Tag: montreal

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Opinions

The death of an important Canadian white of passage?

There’s snow way Canadian childhood will be the same without snow days.

I’m in elementary school. All day I’ve heard whispers from the adults that tomorrow there might be a huge snowstorm.

My exhilaration is palpable. In class, I dream about traipsing through deep snow and making maple syrup taffy in the backyard, leaving the stresses of the third grade behind for a day.

As I got older, I even heard rumours of a ‘SnowDayPredictor’ that some would refresh frantically and announce the odds to their peers.

Before I go to sleep, I stare out my window, willing the snow to fall in copious amounts, silencing the city with a thick white blanket.

The next morning, I’m too wired with excitement. I wake up early and glance outside. Sure enough, the snow has piled up to at least knee height, and my mom urges me to go back to sleep — school is cancelled. It’s a snow day!

As a born-and-raised Montrealer, snow days are an integral part of my fondest winter memories. There’s nothing like waking up and realizing you have the day off to spend outside, frolicking in fluffy powder and cozying up with a warm hot chocolate when you come back inside (or spending the entire day inside, staying warm!).

But with new possibilities for online school thanks to the pandemic, are my beloved snow days a thing of the past? On the Jan. 16 snow day, 10 Montreal schools opted for Zoom learning instead of giving students the day off to enjoy the winter wonderland.

It’s ridiculous. Blasphemy. Absurdity.

I firmly believe that snow days should remain in practice in spite of the option to hold school online when excessive snow makes travelling to school difficult.

In addition to the pure fun and the creation of core memories that snow days bring, taking a spontaneous day off school does wonders for one’s mental health.

In our often-too-busy lives, snow days offer us the time to relax, recharge, and enjoy our surroundings, without having to feel guilty for missing out on being productive.

“Where I come from, some days it’s like 40 degrees,” said Concordia student Zina Chouaibi. She grew up in Algeria and moved to Montreal at age 11. “We [didn’t] take days off. Even if the sun [was] burning,” she explained, noting that her first snow day here was quite a shock, but very exciting.

Still, Chouaibi sees the benefit in snow days, particularly for younger people. “My sister does a lot of Zooms now. And it’s sad because she [spends] most of the time now inside rather than outside.”

A 2020 study from the International Journal of Behavioral Nutrition and Physical Activity found that only 4.8 per cent of children and 0.6 per cent of the youth surveyed were meeting movement behaviour guidelines during COVID-19 restrictions. More than ever, children can use time away from their screens to enjoy the outdoors, making the need for snow days even more apparent.

Taking these much-needed breaks isn’t only necessary for kids and teenagers — these so-called “mental health days” reduce burnout in adults as well.

That being said, even if snow days become obsolete, I’ve been known to create my own. When there’s a decent snowfall in the Laurentians or the Eastern Townships, I suddenly fall ill with mogulitis, a near deadly self-coined disease that can only be cured by playing hooky and driving to the mountains for a day of skiing.

But mogulitis isn’t really about skiing, it’s more about reconnecting with nature, taking time for myself, and appreciating the beauty of Canadian winter (before it turns to brown slush). So even if snow days become a thing of the past, I urge you to fall back on mogulitis — but hopefully it won’t come to that.

 

Archive Picture from Talia Kliot

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News

Queering Montreal’s Map

Interactive database Queering the Map reveals the queer experiences that are everpresent yet invisible in the physical world

In May of 2017, Lucas LaRochelle launched Queering the Map, a crowdsourced digital archive for queer experiences, which now features over 20,000 written entries from around the world. 

The idea for Queering the Map came to LaRochelle while passing a tree where they had met and shared numerous experiences with a long-term partner. Reflecting on their own mental map and queer experiences led to the concept of a database where anyone could anonymously share their own experiences with a pin on the space where they’ve occurred. “The aim of the project is to make legible memories, histories and moments of queerness that would otherwise disappear,” said LaRochelle to CBC Arts in 2018. 

Submissions are entered as pins on the map and comprise feelings, events and stories. Ranging from love, sex, heartbreak, and happiness they reveal an honest image of queerness relative to the physical spaces it occupies. “Our first date. We talked for hours and you kissed me outside my apartment. 2 years later and I still think about you” shares a submission pinned in the Plateau-Mont-Royal. In February 2018, engagement shot up after the map went viral on Facebook, sparking growth from around 660 pins to 6,500 pins in just three days and garnering attention worldwide.

During their time as a resident of the Fine Arts Reading Room (FARR) at Concordia in Design and Computational Arts, LaRochelle created the map with a little help from friends and tech consulting from the FARR Lab. LaRochelle noted, “I was primarily inspired by Tumblr in the early 2010s, which is one of the places where I for the first time saw queer and trans people expressing themselves on their own terms vis-a-vis text and image.” For LaRochelle and those they connected with online, anonymity helped form the digital landscape into a place where identity and queerness could exist at ease and as intended by each user. Anonymous submissions on Queering the Map serve to mirror the positive effect a platform which universalizes user presentation has had for online queer community.

After five years online LaRochelle is seeing how a queer approach to space develops after its first steps and successes. With the project’s expansion to the global scale, it must reckon with how the growth of the space we inhabit conflicts with a core facet of the Map: the intersection between queer liberation and decolonization. 

Its moderation system, which vets submissions for hate speech, spam, and personal information shows where they must adapt, given how moderation is currently based in Montréal but overlooks entries coming from global, specifically non-Western, perspectives. 

“Rather than myself and most of my friends [who do the moderation] who are located in the western context, a better moderation system would be moderated by people who have more knowledge of that specific culture and context,” said LaRochelle, referring to a localized moderation system across geographic regions.

Queering the Map has since used event opportunities to explore the project’s themes and questions in a concrete space. In 2019, Concordia’s 4TH SPACE hosted Queering the Map: On_Site, a public exhibition which sought to embody how it’s themes interact in a complex way when brought off the digital platform. The collaborative event held curated workshops and performances including digital self-defense for marginalized communities, a latin dance partner class, counter-cartography through beadwork, self-reflection through hip hop, and mapping desire through movement.

With potential for a podcast and docu-series, there is much on the horizon for Queering the Map. Still, it’s impact in the past five years can be seen on the site itself across the thousands of heartfelt contributions which connect the queer community across the map.

Check it out or submit your own queer experiences at www.queeringthemap.com

Categories
News

More than just a budget cut

Photo by Kaitlynn Rodney

The Quebec government’s decision to abruptly cut the $100 million worth of funding once promised to Dawson College raises questions, especially for what they had planned on doing with the funding

The Coalition Avenir Québec’s (CAQ) sudden change of heart to cancel the Dawson funding project has left many in the English community scratching their heads as to why the once-promised $100 million project to expand the institution is no more.

Over seven years in the making, the long-term project supposedly guaranteed Quebec’s largest English CEGEP funding to expand its medical technology department. According to Dawson’s Communications Coordinator Donna Varrica, the funding would have improved upon the current lack of adequate space to comfortably host all of the CEGEP’s students, all while providing a medical clinic in the area that would serve the community and train their students.

 “Over the past two years, we’ve been hearing about the lack of skilled labour in those areas”, Varrica said when referring to Quebec’s healthcare system. “The fact that it’s overburdened, the fact that there’s a burnout because they’re understaffed, the timing couldn’t have been any worse. Here we were providing a solution for the healthcare system and had the rug pulled from under us,” Varrica said.

Former Dawson alumni, lawyer, and Quebec Community Groups Network secretary Matt Aronson said the sudden budget cut emits “a feeling of betrayal, disappointment and outrage,” among many in the English-speaking community. “The funds that have been previously committed for a shovel-ready project that met the needs of not only the community, but of the healthcare system were being withdrawn so that they can prioritize French institutions.”

The decision makes less sense when put into context. Last November, the CAQ unveiled a new $3.9 billion investment plan to attract 170,000 students interested in enrolling in essential sectors like health and social services. The decision to cut funding seemed entirely propelled by language as Quebec’s Minister of Higher Education Danielle McCann advised Dawson that the decision to scrap the expansion project was based to prioritize francophone institutions and students. 

For many, the swift motion to pull funding from Dawson not only seems like a political chess move with an upcoming election on the horizon but also felt like the government was picking sides, choosing to favour francophones. “There really is no two ways about it, it’s clearly the case that the decision was made entirely arbitrarily because, had Dawson College been a francophone institution, they’d be getting the money,” Aronson said. 

“They have an election coming in October, and in the event that they fulfill their obligations as good government they would allow for the possibility that they would be pillory in some very nationalist French press for doing anything to assist an English-speaking community to thrive.”

 More than a matter of space

 Though all students have experienced the same space issue over the past 20 years, students studying in health programs especially need the extra room for the machines that they operate. “Because our programs are technologically advanced, we had to invest in some big and expensive equipment,” Varrica said. “The entire nurse simulation room is an old closet.” Though Dawson’s students are still getting their education, the infrastructure in which they’re receiving it is too small to accommodate both students and equipment.

 “Even to this day if you walk through our halls, you’ll see a student on the floor with their laptop plugged into a wall socket because that’s the only place where they could sit,” Varrica explained.

 “We’re not looking to get more students; we have a cap of 7900 students and that’s what we’re sticking to. But even at that we’re still short of space,” described Varrica.

Dawson has been trying to find alternatives to comfortably accommodate the ones currently enrolled. Legault and the CAQ have already acknowledged the need of over 11,000 square metres of added space despite Parti Quebecois pushback. The decision to pull back in the final hour raises questions regarding why now the government saw fit to cancel the project, especially when they’ve defended it in the past.

The budgetary decision may affect francophone students enrolled at Dawson, the students the government has intended to protect. Dawson Student Union President Alexandrah Cardona said the students she represents aren’t exclusively anglophone, and the narrative from the government that Dawson is exclusively for English speakers is far from the truth. “In the day-to-day lives of Dawson students, we are francophone, we are anglophone, we are bilingual, we’re allophones, we speak all types of languages and so that’s where the confusion comes from.”

Photo by Kaitlynn Rodney

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News

Concordia’s Annual SCPA Panels are Underway

This year’s overarching theme is “Utopia,” giving students opportunities to discuss plans for a better future in Montreal through policy changes

After two semesters of planning, teams of students from the School of Community and Public Affairs (SCPA)  have begun presenting their panels on various social issues. The first panel took place on Feb. 1, and more will follow until the end of March.

The panels are a part of a class called “Social Debates and Issues in Public Affairs and Public Policy,” or SCPA 301. As described on Concordia’s website, the focus of the class is to help students “on developing both communication skills, through oral and written presentations, and organizational skills as each team must organize one public panel discussion on one of the selected issues.” Six panels will be presented, and the class typically consists of no more than 25 people. The goal of each panel is to bring awareness to a specific issue, like food insecurity, accessibility, or policing, and showcase the ideas of experts in their respective fields.

“Our panel is on food insecurity,” said student Romy Shoam. “The goal of our panel is to hear from experts on differing specific aspects of food insecurity in Montreal and in Canada. They’ll be talking about fixing this problem in an affordable and healthy way for all people. We want to hear about how we can reform our food system in Montreal, both in the short-term and long term.”

The panel will dive into specific problems that affect food security, ranging from accessibility and affordability of food as well as community cooperation to improve food insecurity. The panelists all have expertise within the Canadian food system in differing ways, ranging from the Montreal Food Policy Council to the Quebec Farmers’ Association.  The panelists are Omar Elsharkawy, Erik Chevrier, Anne Marie Aubert, and John McCart.

Rose Chisholm is a student working on a panel that deals with ageism in urban life. “Our panel is called ‘Generation All: Reimagining Montreal.’ We want to have a big brainstorm about creating intergenerational environments. In Montreal, we’re really divided by age, especially in this epidemic of loneliness,” she said.

“In our capitalist society, if you’re not seen as part of that ‘productive’ age bracket, you’re disregarded,” she added. The panel will feature experts and researchers on creating age-friendly cities and bringing an end to the crisis of elder abuse. The students involved have partnered with RECAA (Respecting Elders Communities Against Abuse), the West-end Intergenerational Network, Concordia’s Dr. Meghan Joy, and engAGE Concordia to make this panel happen.

Ace Baldwin is working on a panel on policing in Montreal and its effects on certain communities. “Our panel began as a discussion on police reform, but our group wanted to take it a step further. Many people don’t understand what defunding the police really means or looks like, and I think it’s because it’s hard for people to imagine what defunding or abolishing police looks like — we’ve built our society around this. We know that policing has a negative impact on marginalized and racialized people,” they said.

The panel will focus on alternatives to the current systems in place regarding policing and its impact in Montreal, like defunding the SPVM and gearing those funds towards social workers and community organizations. Panelists will include experts and activists who have witnessed the horrors of police brutality, all of whom happen to be women of colour. The panelists are Marlihan Lopez, Amy Edward, Jessica Quijano, and El Jones.

This year-long course is now reaching its long-awaited climax as students present their panels. Each presentation will be around two hours long, with the last half hour reserved for questions. Due to ongoing pandemic restrictions, the panels will be taking place online. Information on how to sign up and watch the panels can be found on the SCPA Student Association’s Facebook page.

 

Visuals by James Fay

Categories
News

PHOTOS: Community organizations strike amidst pandemic pressures

Coalition des Tables régionales d’organismes communautaires (CTROC) kicked off their mobilization week with a massive protest in the Berri-UQAM area on Tuesday, Feb. 22.

The CTROC is a coalition of Quebec’s community organizations primarily supporting the area’s health and wellness needs. According to the organizers, the need for their services by vulnerable people has increased greatly since the pandemic began, whereas their resources remained the same.

Accompanying the mounting pressures of the pandemic, many feel a lack of moral and financial support from the provincial government. Workers in these community organizations have struggled to adapt on their own without clear guidelines to follow. According to those who attended, some 2500 protesters filled the streets, and the strike will continue for at least the next week with demonstrations taking place across the province.

Photo Story by Catherine Reynolds

Categories
Student Life

It’s okay to be uncomfortable – confronting our complicity through The Lily Pod

Linneah Shanti sits down with friend & writer Antea Zivanovic to discuss The Lily Pod. CATHERINE REYNOLDS/The Concordian

A Concordia podcast that teaches us how vulnerability can connect us to ourselves and each other

Often when I think of Linneah Shanti, I think of all the things that have to do with feeling good. A feeling of good-ness that isn’t attached to something I can hold, no matter how much I adore croissants and cappuccinos. A feeling of good-ness that unwinds from budding empathy, love in bloom. A feeling of good-ness that, like her podcast, would be the worst thing to keep secret.

Originally from Ontario, Shanti is currently based in Montreal and in her third year of Interdisciplinary Studies in Sexuality at Concordia University. The two of us were introduced during

our first semester at university. A year and a half later, in January 2021, she started The Lily Pod.

The idea had been on her mind for a while before then, morphing itself from a yearning to create something special. What she ended up creating is now a space for learning and exploring, focused on the disentanglement of ideas and quenching curiosities.

When I asked Shanti to try and contain The Lily Pod to a set of defining words, she playfully replied with “Queering the existence of life.”

TC: So where did the name come from?

LS: The initial intention for the name came from my desire for this podcast to be a safe, peaceful, and loving place. I decided to take garden imagery — which for me evokes a sense of calm, safety, serenity, and welcoming. Flowers, water, and greenery have always played a big role in my feelings of belonging and safety, which I wanted the podcast to reflect.

‘Lily’ is [also] a name my partner calls me because it’s an acronym for “Linneah I Love You,” which felt really special given the loving space I wanted to create.

TC: Given that the podcast is something that is both yours and something you share — where does being vulnerable fit into this context?

LS: It fits in with how I and listeners confront our own questions, instincts, and learned ways of thinking about the world. In the process of thinking about and creating the episodes, I’m constantly confronted with how much I want to share and what I really think about something… putting my thoughts into the void can be both really scary but also really liberating.

I get a few messages a week from listeners interpreting what I’ve said in a really personal way, and I find this openness to vulnerability really special. It’s this cool cycle where this vulnerable experience for me is made public, then made personal to someone, and then reflected back to me… we’re all going through it together.

TC: You’ve explored so many topics throughout the last year, from desirability, to the male gaze, to polyamory, to the complexities of gender… Is there one topic that has stuck with you more than the rest? 

LS: I immediately gravitate towards what it means to desire and to be desired in the unique context of our own individual identities… how this intermingles with gender, sexuality, the body, perceptions. What it means to understand our positionality and using this understanding to connect us even if our experiences aren’t identical.

TC: If there’s one episode you recommend to first time listeners, which one would that be? 

LS: The polyamory one! It was the first collaborative episode and was recorded with two beautiful friends. It felt like I was doing something more than just sitting down and recording… and it reflected a lot of different themes from a queer perspective, really encapsulating what The Lily Pod is.

How to listen to The Lily Pod

My favourite place to listen to Shanti’s podcast is in my bedroom, in the midst of my process of getting ready to go somewhere. I often catch myself audibly agreeing with her, or suddenly hyper-focused on a new thought she’s helped me connect with.

Regardless of where I am when I hit play, I’ve found that by the end of each episode I’m always left feeling some type of new.

The Lily Pod is available on Spotify, Buzzsprout, and Apple Podcasts. You can find more of Linneah Shanti @linneahrae and @thelily.pod on Instagram. 

Photos by Catherine Reynolds

Categories
Arts

Inside the creative mind of Aaliyah Crawford

“As I learned printmaking, it was like a language I understood. How to make prints just felt very intuitive”

Some people are simply born to create. This is certainly the case for Aaliyah Crawford, the general coordinator of the Fine Arts Student Alliance (FASA) and co-editor in chief of Yiara Magazine. Since the age of five, Crawford has been creating art. She later went on to study printmaking at John Abbott College, where her interest in the medium flourished. She is now in her final year at Concordia where she is majoring in Studio Arts. Crawford spoke with The Concordian about her passion for printmaking, her creative process, and more. 

TC: What appeals to you most about printmaking?

AC: I learned printmaking at John Abbott. At first I didn’t think I would like it. I was kind of confused by the whole thing. I was like, ‘why would you want to do something that a machine can do?’ As I learned printmaking, it was like a language I understood. How to make prints just felt very intuitive and I was really comfortable with the medium. It’s really fascinating, it’s very labour intensive. 

But as I’ve been doing print now for nine years, I don’t feel the same way about it anymore. Now I’m really into monoprinting and book arts. I’ve been really enjoying that and finding different ways of using a medium that I think can be really rigid in a more flexible kind of way.

 

TC: What themes do you like to explore in your work?

AC: It’s a lot about me, it’s kind of like a diary or like a dream journal. I kind of meditate on my own experiences. For me, when I’m working, I don’t often know what I’m making while it’s happening. And then when it’s finished, I almost look back and learn secrets about myself that even I didn’t know. It’s really fun, but also kind of terrifying.

TC: Can you briefly walk me through your artistic process? How do you bring an idea to life?

AC: Lately I’ve been making a lot of books, so when I’m doing a book project I tend to be writing all the time. I keep little notes on my phone or computer, and eventually I’ll start to notice a theme. If I keep writing about the same thing or certain key words keep coming back up, something’s happening. Usually it starts with a title. I tend to know the title of all my book pieces before I make them.

So I’ll start to think about what I’m noticing in the work. I have a little studio space [at home], and I’ll take everything out. I work with a lot of different mediums, so I’ll take some stuff out and I’ll block off like five hours to make something. I’ll do that about five times and then I’ll go through everything I made and sort of notice a theme. Then I try to tease it out. I’ll work on the same pieces again, I’ll do a lot of layering, and revisit a lot of old things I made. There’s usually a lot of writing in my work, so I’ll edit what I wrote. Then I have to make it into a book, so I have to do the layout. When I make the book I either get it printed somewhere or I do it myself, and then bind the book.

TC: You mentioned that your work often centres on you, and that it’s almost like a diary. I was wondering if there are any particular pieces you’ve created that capture your experience as a Black artist? What have these pieces taught you about yourself?

AC: With my work being so autobiographical, it inevitably captures some of the essence of my experiences as a Black person. Some of my work has brought up memories from my childhood where I experienced racism before I really understood what it was. I think it left me with a feeling of being other, growing up in a predominantly white community. It’s been interesting revisiting those memories as an adult through my work and reshaping the narrative that I had internalized about myself.

TC: How has your work evolved over time?

AC: It’s becoming more honest and less fixated on perfection. I think when I first started making art I spent a lot of time making things that I thought other people wanted me to make. I think I was just trying to figure out, in terms of getting a degree and pursuing it as a career, how I could make art that’s marketable. Now I don’t think about anything (laughs). It’s so much more fun that way. I feel like when I started studying it in CEGEP, it kind of sucked the joy out of it, because everything I made was part of my art practice and part of some overarching creative narrative of my life. I longed for when I was a kid and I would make art for hours and hours on end, and I never really thought about what I was making or what it meant, if people would like it, if I could make money off of it, or if it was important. That’s why I wanted to be an artist, because I love that process. 

For more information on Crawford and her work, please visit her website and Instagram. 

 

Visuals courtesy Gab Castelo and Aaliyah Crawford

Categories
Arts

Art event roundup: February

By Véronique Morin and Ashley Fish-Robertson

Shake off those winter blues with some exciting new art events this month

With midterm season looming in the (very) near future, you might be tempted to make the most of any last-minute free time you have before hitting the books. Here are some noteworthy events that will give you a hearty dose of inspiration needed to ace your assignments. 

In-person exhibitions

  • House of Skin: Artists Sabrina Ratté and Roger Tellier-Craig present an exhibition inspired by David Cronenberg’s films at La Cinémathèque québécoise. Located at  335 De Maisonneuve Blvd. E until March 20.
  • Jouer avec le temps: Photography exhibit featuring circus artists presented at TOHU. Located at 2345 Jarry St. E until March 13. 
  • An Exhibition by Marven Clerveau: Visions Hip-Hop QC: Exhibition of works by painter Marven Clerveau which gives an overview of Quebec’s main hip hop figures at the Phi Centre. Located at 315 Saint-Paul St. W until March 26.
  • Lashing Skies : Audio experience presenting five original stories related to events in New York City on 9/11. Located at the Phi Centre from Feb. 17 to May 15.
  • The Disintegration Loops: Living Sound presents this immersive installation featuring works from composer William Basinski. Located at the Phi Centre from Feb. 17 to May 15.
  • JJ Levine – Queer Photographs : Artist JJ Levine presents his photography work at the McCord Museum this month. The museum will also host an online opening of the show on Feb. 16. Located at 690 Sherbrooke St. W from Feb. 18 to Sept. 18.

Film: 

  • NFB Film Festival: Several special events are underway courtesy of the National Film Board of Canada to celebrate Black History Month, including screenings and Q&A sessions. This year’s theme is centred around Black Health and Wellness. 
  • Silver Screen Sundays: Cinéma du Musée and The Film Society will return with their biweekly screenings of classic films. They will be showing the cult classic Casablanca on Feb. 20.

Dance:

  • 18 P_R_A_C_T_I_C_E_S: Artist and performer Andrew Turner presents a 60-minute show that offers a hearty dose of humour, moments of absurdity, and a sharp tone. Presented at La Chappelle Scènes Contemporaines, located at 3700 St-Dominique St. from Feb. 16 to 19.
  • Marie-Pascale Bélanger + Jordan Brown: This double program features the work of Bélanger, inspired by tales she was told as a child, and Brown’s choreography, structured around wool and knitting. Presented by Tangente Danse at Edifice Wilder – Espace danse, located at 1435 De Bleury St. from Feb. 19 to 22.

 

Visual courtesy Galerie Robertson Arès

Categories
Opinions

What makes Molotov cocktails on a weekday night worthy for a journalist?

In the pursuit of finding the answer to journalistic woes, I was reminded why I am here

Patricia Mukhim, an investigative journalist and the editor of The Shillong Times was greeted with a gasoline-filled Molotov cocktail at her house on April 17, 2018 in Meghalaya, India. She had been reporting on illegal limestone mining in the northeastern hilly state with a fragile ecosystem.

Raman Kashyap, a freelance investigative journalist at Sadhana TV, Uttar Pradesh, India, was at first declared missing and later found dead on Oct. 4, 2021. He was covering the ongoing farmer protests where a vehicle of an official allegedly ran over protesters.

I could have brushed these examples off as anomalies in the vast profession that is journalism. But the stats didn’t support me either. In Reporters Without Borders’s 2021 World Press Freedom Index that ranks nations according to their press freedom and safe reporting laws, India ranked 142 among 180 countries. This calls out a crisis in Indian journalism, the very crisis I decided to be a part of.

These events and stats made it really hard for me to convince my dad to fund my journalistic interests. Like any Indian father, he too was religiously following the loud news debates, atrocious insensitive headlines, clickbait thumbnails and shameful coverage of what is now merely labelled news. He politely asked me to choose something else to pursue.

When I first shared my intentions to still pursue journalism, the immediate response was a shocking “Why?” followed by a big “No.” My loved ones were worried about my safety — and it was a valid fear. They knew I would be too ambitious to cover a mere puff piece instead of a scandal. Thankfully, I convinced them.

Once travel restrictions around the world were lifted, I flew thousands of kilometres from Hyderabad, India to Montreal to study journalism. I hoped that it would give me a global perspective on the respected profession.

Soon after arriving, I luckily came across an investigative article by Ricochet Media, which reported on police brutality in Montreal against student journalists during a protest. The Canadian Association of Journalists also published a press release condemning multiple attacks on journalists and reporters covering protests in Montreal and Quebec City. They requested police to take action against the attackers.

What I learned from instances like this is that the world views journalists and our profession as something to be restricted, disrespected, and controlled with an iron hand no matter the continent.

Why do these journalists keep going back to the field, back to their newsrooms, back to reporting and investigating just to be shoved around, arrested and even killed? Why am I still here writing for newspapers and looking for events to report on? It is because journalism is a powerful profession — one that I want to be a part of.

My presence as a media person suddenly made people around me self-aware of what they said and did. That was something to take pride in. It’s crazy to think that I, a student journalist who just started her classes, am already making people nervous. It was this power of journalism that still drives me and convinced my loved ones to support me.

Journalism is founded on the efforts made to seek the truth, and I believe that the profession derives its power from this truth.

Truth-seeking is also one of the founding pillars of freedom of the press. In the same way, the makers of the Indian Constitution included freedom of speech and expression as some of the fundamental rights for its citizens, with a few press or media exceptions.

But where do we draw the line in our reporting, when it doesn’t guarantee complete truth?

Some journalists get hit with death threats and “sedition” cases for digging deep or getting closer to a hidden truth. However, those who spread and propagate falsified truths remain unaffected.

The reason behind those who benefit from fabricating truth being unharmed is complex. When the truth is being weaponized, fabricated and projected from behind a shroud of imagined righteousness, those holding the weapon are not harmed, nor those who fixed the targets. I could be at the right place trying to debunk false news at the wrong time and become an easy target in this chaos. Now, I understand the collective concern and worry my friends and family had for me and my professional choices.

In the wake of all this, what is journalism fighting for? For the truth that is losing its sanctity? For righteousness that is constantly maligned? For an ultimate value that can never be achieved? No. Journalism fights for change.

Mukhim’s reporting moved the local government to make amendments to licensing limestone mining. This was a partial win as the illegal and environmentally harmful extraction of the locally abundant material hasn’t stopped. But neither will she.

Efforts of journalists like Kashyap, along with many local farmers, enabled change. They covered different angles of the farming laws, collected reasons for the dissent, debunked fake rumours for over a year, and finally led the government to annul the new farming laws.

Hope that change can be achieved, even in part, pushes journalists to keep going against the odds. It inspires young journalists like me to take up this profession so that in every article I write, I am able to push the wheel of change, one millimetre at a time.

It is great to witness journalism striving for noticeable changes and generating value for itself by overcoming the negative effects of the actions of some of its own, seeking truth, and hopefully being safe to practice. Until then, cheers to Molotov cocktails on weekday nights.

 

Photo by Christine Beaudoin

Categories
Features

‘You’re creating your own life based on what you want:’ Meet the owner of Cocktail Bomb Shop

Kiana Gomes, a second year journalism student at Concordia, started a bakeshop in the middle of the pandemic from the comfort of her own home. A few months later, she expanded her business to selling cocktail bombs

During the first COVID Christmas holidays, most other students were taking a break from Zoom classes. Meanwhile, 21-year-old Kiana Gomes was converting her home into a Willy Wonka chocolate factory and perfecting her first “chocolate bomb.” 

Hot chocolate bombs are chocolate spheres filled with chocolate milk powder and marshmallows. When put into a mug with hot milk, they explode to make hot chocolate. Gomes thought they were a great way to treat yourself during the winter in lockdown.  

Gomes started her bakeshop to ease her boredom during quarantine and pursue her baking passion. During the first wave of the pandemic, she started baking cakes for friends and family. 

“I started making cakes because I didn’t really have a job because of the pandemic.” 

It was late October 2020; Montreal had just entered into a red zone, restricting people from non-essential activities and services. The weather was getting colder and the days shorter. Like many people, Gomes was stuck at home in need of distraction.  

When her mom suggested she sell her cakes on Facebook Marketplace, she began baking five cakes almost every week.  

Gomes baked custom birthday cakes using coloured frosting and edible decorations. Her personal favourite was an Among Us birthday cake. 

Inspired by a video she saw on Facebook, Gomes had the idea of making chocolate bombs for the holidays and decided to sell them on Facebook Marketplace.  The chocolate bombs were the perfect product to sell during the cold winter, stuck in another lockdown. In just a few weeks, she launched Kiki’s Bakeshop from her house around the Montreal area. 

Soon after she began her venture, her family members were welcomed  by the mouth-watering smell of chocolate and peppermint. In contrast, the room itself was cold and dry — they had to turn off the heaters to keep the chocolate bombs from melting. As her family entered the kitchen, they were welcomed by the sight of chocolate bombs scattered along counters, leading up to her dining table.  

Around fall 2020, while most students keep their cameras off during Zoom lectures, so no one sees their bedhead, Gomes closed hers so no one would see that her shirt was white with flour. With the help of her mom and two family friends, she made hundreds of chocolate bombs a day. 

Her family’s garage quickly turned into Gomes’ own mini warehouse. Sales exploded. Gomes was selling chocolate bombs on Etsy, shipping them to the United States, while also selling them locally in Montreal. Local orders were picked at her house, while the U.S. orders were shipped through Canada Post.  

 It was hectic; her days were long but felt short. During her Christmas break that year, Gomes started her days at 5 a.m, working over 12 hours. Time flew by as she packed what felt like endless boxes of bombs all day, drinking lots of hot chocolate in the process.  

 However, as the holiday season came to a close, her chocolate bomb business started to die down. She knew that they would not be very popular after the winter months. Gomes needed a new idea to keep her business flowing.  

Inspiration struck when she came across a video on social media of a bartender in New York City making cocktail bombs for a special event. She then searched the recipe online and experimented to find the perfect ratio for the ingredients.  

For Gomes, putting the puzzle pieces together was a matter of trial and error. 

“The first bombs that we made are not even the same bombs that we make now,” said Gomes. “Before, it took longer to dissolve, now it dissolves in two minutes, and the flavours are stronger. There’s a lot of things that I figured out along the way.”

The cocktail bombs are similar in concept to bath bombs. You add them to a glass of sparkling water and pour in a shot of liquor of your choice. They can also be prepared as mocktails, making it a great option for children and non-drinkers who wish to join in on the fizzy fun.  

 Gomes’ cocktail bombs are unique. The ingredients have a high quality and natural focus, with the final products packaged in biodegradable plastic. 

These bombs make a great addition to any drink by adding fun colour and taste. A popular flavour is the Peach Bellini bomb. As Gomes describes, it tastes like a peach with a splash of tequila. Other choices include margarita, blue raspberry, raspberry orange, mojito, mimosa, and piña colada.  

Gomes’ involvement on TikTok was also a major factor in the success of her business, as she began making short videos to promote her products.

“When I first posted the TikTok about the bomb, I knew it would be something big,” said Gomes.

Gomes was happy with the amount of good reviews and comments from her TikTok videos. 

“Because the business came so fast, we had a lot of time to adapt on what people were saying: what we should change, what’s good, what’s not good, to finally come up with this perfect product, but I wouldn’t even call it perfect, because it’s constantly evolving. Like tomorrow we might change something or add new flavours,” Gomes said. 

“I feel like the product is so new. It doesn’t really exist, [it] is is growing with the business,” she added. 

Her cocktail bombs are now being sold in different Linen Chest stores around Montreal, as well as Pusateri’s Fine Foods, and smaller gift stores. They are also shipped to the US and internationally through the Cocktail Bomb Shop’s website.  

 Since March 2021,Gomes has seen her business grow exponentially. Instead of working from her workshop at home, she now owns an office in downtown Montreal, with 10 full-time employees. From working in her messy kitchen and garage, Gomes now has a small office and an open space with designated areas for her employees. The sections are divided into three departments: manufacturing, packaging, and shipment.  

 The employees are constantly producing bombs, while Gomes focuses more on the on the administrative side of the operation, such as clearing paperwork, answering emails, taking phone calls and attending meetings.

Though she misses making the cocktail bombs, she is very happy that her business has flourished. 

“Follow your passion, because I really liked baking so I decided to sell the cakes, and it brought me to this,” said Gomes. “Everything that I did was out of the fact that I enjoyed doing it. It wasn’t doing something that I was miserable in.” 

“If you want to be an entrepreneur, you just have to do what you love because the business can be generated from anything.”  

 Gomes still attends university part-time while running her business. She explained that she loves the program and is willing to finish her degree as a backup plan.   

“Every day, it just continues to grow. I guess sometimes it hits me that it’s not that small anymore. I think that every day is just an adventure. I don’t know how big it’s going to get or if it’s going to stop tomorrow. Who knows? But right now, I’m just going to ride and see what it becomes.”  

Gomes’ quarantine hobby ended up creating the perfect product for a socially distanced picnic in the park. 

 

Visuals courtesy of Kiana Gomes

 

Satire: Creative Valentine’s Day gifts guaranteed to impress — even a day late

Who wants flowers anyways?

Your beloved Nivea lip balm is on its last legs. A daily walk to the pharmacy is in the cards for you this morning. You begrudgingly make the trek through the bitter cold to the nearest Pharmaprix (or maybe you’re a Jean Coutu person — this is a choose-your-own adventure, I guess).

As you walk through the aisles, you’re met with semi-bare shelves full of pink everything — from chocolates, to teddies, to flowers. A shiver runs down your spine. Could you have forgotten? You brace yourself as you fish around the old masks in your jacket pocket to find your cell phone. To your dismay, it proudly displays the date as February 15. You’re in deep shit.

At this point, you’re panicking. How can you explain forgetting about THE holiday of love to your significant other? Will this be the end of your relationship? How can you come back from this? (In a blind frenzy, it slips your mind that they too may have forgotten).

Luckily, you won’t have to, since I’ve compiled a list of the four best next-day Valentine’s Day gifts that put chocolate and flowers to shame, and are guaranteed to leave your lover enchanted enough to forget about you forgetting.

Swag socks

I know what you’re thinking, but trust me on this one. While socks might seem like a simple stocking stuffer or a leftover Christmas present, you can repurpose them with the help of a sweet pun. By gifting your boo a pair of socks with a card reading “you knock my socks off,” you’ll not only make them a free elf but also warm their heart (and their feet).

Bonus points if they have cartoons of an animal that your special someone has mentioned finding cute once. It’s almost effortless, but foolproof.

Relationship self-help book

Is your person an avid reader? This is the perfect gift for them. Instead of finding the latest silly fiction, expand their horizons with something more personal and refined. A relationship self-help book is a genius way to satisfy their paper craving while setting yourself up for an even healthier connection. Regardless of whether or not your relationship is going smoothly, it’s always good to have tools in case it goes sour. Extra credit if it’s called “It’s Not You, It’s Me,” highlighting that you also have stuff to work on. It’s incredibly thoughtful — there’s absolutely no way your partner could get the wrong idea.

Skydiving tickets

This one is pretty self-explanatory. What says “I love you” like being strapped to a stranger and falling from the sky out of a plane? This is also a pricey gift, which certainly helps with the lateness of the delivery. Everyone knows that expensiveness has a direct correlation to how much you care.

A will to live

This is probably the hardest to acquire — you won’t find one lying on the shelves of the pharmacy. To find a will to live, you’ll have to search far and wide, or maybe even embark on a quest. However, if you do manage to get one, this is the gift to end all gifts. If you succeed, please let me know. We might be able to get a two-for-one deal.

With any of these items, you should have no trouble saving your Valentine’s Day.

You’re welcome.

And if for some reason, these ideas don’t work for you, you can always go for an apology or a heartfelt card, but that’s kind of basic.

Graphic by Madeline Schmidt

Categories
Arts

Eastern Bloc’s strong comeback showcases interactive technologies

Quebec City screen-based artist Baron Lanteigne’s Nature Morte 7 in 2022. In the background, artist Xuan Ye presents ERROAR!#1, a large artwork inspired by the AI Go player AlphaGo.

Technology fuses with physical interactions in Eastern Bloc’s most recent exhibition titled Techno//Mysticism. The show features four works from emerging artists who explore new possibilities for technology in their artistic practices. It is the first event to take place in the art gallery’s new space. 

“Ultimately, technology may never provide the transcendence we seek, instead operating as a pixelated reflection of our enduring quest for meaning, both inside and outside of the digital realm,” reads the opening statement of the exhibition. This excerpt sets the tone for a show that leaves visitors with unanswered questions and reflections on their relationship with the digital world. 

Located on Louvain St. in the industrial area of the District Central, the Eastern Bloc gallery is not exactly the type of business that one would expect to come across in the neighbourhood. With windows offering a view of the surrounding concrete buildings and parking spaces, the art hub feels like a little world of its own. 

Catherine Averback, production coordinator for Eastern Bloc, described the pieces of the show as “very physical, both in terms of their actual scale, and in the way that the audience is asked to interact with them.” Xuan Ye’s work ERROAR!#1, placed beside the entrance, particularly speaks to this statement. The piece is a large-scale representation of an artificial intelligence brain that has been printed on a two metre square vinyl sheet. 

The artist was inspired by the defeat of one of the most talented players of the board game Go, Lee Sedol, against an AI adversary called AlphaGo in 2016. The piece presents the immensity and complexity of AlphaGo’s brain. Ye invites visitors to get close to the work and even walk on it. A QR code grants access to an augmented reality website. Visitors are then able to experience the work and see words appear on top of it through the platform. 

By this point, visitors might have noticed constant rumbling sounds playing in the gallery. They get louder and louder when approaching the work titled O )))) Ghost Echoes ; Where Pathways Meet. The high tower-like creation features small windows to look into. To see what is presented, one must step on the sand surrounding the piece. The closer visitors get to the installation, the more the volume increases. 

Marilou Lyonnais A. created this sound installation with Etienne Montenegro. O )))) Ghost Echoes ; Where Pathways Meet is equipped with a system that detects human presence and distributes sound accordingly. The videos featured in the art creation present internet archives gathered by the artists. As explained in the presentation of the work, the piece considers the relationship individuals have to technology since it “evokes the echoes of virtual solitude and media feedback,” reads the text accompanying the art piece in the gallery.

For Averback, another aspect of the show is that “all of the works in there physicalize technology in a way that the visitor […] becomes very aware of the container and not just the content.” This reflection especially relates to Baron Lanteigne’s work, Nature Morte 7, which first shows the insides of an electronic system to the audience. 

Lanteigne assembled seven screens in a visually striking sculpture. The main piece hangs from the ceiling. Viewers first see its electronic inner workings highlighted by fluorescent lights. It features colourful digital videos at the front of the exhibit, and on the floor six illuminated screens are placed on top of a pile of cables. An abundance of bright green plastic leaves complements the work. Their presence enhances the piece title’s play on words, being Nature Morte 7, as digital representations of nature are contrasted with fake physical plants.

The Scryer, an intriguing art creation by Nicolas Lapointe, also requires visitors to get closer to experience it fully. A long and thin white marble piece catches the eye. On it are minuscule inscriptions. A microscope slowly scans the line of the text which is transmitted on a screen beside the work for viewers to read. Lapointe’s creation presents excerpts of advertisements on Kijiji that were engraved with a laser on the marble. The art piece presents an interesting duality between the meticulous work of the creator and the absurdity of the words featured in the work.

Lapointe’s work, The Scryer, features a marble piece engraved with kijiji advertisement retranscritions. VERONIQUE MORIN/The Concordian

In Techno//Mysticism, Eastern Bloc has brought together a small group of artists who all question the place given to the digital aspects of our society. As explained by Averback, the show reflects on “the ways that technology and our lives are sometimes confusingly interlinked.”

This exhibition also speaks to Eastern Bloc’s larger mission, which is aimed at supporting emerging artists and their experiments with science and technology. The art hub’s new spaces provide creators with more possibilities for workshop spaces and artistic residencies.

With this new show, the gallery offers a unique experience by balancing discoveries, curiosity, and absurdity.

Techno//Mysticism is presented until Feb. 26 at 53 Louvain St. W.

 

Visuals courtesy Véronique Morin

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