the amount of time they had to assemble the Rover. This prevented the team from completing one of the four tasks they had set out to do: navigation, maintenance, science and collection and probing. 

“The assembly was frantic but we did it,” said Philippe Fernie, mechanical co-lead for the Robotics team. “We got the Rover at three o’clock on Friday which was the first day of competition and everyone got together to assemble it. We got it done within four hours, which is very fast.” 

The team still managed to go through three of the ERC challenges. The various tasks included trying out a hypothesis they wanted to test in a Martian environment and manoeuvring the Rover to put probes into the soil and scoop out dirt to conduct some tests. These exercises allowed the robotics team to practice with their Rover in real-life conditions. 

“It really helped the team too, I think, to see if the Rover could actually perform the tasks and be out in an actual competition environment rather than just seeing it go around the University,” said William Wells, the technical lead and software co-lead from the Robotics team. 

Wells explained that each year, the ERC changes the artificial Martian track to model a different type of location on Mars. 

“This year it was a volcanic location […] it was really cool to actually see it and get to put a Rover out there and drive around,” Wells said.

After the stress of the competition, the team is tired yet happy to have had the opportunity to attend the ERC and practice their skills. 

“It was an incredible experience actually getting to go to a competition in person because most of us on the team never got to go to an in-person competition since the pandemic,” said Wells.

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