Tag: masks

Categories
Sports

The art of goalie gear

Stingers' Jonathan Lemieux and Jordan Naylor after practice on Nov. 30, 2022. Maria Bouabdo/ The Concordian

Concordia Stingers’ goaltenders talk about their gear and the inspiration and meaning behind it

Everybody knows how agile and smart hockey goaltenders have to be. But they also have the most creative and artistic position when it comes to gear in team sports.

Goalies have the freedom to design their own equipment, including their masks and pad sets.

While everybody notices how aesthetically pleasing these masks are, what they don’t always realize is the meaning and inspiration behind certain designs.

The Concordia Stingers’ goalies — from the women’s and men’s hockey teams — explained the designs on their gear.

Alice Philbert wearing her white mask.

The veteran goaltender in her matching white pads, glove, and blocker. She’s a big fan of white gear as it’s discreet and allows her to blend in with the background.

Woody from Toy Story on the back of Philbert’s mask has a special meaning for her.
“My best friend’s nickname is Woody,” Philbert said. “She was on the team and she didn’t play much so I wanted something to represent her so she can be on the ice, in the net with me during every game.”

Jonathan Lemieux in his old mask from his time with the Moncton Wildcats of the QMJHL.

Lemieux with his mask on top of his head.

Lemieux’s mask mostly has designs representing his old team, banners from their championships, Garfield, and scratches on the back. He also included “prove people wrong” and a four-leaf clover for good luck.

Lemieux in his white set and his teammate Gabriel Proulx in the back. The 6’1 goaltender said he likes to wear white equipment because it makes him look bigger.

Teammates Jordan Naylor (left) and Lemieux (right) on the ice during practice on Jan. 11, 2023.

Madison Oakes in their gradient white-to-maroon mask.

There are four stars on Oakes’s mask with encouraging messages they have received from people close to them. They said they wanted to have them on their mask as reminders. The message “I will always be there” is from their teammate Philbert.

Oakes in their full gear. They wanted a more colourful setup and liked the idea of a gradient.

Jordan Naylor in his grey-base mask with maroon and gold designs.

The Stingers’ #34 with his mask on top of his head.

On the back of Naylor’s mask, he decided to have designs that remind him of his home in Aldergrove, B.C. Designs include the skyline and “The Shack,” which is what his parents call their house.

Naylor in his full equipment set.

Lemieux and Naylor after practice on Nov. 30, 2022.

Categories
News

Texas lifts all COVID restrictions, causing outrage from the Biden administration

Mask-wearing and gathering limits will no longer be enforced by state law

Texas Governor Greg Abbott lifted the statewide mask mandate and allowed all businesses to operate at 100 per cent capacity on March 10, while only one-tenth of Texans have been fully vaccinated against COVID-19.

Texans are still encouraged to follow all of the necessary health guidelines, including social distancing and wearing a mask in indoor spaces. However, Gov. Abbott explained that his people “no longer need government running their lives.”

U.S. President Joe Biden called the governor’s decision “Neanderthal thinking” on March 3,  claiming that such measures are the last thing Americans need at this stage of the pandemic. This situation threatens Biden’s plan to have all Americans wearing a mask for the first 100 days of his presidency.

Mass sporting events and music concerts are also allowed to take place in Texas and may welcome over 10,000 spectators.

Despite receiving a green light from the state government, however, American businesses decided to further protect Texas residents from the spread of COVID-19.

Companies including Target, Best Buy, Toyota, and Macy’s will continue to require all of their employees and customers to wear a mask on their premises. The majority of retail stores, supermarkets, and pharmacies will not be cancelling their COVID policies across the state.

Gov. Abbott’s statewide changes have led to a political clash, as the Republican governor was met with resistance from Democrat mayors of Houston, Dallas, San Antonio, and Austin.

As the cities’ leaders have the authority to implement COVID restrictions on a local level, social distancing and mask-wearing will still be required in all municipal buildings including libraries and convention centres, as well as public transportation.

“We think that masking is so important. The doctors and the data all indicate that,” said Steve Adler, the mayor of Austin. “We’re going to stay on that course as long as we can. […] Now is not the time to take a risk.”

U.S. health officials have warned against lifting such restrictions, emphasizing the highly contagious variants and the lack of vaccination in the state. Despite the recent drop in daily coronavirus cases, Gov. Abbott’s decision directly goes against the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) guidelines.

Houston became the first American city to record all the dangerous types of COVID strains, while Texas — a state of 29 million people — currently ranks 47th out of the 50 states in terms of per capita vaccine distribution.

As mask-wearing turns into a Republican-versus-Democrat debate rather than a health precaution, a political divide is inevitable on Texas’ path towards defeating COVID-19.

High school students struggle to keep their masks on

 Who is enforcing the rules?

When the school year began at the end of August, it was believed that healthy youth were at low risk for contracting COVID-19 and that schools could open confidently and safely. Now, in the midst of an extended lockdown during the second wave of the pandemic, schools have become the driving force of transmission in Quebec. According to Santé Montreal, by the end of October, among the highest number of reported cases was in youth between the ages of 10 to 19. As a result, the government is contemplating shutting down schools during the winter term.

Living near a local high school, this outcome is not all surprising. Since the beginning of the school year, I have often seen high school students huddled closely together, without masks on, walking to and from school.

The Government of Quebec provided a document detailing how students should conduct themselves on school grounds in accordance with health and safety measures. Initially, secondary students were not required to wear masks in their classrooms so long as they were with students from their own class. Now, students who attend schools in red zones must wear masks in their classrooms regardless. Outside of the classroom, masks are required in communal spaces like hallways, cafeterias and on public and school transportation.

Physical distancing has not been made mandatory for students who are in the same class as one another. However, when interacting with students from other classes they must keep a one-metre distance, except in red zones where a two-metre distance must be maintained. Perhaps this is easy enough to enforce on school grounds, but once the school day is over there’s no way to prevent the intermingling of students off of school property.

At College de Montreal, for example, the high school students display different behaviour depending on the time of day. At 8:30 on a Monday morning, teenagers can be seen walking along Sherbrooke Street towards the grand grey stone building that was once a Roman Catholic seminary. Nearly all of these high schoolers are wearing masks as they make their way onto the school grounds. The black masks appear to be just another garment added to their school uniform, blending in fittingly with the charcoal grey and navy tones of their skirts and slacks.

The end of the school day, however, shows an entirely different scene. About a dozen students stand at a bus stop across the street from the school on the corner of Sherbrooke and Saint-Marc Streets. The majority of them wear their masks around their chins or have them dangling between their fingers as they enjoy their after-school snacks of AriZona Iced Teas and assorted bags of chips.

While observing the scene, I see a middle-aged woman wearing a mask and big black sunglasses exiting the 24 Sherbrooke bus. She wanders over to a group of teenage girls, about 14-years-old, who aren’t wearing their masks as they cluster together. If you’re not standing six feet apart you must keep your masks on, she tells them.

“Don’t you care about your parents? Your grandparents?” she appeals to them.

“Our parents aren’t here,” one of the girls retorts to the agreement of her friends.

“Yeah, they’re not even here,” they repeat in unison.

Exasperated by the seemingly futile conversation, the woman turns her back on the group and walks the other way. Invigorated by their triumph, the girls brainstorm alternative comebacks.

“My grandparents are dead,” one of them exclaims followed by a fit of giggles.

Becoming increasingly animated with every retelling of the confrontation, their group creeps closer and closer together. One girl with a high ponytail stands on the periphery of the group and laughs with the others while subtly putting her mask on.

The girls spot two schoolmates across the street and call them over. With her mask securely on, the girl with the high ponytail pushes herself to the centre of the circle and is the first to tell the newcomers the tale of their perceived victory.

For those of us who have been strictly following the proper protocols, the event that unfolded is concerning and rather obnoxious, but we must be careful not to judge these young people too harshly. The rules keep changing for these students depending on where they are and who they are with, and they’ve had to continuously alter their behaviour accordingly. Despite a verbal dismissal of the woman who confronted the high school girls, once she left, some of them began to adhere to her request. The issue is not simply a matter of teenagers resenting being told what to do, but a lack of consistency in what has been expected of them.

 

Feature photo by Christine Beaudoin

Categories
Opinions

Mandatory mask laws: Make caring about people normal again

Hot take: Public health has no place in identity politics, and comparing public health measures to the Holocaust won’t prove your point.

Since early March, when the WHO officially declared the novel coronavirus disease a pandemic, public opinion evolved drastically. Most notably, the issue has found its way into identity politics.

Leonard Cohen best said it: “There is a war between the ones who say there is a war, and the ones who say there isn’t.”

At this point in time, we’re somehow in dispute about whether there is a virus, and whether that virus is as dangerous as our government and health officials say it is. To that end, we’re in dispute about the unprecedented measures our government is taking to protect the health of its citizens by balancing the health of the economy and the health of the people.

Here’s a hot take: mandatory mask laws are actually not political, they’re medical. A mandatory mask regulation is not the mark of a political coup. It’s akin to banning smoking indoors or a “No shoes, no service” sign.

Meanwhile, our economic system continues to plunder the lower classes of our society, pushing them to more and more dire living conditions, while the elite few make a casual $8 billion earnings in one day.

It comes as no surprise that, with such a disparity in wealth ever growing, discouraged people experiencing exploitation are at their wits end, and are not about to take one more assault on their liberty. In this cultural landscape, I understand that a mandatory mask is just one more thing you have to do, while you risk your life in order to afford your life. But it’s also a low hanging fruit, and it doesn’t reach the actual issue at hand.

Compounded with a government that’s inconsistently transparent, and cases continuing to climb in Quebec, it really does feel like our democracy is in crisis.

We, like Nelly, have a dilemma, and it’s getting undermined when we centre mask regulations as a human rights violation.

Despite what the old man yelling at the clouds would have you believe, it is incomparable to relate mandatory masks with the forced branding of Jewish people during the Holocaust. It also acts to undermine a very real issue in our society by misplacing the focus of people’s fears.

I first noticed this comparison in June during the internationally covered Palm Beach County commission meeting on a mandatory mask order.

At this meeting, one resident, Theresa Roberts said, “I’m also the daughter of somebody who lived through Germany. I know a lot of stories. And this is sounding very familiar to me. You’re forcing people to wear masks. They were forced to wear a star.”

Another resident and Republican candidate for Congress, Reba Sherrill, said at the meeting, “Discriminating against certain groups of people while exempting others is a violation of our civil rights. Following World War II, we Jews said ‘Never again.’” She continued, “We were forced to wear a gold star. Told to get [in] a box car to be taken to a safe place. In reality, what happened?”

I know there is a lot of fear, especially for people in the Jewish community. Throughout history, Jewish people trying to assimilate to new societies have been met with violence, and I understand that the fear of history repeating itself is very real. We also lose credibility when we make leaps like this.

We have genuine cause for concern about the safety, privacy, and freedom of people in North America. In Quebec, the Legault government passed a law that entitles police officers to obtain search warrants via the telephone, enabling quick legal access to private residences, for the intended purpose of enforcing COVID-19 restrictions on public gatherings.

In my opinion, this law poses greater issues for human rights violations and discriminatory policing than a mandatory mask law. We have to be smart about where we cast our attention and criticism.

“There is a war between the ones who say there is a war, and the ones who say there isn’t.” Lately, I wonder whether there is a war between those of us who say chaos is a conduit of war and those who say a mask is.

 

Feature graphic by Taylor Reddam

Categories
Student Life

Food isn’t always good for the skin

Graphic by Thom Bell

Lemon juice treatments, baking soda masks, sugar scrubs—type “DIY acne treatment” into Google, and you are likely to find a slew of articles that praise these treatments and other common household items for their alleged pimple-fighting benefits.

But are these trending DIY ingredients truly effective in treating pesky skin ailments? The kind of skin-care advice found in many women’s magazines, as well as in online beauty and health articles, may actually be ruining your skin.

Let’s begin with the widely-acclaimed beauty blog miracle ingredient: lemon. A health.com article titled “15 Home Remedies to Make a Pimple Vanish,” advises readers to “wipe lemon juice across your pimples with a cotton ball, and leave it on overnight.”

This common skin care treatment overlooks an important aspect of our skin’s chemical makeup: its acid mantle. The acid mantle is the skin’s barrier to bacteria, viruses and other potential contaminants—it is measured by pH.  Through their research for Wake Forest University’s department of dermatology in North Carolina, Dr. Saba Ali and Dr. Gil Yosipovitch stressed the importance of the skin’s acid mantle.

Ali and Yosipovitch expressed in their research paper some concern over the disregard to acid mantle.  They argued that skin’s acid mantle is vital, and that “recognizing factors that alter skin pH and selecting products that preserve the acid mantle is of prime importance” in treating skin.

Exogenous factors, like products that are too acidic (low pH) or too alkaline (high pH), cause damage to the skin’s barrier and lead to “compromised skin,” according to a research paper by American dermatologist, James Del Rosso.

Lemon juice has a pH level of two, while human skin is roughly 5.5. Therefore, Del Rosso explained, this difference in pH levels means using lemon juice on your face can lead to loss of skin elasticity, increased skin rigidity and acne.

According to a 2014 research paper by endocrinologist Dr. Stacey E Anderson and dermatologist Dr. Barbara Jean Meade, having compromised skin can make you more at risk to toxic chemicals that irritate and further damage the skin.  This is because, if the skin’s pH is compromised, chemicals can get through the outer layer of the skin, and inside the body.

Another popular ingredient seen in amateur skin care articles is baking soda. According to Doctor Oz’s website, “you don’t need harsh chemicals to fight acne. Try a mixture of baking soda and honey to help clear skin.”

Baking soda is an alkaline, with a pH of nine. Whether alkaline or acidic, Anderson and Meade’s research found that the pH of daily skin care products is very important to protect the skin barrier.  Baking soda’s pH is, therefore, just too high for skin to handle.

However, some household items are proven to be good remedies.  The aforementioned skin-clearing mixture of honey and baking soda, while best to be avoided, includes honey. In a research publication for the Iranian Journal of Basic Medical Sciences, dermatologists Tahereh Eteraf-Oskouei and Moslem Najafi explored honey’s benefits.  They argued that topical application of honey has healing effects for superficial skin burns and operation wounds, making honey a safe ingredient in DIY skin care treatments.  Honey’s average pH is 3.9, but can range anywhere from 3.4 to 6.1.

While some websites may provide acne-sufferers faulty skin care advice, online communities exist to counteract the wave of careless information. Forums on Reddit, for example, pride themselves on circulating facts about skin care discovered in scientific journals.

Graphic by Thom Bell

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