Cam Novak founded Cycle-Bird, a bicycle-powered courier company that closed its doors last year. Photo Michelle Pucci

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As Urban Cycling Week comes to an end, Montrealers can still catch a glimpse of the consciousness-raising project in the form of a mural on St. Marc St. and Ste. Catherine St. W.

A Mural for Montreal Cyclists uses art to stir up an awareness of the politics behind transportation.

“Bikes don’t really have a place in the visual dialogue,” street artist Cam Novak said of the lack of bike culture in media.

Novak is partnering up with another artist, Roadsworth, to complete the mural.

Both Novak and Roadsworth are avid street artists and bike advocates.

“You look around and you see car advertisements and SUVS,” said Novak. “I mean you look everywhere and there are cars parked on every street—it’s the most visible thing you see.

“So why not give cyclists a space, in the public eye?”

The project is meant to confront the city’s lack of bike ads, and remind cyclists that they do have a place on city streets.

Roadsworth described it as a “glorification or beautification of bike culture,” without actually trying to sell you a pedal-powered machine.

The mural itself depicts a cyclist in motion, symbolized with a bird above the cyclist, also in motion, and leaving behind Novak’s brightly coloured and floral spray-painted arrangement.

“It’s as though you’re leaving a trail of crazy beautiful energy behind you,” Novak said of the mural.

“It’s fun but it’s also playing a role so that people feel welcome when they’re on their bike.”

Even with the introduction of Bixi, bikes and cyclists are a part of a city transportation taboo, and are at the receiving end of a lot of animosity, according to Novak.

“[Cyclists] are allowed [in the city],” Novak said. “But I don’t think it’s as encouraged as people think it is.”

Before getting more involved in his art, Novak founded Cycle-Bird a bicycle-powered courier company, which closed its doors last year.

Roadsworth a.k.a. Peter Gibson is infamous for his unsigned street art, having painted the streets and sidewalks of Montreal with counter-car-culture “illegally” a decade ago.

His street art and the arrest that followed led to a whirlwind of publicity, including the 2008 documentary Roadsworth: Crossing the Line, which was co-produced by the National Film Board.

Organized by the Montreal Bike Coalition, the Urban Cycling Week saw bike tours and conferences, including a Tour du Silence in memory of cyclists who have died on the road, all leading up to the Urban Bike Summit on Saturday.

Endless Fantasy is in stores May 14.

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Anamanaguchi, the bumpin’ indie-rock-meets-chiptune quartet from New York, are finally ready to present their second full-length album to the world.

If you’re not familiar with their brand of electronic fury, you might think you’ve accidentally clicked on a retro online game. The genre of 8-bit, or “chiptune,” refers to harnessing old school gaming systems’ soundcards to produce fast, upbeat electronic melodies: think Super Mario on acid.

Embracing their roots of mixing videogames and music, Anamanaguchi provided the soundtrack for the game adaptation of the 2010 cult film Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, starring Canada’s beloved Michael Cera, a “total chiller” according to the band.

Their first full-length, 2009’s Dawn Metropolis, showcased their unique style of blending 8-bit bleeps and chirps with pop-rock style, including guitars and bass to jam along with the Gameboys and NES’s.

Endless Fantasy, out on May 14, boasts an impressive 22-song tracklist, with several songs already released, including a glitchy Japanese-themed music video for the single “Meow.”

“Meow” —Anamanaguchi

The album has been over 4 years in the making, which drummer Luke Silas called “a truly arduous but totally rewarding process.

“_Endless Fantasy_ has been nothing short of a labor of love,” Silas said. “The whole project was pushed back plenty due to false starts and offers that ended up not panning out, but we wanted to take our time and make sure we could do things properly.

“Some of the songs on the record were started years ago, as early as 2008. As a stronger theme and cohesive sound for Endless Fantasy came into place, songs were reworked and expanded in a way that made sense,” he added.

8-bit to 16-bit: A New Sound Rises

This album is a slight departure from the raw, unrefined 8-bit tunes of Dawn Metropolis, and tracks have a more organic flow, most notably one of the album’s singles, “Planet,” a standout dreamwave-y track that took most fans by surprise.

“I was playing through The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask and the ‘Astral Observatory’ blew my mind,” songwriter Pete Berkman said, concerning his inspiration for “Planet.”

“The song is about Earth’s place in the universe, it’s a tiny zone floating through in an infinite abyss, and somehow there’s life on it,” Berkman said. “I wanted to create a sense of that melancholy wonder of being alone and knowing we aren’t.”

“Planet” —Anamanaguchi

The shift in sound was “definitely a natural progression,” according to Silas. The polished electronica sound is the result of members endlessly tweaking the tracks to have them sounding as full as possible, and also due to branching into different sampling techniques.

“We expanded to using more sample-based 16-bit software, and spent a long time with our producer fine-tuning everything,” Silas said.

“Make no mistake, those abrasive [8-bit] bleeps are still the majority of the sounds on the record, but we wanted to expand everything.”

And Endless Fantasy marks another milestone in Anamanaguchi’s growth and progression as musicians with the introduction of vocals in their songs.

Their previous record and EPs remained firmly within the instrumental realm, but their latest effort features singing, looped soundbites, and even spoken word on a number of songs, including “Japan Air,” “Viridian Genesis,” and the trippy album closer, “(T-T)b.”

“We’ve wanted to work with vocalists for a while,” Silas said. “We had very specific vocal styles in mind for the tracks with singers, and we actually just looked to some amazing friends of ours on those tracks.”

The band will be playing their second Montreal show later this month—their first time being in the “coldest temperature I’ve ever been exposed to,” Silas admitted.

“The city was rad and we’re super excited to get back. We love Montreal and can’t wait to play a sweet, bright and loud show for you,” Silas said.

“And we’ll gladly wolf down some poutine.”

Endless Fantasy will be released May 14, by the label Dream.Hax.

Anamanaguchi // Il Motore (179 Jean Talon St. W.) // May 21 // 8:00 p.m. // $11 – $13

Buck 65 and Shad are playing a $5 show at the Corona Theatre May 17.

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If you think Buck 65 has been taking it easy for the last couple years, you just haven’t been looking close enough. In fact, he’s never been busier.

The genre-bending hip-hop cipher has several pots on the fire and a new LP in the can. And he’s in the midst of writing a novel—mashing his love of music, baseball and the history of his hometown of Mount Uniacke, Nova Scotia.

While it’s been a couple years since his last major release, he’s been working away at his home in Toronto, adding to his already huge catalogue.

“It’s the one feather in my cap,” says Buck 65, real name Richard Terfry. “I never sold tons of records, I never became super famous, I can’t claim all the usual measures of success that a successful musicians would have.

“The one thing I do have is a fairly large body of work coupled with longevity.”

Over the last 20 years Buck 65 has rapped over tracks ranging from scratch-heavy hip-hop to banjo-driven country, to dark ambience and simmering drum & bass. And while he maintains a sound that’s distinctively Buck 65, what that means exactly depends on which record you’re listening to.

“It drives some people crazy, but it’s the only way I can work. It’s almost ironic that comes across as schizophrenic. I just can’t make every song I make be a disco jam, or any other kind of jam,” he says.

It’s a testament to his restless work ethic, that he lives and breathes his music. Writing about any and every feeling and experience that inspires him, he doesn’t want his palette to be limited—and staying loyal to one sound is dangerous to his work.

“I try to express myself as fully and as richly as I can, as a human being going through their day. And that’s complicated, as it is for everybody alive,” he says. “Nobody is a one-dimensional thing, I would even dare say gangster rappers, even though we get only one side of them on most cases, have their moments of tenderness.

“When their sister has a baby and they smell its forehead. Nobody is immune to that.”

Survival Tactics

Buck 65 has had a major label deal for over 10 years, releasing a number of LPs under Warner Music, as well as re-releasing earlier work such as 2001’s dark, experimental Man Overboard.

But far from keeping to the simple model of a new full-length release every couple years, he’s been building up his catalogue with unofficial records and side projects. His last Warner release, 20 Odd Years, first came out as a series of EPs, and since 2008 he’s released three free hour-long mixtapes titled Dirtbike —holding some of his best work to date.

“I, along with everybody else, am trying to make sense of how this business is moving,” he says. “I’m always thinking about how my approach to this career needs to evolve.”

His most recent endeavour to alternate releases is SASS, an acronym for Short Attention Spans. It’s a 14-song record that clocks in at under five minutes —each song no longer than 30 seconds.

“If I’m listening to music in my travels, I’ll often listen to it on shuffle. I’ve noticed even if I really love a song that comes on, no song is as good as the excitement of hitting that button to the next thing, knowing you have something new coming next,” he says.

“I’m skipping through songs at this unbelievable rate of speed, and I thought how can you make an album that is going to withstand that test?”

It’s that idea, that we expect everything to be digestible in smaller and smaller bites, that inspired SASS. He’s been kicking around the concept for a while, and has already posted a second track on Soundcloud produced by longtime collaborator Jorun Bombay.

“If you mention a song to somebody, like ‘Hungry like the Wolf’ by Duran Duran, you would sing the one part you remember,” he says. “When a song gets in your head, it’s never the three-and-a-half minutes of the song, it’s one part that will cycle through your head over and over again.

“So I thought, why not make a song just that? Is everything else just filler anyway?”

The Major Label Game

Despite regularly posting music online, it’s all been fairly low-profile since his most recent Warner record 20 Odd Years came out in 2011. But the next Warner LP has been done for months. The finished product, complete with name and album artwork, was sent to the label in November.

“It’s the one feather in my cap. I never sold tons of records, I never became super famous, I can’t claim all the usual measures of success that a successful musicians would have. The one thing I do have is a fairly large body of work coupled with longevity.”
—Buck 65

Despite it being done since last year, it may not see the light of day until early 2014.

“I don’t know and I’ll admit that’s utterly agonizing,” he says of the album’s mystery release date. “I was dying for people to hear that stuff the day those songs were mixed in November. They’re waiting until the best time, strategically, to put it out.”

His records are released internationally, meaning the pushers and movers at labels in 18 different countries need to sign off on the release date. And if the stars don’t align—if domestic releases clash with his prospective release date—then it sits at Warner.

One of the tracks, the hot, hook-heavy contemporary hip-hop of “Fairy Tales,” has been hosted on Buck 65’s Soundcloud. But in the meantime, the rest of the record, and its title, wait for the label’s official announcement.

“Labels like to announce it themselves, it seems that’s a thing now,” he says.

In the meantime he continues to work. He’s halfway through the next Bike for Three! album, his collaboration with Belgian producer Joëlle Phuong Minh Lê. The fourth Dirtbike is in the works, too.

The upcoming Bike For Three! record has been negotiated with Warner to be released outside the label, but some of Buck 65’s other work, like SASS and the Dirtbike series, is in a legal grey area.

“Technically it would be seen as a violation of my contract. It’s basically illegal what I’m doing, and if my label was a little more iron-fisted they could probably kick my ass for this sort of thing,” he says.

He works in parallel universes simultaneously—signed to a major label while putting out free music on the side. It’s a pretty rare scenario in the business these days, but Buck 65 isn’t like most major label artists.

“I had a way of doing things that was pretty grassroots, or underground or whatever you want to call it,” he says. His deal with Warner was struck after being independent for 10 years.

“The label doesn’t meddle in the recording process at all.”

And as such there’s something of a paradox in Buck 65’s catalogue. His success has allowed him to have his records distributed around the world—but on Warner’s time. So he balances that waiting game with what he puts on Soundcloud, what his fans can hear five minutes after he finishes the track.

He went outside the label for a recent vinyl reissue of Vertex, a “lo-fi left field artifact” from 1997, home to one of his earliest hits, “The Centaur.”

But word inevitably gets out, and demand came from all over—even though it was a Canada-only release.

“I’m selling it in Canada for $15, and then trying to get it in Japan would cost $50 without distribution—and I don’t want to charge $50 for anything,” he says.

“When the worldwide release does come out, a kid in Japan can go to their local record store and pay $15.”

Buck 65 (with Shad) / May 17 / Corona Theatre (2490 Notre Dame St. W.) / $5 advance

Nicolas Maigret’s projected hard-drive disk-scratching installation “System Introspection.” Photos provided by Eastern Bloc

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Organized by the Eastern Bloc, Montreal’s multimedia exhibition centre, the Sight + Sound festival will exhibit installations and host performances by international digital media artists from around the world, beginning today.

The festival spans three weeks and showcases works that incorporate black market themes.

Artistic director and curator at the Eastern Bloc Eliane Ellbogen describes the black market as made up of structures and systems that function under the radar.

“They function in parallel or in alternative to more apparent socio-political and economic structures,” she said, explaining that the festival is curating works that explore the way these systems function, and the networks they create.

“The idea is to create an overview, or links between these systems and how they relate to contemporary digital culture and telecommunications systems,” she said.

Jean-Baptiste Bayle’s “Terminator Studies” installation is a satirical cartography that demonstrates the connections between the Terminator film series and contemporary political structures.

“There’s some fiction there but there is also a lot reality,” Ellbogen said. “There are obvious links between Arnold being the governor of California and also being the star of the film trilogy.”

Online, the most well-known black market network is the deep web, made up of web content accessible through standard search engines like Google.

According to Ellbogen, over the years, the number of performances and installations directly interacting with the Internet has increased.

One such performance in this year’s programme is Raphael Lyon’s “The Limits of Perception and the Rectangular Frame 2.” Lyon creates a 45-minute narrative through Google’s search bar and, through this interactivity with the Internet, pieces together a story.

French artist Nicolas Maigret presents two pieces at this year’s festival: the projected analysis of peer-to-peer exchanges “The Pirate Cinema” installation and a performance of hard-drive disk-scratching entitled “System Introspection.”

System Introspection —Nicolas Maigret

“The Pirate Cinema,” produced in collaboration with media artists and engineer Brendan Howell, intercepts and presents the underground and obscure file exchanging activity online in a control room setting, with multiple screens displaying parts of files, movies, TV shows, porn, etc. as they are traversing the torrent system.

File sharing is the subject of controversy, specifically with regards to copyright laws. Maigret wanted “to give a form and make it possible to be sensed and felt by people.”

“System Introspection” also explores how data can be translated into raw sound and visuals. The performance is a modern play on vinyl record scratching: Maigret scratches a computer hard-drive and tricks the computer into reading data stored as binary codes, such as Word documents or an iTunes playlist, into sound and pixels.

The project is intended to present computer language, which isn’t meant to be read by humans, in a visually and sonically tangible way—offering audiences the chance to have a critical experience of data.

“Today we are surrounded by data, and a lot of abstract data, we are producing it all the time,” Maigret said, explaining his inspiration.

“Your mobile phone in your pocket is producing data right now, your computer as well—soon your microwave will be producing data.”

“Untitled (Piece for Sound and Light #2),” a performance by Montreal-based artist and musician Steve Bates, explores the links between audio and visuals. Bates will convert live sounds in the Eastern Bloc into a video signal that displays a visual translation of these sounds.

Bates, who holds an MFA from Concordia, created a sensory feedback system that tricks a projector into emitting coloured, black or white light depending on the sound’s frequency or volume.

This interest in manipulating sensory products stems from his work as a musician.

“I also love guitar feedback and noise and use that in other performances as a sound source as well,” Bates said. “If you lean an electric guitar up against a amplifier with the sound at 11 running through effects pedals, I can listen to that happily for a really long time.”

The performance is similar to his previous installation “Feedback for a Black Box,” which was exhibited last year in the FOFA gallery.

The festival is in its fifth year and was extended in order to place more emphasis on conferences, workshops and the installations that contribute to a consistent theme, as well as giving more space to the projects so that festival-goers can fully appreciate them.

“The idea is to present a clear curatorial line that is well-articulated with fewer projects rather than just having a cacophony of projects that aren’t necessarily that clearly related to the theme,” said Ellbogen.

Maigret believes the Eastern Bloc’s dedication to supporting new, intelligent, experimental and boundary-crossing projects is exceptional in the art world.

“Not very often are festivals dedicated to pure, cutting edge or experimental or risky projects,” he said.

For Maigret, many new media projects are often less about artistry and more concerned with “promoting the innovation,” showing the potential of new technology without interpreting or critiquing these new systems.

“It’s a way to put more gasoline into the existing system,” he said.

“The idea is to work with artists whose practice is critical and also engaged with new technologies so that there isn’t just, say, a straightforward spectacular presentation of what digital art can be, what it’s proposing to be,” Ellbogen said.

The Eastern Bloc curates pieces that are critical and interactive so that audiences, as mass media consumers, can be more aware of how these technologies are used.

Sight + Sound / May 8 to May 29 / Eastern Bloc (7240 Clark St.)

For more info, visit the festival website.

New and former president of the FEUQ, Antoine Genest-Grégoire and Martine Desjardins, say research and employment support are top priorities for the lobby group. Photo Louis Gabriel Kéroack

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After two years at the head of the Fédération Étudiante Universitaire du Québec, Martine Desjardins is stepping down.

She was replaced on May 1 by Antoine Genest-Grégoire—a masters student in economics and former president of the Université du Québec à Montréal’s Association étudiante – École des sciences de la gestion.

The FEUQ represents over 125,000 students from 14 student associations across Quebec, including the Concordia Student Union.

In an interview with The Link on Monday, Desjardins and Génest-Grégoire reflected on the FEUQ’s role over the past two years and discussed some of the upcoming challenges for the Quebec student movement.

Desjardins, who will be remembered for her role as FEUQ president in the 2012 student strike, said that she witnessed “enormous” change during her time at the federation.

“We changed our internal policies,” she said. “And we improved the links we have with our members.”

Desjardins also noted the FEUQ’s transformation from an organization that was not known for its ability to mobilize into a driving force of a large protest movement.

“We showed that we were able to do both political lobbying and mobilization in the street,” she said.

Since announcing her decision to step down, the former FEUQ president has been vocal in criticizing certain aspects of the Coalition large de L’Association pour une solidarité syndicale étudiante’s actions during the strike, including the coalition’s failure to immediately denounce violence at protests.

But Desjardins dismissed the idea that ideological divisions between the two groups could hurt the student movement.

“We shouldn’t be afraid to debate in public,” she said, adding that it is “normal” for the two organisations to be at odds. “When you don’t have the same principles, it’s difficult to show a united front.”

Genest-Grégoire’s presidency is likely to be a more peaceful one than Desjardins’, but will present a different set of hurdles.

“We’re no longer focused on one central campaign,” he said. “We now have a larger number of challenges, and we’re working on many different issues at the same time.”

Chantiers de travail

One area of focus is the FEUQ’s participation in the Ministre de l’Enseignement supérieur, de la Recherche, de la Science et de la Technologie’s chantiers de travail, the policy-planning committees created in the wake of February’s education summit to deal with various unresolved issues in higher education.

The work of the chantier on student financial aid is almost complete, and the FEUQ is awaiting the release of its final report to see which of its recommendations will be included.

The federation wants to increase how much students can earn with summer jobs without affecting their financial aid, and to raise the amount of money that students are given for living expenses.

“We’ve been waiting for this to change for a long time,” Genest-Grégoire said. “The government allots $7 a day for students to feed themselves. This amount is very, very out of date, so we’re going to try and raise it.”

The FEUQ is also trying to influence change in the chantiers concerning the drafting of a legal framework for universities and the formation of a council on universities, on which the FEUQ wants to see as much student representation as possible.

“We’re trying to protect everything in the category of accessibility and public financing,” said Desjardins. “We want to reform university management, and we can’t forget that students should be key players in that management.”

Both Desjardins and Genest-Grégoire said that they had faith in the Parti Québécois government’s good intentions for the chantiers, despite their disappointment the recent decision to index tuition fees to the cost of living, leading to a 2.6 per cent increase for the 2013-2014 academic year.

“At the moment, we’re getting good feedback; it’s an honest process,” said Genest-Grégoire of the chantiers. “Of course, the chantiers end up as reports, and the reports are supposed to end up influencing policy […]. When the policy comes out, that’s when we’ll know whether they were listening.”

Supporting Student Researchers

Also on the horizon is Quebec’s new research policy—the Politique nationale de recherche et d’innovation—which will be released in June. The FEUQ has been lobbying the government to make sure that student researchers get a fair shake in the new policy.

“A lot of research and innovation is propelled by graduate students,” said Genest-Grégoire. “It’s great to have grants for research but we should also have them for student researchers.”

Genest-Grégoire said that the Fonds de recherche du Québec, the province’s main funding body, turns away too many qualified students.

“There simply isn’t enough money,” he said. “The province needs to catch up to make sure that students can continue to graduate studies, to do research that moves Quebec forward.”

The FEUQ is also keeping an eye on the government’s possible plans to promote more research partnerships between universities and private industry in the new policy.

“We’re not against partnerships,” Desjardins said. “But we have to make sure that they’re fair to students, that they respect intellectual property and that the profits from the research don’t just go to the businesses.”

International Students

Though he admits that international tuition fees are often considered a “peripheral issue” in the funding debate, the FEUQ’s new president sees a need for change.

“What we’re seeing is essentially a deregulation of certain programs,” said Genest-Grégoire.

Although international rates are regulated, many programs are allowed to charge an unregulated supplementary fee that has put students, in Genest-Grégoire’s words, “at the mercy of administrators.”

Genest-Grégoire said the FEUQ would study the issue within the framework of the chantier on university funding.

Internal issues

Genest-Grégoire is taking the presidency at a moment when the FEUQ is under scrutiny for its centralized leadership style, both in the press and from a former member of its executive.

Genest-Grégoire said that the FEUQ wouldn’t respond to individual comments, but that it was taking its member associations’ concerns seriously.

“We had a mandate from our members to revise a portion of our internal processes,” he said. “That has already started in this past year, and it will continue in the year to come.”

“What matters to us is that students are satisfied with their organization, that it gives them results, that it provides them with something concrete, and at the same time, that they have a way to control it—that they can know where it’s going.”

Genest-Grégoire explained that he became familiar with the FEUQ’s policies and procedures over two years of participating in the federation’s congresses, but that in the past year, he “wanted to do even more, to go as far as I could with the organization.”

“It was a personal challenge, and also a way to put everything I’ve learned in theory into practice,” he said. “Economics is very abstract […]. Applying these principles to real public policy is a wonderful experience for me.”

Graphic provided by Club Roll Music.

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One day last year, former president of Montreal’s Last Gang Records Lenny Levine met with Pop Montreal founder Dan Seligman at a café to ask him to start a record label.

He didn’t have to ask twice.

“He didn’t hesitate,” Levine said. “He was just like, ‘yeah, I’m in.’”

Not even a year old and Club Roll, the label founded by Levine and Seligman, already has a distribution deal with Universal Music Canada and a publishing deal with Nettwerk One.

The two had worked together before, Levine having collaborated with the independent music and arts festival Pop Montreal on behalf of Last Gang Records. Seligman is already infused in the Montreal music scene, but had never ventured into the label side.

“I’ve been around record labels but I’ve never been directly involved, so I thought this would be an interesting opportunity to pursue and potentially diversify,” Seligman said.

Montreal’s pool of talent is no secret to the rest of the world—the last decade seeing the ensemble-rock of Arcade Fire, electro-funk of Chromeo, alt-pop melodrama of Stars and otherworldly electronica of Grimes earning international success—to name a few.

Levine hopes to tap the mainline of Montreal’s musical prowess with an indie label armed with major-label-sized connections.

So far the label has signed the “David Byrne meets Zappa” mad scientist Karneef, “dark-folk with a melotron vibe” AroarA, flamboyant and captivating Jef Barbara, and newcomers Filthy Haanz.

AroarA’s In The Pines EP was released last month; the full-length is expected in June. More releases are slated for the end of the summer.

“The next few months are going to be telling,” he said. “We’re going to be carpet-bombing people with music.”

Buzz surrounding the newly born label is building. The Globe and Mail ran a few articles about AroarA early this year after Feist joined them onstage in Toronto for a surprise performance.

“The inside joke between Dan and I is that Feist is our publicist,” said Levine.

After recently ending their worldwide tour supporting Martha Wainwright, AroarA finally “inked” their contract with Club Roll. The duo, made up of former Broken Social Scene member Andrew Whiteman and Montreal-based orchestra Land of Kush singer Ariel Engle, has worked with Seligman and Pop Montreal for many years before forming the AroarA project.

“We’ve all been involved in music for quite a long time,” said Whiteman. “It’s kind of fun in that way because you get to start again, but you get to start again after already having made a shit-load of mistakes.”

According to Seligman, Levine has expertise in the industry and is known for getting things done. On the other hand, the Pop Montreal director is comfortable doing A&R, the task of finding new artists, because he spends so much time working with bands on the ground.

“He’s got his finger on the pulse of what’s going on artistically and culturally,” said Levine.

Seligman runs the management company Danagement. The company manages Montreal-based Besnard Lakes, Suuns, Socalled and Yamantaka//Sonic Titan, and provides other services for artists, like grant writing and tour production.

Levine owns 50 per cent of Club Roll and Seligman owns the other half with fellow Pop Montreal administrators Hilary Leftick and Shaun Bronstein, each contributing to the label with their respective financing and grant-writing expertise.

New Beginnings

Levine worked at former record store Phantasmagoria on Parc Avenue when he was a 19-year-old student at Vanier College, before going on to work as the manager of a Phantasmagoria franchise at the corner of Sherbrooke and Claremont.

“That’s where I got my education in music,” he said

After graduating from Concordia with a BA Philosophy, he started working at EMI in the ‘90s in the sales and customer service division. He later moved to Aquarius Records, which was part of the Donald K. Donald empire, before working at Last Gang Records for eight years.

Levine was president of Last Gang’s Montreal branch before it closed and all operations were moved to Toronto two years ago.

After being unceremoniously let go, Levine considered other opportunities. He was offered a position at Universal Music Canada and weighed his options before deciding to start his own record label.

“A lot of times it’s very hard in any facet of the entertainment business to come back,” he said.

One of Club Roll’s slogans, ‘Sorry, We’re Open’ speaks to Levine’s resilience to stay in the business.

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Concordia filmmakers are screening their short film productions during the 40th annual Concordia Film Festival, which kicks off today.

The festival is the longest-running university film fest in Canada and presents works by Mel Hoppenheim School of Cinema students in film production and film animation.

According to festival director Simran Dewan, the 40th edition aims to pay homage to students and ex-students alike.

This year the festival honours André Turpin, Concordia alumni and acclaimed cinematographer of the Oscar-nominated film Incendies.

Cinema students present their fictional, documentary and experimental films with their peers as part of 90-minute-long screening segments, and a jury of professionals chooses 15 films to screen at the Best of the Fest, where awards are given. The Best of the Fest screens Saturday May 4 at 8:00 p.m.

This year marks the end of analog productions in film classes at Concordia. Now that Montreal film labs and companies are closing down, students will be working exclusively with digital next year.

“The big attraction for Concordia was the fact that even ‘till today we were shooting everything in film—so 16/35mm,” Dewan said.

This year’s festival is meant to mark the shift to digital production, the third-year cinema student added.

An Open Bar segment is new this year. Filmmakers from around Quebec were invited to present their work alongside Concordia students. The festival received submissions from CEGEP students as well as out-of-school filmmakers.

“It was sort of like a test run to see the reception of what would happen if we opened up a screening to many different universities,” Dewan said.

“We were curious to see what would happen if you put a Concordia film against a [Université de Montréal] film.”

First-year Filmmaking I students aren’t excluded from the festival, and last year a few of their films were even selected as part of Best of the Fest.

Teachers set up a first year screening, and organizers of the Concordia Film Festival send their own jury to select 15 films to be screened alongside works by students in more advanced film classes.

“In the end it’s not about the medium or what year you’re in,” he said. “It’s really just about how good your film is.”

The first-year filmmakers traditionally shoot their short movies with a Bolex camera, although next year they will make the move to digital cameras.

“The jury we select comes in like a professional jury,” Dewan said. “They don’t really care whether it was shot 35mm or Bolex.”

Concordia Film Festival / May 2 to 4 / Maxwell-Cummings Auditorium (Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, 1379A Sherbrooke St. W.) / $7.75 per film

For more info, visit the Concordia Film Festival website

International Workers Day in Montreal, also known as May Day, saw mass arrests at the demonstration organized by the Anti-Capitalist Convergence. Photo Erin Sparks

Montreal’s May Day protest was nearly over before it began, with roughly 300 people detained and ticketed in the the city’s Old Port Wednesday afternoon.

Organized by the Anti-Capitalist Convergence, the protest gathered at Place Jacques-Cartier, right outside Montreal City Hall to protest capitalism, corruption and labour issues.

Wednesday’s demonstration was intended to centre around the Le 357c—a private club that has recently come up in the Charbonneau Commission and, according to the CLAC, is where “the capitalists draw up the plans of our oppression and our exploitation.”

The protest never made it to the club.

As someone over a megaphone called for the march to begin, Montreal police in riot gear moved in and split the group, causing small clashes between police and groups of protesters still trying to remain in the streets.

Paint and water balloons were thrown at a line of riot police and a small scuffle ensued. The police soon announced that the protest had been declared illegal under municipal bylaw P-6 as well as due to criminal acts being committed.

A tweet from the Montreal police later claimed that sticks were used to hit officers and that billiard balls had been thrown at them.

After a short march west down several blocks of de la Commune St., the police forcibly corralled and kettled approximately 300 people. Others were targeted and arrested before and after the kettling.

Pepper spray and sound grenades were used by the police during the protest.

Other demonstrations were organized throughout the city to mark May Day. The day is also known as the international worker’s day and is celebrated annually to commemorate or demonstrate for labour issues and workers rights.

Two protests converged on Montreal’s Old Port mid-afternoon on Wednesday, according to Montreal police. Demonstrators included workers from the umbrella union group Confédération des Syndicats Nationaux, which is asking for unionization among employees of the Couche-Tard convenience store franchise.

A representative from the CSN also sat down with Quebec premier Pauline Marois, along with representatives from the Quebec Labour Federation and the Central Union of Quebec—the two other major provincial labour unions—to discuss the unions’ concerns with Bill C-14, a proposed language law amendment to further protect the French language in the province.

A Non-Migrating Struggle

While proponents argue worker’s rights for collective bargaining and fair wages are being threatened worldwide, immigrant labour organizations say the rights of migrant workers are being disproportionately ignored.

According to a press release by the Immigrant Workers Centre in Montreal, migrant and temporary agency workers are upset with changes to the federal Low Skilled Temporary Foreign Workers Program, announced this week in response to RBC’s hiring of foreign workers to replace 45 Canadian-held positions at the bank.

They say the changes will discourage migrant worker employment in Canada.

“We are not asking for anything but a minimum of respect for our rights as temporary migrant workers,” said Mohammad, a temporary worker in New Brunswick whose last name was omitted in a statement released by the IWC.

They are also demanding minimum wage be increased to the “liveable” sum of $12 per hour.

According to Emma Smith, spokesperson for the Montreal chapter of CLAC, the struggle of migrant workers is closely tied to the anti-capitalist cause.

“One cannot exist without the other; they are intimately tied and linked there is no difference between one struggle and the other,” Smith told The Link.

“I think it’s important for people not to ever allow their basic civil freedoms to be taken away so easily, particularly when the political elites are the corrupt in all this, not the people,” she added.

CLAC has organized multiple demonstrations in Montreal over the past few months, primarily to denounce the municipal bylaw P-6, which the organization says is illegally restricting rights to free expression and assembly.

In amendments last year, the bylaw was expanded to grant police powers to declare protests illegal if no route is provided to police within 24 hours of any demonstration on public land.

Protesters are also prohibited from concealing their faces, whether it be with bandanas or panda heads.

Tamey Lau’s Mile End flower shop Dragon Flowers was destroyed in a fire on April 23. Since then, the community has donated gifts and money to help restore the shop. Photo Katie McGroarty

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After Tamey Lau lost her Mile End flower shop in a devastating fire the night of April 23, thousands of people from the neighbourhood, and others as far away as Vancouver, came to her support. Every day since the fire, customers and friends have dropped by the boarded-up store to offer their sympathy and donate money to help rebuild Dragon Flowers, a Mile End fixture of 27 years.

The day after the fire, a family friend of Lau’s started a “fire recovery fund” on a crowd-funding website with a goal of $10,000. So far the campaign has raised almost $14,000 in donations from across the country.

“It’s just very surprising,” Lau said describing the outpour of support she has received. “This kind of love is Mile End. In Mile End, the energy is amazing,” she added before stepping out of the burned-out store to greet a customer.

“Come back and tell me how your exams went!” Lau tells the young lady as she hands her a bouquet of fresh flowers.

Lau says she still doesn’t know what caused the blaze that gutted her store. She was preparing dinner at her daughter’s apartment a few blocks away when her son called to alert her that a fire had broken out.

“There were firemen everywhere, everything was burning,” Lau recalled. “I thought, ‘This is game over.’ I’ve worked here for more than 20 years […] It made me so sad. It was so painful.”

Lau’s son, Tino, was one of the first at the scene of the fire. He was about to go to bed in the apartment above the shop, where he lives with his mother, when his sister smelled smoke. Tino went downstairs and found the store in flames.

“I can’t really describe how it felt,” he said. “It’s my mom’s whole life here. She put all her heart into it, to raise us. And now that it’s all gone, it’s really sad. You work your entire life for something, and in a few hours you lose everything.”

“There are so many people with different stories about how my mom helped them. She saved couples, she saw people grow up, and they always remember my mom.”
—Tino Lau

Since then, Tino and Lau’s other children have spent most of their time helping their mother clean up the mess. As of yet, they do not know when the store will reopen, but they hope to be ready for Mother’s Day.

Yesterday, Tino was carrying pots and statues away in preparation for a garage sale his family is hosting outside the organic food store, Bio Terre, on April 28.

Like his mom, Tino said he feels moved by the community’s response to the fire.

“I was really, really surprised. In one day, a thousand people came together. It was really touching. There are so many people with different stories about how my mom helped them. She saved couples, she saw people grow up—and they always remember my mom.

“I saw on Facebook that someone made a donation from Vancouver, and she said she used to live in Mile End nine years ago and still remembers my mom,” he said.

So many people in the neighbourhood have reached out to Lau that she has trouble remembering all their names.

“There was one group of musicians—they’re called Fire… something?,” she said, drawing a blank. “Fire Alligator? I don’t know their name because my English is no good. Fire Me Away?”

“Arcade Fire!” Tino interjected as he carried a box out the backdoor. “Right! They support me a lot,” Lau said.

Last Wednesday, Arcade Fire tweeted “Tamey has filled our homes with flowers for years and is well loved in our neighbourhood. Let’s help her out!” followed by a link to Dragon Flowers’ fire recovery crowd-funding page.

Most of all, Lau says she is grateful for the kindness and generosity of “Mile End’s kids.”

“In Mile End, the kids are amazing. From two years-old, to 15, 20 – they’re all my kids. They drew me a lot of pictures and sent me a lot of love.”

“They drew me this picture,” said Lau, pointing to a coloured-pencil drawing of her name.

“They drew me this picture,” she said pointing to a coloured-pencil drawing of her name, ornamented with flowers and hearts, hanging on the wall.

Thirteen-year-old Tomas Kovac stopped by Dragon Flowers with his mother on Friday afternoon to say hello. The day after the fire, Kovac went to the shop to comfort Lau and make a donation.
“I donated $50 because she was always kind to me, and she would sometimes give me little treats, but mostly she just makes my day,” Kovac said.

Holding a chocolate and vanilla sundae with rainbow sprinkles, Kovac says he often goes to the shop to chat with Lau and buy flowers. Asked who the flowers were for, he said they are for his mother.

“I don’t have a girlfriend yet,” he said, “Soon.”

Kovac’s mother, Mary-Ann, says that Dragon Flowers is “much more than just a business.”

“They have a relationship, her and Tomas,” she said. “She has a connection to everyone. It’s not a regular flower shop.”

Projet Montréal has nominated two candidates in N.D.G. for the upcoming municipal election. From left to right: Christian Arseneault, Loyola district; Richard Bergeron, party leader; Peter McQueen, NDG district. Photo Michael Wrobel

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Montreal’s municipal election may still be months away, but Projet Montréal has already nominated two candidates in the Côte-des-Neiges–Notre-Dame-de-Grâce borough.

Christian Arseneault will run under the Projet Montréal banner in the Loyola electoral district, while Peter McQueen, who won a seat on city council for Projet Montréal in 2009, will seek re-election in the NDG district.

Arseneault, 24, told The Link that despite his young age, he has a lot of political experience and knows the Loyola district—home to Concordia’s Loyola campus—very well.

“I do bring [to the table] the optimism and idealism that characterizes our youth, and I think that people will realize that’s a good thing, and not a disadvantage,” Arseneault said on April 21 at the NDG Sports Complex, where party members gathered to vote on who would represent Projet Montréal in the elections slated for Nov. 3.

“People write off the idealism and optimism of young people as naïveté and unreasonableness, and I think that they’re wrong in [doing] that,” he said.

“While some people might have qualms about my age, I can guarantee that five minutes with them will have them convinced otherwise.”

Both Arseneault and McQueen told The Link that public transit would be a major issue during the election campaign.

Arseneault said the 105 bus—well-traveled by Concordia students along Sherbrooke St. W.—presents a particular challenge.

“While we have very frequent service, the fact is we have so many people using it,” he said, noting that even small changes could improve on the travel time and comfort of passengers.

McQueen said the Société de transport de Montréal, the city’s public transit authority, has a plan to create a bus lane on Sherbrooke St., but it won’t help students.

The buses will use the reserved lane to travel eastward, toward downtown, in the morning and westward, toward N.D.G., in the afternoon—in other words, against the flow of students.

“I want better service on the 105 bus,” said McQueen. “I would say, bring the [articulated] accordion buses as soon as possible, increase the frequency.”

Arseneault also noted that Projet Montréal has previously called for the price of monthly transit passes to be reduced for students and low-income earners to make their commutes more affordable.

Transparency and openness in government could be another major campaign issue, if Arseneault has his way.

“I hope to show people, through the way that I run my campaign and the ideas that I propose, that in six months from now, we’ll be in a position to encourage greater citizen participation through openness and, as a result, that we’ll be able to improve the delivery of services to citizens all over the borough and all over the city,” he said.

Arseneault has a bachelor’s degree in political science and philosophy from McGill and previously worked in the N.D.G. constituency office of Liberal MNA Kathleen Weil.

McQueen, a Concordia graduate and entrepreneur, ran unsuccessfully as a candidate for the Green Party in the 2007 and 2008 provincial elections before getting involved in municipal politics.

While McQueen’s nomination was unopposed, two people sought the party’s nomination in the Loyola district. Arseneault was chosen in a vote of 141 to 104 over Sharon Sweeney, a former tour planner who is now involved as a volunteer and fundraiser in several community organizations in the borough.

Mayoral Race Heating Up

Projet Montréal leader Richard Bergeron will be running to become Montreal’s mayor in the November election, as will Vision Montréal leader Louise Harel.

Seemingly ending months of speculation that he would throw his hat into the mayoral race, Liberal MP Denis Coderre registered a political party in his name—Équipe Denis Coderre pour Montréal—on Friday.

According to The Gazette, Union Montréal interim leader Richard Deschamps has not confirmed whether or not he will run for mayor. Former Union Montréal leader Gérald Tremblay resigned as mayor on Nov. 5, 2012, following allegations of corruption in the awarding of municipal construction contracts.

Many city councillors elected under the Union Montréal banner in 2009 have since left the party to sit as independents, including Susan Clarke, the current city councillor for the Loyola district.

Benoit-Antoine Bacon will begin a five-year term as Concordia’s new provost starting July 1. Photo Concordia University

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In keeping with recent tradition, there will be another new face on campus next year.

Concordia’s Board of Governors unanimously appointed Benoit-Antoine Bacon to be the university’s newest Provost and Vice President Academic Affairs, set to take office July 1 for a five-year term.

“This is a big moment,” said board Chair Norman Hebert Jr. in an interview with The Link following the meeting. “[Concordia President Alan Shepard] can’t do everything, and he needs a strong provost. This is his right hand.”

Before making his move to Concordia, Bacon will have to finish his current job as Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Science and associate Vice Principal Research at Bishop’s University.

Bacon holds a M.Sc. in Psychology and a PhD in Neuropsychology from the Université de Montréal. He is also a Concordia alumnus, having graduated in 1995 with an Honours Psychology.

Though he was keen to point out Bacon’s Concordia connection, and he’s excited about the changes that he can bring to the university, Shepard added that Bacon would be wise to take his time to become reacquainted with his alma mater.

“What I’ve told him is ‘don’t come and make any sudden decisions. Come get to know the place again,’” said Shepard. “He was here as a student but it was a while ago, and he was a visiting professor at the beginning of his teaching career.

“We’ve talked about him coming to get a lay of the land before starting to pull levers.”

Last year saw Concordia usher in its first official Academic Plan, which Shepard is eager to move forward on. But, he added, some revisions will be necessary as the new provost is brought on.

“We’re ushering in the next era of academic leadership,” said Shepard. “I think we’ll be doing a mix of traditional stuff that universities do, and some innovative stuff that not so many of them do.”

Part of this movement will be to continue towards Shepard’s vision for online and alternative learning at Concordia.

“We’re ushering in the next era of academic leadership. I think we’ll be doing a mix of traditional stuff that universities do, and some innovative stuff that not so many of them do.”
—Alan Shepard, Concordia President

While Bacon’s portfolio as provost will include e-learning in certain capacities, Shepard explained his intention in creating a new position to focus specifically on online education.

“I don’t know what we’ll call it yet, but I’m thinking of some sort of vice-provost role inside the provost office that would work on e-learning,” said Shepard. “We need somebody that wakes up everyday thinking of online learning and the sort of next-generation pedagogy as their baby.”

He added that this would not be restricted to eConcordia, the online learning platform run through the university’s for-profit e-learning corporation, KnowledgeOne.

“We have to position ourselves to stay current,” said Shepard.

According to Bishop’s University, Bacon’s primary research interests are in the field of visual neuroscience. He is also a member of Centre de Recherche en Neuropsychologie et Cognition out of the Université de Montréal and the Group for Interdisciplinary Research in Psychology Applied to Social Systems. Bacon also co-founded the Psychological Health and Well-Being Research Cluster at Bishop’s.

At last year’s Take Back the Night demonstration, Concordia students rallied around the need for a sexual assault centre. Photo Kieth Race

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Concordia’s Sexual Assault Resource Centre will hopefully be up and running when students return this fall.

The university announced their plans to open the centre on Wednesday, finding its home in the downtown GM Building.

“We’ll probably have the space before we have the coordinator,” said Concordia Counselling and Development Director Howard Magonet. “But that’s a good thing.”

His goal is to have the centre operating by the fall semester at the latest. But specifics won’t be ironed out until the centre’s coordinator is hired—a full-time social worker position that Magonet says has received two applications before the one-year contract has even been posted by the university.

The new centre will be funded by Concordia’s Vice-President Services office, and will work under Concordia Counselling and Development.

This comes after two years of campaigning by the Centre for Gender Advocacy, an independent student group mandated to promote gender equality and empowerment. Holding events, postering and rallying around the annual Take Back the Night demonstration, the centre worked to show how essential such a space is for the university.

“We know the statistics behind sexual assault on campuses, that one in four students are sexually assaulted during their post-secondary career,” said CGA Programming and Campaigns Coordinator Bianca Mugyenyi, citing a survey done by the University of Alberta.

“When very few people are reporting it at Concordia, these services are much needed,” she added.

Last spring the CGA started a petition asking the university to provide permanent space for a sexual assault centre. It has since received over 1,000 signatures when tallying online and paper petitions. The Concordia Student Union and Graduate Students’ Association also put their support behind the initiative last year.

In the past few months, the proposal was drafted by the university. The full-time coordinator will work with student volunteers to create education, counselling and referral services, and will have access to the counselors and psychologists already working in Counselling and Development.

The space in the GM Building will have two adjacent offices, one for the coordinator and one for the resource centre.

“It’s a really cool example of student initiative being embraced by the university as an institution,” said incoming CSU President Melissa Kate Wheeler, who was involved in initial talks with the university because of her involvement in the “Love Doesn’t Hurt” campaign, an awareness-raising campaign centered around abusive relationships.

Wheeler was quick to point out, however, that the work done by the CGA is the reason why the centre is happening.

With Concordia’s administration providing all the funding, it’s a different model than the Sexual Assault Centre of the McGill Students’ Society, which runs on a student fee levy and has been housed in the student union-owned building since the 1990s.

Wheeler says Concordia’s approach makes it easier to get experts involved in the centre, combined with the “skills and sensitivity” of student volunteers.

In the university’s proposal for the centre there are plans for an advisory board, which will meet regularly to provide feedback and recommendations for the centre. It’s a body Mugyenyi wants to see with a substantial student contingent.

“Our hope is that there will be as much student involvement as possible, because to build a genuine culture of consent at Concordia you have to have students integrated,” she said.

“Décalé” by Stare

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Montreal may have a reputation for spray-can art on its concrete walls, but there’s graffiti in the galleries too. At the Yves Laroche Galerie d’art, five graffiti arts are displaying their work in the double exhibition Saturation and Star d’un soir.

Saturation is the fruit of a collaboration between four artists from Montreal to Puerto Rico, where the exhibition was held last year. Alex Scaner, Zek One, Philip Pun18 Cruz and Kems combine their styles in their shared passion: graffiti.

Taking inspiration from pop art to comic books, the team celebrates graphic street art with explosions of flashy colours—spray-painted across white canvases.

Bright pink, green apple, neon blue and yellow blend together to create a stark contrast against the white, brightly lit gallery walls. The street style signature of spray paint is juxtaposed against the contemporary chic gallery space.

“ Saturation was always meant to be ongoing and worldwide. Everyone involved is really good at what they do, they are friends and they form like a Voltron.” said Louis Coupal curator for both exhibitions.

Co-founder of street-writing NME crew Stare is also marking his solo gallery debut with Star d’un soir.

Having worked in the urban artform for over 15 years, Stare has developed his own style—distinguishing himself through mastery of lettering.

Stare adds a unique twist to the art by mixing it with different platforms and exploring new textures.

On square canvases, Stare incorporates his lettering into urban landscape and architecture.

Stare plays with by-products of graffiti, bringing his street art off the street—all while keeping it in context.

His work looks like Polaroids of street art, adding pinks or blues like filters for a camera lens. He then covers the painting with a resin, making the large “Polaroids” glossy.

“What stands out in his work is how it’s amazingly soulful, yet intricate and meticulously crafty or technical,” said Coupal.

“His experience with the medium, his honest and personal subject matters, the flow and balance of his typography and style blows me out. He is a very deep, actual and impressive artist.”

Saturation and Star d’un soir / Until May 1 / Gallery Yves Laroche (6355 St. Laurent Blvd.) / Closing reception: May 1 from 5:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m.

Phonopolis is one of the participating record stores this year. Montreal-based AroarA will be performing in store. Photo Adrian Sousa

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In today’s increasingly digital age, many still prefer listening to music on their old school vinyl. Some insist the sound quality is better, for others, it’s just a matter of taste.

Despite not being portable or easy to maintain, there can be no doubt of the popularity of records among audiophiles and average music listeners alike, with April 20 being the 5th annual Record Store Day.

Record Store Day is an internationally celebrated day taking place each year on the third Saturday of April.

The event began in 2007 as a gathering of independent record stores owners and employees to promote the unique culture of the thriving number of independently-owned record stores in the US and internationally.

On this day, record stores across the world collaborate with hundreds of artists, selling limited edition vinyl and CD albums as well as specially released or re-released albums made exclusively for the event.

For instance, a limited edition live version recording of the Paul McCartney and Wings song “Maybe I’m Amazed” will be reissued in the 12’’ format. One copy will be available at Montreal record store Beatnick.

It was originally only available to radio stations back in 1976, but is being reprinted specially for the event. Similar rare and unique songs and albums from various artists will be available at stores all over the world.

This Saturday, record stores in Montreal and the world over will be selling this special stock, while crowds form lines outside their doors.

Local record store owners will definitely have their hands full on what is probably their busiest day of the year.

Pete Markotanyos, owner of Aux 33 Tours, saw a turnout of over 200 hundred people last year.

This year he says he’s anticipating even more.

Located in the heart of the Plateau on 1373 Mont-Royal Ave. E., Aux 33 Tours has participated in Record Store Day for four years.

Markotanyos explained that on Record Store Day the store is open earlier, at 9:00 a.m., and closes later, at 10:00 p.m., rather than its usual hours of 10:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. They also set up three tables just for the products they receive that day.

“It’s a big day for us” he said.

Additionally, there will be in-store performances by artists, including Michel Rivard, Groenland, Solids and a few others.

It’s also a big day for Nick Catalano, the owner of Beatnick music store located on 3770 St. Denis St.

Record shops receive a catalogue listing which albums will be released for sale, as well as the quantity available. But because of the severely limited quantities of product as well as the size of the market, what they actually end up with isn’t always what they hope for.

“We might order 25 copies and only end up with two,” said Catalano. “A lot of stuff is also US only, but the listings online don’t tell you if it’s available outside the US.”

The limited number of records received has lead to the implementation of a one copy per customer rule, to try to dissuade people buying all the copies and flipping them for profit.

Another problem, Catalano explained, is getting exactly what they ordered.

“Let’s say I order 90 copies of something in the hopes of getting 10 copies. If the demand isn’t high, there’s a chance that I’ll get stuck with all 90 and then have to sell them.”

The “shelf-life” of these products is also very short, because after Record Store Day, more copies of limited editions might get printed, considerably lowering their retail value.

Despite the risks, Beatnick sees its fair share of turnout.

“Everything moves really quick,” Catalano said.

For more info visit the Record Store Day website

Also see Last Shop Standing: The Rise, Fall and Rebirth of the Independent Record Shop a documentary made by Record Store Day on UK record shops, available at record stores in Montreal.

Inside the Atwater Library. Photo Michael Wrobel

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In a room at the Atwater Library—beyond the circulation desk, up two flights of stairs and through a nondescript doorway—roughly 25 chairs were arranged in a circle on April 8. Slowly, people entered the room and filled the seats.

An animated discussion soon began, with participants introducing themselves before offering their thoughts. Words of encouragement from the moderator made even the shyest participants feel comfortable, like they could contribute to the conversation.

“I don’t know what I would do if I ever didn’t have a library [to go to],” admitted archivist Jeri Pitzel. “Have I become addicted to libraries? I love them so much.”

The topic of discussion was the future of libraries in the digital age. The Atwater Library and the University of the Streets Café, Concordia University’s annual conversation series, organized the event.

Short presentations by three panelists began the discussion: Eric Craven, the coordinator of the Atwater Library’s Digital Literacy Project; Kathleen King, a community worker at the YMCA’s residence in Montreal; and Edward Little, a theatre professor at Concordia. The presentations were followed by a moderated discussion involving all of those in attendance.

With the rise of e-books, collaboratively edited Internet encyclopedias and online databases containing millions of scholarly articles, libraries are no longer the only places to find books or do research. In this context, how can libraries remain relevant and continue to serve the needs of their communities?

“I think for a long time, the role of libraries has been to provide access to information,” said community organizer Jimmy Ung, who completed an undergraduate degree in industrial relations at the Université de Montréal in 2008.

“We have to rethink what the roles of libraries are.”

In his opinion, libraries need to focus on “giving life to information” instead of just providing people with access to it, a role that is nowadays already fulfilled by the Internet.

“I feel like libraries should be places for storytelling,” he said, adding that they shouldn’t shy away from hosting social events like film screenings or public discussions on books.

“The experience of interacting with those stories can become collective when you project them or read them out loud. I think that’s something [libraries] should strive for, because that’s an experience in its own.”

That’s a sentiment shared by Little, who has worked with the Atwater Library to develop an interdisciplinary course that brings Concordia students out of the classroom and into community spaces to experience hands-on what it’s like to be “artists in residence.” Little specializes in this type of “socially engaged and activist theatre.”

He pointed out that Montreal has an unparalleled concentration of students in its downtown core, with the Université du Québec à Montréal, McGill University, Concordia, Cégep du Vieux Montréal and Dawson College all located in the area.

“I see this student energy as kind of like a river. It’s a river of youth and optimism, and imagination, and a burning desire to socially engage. […] If this is a river, I want to open little irrigation channels and send some of that creative energy out into the neighbourhoods of Montreal.”

Little said that libraries should hold more events organized by oral historians and artists. He said these types of animated, creative events could help to humanize these spaces and turn them into the social hubs of a community.

He said theatre in particular has the power to make us less individualistic and more like a “collective.”

Still, many participants in attendance felt that the library’s more fundamental roles in educating people and providing access to educational resources shouldn’t be completely overlooked, despite the newfound ease of finding information and even entire books on the Internet.

“The experience of interacting with those stories can become collective when you project them or read them out loud. I think that’s something [libraries] should strive for, because that’s an experience in its own.”
—Jimmy Ung, community organizer

King said libraries play an important role in integrating immigrants into their new communities and in helping to break their isolation.

“The role of the library is extremely important, because for immigrants, it is a free place to go with multiple free activities or low-cost activities. It offers free Internet access and computer use, movie rentals, CDs and homework help for their children.”

Libraries help out a variety of disadvantaged groups, said Katherine Moore, a volunteer who helps seniors to improve their digital literacy.

“There are marginalized people who have no access to online resources,” she said. A senior herself, she said providing online podcasts of public events held at libraries would go a long way towards making such events more accessible to the elderly, especially those with mobility issues that might prevent them from leaving the house.

Craven spoke about the Atwater Library’s digital literacy initiative. The library organizes various digital skills workshops for people ranging in age from 10 to 90.

According to the Digital Literacy Project’s website, the workshops touch upon topics as diverse as sound recording, video animation, blogging, web design, media literacy and critical media analysis.

“The whole idea is to address the growing digital divide in skills and information, and to make sure that we’re working towards an even playing field with these tools,” Craven said.

“For me, this is just one way of being a contemporary librarian. Librarians have always been connecting people to skills, literacies and different types of information, and adjusting as we go [to meet people’s needs]. Right now, we’re fixated on the digital age.”

Libraries have an important role to play in preventing the commodification of knowledge and literature, added Kendra Besanger, who is working on a master’s degree in media studies at Concordia.

“We’ve been taught in a really, really intelligent way to be very good consumers,” she said. “You can experience the materiality [of books] and you can excessively collect books—you can do that, but you don’t have to pay for it [in bookstores]. We have to train ourselves to not just go out and buy it because that’s the ‘easiest’ thing.”

According to the Federation of Ontario Public Libraries, library use often increases by as much as 20 per cent during an economic downturn. That would seem to suggest libraries are still relevant in giving people access to books and academic resources, especially when they fall on hard times.

However, today’s libraries also have some shortcomings, and those were equally discussed. The accessibility of libraries was something that came up several times during the conversation.

“I think Montreal’s community libraries are way behind in terms of opening hours,” said Stephanie Watt, a freelance editor and Concordia graduate. “If the library is only open from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., who’s going to go?”

Sarine Makdessian, a Concordia student of Armenian origin, said she wished ethnic and linguistic minorities had access to books in languages other than English and French in Montreal.

“I actually lament the fact that I can’t find books or novels in my first language very easily,” she said, noting that it’s difficult for her to make it out to the library housed in Montreal’s Armenian Community Centre. “I work full-time, I study, so I don’t have the opportunity to engage with my own [ethnic] community.”

For more information on the University of the Streets Café, visit their webpage.

Sarah-Maude Beauchesne Photo Flora Hammond

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À 23 ans, Sarah-Maude Beauchesne a déjà été demandée en mariage. Par un inconnu. Sur Gmail.

L’auteure du blogue littéraire mais pas culinaire les Fourchettes agrippe les envies et la fascination de ses lecteurs avec la poésie tartine-au-beurre-fondu de ses mots.

Depuis près de deux ans et demi, Beauchesne dévoile des morceaux de ses histoires de cœur ramassés dans des lits-draps-froissés-au-petit-matin, à travers le récit de sa vie, version «soft-sexu» —selon ses propres mots. Elle y consigne ses insécurités de filles, ses rencontres sexuelles et émotionnelles et ses rollercoaster sentimentaux.

«[Les gens] ne veulent pas lire ce que j’ai mangé ce matin. Ils veulent lire qu’est-ce que j’ai fait hier soir quand j‘étais saoule, ou qu’est-ce que j’ai faite en fin de semaine quand j’ai braillé parce que mon chum m’a laissée».

Dans le sillage des mots, d’autres indices. Sur Instagram, des photos-morceaux de Beauchesne: ses ondulations capillaires rousses; en short/jupe/robe mini-mini; dans de la pabst; avec une candeur d’enfant pas tout à fait adulte encore; quelqu’un qui se fait tatouer à même le salon d’un ami.

Les pièces du puzzle représentant le «moi» de Beauchesne flottent sur internet, comme une énigme opaque. Elle ressemble à cette fille inaccessible dont on traque un peu secrètement la vie super-bohème-intense sur les réseaux sociaux.

«Les gens, des fois, pensent que je suis la personne derrière mes histoires. Puis 90 pour cent oui, mais y’en a 10 pour cent qui est vraiment plus intense».

«Ça me fascine de savoir comment que les filles, ensemble, on interagit, pis comment qu’on vit l’une à côté de l’autre»
—Sarah-Maude Beauchesne

Son Gmail est le réceptacle des preuves d’admiration les plus folles.

«Je pense que les gens [lisent les Fourchettes] et sont comme : «J’peux lui dire n’importe quoi, tsé. Elle a l’air wild, ou whatever ».

Demandes en mariage et poèmes d’amour dédiés à une Beauchesne fantasmée font partie de ces audaces virtuelles qu’elle affectionne pour leurs précieuses étrangetés émotionnelles.

Et son blogue à elle, c’est aussi un tribut à la fille vraiment wild. Une preuve d’admiration, un aveu un peu contrit.

«J’aimerais ça, que ça soit 100 pour cent moi [la Sarah-Maude des Fourchettes], parce que je la trouve vraiment plus awesome que moi».

Beauchesne dessine cette fille fourchette avec des couleurs mi-jalouses, mi-curieuses, volées aux filles réelles—celles qui ont le premier rôle dans son texte «Les filles deuxième partie».

«Deux filles ça se regarde tout le temps, ça se compare tout le temps, pis même si tu veux pas, c’est impossible», explique Beauchesne, pour qui les relations de rivalités fille-fille sont un sujet de prédilection.

«Ça me fascine de savoir comment que les filles, ensemble, on interagit, pis comment qu’on vit l’une à côté de l’autre».

Et au-delà du personnage fantasmé, c’est sa plume qui rallie ses lecteurs derrière elle. Beauchesne ne se chronique pas sa vie. Elle expulse sa vie sur l’internet, avec un naturel presque violent de sincérité.

Son style fourchette est une expérience grisante bipolaire.

Elle écrit une histoire d’un unique souffle, qu’elle assaisonne de tonalités lyriques. Ses phrases, ses mots, sont un cliché de cheval sauvage au galop. Ils s‘élancent, gracieusement, affolés. Ils n’ont pas de bride-ponctuation.

Quand Beauchesne écrit une fourchette, tous les mots sont jetés avec urgence, les uns après les autres. Elle n’y revient plus par la suite.

Elle pique son procédé littéraire virginal d’argot franco-anglais montréalais, langue qui fait rougir le français académique trop bien élevé—celui qui demande invariablement la permission aux siècles précédents.

Hantée par l’oeuvre littéraire de Marguerite Duras, Beauchesne fait de la langue française un laboratoire expérimental.

«Si je pouvais me transformer en Marguerite Duras, je le ferais».

Beauchesne admire la sincérité, le rythme et l’imagination de l’auteure. Son sentiment, c’est que les mots de Duras ont bouleversé toute une génération. Son livre préféré à elle, c’est un roman autobiographique de Duras, L’amant.

On ne nait pas fourchette, on le devient

Beauchesne a récemment publié Les Je-Sais-Pas-Pantoute, son premier recueil papier qui compile une sélection d’articles de son blogue. C’est une mise en bouche pour la petite fille qui voulait écrire des histoires.

Elle ne se rappelle plus vraiment quels furent ses premiers balbutiements verbaux, mais elle a retrouvé des poèmes «cheesy-fleur-bleue», composés du haut de ses sept ans.

«C’est écrit tout croche en lettres attachées, on comprend même pas ce que je veux dire, y’a le mot fleur, cœur, des affaires de même».

Ses premiers rêves d’auteure ont pris forme à Poudlard, l’école fictive crée par J.K. Rowling.

«Je suis vraiment fan d’Harry Potter, c’est weird tellement que j’aime ça».

Elle raffolait des triangles amoureux, entremêlés à la vie en pensionnat à l‘école des sorciers.

«C’est vraiment con, c’est cheesy, c’est un des best-sellers les plus communs. Mais c’est ça qui a fait genre, ‘Je veux écrire, peu importe c’est pour quoi. Je veux créer des personnages’».

Mais elle n’a pas accouché des Fourchettes avant de quitter Granby pour Montréal, à 18 ans.

«Montréal a fait en sorte que j‘écrive toutes ces choses-là».

Beauchesne y fait sa crise d’adolescence tardive. Toutes ses premières expériences sont des premières expériences à Montréal.

Le premier cri des fourchettes, c’est un sanglot. Elles sont nées d’un chagrin d’amour.

«J’ai commencé à beaucoup écrire. Avec un rythme, avec beaucoup de tristesse, beaucoup de colère, en un souffle, puis un peu en vomissant les mots».

Pour lire les histoires-fourchettes de Sarah-Maude Beauchesne, visitez son blogue ou procurez-vous son livre.

CSU VP External Simon-Pierre Lauzon along with VP Finance Keny Toto were asked to step down in a vote at last night’s council meeting. Photo Sam Slotnick

With less than two months left in their mandate, the Concordia Student Union requested the resignation of two of its executives at Wednesday’s council meeting.

CSU VP External Simon-Pierre Lauzon and VP Finance Keny Toto were asked to resign after an extra $19,100 was allocated to the Arts and Science Federation of Associations’ ASFA Talks 2013 speaker series. The funds were used to help secure Jeff Rubin, the former chief economist at CIBC World Markets, as a keynote speaker.

The union ultimately spent a total of $30,000 before taxation, while only $10,900 was earmarked for the one-evening, five-hour event in the CSU’s annual operating budget.

This leaves the CSU executive with four resignations within their term, VP Academic and Advocacy Lucia Gallardo and President Schubert Laforest having left earlier this year.

According to Chad Walcott, who put forward the original motion to ask for the resignations of the two VPs, ticket sales provided by ASFA placed attendance at the speaker series at 47, pricing the event at around $638 per student. Tickets were priced at $5 for students and $10 for non-students.

While he admitted in his executive report that ticket sales were lower than expected, Lauzon told council that free events and a gala organized as part of ASFA Talks had around 150 people in attendance. That assertion was also made by outgoing ASFA President Caroline Bourbonnière, who currently sits as an arts and science councillor and will be taking up the CSU VP External portfolio in June.

According to Lauzon, contracts were signed in January after consulting with Toto and then-CSU President Laforest.

But a tweet from Laforest during session denied this conversation ever took place.

Council members critical of Lauzon said he was unable to sign off on any contracts anyway because he is not authorized as a signing officer.

CSU standing regulations require all transactions over $10,000 to be approved by the union’s financial committee, except in “emergency circumstances,” in which case regulation 82 allows the president and two of the authorized signing officers on the project to approve and sign off on cheques, contracts and other agreements.

Both Toto and Lauzon said the situation was considered an emergency, but others on council dismissed the assertion.

“These are not reasons, these are not excuses and these are not things that a person doing their job […] would have done,” said councilor Gonzo Nieto.

Lauzon also maintained that at the time, he believed he had the authority to sign off on the additional funds for the event—though he admits he did not check CSU bylaws or standing regulations for himself to be sure.

That wasn’t enough for incoming CSU VP Academic Gene Morrow.

“I think you failed in due diligence,” he stated bluntly, though he added he did not think it was done maliciously, but out of a lack of oversight.

A tense council immediately broke for a breather after the vote.

Neither Toto nor Lauzon ever returned once the session resumed.

They won’t necessarily have to give up their executive seats, though.

CSU Chair Jean-François Ouellet told The Link that the two executives are free to comply with the motion and resign, but that there is more to the process of removing an executive.

Going forward, CSU bylaw 10.3 requires council to present their vote in writing with an official notice having to be delivered to the president within 10 days. It must be signed by at least 10 councillors to be considered valid—and in Lauzon’s case, only seven voted in favour of asking him to resign.

A special council meeting will then be called for councillors to vote on actually removing either candidate.

In his closing remarks, month-old CSU President Andrew Roberts decried council’s decision.

“I don’t know if it was fully realized how much work and how much those people were depended on for their positions,” he said.

“I’ve been working with Simon-Pierre on a bunch of projects and this is highly problematic on things I am trying to face, so I think we all need to be aware of the gravity of what just went down.”

Roberts also added he would understand if neither Toto nor Lauzon would help transition to the next VP Finance and VP External executives.

“If I was forced to resign from a position, I don’t think I would particularly want to stick around and help out,” he admitted.

“If they are forced to or are asked to resign or if it just happens, I don’t know how solid they’re going to want to stick around to do some training, I can’t imagine their sentiments are going to be very strong to stay and train people.”

The current crop of CSU executives and councillors hold office until the end of May.

In a previous version of this article, Gene Morrow was wrongly identified as a current CSU councillor and CSU chairperson Jean-François Ouellet was misquoted stating that Lauzon and Toto had 10 days to convince 10 councillors to sign a motion to keep their positions. The Link regrets the error.

Watch the video interview in our Archives Blog.

The 1985 Hunter S. Thompson exclusive interview has achieved legendary status at The Link. We found the writer, 28 years later, appraising wine in the Netherlands. Watch the video to learn the story behind the story.

“Einstein’s Dream,” an exhibit by the Topological Media Lab, was performed throughout the conference. Photo Pierre Chauvin

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Universities around the world are suffering some growing pains.

To put it simply, what’s the point of classroom chats in the era of virtual check-ins?

Higher education is playing catch-up with technology, but at Concordia last week, e-learning enthusiasts from around the world were willingly sharing their secrets on how to get ahead of the curve.

“What technology does is that it forces you to open up your horizons and your mind, and creates new possibilities,” said Concordia Vice-Provost, Teaching and Learning Ollivier Dyens, paraphrasing famed technology scholar Kevin Kelly.

“We’re going to look into augmented reality, we’re going to look into gesture-based computing—all of these things we’re going to look into, because they have forced us to really think about what is a 21st-century university.”

But while some speakers at Concordia’s inaugural e.SCAPE conference explored these technologies—including videogames, synchronous online classes and even social media—others were there to provide refresher material for e-learning tools students are already using.

Multiple info sessions on Moodle 2.3, the latest release of the online communication tool already used extensively at Concordia, ran each day of the three-day conference.

e-Learning ≠ eConcordia

Other seminars sought to bridge the gap between in-class and e-learning by advising professors on how to create online courses at Concordia.

Since its inception in 2000, eConcordia—a for-profit corporation set up in adjunct to the university—has been offering accredited courses online in partnership with Concordia.

Growing from close to 10 courses in 2006, 53 credited courses were available this winter semester.

The online entity now accounts for 15 per cent of university enrolment, with about 33,000 unique students registered to take e-courses.

According to Concordia professor and e-learning fellow Saul Carliner, classes are proposed by professors to their department and usually cost around $50,000 to develop.

Concordia is also hoping to offer massive open online courses, or MOOCs, for the world outside its own student body.

MOOCs emerged as an online teaching format as early as 2008, but did not gain significant attention until 2011.

Major projects, such as Coursera and edX—a joint venture between Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, in partnership with other institutions such as UC Berkeley and McGill University—now offer classes with over 100,000 students enrolled.

In an interview with The Link in March, Concordia President Alan Shepard explained that while MOOCs have a notoriously high dropout rate, the platform is still in its infancy.

And while the courses will be widely accessible, MOOCs are not applicable to a Concordia degree.

“They are going to get no formal academic credentials even if they complete [the class], so the carrot at the end of the stick is all about intellectual development,” said Shepard.

Traditional, face-to-face classes are upgradable as well. According to Shepard, Concordia is also looking into developing more “blended” courses: a mixture between conventional teaching and online multimedia tools.

To Shepard, blended courses are a growing trend that seems to have long-term staying power.

But Dyens says that for the university to be successful, patience and caution are also needed.

“Concordia is too large to go ahead all the way right now, so we have to move carefully using pilot projects with people who are interested,” he explained.

According to Dyens, the university will introduce beta-tested courses, or BTCs, in September, in which professors and interested students will collaborate to develop that class’s final materials and structure.

BTCs will not be graded—it’s pass/fail for students—and will be clearly marked to ensure uninterested parties do not mistakenly enter the trial class, he added.

Digi-Bag of Tricks

Adventurers who do decide to participate in BTCs will be able to experiment utilizing augmented reality and, surprisingly, video games.

“Some of the most forward-looking, innovative or even edgy ideas are things we will consider because they’re interesting, and I think games are one of the big things we’re trying right now,” said Dyens.

But there are some at Concordia that have already incorporated both technologies.

The interdisciplinary Topological Media Lab affiliated with the Hexagram-Concordia Centre for Research-Creation in Media Arts and Technologies on campus already utilizes gestural sound and video that varies according to movement.

In communication studies, students are already making their own video games to explore the ethical consequences of human choices.

According to Dr. Mia Consalvo, the Canada Research Chair in Game Studies and Design, video games formatted to allow for choices to affect gameplay are easily translatable to commerce, particularly marketing and economics.

“You don’t normally see students say, ‘Hey, I showed my friends my final project and made them play it,’” admitted Consalvo during her e.SCAPE seminar on April 5.

“It was such a wonderful moment for [them] to get this game to work and it gave each of us an achievement, an accomplishment.”

But while Dyens is optimistic about using games in academia, technology should be shaped by the subject matter.

Some areas of study are not suitable for videogames, he concluded.

“The goal here is not to use technology for technology’s sake, but really to use technology so it enhances the student and the faculty experience,” Dyens said.

“That’s the whole point here.”

Anarchopanda, a staple of the student strike last year, had his panda head confiscated April 5 for violating bylaw P-6. Photo Brandon Johnston

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Opposition to bylaw P-6 has now reached the mayor’s office.

Pressure and criticism are mounting against Montreal police as protesters continue to be arrested by the hundreds under legislation detractors say is unconstitutional.

The two main municipal parties both came out against the bylaw Monday, and a vote to repeal the bylaw is expected April 22.

Amended last May in response to increasing protests during the student general strike, new sections of the bylaw render protesting in public space illegal if a route is not provided to police at least 24 hours in advance. Participants are also forbidden from concealing their faces while demonstrating.

“These provisions of the bylaw easily lend themselves to discriminatory enforcement and application,” wrote Nathalie Des Rosiers and Cara Faith Zwibel on behalf of the Canadian Civil Liberties Association, in a letter to interim mayor Michael Applebaum dated April 2.

A second letter from the CCLA was also sent to Service de Police de la Ville de Montréal chief Marc Parent.

Last May, the Quebec Bar Association also openly denounced the new bylaw sections as a violation of legally protected rights to free expression and association.

First-time offenders can be fined anywhere between $500 and $1,000, though are usually fined $637, a sum which includes added fees.

While not widely used over the course of the student protests against tuition increases last year, SPVM officers have escalated their use of the bylaw since February—often detaining protesters en masse by corralling and boxing in the entire group in a tactic known as kettling.

At least 250 people were kettled, ticketed and released during the annual anti-police brutality protest on March 15. Arrests began before the demonstration even started.

A second demonstration, which took place three weeks later in response to police action during the March 15 protest, was not much different: 279 protesters were fined for P-6 violations and three arrests were made for assault on SPVM officers April 5.

Police cruisers and vans had barricaded the protest around Parc Émilie-Gamelin, the habitual meeting point for demonstrations, keeping protesters from their intended march.

Riot squads surrounded the crowd after it circled the park, kettling and then ticketing the majority of protesters near de Maisonneuve Blvd.

According to event organizers Anti-Capitalist Convergence Montreal, a route was purposely not provided to police.

A coalition of 31 local community organizations, including CLAC, is speaking out against the escalating kettling strategy towards protesters.

“One clear goal of the police tactic is to scare demonstrators and potential demonstrators from taking to the streets,” they said in a statement released March 28.

“We refuse to negotiate with the police our freedom of expression, our right to demonstrate and our right to disrupt the existing social, political and economic order that we consider profoundly unjust and illegitimate.”

Off With His Head

Even at the height of last year’s protests, some of the most iconic faces were concealed—many with scarves or bandanas, but one in particular with a panda bear costume.

Originally meant to help diffuse hostility between police and protesters, “Anarchopanda” quickly became a staple of the Maple Spring protests.

The CEGEP philosophy professor behind the suit, who asked to not be identified by name, says he has already received multiple tickets from police for sporting his velvety, black and white disguise.

The costume-clad teacher was one of the 279 detained in the police kettle last Friday.

SPVM officers also seized his panda bear head.

According to the Anarchopanda creator, he received two $637 tickets that evening—once for illegal assembly, and again for masking his face while doing so.

In a press conference last week, SPVM spokesperson Daniel Lacoursière said the panda head may be used as evidence against Anarchopanda in court.

But the CEGEP professor is still not convinced the head could be seized.

“My understanding is it’s a municipal ticket […] if I give you a ticket because you’re missing a light on your car, I don’t confiscate your car as a piece of evidence,” he said, adding he is seeking legal council to determine if the seizure was lawful.

A spokesperson for the SPVM told La Presse Monday the Anarchopanda head will be returned, though it was not actually returned until yesterday.

One Step at a Time

Collective challenges are also being prepared against bylaw P-6 infractions, revealed the Anarchopanda creator.

“We are going before the courts in October, it seems, to contest [the bylaw],” he revealed, although was unable to provide more information at this time.

Despite having his head withheld for the moment, the man behind Anarchopanda says it will take more than losing a plush helmet to get rid of this panda.

“There will be more costumes, for sure,” he vowed, adding he has no plans to cut back on protesting either.

He also says he is helping start a collective fund to help protesters contest P-6 infractions.

“I think more and more people are getting outraged about it, and we want to get more and more information about its implications in the wider public,” he said.

And while still very much tied to the student strike movement, the initiative is seeing some traction, Anarchopanda’s creator says.

“Half the people who were there were not students at all, you know, they were anybody against the bylaw P-6,” he said.

“It’s not just between the students anymore.”

During last spring’s student strike, Concordia’s fine arts students were extremely vocal against tuition hikes. Photo Erin Sparks

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For anyone who remembers the all-red art installations and flash mobs of last spring, it’s no surprise that fine arts undergrads are some of the most visibly politically active students at Concordia.

The Visual Arts Building, its existence often forgotten by the average student, became something of a satellite strike headquarters last March, when classes were blocked and that little stretch of de Maisonneuve Blvd. became a days-long protest party.

With that in mind, it’s not all that shocking that fine arts students had the highest proportional voter turnout of any faculty in the Concordia Student Union general elections.

What’s more surprising, however, is that no candidate ran to represent them.

“There is a lack of connection between fine arts students and the CSU,” said incoming VP Student Life Katrina Caruso—the only fine arts student elected to the CSU in last month’s elections. “I personally never felt a major connection up until this year to any student government.”

While CSU council will have representation for arts and science, engineering, business and independent students, seats meant for fine arts representatives remain empty.

So while fine arts students statistically cared more about voting, the question remains why none of them wanted to sit on council.

Getting What You Paid For

“There’s this general feeling with fine arts students that the CSU doesn’t reach out to them and the events they hold don’t necessarily correspond with what fine arts students are interested in,” said Fine Arts Student Alliance VP Clubs and Services Erika Couto, who is currently a non-voting fine arts representative on CSU council along with Caruso.

After months without fine arts representation on CSU council, the union motioned in January that they’d allow non-voting representatives chosen by FASA to sit on council.

“You’re trying to represent people that come from engineering and science and at the same time trying to represent people from sociology, women’s studies and fine arts, who just function ideologically from a different position,” said Couto.

“There are definitely some people who think faculties should be left to their own devices.”

To combat that sentiment, Caruso and the rest of her executive want to bring back general assemblies to inform students of what’s going on with their union.

The plan is to include Loyola and fine arts students in these meetings by holding some of them in spaces other than the central Concordia constellation of the Hall, LB, JB and EV Buildings—like the VA Building, for example.

Caruso also suggested the idea of going into classrooms, especially those of fine arts students while they have no official union representation.

“If it’s only through council that the big issues get discussed, then that’s a problem,” she said.

Reforming FASA

While eight per cent of fine arts students showed up at the CSU general elections, less than half of that went to the polls to vote for their faculty association, the Fine Arts Student Alliance.

The alliance faced the same problem seen across the board in Concordia student politics—a lack of contested positions.

“It doesn’t seem as if it’s community organizing, but it is, and I want to emphasize that role,” said incoming FASA President Didi Ohri of the role of student government.

Ohri had little interest in student politics before last spring’s student strike. This year, she was part of the direct democracy committee, created in December to make the alliance more accessible to its membership.

The committee worked with the FASA executive, Concordia’s chapter of the Quebec Public Interest Research Group and incoming VP Academic and Advocacy Gene Morrow to create sweeping bylaw reforms aimed at decentralizing power at FASA.

“A lot of people on our current team of executives were elected on the platform of bringing direct democracy to FASA,” said Couto. She added much of that work had started last year, when there were “questionable decisions being made by the executive.”

In November 2011, FASA passed a budget that saw the executive’s honoraria be bumped up to $3,000 per semester each—doubling the president’s former salary and more than tripling the pay of vice-presidents.

These reforms make it so that honorariums must be approved at a FASA council meeting, and that they cannot exceed 20 per cent of the alliance’s budget—a maximum of $1,500 per semester each.

They also make it possible to force the resignation of councillors and executives at a special meeting with five per cent of FASA members present. The reforms see title changes too—presidents and vice-presidents are now named “coordinators.”

“It shouldn’t be six people and a small council doing what they want with student money,” said Couto. “If students don’t like what they’re doing, they should feel like they have recourse—they should have ways of impeaching their executive if they feel they’re doing a really bad job.”

Bylaws have been changed to make general meetings easier to hold, so that a simple majority can make binding decisions, instead of council expected to make all rulings. It’s a change Ohri is hoping will get students-at-large more involved in the process of allotting grant money to student projects, and “demystify” how council works.

All bylaw changes will be ratified at FASA’s annual general meeting on April 10.

The Grassroots Level

The act of accurately representing the will of those who elect you becomes a much more digestible task on the micro level. For the Concordia Association of Students in Theatre, it’s been a year of building towards being that kind of voice for its membership.

“There is a lot of laying the groundwork being done in fine arts right now […], and so with FASA’s move to direct democracy, I’m really excited to see where that goes,” said incoming CAST President Ned Zimmerman.

It’s been a transition year for CAST, whose executive only consisted of Co-Presidents Miriam Cummings and Lindsey Hubener at the beginning of the fall semester.

Along with Zimmerman, who was later voted in as CAST treasurer, they lead information campaigns on budget cuts to the fine arts faculty and the Concordia University Faculty Association’s strike mandate. They also acted as a liaison between the faculty and its students.

It’s that hyper-local approach that Zimmerman found most effective in getting students involved in Concordia politics. He says their weekly meetings now have between 15 and 20 attendees, and all five executive positions are filled for the upcoming school year.

“I’m really into the idea of smaller-scale, grassroots student organizations,” said Zimmerman. “There’s so much that needs to be done on the departmental level, that at least within theatre there’s a feeling that some students don’t want to get involved with the CSU, or even FASA.

“I think watching the ways the CSU functioned—or didn’t function—this year was pretty disheartening,” he said. “Maybe the better idea is to work locally and [see] how that can resonate outwards.”

FASA’s Annual General Meeting is happening April 10 at 6 p.m. in the CSU lounge (7th floor Hall Building).

Ste Catherine St. and McGill College Ave. Photos Brandon Johnston

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The majority of women in the world have experienced street harassment in some form. Whether it is in the form of inappropriate comments, leering or assault, unwelcome harassment in public space is an epidemic that occurs worldwide.

The problem has been brought to national attention in the past few years with groups like Hollaback documenting the experiences of victims of street harassment. Started in New York City, the organization tries to put together events worldwide for Anti-Street Harassment Week.

“Part of the thing with street harassment is that it’s individuals towards other individuals—but it’s always in public, with people around,” said Kira Poirier of Hollaback Montreal. “It shouldn’t just be the responsibility of the victim to constantly defend themselves.”

For Anti-Street Harassment Week, which runs from April 7 to April 14, Hollaback Montreal is hosting a workshop teaching people what street harassment is and how to react when it happens, but also focusing on the sometimes-overlooked role of the bystander.

Hollaback is a website active in 30 countries around the world where street-harassment victims can log their experiences on a map of their city, stating what happened in order to highlight the frequency of such incidents.

Historically, the voices of people targeted by harassers have been silenced or dismissed, something they say perpetuates the opinion that harassment is acceptable or inconsequential.

Poirier, the site leader of the Montreal webpage, says their goal is to do outreach with other organizations with the hopes of ultimately trying to end street harassment.

“If it’s happening in public there are other people watching this happen as well, and I think as a community we want to have each others’ back, we want to help people feel safe in public space,” she said.

Poirier says that the role of the bystander always depends on the situation, but your first priority should be that you’re not creating danger for yourself in intervening.

“You can try to deflect the attention of the person who is doing the harassing away from harassing, you can ask them, ‘What’s the time?’” she said. “You can even do something simple as standing a little bit closer to the target, you can pretend they’re your friend—there are many ways you can go about it even without confronting the person doing the harassing.”

Poirier contacted Hollaback two years ago when she realized that Montreal didn’t yet have a branch.

“It can be just a humiliating and isolating experience, being street harassed,” she said, mentioning that the well-being of the victim was a main motivation for hosting a workshop mostly dedicated to how to react as a bystander.

Poirier hopes that audience participation will fuel the event, saying that they will mostly focus on first-hand accounts and workshop situations participants have seen or done in the past.

Stand Up, Speak Out—Street Harassment and the role of bystanders / April 11 / Simone de Beauvoir Institute (2170 Bishop St.) / 6:30 p.m.

Raymond Robertson shaking hands with a member of the audience at Concordia. Photos Alex Bailey

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First Nations Elder Raymond Robinson circled the room, shaking each member of the audience’s hand before taking his place in front of the microphone.

“This is what life is about, taking the time to say hi,” he says to crowd.

If Robinson’s lecture had happened only a few days prior, the handshakes would probably not have been punctuated with the sound of the press’s flashing cameras.

The crowd on the seventh floor of Concordia’s Hall Building would have been scarcer; a TV cameraman wouldn’t have been there to look at the flickering florescent lights disapprovingly.

Whether they had been following the Idle No More movement since its beginnings or just happened to catch Robinson’s interview on the CBC the night prior, journalists and attendees alike looked into his eyes with genuine appreciation as he made his way around the crowd.

This may be the last opportunity they’ll get to shake his hand.

April 2, one day prior to his scheduled talk at Concordia, Grand Elder Raymond Robinson of Cross Lake, Manitoba announced that he would be going on a full hunger strike starting April 3.

To protest Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s lack of consultation with Canadian First Nations, Robinson has vowed to not consume food or water until a “nation-to-nation” meeting is held between the two groups.

“I’m not trying to commit suicide—I don’t condone to anybody what I’m doing,” he said.

Robinson said that a hunger strike was a traditional way to seek higher intervention.

“When we need something for the benefit of our nations, we go into fasting. We go into hunger strikes; we sacrifice ourselves hoping that a higher power—the creators—hears us though our sacrifice, putting our lives [at] risk,” he said.

Robinson announced his plan to strike the previous morning on-air on CBC’s Power & Politics, a weeknight news show focusing on national politics.

His talk at Concordia had been organized before his announcement, but he still upheld his commitment.

Concerns With Parliament

Robinson was first in the national spotlight last December, when he and Attawapiskat First Nation Chief Theresa Spence both went on a hunger strike, consuming only tea, fish broth and water for six weeks to draw public attention to First Nations issues.

“I’m going all-out this time,” he said during his talk at Concordia. “Harper has a ‘take it or leave it’ message for us First Nations. I’m giving my message to Harper, my take-it-or-leave-it message. Let’s play checkmate; let’s play chess.

“Provincial, federal, negotiating deals, treaties, agreements—I’ve been through it all. But over the course of those years it has always been a one-sided affair: ‘You don’t tell me what’s good for you, I’ll tell you what you need, you don’t tell me what I need.’”

Two pieces of legislation mentioned recurrently throughout the two-hour talk were bills C-38 and C-45.

Omnibus bill C-38, also known as the “Jobs, Growth and Long-Term Prosperity Act,” was subject to much debate when it was passed, with critics saying that because it introduces, repeals or amends 70 federal laws, it undermines democracy and does not give Members of Parliament enough opportunity for debate.

Robinson referenced many parts of the bill that caused him concern, such as those parts that affected environmental protection. He also mentioned the bill’s violation of the federal government’s legal obligation to First Nations treaties and aboriginal rights.

Better known as the “second omnibus bill,” C-45 raised concerns among many First Nation communities because of its changes to the Indian Act, the Navigation Protection Act and the Environmental Assessment Act.

“With [these bills] C-38 and C-45, you don’t even own your own land. The government can come and do whatever they want with your land,” said Robinson.

“You may hold title to it, but your title will be superseded by them. They are giving themselves the power to do whatever they want to do—with or without your consent, and with or without your informed decision.”

A Laughing Matter?

Robinson appeared once again on Power & Politics on the third day of his hunger strike, April 5. Earlier that day, he had met with Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Minister Bernard Valcourt.

Although he was glad the meeting took place, Robinson said it was only a positive move because Valcourt is in a position to bring about change.

However, he was not pleased with the outcome of the meeting.

And for Robinson, that wasn’t a surprise.

“When we sit down with members of the government, they always give us this hope that everything is going to be okay from now on,” he said on the broadcast. “But when all is said and done, they have never delivered.”

If the meeting had one purpose, it was to back up his concerns regarding the dire needs of Canadian aboriginal reservations.

Robinson referenced his experience on his own Cross Lake reservation, speaking of its lack of development and its history of high suicide rates.

Raymond Robinson during his speech at Concordia.

“The minister said, ‘I’ll make you a deal. If you end your hunger strike today, I’ll go visit you in your reserve,’” said Robinson of the meeting. “So I said, ‘since we’re into deals, I’ll make a deal with you. You’re going to be meeting with the Prime Minister. After this, you’re going to report to him what was said.’”

Robinson asked Valcourt to relay a message to Harper, asking him to urge the prime minister to start meeting with First Nation leaders to create a dialogue on aboriginal issues.

Robinson said that in response, Valcourt laughed.

“That is never going to happen,” Robinson quoted the minister as saying.

“Are we a laughing matter? Are our treaties a laughing matter? Is the condition of my reserve and the reserves across Canada a laughing matter? Is the way that they’re cutting our programs a laughing matter?” Raymond said on the CBC. “Are we a joke, have we always been a joke? Are we ever going to be taken seriously, or is that a good representation of how the government sees us First Nations in this country—that we are nothing but a laughing matter.”

A Nationwide Issue

As of April 9, Robinson will have been on a full hunger strike for seven days. At Concordia, he said that he was told he would only last three or four days before dying of dehydration.

So far, he has lost 12 pounds.

Dr. Blake Woodside, medical director of the program for eating disorders at Toronto General Hospital told Canada.com that his weight loss is consistent with that of someone who has not consumed food or water for as long as Robinson has.

“I would expect him to be pretty frail at this point,” said Dr. Woodside. “A day or two away from his death.”

Robinson’s speech at Concordia ended with a question-and-answer period. Instead of talking politics, most of the crowd expresses their gratitude toward his selflessness.

John Symon, a member of the audience, mentioned social media’s response to Robinson’s fast, saying that many were concerned that his potential as a martyr for the cause would not be as useful as his continued fight for justice if Robinson were to end his hunger strike.

“You mentioned a few minutes ago that each one of us has the power of life in our hands,” said Symon. “I’m conveying this message to you, because I’m afraid that the Harper government is not going to listen to too many people very quickly.
“Please, in the very least—take water,” Symon urged.

Robinson finished his talk on that note and responded by saying he would consider the option.

On Monday evening, over 20 cities around the world held nighttime vigils in support of Robinson’s plight.
In a video released Sunday, he stated that he will continue his strike until he hears from the prime minister regarding his requests.

“If in any time during the course of my hunger strike something happens to me, I call on people not to bear arms, not to do anything violent towards your brothers and sisters,” Robinson said. “I call on Canadian society; this is not just a First Nations issue—this is an issue that affects us all.”

Update: Elder Raymond Robinson has recently announced that he ended his hunger strike at 12:00 p.m. Monday night, after five days and 15 hours without food or water. More updates to come.

Graphic Graeme Shorten Adams

There comes a time when large-scale acts of civil disobedience are necessary. That time is now.

In recent weeks, the City of Montreal and its police have violated the rights of hundreds of people by enforcing municipal bylaw P-6 to bring excessively violent ends to peaceful demonstrations in the city.

The two key elements of the bylaw make the wearing of masks illegal during a demonstration and require the organizers of any protest or demonstration to submit an itinerary or route to the police in advance. In response to these infractions, the police surround the area—trapping both demonstrators and bystanders inside in a technique known as kettling.

On March 15, over 250 people were detained at the annual protest against police brutality in downtown Montreal. Preventative arrests were made prior to the police instigating a series of unnecessary violent acts on a relatively small group of protesters and journalists.

On March 22, the anniversary of the previous year’s massive peaceful demonstration, another 250 people were detained in the cold for hours and fined before the demonstration could move more than a few blocks.

On April 5, over 270 people were arrested and fined over $600 each for assembling in the streets in protest of, ironically enough, the same bylaw under which they were fined.
The protest—which never truly began—was described as a “family friendly” civil disobedience action aimed at addressing the unconstitutionality of bylaw P-6.

The organizers of this demonstration are not the first to point out the problematic nature of bylaw P-6.

The Canadian Civil Liberties Association has recently published letters to Montreal Mayor Michael Applebaum and to the Service de police de la Ville de Montréal, condemning P-6 and demanding it be repealed on several grounds. The Quebec Bar Association has done the same.

Most recently, the Association of Progressive Jurists have followed suit. They demanded a public inquiry into police actions, saying that “each day that passes without it erodes our fundamental rights and liberties.”

On April 8, according to The Gazette, Vision Montreal and Projet Montreal, the city’s two largest opposition parties, confirmed that they are both against the bylaw. One Projet Montreal councillor went so far as to call it “obsolete.”

We’re reaching a tipping point—again.

Last year, when revisions were made to bylaw P-6 to include the anti-mask, pro-itinerary provisions, there was a public outcry. The province galvanized around the undeniable unconstitutionality of the Liberal government’s similar Bill 78 and took to the streets to make it known.

The City of Montreal pushed it back under the rug, swearing not to use it.

But now we’re moving backwards.

Protests today exhibit one fundamental difference from protests happening even a few months ago. People are no longer only rallying against a government they don’t believe in, or austerity measures that affect public services.

It’s now devolved to a debate about our freedom to assemble.

There’s hardly any discourse, just a weekly corralling of demonstrators that have done nothing to provoke such a brutal response.

The Concordia Student Union is calling it “collective censorship,” and we couldn’t agree more. When a demonstration is prevented from happening, the message can’t get out in the same way it did last spring.

What we’re left with instead is a more simple, more alarming message: The city is trying to outlaw protesting through the heavy-handed enforcement of a bylaw.

What you need to know, if you are out there demonstrating, is that a bylaw infraction is not a criminal offence, and the fact that the police are resorting to using batons and tear gas to enforce a bylaw is ridiculous. As long as demonstrations remain peaceful, there’s no cause for such a response on the SPVM’s part.

This is The Link’s last print issue until the fall. Several of our reporters, and others we work with, have experienced much of the same unjust treatment that people protesting have—we’ve been hit, pepper-sprayed, arrested and fined while trying to do our jobs.

We’ll continue to cover this issue for as long as it continues.

But for now this is what we’re left with, and if the police quash our freedom to assemble with brute force and huge fines, then censorship prevails.

If you’ve been ticketed, we’re calling on you to protest once again—don’t pay that ticket. It’s a sentiment that’s already growing and holds its strength in numbers.

The police ending a gathering doesn’t have to mean the message is stamped out—it does, however, make that message all the more urgent.

For more on The Link’s stance against bylaw P-6 listen to Link Radio: April 11, 2013.

Graphic Graeme Shorten Adams

The National Women’s Show rolled into town recently, bringing with it the kind of old school sexism that dominated the 1950s. The show bills itself as the “ultimate girl’s day out,” offering everything from the latest makeup to the newest in kitchen technology.

Notably absent from the show, which claims to have “something for everyone,” was anything relating to women’s issues, issues of equality or really anything non-stereotypical, save for a small section on the show’s website advertising the “Business and Career Centre.”

Given how outlandishly sexist the rest of the show is, I don’t necessarily have high hopes for this.

In 1976, 48 per cent of Canadian women participated in the labour force, compared to 91 per cent of men, according to census data. In 2009, the female participation rate had risen to 76 per cent, while the male rate fell to 86 per cent.

Women represent a large portion of the country’s labour force; the National Women’s Show and its attempt to minimize this reality is insulting to the progress that has been achieved over the years.

This is not to say that the status of women has by any means become a non-issue—the wage gap is still a reality—though the disparity is slowly lessening.

The point of the show is to promote the things that women apparently like and are interested in, and to assume that women aren’t interested in things like equality or gender issues is inane, not to mention flat out incorrect.

The National Women’s Show, and other events like it, does nothing to further the idea that women are just as capable as men are.

How are stereotypes going to change if events like the National Women’s Show continue to impress upon people that a woman’s place is exactly where it was 50 years ago—in the kitchen making dinner or playing the role of observant housewife?

According to their website, 29 per cent of the attendees at last year’s show were between the ages of 19 and 29. This represents a significant portion of attendees who are in the early years of their adult life, who are likely still figuring out how to situate themselves in the world.

Imposing such a narrow view of what it is to be a woman is doing nothing to break down the gender divide and is only perpetuating stereotypes.

The show highlights its special guest speakers on its website. Of the four speakers, three are men: one is a life coach, another is a psychic and the third is a “personal style expert.”

The sole female special guest is a former Olympic athlete who now works as a nutritionist.

It is simply not possible that no other guests were available—there is no shortage of women working in tech or design in Montreal who could lend their voices to a panel at the show.

Take, for example, Liesl Barrell, the executive director of Montreal Girl Geeks, an organization that promotes female involvement in the Montreal tech scene. In the past, Montreal Girl Geeks has hosted events that teach women how to use code, manage start-ups and work with other facets of the tech world that the National Women’s Show does not even bother to consider.

I don’t see anything wrong with women wanting to be up-to-date on their style, or for them to enjoy new cleaning gadgets, but if those are the types of events the show wants to focus on, why not advertise itself as exactly that?

It’s the fact that the National Women’s Show promotes itself as an inclusive event with something for every woman yet provides nothing but stereotypes that’s problematic.

It’s hard to see it as anything but incredibly offensive and backwards.

Conferences like this cannot claim to have national appeal while only offering a snapshot of what women like (hint: some of us like science and fashion).

Don’t get me wrong, some of the seminars advertised could actually be interesting, but it’s 2013, not the ‘50s. This type of sexism is best left in the past.

What’s important now is that we focus on the future and how to make things like the National Women’s Show better represent the 17.2 million women in this county because, let me tell you, we aren’t all the same.

By refusing to incorporate a more well-rounded idea of what women are interested in, the National Women’s Show does a disservice to all.