In 2026, Deloitte predicts that women will make up less than 30 per cent of the global technology workforce, given that they are consistently underrepresented in academic programs in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). What is more, women make up only 25 per cent of tech positions on a global scale, as reported by Forbes and the National Center for Women and Information Technology. 

Girls Who Code confronts gender disparity in STEM by making the field inclusive and accessible for women and gender-diverse people. With an eye towards breaking gender barriers, the organization offers computer science lessons and mentorship for elementary and high school students across Montreal. It also runs hackathons for university students, networking events, and workshops. 

The Daily spoke with Girls Who Code executives Jenna Cacchione and Virginia Ceccatelli, U3 students studying Computer Science and Economics at McGill. We talked about the creative side to coding, imposter syndrome, and why young girls and gender-diverse students belong in the computer science field.

This interview has been edited for clarity and conciseness.

Enid Kohler for The McGill Daily (MD): How did you get involved in Girls Who Code, and why? 

Virginia Ceccatelli (VC): I was never really exposed to coding in high school. It wasn’t really a subject that was taught, and I always thought it was scary as a field and very masculine. When I started my studies in International Relations in university, I got a bit of exposure to Python and R and had so much fun with it, so I transferred into Computer Science. I want to give girls the opportunity to get into coding and see that it’s a creative process as well. 

Jenna Cacchione (JC): Similar to Virginia, I did my first year in [another program, Economics,] and then I switched into Computer Science. My high school didn’t have anything computer related…Had I had a program like this, maybe I would have switched into CS a little bit earlier. I really just wanted to give back [by giving] other girls that same opportunity. 

VC: CS really is like learning a language. Like any language, the more you speak it and the earlier you’re exposed to it, it’s so much easier to pick it up. 

MD: That’s a really good comparison. For those who aren’t familiar with your organization, can you pitch Girls Who Code in a few sentences? 

VC: [Girls Who Code] a way to make coding fun and creative, and to change the narrative that [coding] is anything relegated to the masculine sphere. We give back to young girls [by seeing] them learn every week. It’s really rewarding.

JC: [Coding] can be really daunting. Sometimes I look at my computer screen and I’m like, ‘oh my God, what am I even doing?’ For younger girls especially, it can be super intimidating, especially since it’s a male-dominated field. I hope our facilitators can act as big sisters to our students. 

MD: Why is it important that young girls and gender-diverse students have access to program like Girls Who Code? 

VC: In general, the CS field is massively male-dominated. Most role models in the industry are guys. So for us, it’s really to show girls that they can do it; it’s not that hard. For guys, this message is something they might have been told growing up, and for girls, it’s not necessarily the narrative. 

MD: You mentioned that the Computer Science space is predominantly male-dominated. In your own professional and/or academic experiences, what kind of patterns have you observed in terms of female representation and inclusivity? 

VC: I’m not working in the field yet, but through research projects, I’ve found that you have to prove yourself more. If you’re in a room that has seven guys and two girls, the two girls have to prove that they know what they’re talking about, that they can actually do everything that everyone else can. I feel like there’s this constant voice that’s second guessing my abilities as a girl coder. 

JC: I have to agree. I also find imposter syndrome is very much there. Exactly what you said, if you’re sitting at a table with a bunch of men, and you’re the only two girls, I sometimes feel like, ‘I don’t belong here.’It’s a mental challenge. Like, ‘no, I’ve put in the work. I do belong here. 

MD: On that note, what do you hope students will take away from the program beyond practical coding skills? 

JC: I hope that students realize that it’s okay to ask for help. Sometimes you do need guidance. I had tons of [it], and I was very lucky to have had mentors who were part of Girls Who Code. I hope that [these girls are] able to ask for help and possibly find a mentor later on in their academic career. 

MD: Do you have a favorite memory of your work with Girls Who Code? 

VC: In my year of being a facilitator for Girls Who Code, I taught at the same high school and a lot of the girls stayed the entire year. In the beginning, they were shy about asking questions, but it was really nice to see them gradually gain so much confidence. 

JC: I like the fact that our whole executive team is going through the same thing: we’re all looking for internships, we’re all studying pretty much the same classes. It’s nice to have that community. 

MD: The theme of this column is “good people doing good things.” In the context of your work with Girls Who Code, what does being a “good person” mean to you?

JC: To me, being a good person means giving back and helping younger girls. Acknowledging that I didn’t have the guidance or knowledge that I do now, and then giving it to the next person. 

VC: Instead of resenting the system and having to stretch myself to catch up to get to where I am now, I can give these girls what I wish I had. Being a good person also means sticking together as girls and by helping girls realize that they can do it if they want to. There’s nothing stopping them. 

Learn more about Girls Who Code and opportunities to get involved on Instagram, @girlswhocodemcgill, or through their website, girlswhocode. ssmu.ca

End note: If you know good people doing good things who you would like to see featured in this column, email news@mcgilldaily.com

The post Rewriting the Code: McGill Students Break Barriers in Computer Science appeared first on The McGill Daily.

Play is critical for children’s physical and mental well-being, but not every child has the same access to recreational athletics and community socialization. Founded in 2000, Right to Play is an international non-profit organization that seeks to protect, educate, and empower children in disadvantaged communities through the power of play. Since its foundation, it has reached millions of children in Africa, Asia, and North America, namely, Canada; with the aim of harnessing play to support youth enduring conflict, disease, and poverty.

Since 2006, students have been the official university representatives of the Right to Play organization at McGill. They volunteer in local Montreal schools to promote inclusive and accessible play, fundraise for the international organization, and run community events like toy and food drives for underprivileged communities in the city. The Daily spoke with Co-President and U3 Biology and Math student Jack Gill about Right to Play. We spoke about his involvement in the club, the importance of play and physical activity, and why curiosity should be encouraged in youth.

This interview has been edited for clarity and conciseness.

Enid Kohler for the McGill Daily (MD): I’m curious about your own involvement with Right to Play. How and why did you get involved?

Jack Gill (JG): I’m on the varsity swim team at McGill, so I’ve been swimming most of my life. We train almost every day, sometimes twice a day. So sports and being active have been a really important part of my life. It’s allowed me to develop a sense of community, make tons of friends, and build my confidence in and out of the water. I wanted to encourage that in other kids. I started volunteering in winter 2025. I worked in a class with students who have learning disabilities and autism, to encourage more inclusive play. It was really fun to build connections with these kids and slowly see throughout the semester how they got more comfortable and open with us.

MD: How would you pitch Right to Play to a first year student at Activities Night?

JG: Right to Play is not just a club we founded here. It’s a broader international organization. Their whole goal is to empower kids through play to overcome adversity, especially less privileged kids. In Canada, the branch focuses more on [BIPOC such as] African communities who might not have … access to [the] resources that we do, as well as Indigenous communities who similarly don’t have the same resources or access. Our chapter takes from that. We have a lot of events where we fundraise in order to support local schools and youth groups, as well as give back to the broader Right to Play organization. We also volunteer in schools to encourage active lifestyles and fun activities.

MD: Why is it important for kids to have play in their lives?

JG: A lot of children we volunteer with don’t necessarily have access to play. For those with learning disabilities, their parents try to protect them a lot and they don’t necessarily let them do the things other children would do. It doesn’t necessarily give them the opportunity to learn and be curious. Being able to encourage that and let them try things and maybe fail and letting them explore is really meaningful to me.

MD: Do you have a favourite memory of your work with Right to Play?

JG: At one of our schools where we volunteer, we go sledding on this little hill in the winter. One of the kids at the beginning wasn’t able to get up on his own. We would encourage him to get up, but we’d end up having to help him. But later, near the end of the semester, he was able to start getting up by himself with all of us cheering around and encouraging him. It was just so nice when he was able to stand up by himself and show [that] he was fully independent. And now he’s able to do that all the time. His parents might have just always helped him and would never have let him learn to do it by himself. That was probably my favourite moment.

MD: What do you hope kids will take away from Right to Play programming into university and beyond?

JG: I think just life skills, like being able to be independent and do things on your own and interact with other people. Also a sense of community as well as teamwork and the idea of an active lifestyle. With this generation we’re kind of leaning away from that with technology, but it’s so important.

MD: The theme of this column is “good people doing good things.” In the context of your work with Right to Play McGill, what does being a “good person” mean to you?

JG: I think what it means to be a good person is to be able to listen to people and kids and let them guide you. One of the big things I like with volunteering is not necessarily forcing kids to do things but guiding them and helping them choose their own path.

To learn more about Right to Play and opportunities to get involved, visit @rtpmcgill on Instagram.

End note: If you know good people doing good things who you would like to see featured in this column, email news@mcgilldaily.com

The post The Power of Play appeared first on The McGill Daily.

The McGill Black Medical Students’ Association of Canada (BMSA) is a student- run chapter of the national organization, which goes by the same name. Founded in 2022, the organization seeks to address anti- Black racism through advocacy for curriculum modification and reform, tackle barriers to medical school admissions by supporting Black pre-medical students, and to foster a sense of community for current Black students.

The Daily spoke with co- president and second-year student of the Faculty of Medicine and Health Science, Britany Mbangi, over her lunch break on the first day of her neurology rotation. We spoke about Black inclusion and representation in the medical community, BMSA’s rapid expansion, and how to be a good person without losing yourself in the process.

This interview has been edited for clarity and conciseness.

Enid Kohler for The McGill Daily (MD): I’m curious to know more about your story. What drew you to BMSA and how did you first get involved?

Britany Mbangi (BM): I knew that I wanted to get involved in a club coming into medical school, and seeing all the Black students at orientation the very first day touched something deep within me. It wasn’t easy getting here. Within the BMSA, we’re all about supporting each other and trying to make the path easier for fellow Black students who are interested in medicine specifically. So it was a no-brainer for me. I was going to join the BMSA by fire and by force.

MD: As Co-President, how would you describe the BMSA in a nutshell?

BM: The BMSA is full of super- motivated, highly-driven people. We’re all about encouraging each other, pushing each other forward however we can, and trying to build connections with people in the community. We all know as visible minorities that it’s not easy to integrate into certain spaces. But we want to make it easier for Black students to join this space. The BMSA is rapidly changing. Last year, my cohort, [the] class of 2028, was the largest cohort that McGill Medicine has had. It’s a long journey, but we believe that little by little, year after year, we do our best to make it better.

MD: Before beginning McGill medical school, was there a specific experience or person who inspired you to join BMSA?

BM: It’s kind of [a] cliché, but ever since I was little, honestly, I knew I wanted to be a doctor. I decided, you know what, I’m going to shoot my shot at medicine. I’ve been surrounded by a lot of very strong Black figures in my personal life. The sky wasn’t even the limit — I could do anything if I put my mind to it, and I was very lucky and grateful to have the support of my close family members. It wasn’t abnormal for me to strive to greater heights.

MD: That’s really special that you had that growing up. On a wider scale, why is BMSA important for the McGill community, but also for the medical space at large?

BM: Historically, there has always been a very low number of Black people getting accepted into medicine due to socioeconomic barriers, social challenges, or biases. We cannot brush those under the rug. So having an official space for Black medical students where their voices are heard and where they are seen and supported is so important.

The BMSA really is integral to bettering the education of not only Black medical students, but all students from different backgrounds and cultures. It advocates for an even better medical education and safe space for Black patients, Black students, and Black professionals.

MD: Switching gears a bit, do you have a favorite memory of your work with BMSA?

BM: Oh my gosh. There have been a lot of great moments within the BMSA. I think one of my favorite memories was the welcome event [in] my first year of medical school. The Welcome Event is an annual event for our members across all cohorts, including Med-P and MD-PhD students. It creates space for our new students to connect with returning members and for the broader community to engage with Black professionals. I cannot even put into words [how] I felt when I saw the 25, 26 other Black students in my cohort. This was the first time in my life that I’ve seen so many Black fellow students. Going to the welcome event this year where there were, I believe, over 100 attendees, was amazing.

Speaking of the welcome event, this year the McGill BMSA reached over 100 members across all years. It’s a milestone for us. Just thinking that a few years ago, we were only five students and now we’re over 100, [is] just incredible. It speaks to the work that the McGill BMSA has been doing.

MD: Beyond your graduation from McGill’s School of Medicine, what do you hope will be the lasting legacy of BMSA on future students and the medical space more broadly?

BM: That’s a great question. I would say that I don’t see BMSA as just a student club. I see it as an organization where we strive to better the whole experience around the healthcare system, specifically the medical system for Black professionals, Black patients, and Black students. I would hope that my legacy would be to better this experience, not just for Black people, but for everyone. I hope that the BMSA leaves a lasting positive influence on the healthcare system and encourages people to strive for greatness, [creating] a better environment for all.

MD: The theme of this column is “good people doing good things.” In the context of your work with BMSA, what does being a “good person” mean to you?

BM: Oh my gosh, what does it mean to be a good person? Being a good person to me means being able to make the people around me feel good without losing myself in the process. Although we’re all unique, as Black people, we often have to minimize or filter ourselves to present a more digestible version to the people around us. While that can make you a great person to others, it doesn’t make you a good person to yourself, because you lose yourself in the process.

Learn more about BMSA and opportunities to get involved on Instagram, @mcgillbmsa, or through their website.

End note: If you know good people doing good things who you would like to see featured in this column, email news@mcgilldaily.com.

The post Taking the Medical Community by “Fire and Force” appeared first on The McGill Daily.

Founded in 2009, Swimming With a Mission Montréal (SWAM) is a registered not-for-profit organization led by student volunteers. A chapter of the national organization SWAM Canada, it seeks to provide affordable and accessible one-on-one swimming instruction to children with disabilities aged 3 to 18. Instructors are paired with one swimmer for the course of the eight week program. Every week, they teach 30-minute lessons with the ultimate goal of fostering confidence in the water.

The McGill Daily spoke with Co-Presidents Anna Bogdan, U3 Psychology, and Benjamin Lévesque Kinder, U3 Neuroscience. We discussed their motivations for joining SWAM, making sports accessible, and the power of swimming to transform how children with disabilities move through the world.

This interview has been edited for clarity and conciseness. 

Enid Kohler for The McGill Daily (MD): I want to start by learning more about your involvement with SWAM. Why and how did you join the organization? 

Benjamin Lévesque Kinder (BLK): I got involved in the winter of my first year. I had been a camp counselor many summers in a row during high school, giving swim lessons to kids. One week, I was assigned a girl who had an undiagnosed autism spectrum disorder. Her support needs were very high, much higher than the camp had the resources for. She loved swimming. We just wandered around the whole day. It was awesome. When I came to McGill, I learned about SWAM at Activities Night and knew it was something I wanted to do. 

Anna Bogdan (AB): I’ve been a competitive swimmer since I was very, very small. When I was injured, I transitioned over to coaching. When I came to McGill I really wanted to continue. I went to Activities Night and saw that there was a club that was offering swimming lessons for children with disabilities, and I thought it was a great way for me to continue my coaching experience, but also to help out the community in Montreal. 

MD: You both mentioned you found out about SWAM. at Activities Night. As co-presidents, how would you pitch your club to a prospective student member at Activities Night?

AB: SWAM offers swimming lessons to children with disabilities. Typically, a swimming lesson for a child with a disability is upwards of $300, but our lessons are about $45. We’re about the only place in Montreal that offers lessons at this level. You’re partnered up with just one instructor for the entirety of eight weeks, every single Sunday for 30 minutes. You see your child become more comfortable in the water and have more confidence in their own abilities, and become more engaged and happy overall. 

MD: You already touched on this in your response, Anna, but why is SWAM important? 

Why is it important that it exists in Montreal?

BLK: There are a few reasons. This is a demographic for whom it’s hard to get exercise. Getting out of the house and doing activities can be difficult for those with sensory issues. SWAM is conscious of this: we have a lot of staff and procedures set up. We’ve had parents tell us that it’s one of the few places that they can just be somewhere. 

A key reason is affordability. Most of the population cannot afford hundreds of dollars of swim lessons every week. We have a lot of new arrivals to Quebec in our program, people who arrive in Canada and have children who are newly diagnosed, and now they have to adapt not only to a new culture, but also what it means to get the right support for their kids. 

It’s the highlight of my week, every Sunday morning when we do this. Because it’s totally different from everything else I do. To me, it feels like real life again. There’s all this other stuff and none of it is kind of real, but this is.  

You show up, and none of your concerns matter to anyone here. It does become sort of trivial. As a student, you’re thinking about graduation and graduate school in these very long time spans. And then I go to SWAM, and you’re making progress on a week to week basis. I think that is refreshing.

MD: On that note, what have you learned from your work with SWAM that has influenced your own outlook on life?

AB: For me, one of the things that I learned is that progress is not always necessarily linear. It requires a lot of patience and it requires a lot of confidence within yourself. I’ve also learned how important it is to make sure that you’re always there to support and encourage each other. 

BLK: I’ll pick up on the point you made about progress not being linear. There was a scheduling mishap a few semesters ago, where a lesson for my swimmer was moved to a different timeslot. For these kids for whom routine is a big, big part of how they move through the world, it throws them off-kilter. They feel uncomfortable. So there were a few lessons where I struggled to get anything done, and my swimmer was irritable. It was like all the progress we had made was gone. 

But then on the next lesson back, seemingly out of nowhere, he swam unassisted, basically unprompted. He just went after it. I was so surprised. After that experience, we realized that for all of us, progress isn’t linear. We like to think that we’re always making progress upwards and so on, but that’s not true. That’s something that I’ve also carried into my day-to-day life.

MD: What is your vision for the future of SWAM? What do you hope children will take from their swimming lessons and apply into their future lives? 

AB: We hope that SWAM is like a stepping stone to the rest of their lives going forward. We’re hoping that these children not only have more skills to be safer in the water, but we also hope that they can build other skills, for example, social skills and communication skills, to be able to create meaningful connections with others.

BLK: To give a concrete example, one of our swimmers had been with the program for three or four years. His dad told us that he had joined a water polo team for kids with disabilities, and that he would not have been able to do that without the swimming foundation he had built.

It would also be nice at some point to build a relationship with the Special Olympics in Quebec. It is a big problem in the disability space that once you age out, resources go to zero. The amount of money that gets put towards programs for children is huge, but once they turn 18, it’s all over. We also hope to expand the chapter to reach more kids.

MD: The theme of this column is “good people doing good things.” In the context of your work with SWAM, what does being a “good person” mean to you?

BLK: By virtue of our position, Anna and I have become the spokespeople for SWAM. But really, we’re not the good people. The good people are really the almost 100 instructors who come in every week. It’s not easy getting up on Sunday morning at 9 AM to trudge through snow, to do this for some kid, in a city you showed up in less than a year ago. Without all of them volunteering their time, Anna and I would be two people with a logo. SWAM is the team we have behind us.

AB: Although Ben and I are the heads, typically the ones that make the most amount of difference in the community are our instructors. So I think being a good person is being able to help others out. As a university, we have all of these services and resources, so why not use them to serve underserved populations? 

To learn more about SWAM and opportunities to get involved, visit swammontreal.caor @swammontreal on Instagram. 

End note: If you know good people doing good things who you would like to see featured in this column, email news@mcgilldaily.com

The post “Swimming With a Mission”: Using Sport for Good  appeared first on The McGill Daily.

Founded by five engineering students from McMaster University in 2013, Queer Engineer is McGill’s chapter of EngiQueers Canada, a nationwide nonprofit organization that promotes “diversity and belonging in engineering.” Queer Engineer creates welcoming spaces for McGill Engineering’s queer community, hosting events such as craft nights, monthly socials, and professional networking events.

The Daily spoke with Ken Sippola, an undergraduate Chemical Engineering student at McGill and President of Queer Engineer. We talked about the club’s evolution and recent growth, what a safe space looks like, and why queer inclusion and representation in the engineering industry matters.

This interview has been edited for clarity and conciseness.

Enid Kohler for the McGill Daily (MD): I’m curious about your role within Queer Engineer. How did you get involved in the club, and why?

Ken Sippola (KS): I joined the club in 2022 because I wanted to be a part of a community of queer engineering students. I wanted to be a part of a movement to improve the visibility and the acceptance of queer people in engineering.

The club’s been around since 2013, but it has ebbed and flowed in its activity. At first, there were no roles on the executive team, so IaskedifIcouldsitinon meetings. When a role eventually opened up, I became Vice President of Finance. However, when I was away on an internship, for about a year, the club was less active. When I came back from that internship, I realized I was kind of the only one left. That’s when I started stepping up into the role of being President.

I just knew I couldn’t let it die on my watch; I had to do everything I could to make sure it continued to exist.

MD: How would you pitch Queer Engineer to a prospective student member?

KS: Queer Engineer is primarily a social club about fostering connections and community. We host a lot of cozy events like craft night, skating night, things like that. But it’s also a great way to make professional connections and get involved with the community.

MD: On that note, how has the McGill community responded to having a space dedicated to queer inclusivity in the engineering field? Why is it important to have this kind of community?

KS: The response has been super positive. A lot of people didn’t know about us before, so when they found out that we existed, they were like, ‘oh, wait, that’s so cool.’ The Engineering Undergrad Society (EUS) was really, really helpful in making sure we have the resources to get going again.

Something I think about a lot is the definition of a safe space, a space that you walk into and feel accepted. Walking into a space and knowing you’re not going to get hate-crimed is very different from walking into a space and knowing you’re accepted. So even though the majority of spaces on campus are at least relatively safe, our club is about getting to that level when people know they’re going to be accepted and can be their true selves, which is why [Queer Engineer] is so important.

MD: That’s really well said. You’ve already touched on this a bit, but in your experience, what have you observed about the level of queer inclusivity in the engineering field?

KS: I’m from rural Saskatchewan, so growing up, to be honest, I never thought that I would be able to work as an engineer in a way that I could be authentic to myself. I’ve done multiple internships and I have found it to be more accepting than I expected, but it definitely varies company by company. I know there’s also a lot of people who don’t feel comfortable being their true selves in the field, even though they don’t feel discriminated against directly.

They often can’t mention things like, ‘oh yeah, on the weekend I was with my boyfriend,’ in casual conversation. There’s still that level of hiding in a lot of engineering disciplines. And of course, there’s a lot of places where it’s just outright unsafe to be out. I would just emphasize that there still is a long way to go.

MD: Do you have a favourite memory of your work with Queer Engineer, or a moment that stands out to you in particular?

KS: That’s such a good question. One thing that I’ve found really fun and interesting in the last year is our merch and stickers that say, “Queer Engineer,” with a little logo. I’ve been really happy with how many people want to take the stickers and put it on their laptop[s], even if they’re not necessarily queer. I also think it’s great because then people, especially new students, can see these stickers and feel more comfortable.

The other thing I’ve been really impressed with is how much engagement we’ve gotten in the last year. Before, the club was a lot quieter and we had a lot smaller events, but recently our reach has been much larger. Our comeback has been more successful than I actually anticipated, so I’m really excited about that.

MD: Do you have a vision for how Queer Engineer will evolve in the future?

KS: This is something I’ve thought about a lot because I’m graduating this year, so I’m kind of passing the torch. When I became president, I really thought about, ‘how can I form this group in a way that it’s going to continue after me?’ What I hope to see is that it will continue being active, host social events, and also become more involved in professional events and advocacy. I have faith that the future generation will carry the club on well.

MD: The theme of this column is “good people doing good things.” In the context of your work with Queer Engineer, what does being a “good person” mean to you?

KS: To me, it means making things easier for the people who come after you. So that future Queer Engineering students, for example, have an easier time. In general, just trying to leave an environment better than when you arrived.

Find out more about Queer Engineer on Instagram, @queerengineermcgill.

If you know good people doing good things who you would like to see featured in this column, email news@mcgilldaily.com.

Editor’s Note (26/01/26): The print version of this article features an incorrect spelling of Sippola. This is the correct version.

The post Queering Engineering: An Interview with Ken Sippola appeared first on The McGill Daily.

Good People is a bi-weekly column highlighting McGill students doing community-oriented work on and around campus. Because it’s important to celebrate good people doing good things.

2.5 million people in Canada do not have adequate care to support their mental health needs, according to a 2024 report by the Canadian Mental Health Association. In Quebec, psychological distress among adolescents rose to unprecedented levels in 2025. For young people in particular, the steep cost of mental health care is a significant barrier to accessing psychological services.

The mental health needs of students do not go unnoticed by Jesse Millman and Mekhi Graham, both McGill undergraduates studying Cognitive Science. In 2025, Millman and Graham launched their free student mental health service, Eye 2 Eye, which provides psychological guidance constructed upon the shared understandings and experiences of students. Within this framework, students complete an online survey to be connected with a peer who is going through similar struggles — such as loneliness, academic stress, or homesickness — with the hope that their shared experience can lead to psychological healing. Once matched, students receive guidance and tips from Eye 2 Eye team members to navigate their conversations.

The Daily spoke with Millman and Graham about founding Eye 2 Eye, men’s mental health, and why emotional vulnerability is so powerful.

This interview has been edited for clarity and conciseness.

Enid Kohler for The McGill Daily (MD): I want to start with your friendship. How did you meet and begin Eye 2 Eye together?

Jesse Millman (JM): Great question. It goes as far back as a McGill friendship can go: to Frosh week. We were both in the Arts & Science Frosh, which instantly set a precedent for a very wonderful friendship. I feel very grateful to have both social and academic aspects of my relationship with Mekhi.

I remember the idea [for Eye 2 Eye] coming to me in the summer after first year. It was a result of having all these similar conversations with people around me, about so many people feeling a little bit stranded and isolated from university culture. I came to Mekhi with the idea in the fall of second year.

Mekhi Graham (MG): I have a lot of memories of late night grind sessions studying with Jesse. I remember one day in the library, we were studying and Jesse was like, ‘Yo, dude, I have this idea.’ And he pitched it to me. I thought it was super cool. We started brainstorming from there. Honestly, every time we were supposed to be studying for class, we ended up talking about Eye 2 Eye instead. We were so excited about it. Probably not the best for the GPA, but we ended up with a pretty cool thing. No regrets.

Now, we have the website up and running thanks to Jesse, and we have a little team now, working with two other people who are also in cognitive science. I think we’re in a great spot. We’re currently working on outreach and trying to get it to as many people as possible.

MD: If you wanted to pitch Eye 2 Eye to someone in one minute at a house party, how would you describe it?

JM: Gosh, the amount of one minute house party pitches we’ve done, you’d think we’d be better at it.

MG: Yeah, we should have a script at this point. Eye 2 Eye is meant to be an informal mental health resource. It’s targeted specifically at first-year students who are dealing with issues related to homesickness and struggling to adapt to the new academic and social environment in university. Maybe they’re not really vibing with the party culture, maybe they just haven’t found their people yet.It’s also for people who might think those issues don’t necessarily warrant professional mental health care. I know for a lot of people there’s a stigma around [therapy], and the tendency to think that their struggles aren’t enough to warrant seeing a therapist.

So the idea behind Eye 2 Eye is to give students the opportunity to talk to someone else who’s in the same boat as them, who’s going through the same things. They are then able to make a connection, learn, and grow together.

JM: We’re definitely not anti-professional help. But I think for these issues specifically, while professionals are trained to help you in many ways, the reality is that they still won’t know what it’s like to be a first year university student in the social atmosphere that exists in 2025. We think that’s where real power is held: in each other. It’s a very comforting experience to realize, ‘I’m not the only person feeling these things,’ so that’s what we’re trying to tap into.

MG: Absolutely. Although the McGill Wellness Center and therapy in general can be super helpful for a lot of people, it’s also true that there is just a shortage in general. It sometimes can be difficult to get the services that you need. At the end of the day, anything that can make mental health support more accessible is a really good thing.

MD: Was there a defining moment in your own experience with therapy or in sharing your feelings that inspired you to start Eye 2 Eye?

JM: That’s a really good question. I don’t know if I can speak to a specific moment, but in previous romantic relationships, I’ve felt very lucky to explore vulnerability, and being able to open myself up completely to someone inspired me to share that. I think there’s something really magical about hearing yourself verbalize something about the way you’re feeling for the first time, and being able to articulate it when for months it had only existed in bubbles and squiggles around your head. I think we should all talk to each other more, and that’s what we hope the service facilitates.

MG: Absolutely. I can think back to times in my life where I didn’t have someone I was comfortable sharing my feelings with, so I would keep them all inside and bottled up. I realized once I started opening up more to people, my problems just felt a little smaller, a little more manageable.

MD: I’m curious about the gendered dimension of your work. In Canada, almost one in two men report feeling socially isolated, and men account for 75 per cent of deaths by suicide across the country. About 67 per cent of men have never sought professional mental health care before, according to the Canadian Men’s Health Foundation. As two young men leading a mental health service, how would you encourage people of all genders — but especially men — to be vulnerable?

MG: The biggest thing I would say to other men is that I don’t see being vulnerable as a weakness. It takes a lot of strength, but in my experience, when I’ve been vulnerable with people, it hasn’t led to judgment, but deeper connections. People can understand because you’re both human.

JM: It would be wonderful if we can get some guys who haven’t opened up in this way before to climb over that barrier just a little bit, because I think vulnerability is so magical. Once you grasp it, you unlock the expanse of what you haven’t explored yet, [and all] that exists behind [everything] that you may have repressed for so long.

MD: The theme of this column is “good people doing good things.” In the context of your work with Eye 2 Eye, what does being a good person mean to you?

MG: To me, it means helping others. Having gone through some of those difficult times in my first year and being on the other side of that now, if there’s any way I’m able to give [support] to first years who are currently struggling, I think that’s what it would mean to me to be a good person.

JM: I think everyone has so much value to their experience and so much to share. There really is an infinite amount to learn from the people around us. I think being a good person is both being willing to listen to what people have to give, and giving in the right way.

You can learn more about Eye 2 Eye at eye2eyemcgill.ca or on Instagram, @Eye2EyeMcGill.

If you know good people doing good things who you would like to see featured in this column, email news@mcgilldaily.com.

The post “Vulnerability is Magical” Says Co-Founder of Student Mental Health Service appeared first on The McGill Daily.

Many Canadian students lack the necessary knowledge to make informed and confident financial decisions. PennyDrops, Canada’s largest student-run non-profit organization dedicated to advancing financial literacy among youth, aims to change this. With an emphasis on peer-to-peer learning, university-level mentors help high school students develop financial literacy skills. Today, PennyDrops has reached nearly 30,000 high school students.

PennyDrops was founded at McGill in 2015 and has since grown into eight university chapters across the nation. I spoke with Co-Presidents Onora Nativ, a U3 student in Marketing and IT Management; and Chayse Holden, a U3 student in Finance and Environment, about PennyDrops McGill. We discussed the importance of financial literacy, building community through education, and why young people need more than Google to make confident financial decisions.

This interview has been edited for clarity and conciseness.

Enid Kohler for the McGill Daily (MD): I wanted to get started by asking both of you why you got involved in PennyDrops.

Chayse Holen (CH): I just really like the mission of the club. The importance of financial literacy is something that my parents brought me up with, and I think there’s a huge gap in academic curricula on this. I was really happy to see a club addressing that.

Onora Nativ (ON): I heard about Penny Drop support, and I thought they have this wonderful reach throughout the country, but also a tangible impact in the Montreal community. It extends well beyond just the school itself, which I thought was honestly incredible. Financial literacy is also very privilege-based and is specific to one’s upbringing, often limited to people who are from Canada or are familiar with how the financial system works here. I’m happy to be a part of something that breaks down those barriers.

MD: What does a week in the life of being Co-Presidents of PennyDrops look like? What are some of the concrete tasks you work on?

CH: Pretty much anything operational, it’s the two of us making everything happen. Hiring our executive team, tabling at SSMU Activities Night, and the Jaclyn Fischer Career Fair… anything we can do to spread our reach. As we progress into the year, we want to plan more events and maybe speaker panels, things like that.

ON: We also train our executives who are in contact with our teachers, making sure everyone is prepared and comfortable. That’s honestly the biggest role.

MD: I want to shift a bit more to the mission of the club. Why is it important to learn financial literacy at a young age? How would you respond to a skeptic who might doubt the importance of becoming financially literate as a kid?

ON: Firstly, I’d say that this particular perspective would come from a position of privilege if that person never had to think about what financial literacy means, or if [they believe] it’s something that feels almost innate, like it’s always been a discussion. Financial literacy is the crux of everything that we need growing up: from people who have had to take out student loans, to budgeting during school, or taking out a line of credit to get a car or a house. It’s a reality for almost every single Canadian. You really do have to be literate about the system in which you live.

CH: I absolutely agree. I also think a lot of people are like, ‘Anything I need to know, I can just Google it,’ which is only half true. If you don’t have that base level of holistic understanding of the basics, it is so intimidating.

MD: When did both of you start learning about financial literacy?

ON: Honestly, it’s always been a discussion in my household since I was very little. I’m fortunate that I asked my parents whenever I had questions about opening a TFSA, about student loans, or even about opening my bank account. But again, I recognize this is not information that I would have known otherwise.

CH: My answer is similar. My dad is kind of a nerd for this stuff. He would talk about compound interest and needing to open your TFSA as soon as you’re 18, all of that. So it’s always just been a discussion, but I recognize that that is not true for everyone.

MD: Do you have a favorite memory of your time with PennyDrops or a moment when you realized the importance or gravity of the work that you’re doing?

CH: That’s a good question. I wish I had a really distinct memory coming to mind, but what I found really impactful was teaching lessons to kids with special needs. It was such a unique experience. I’ve been a tutor before, but it felt extra impactful to reach that audience and see that we can adapt our lessons based on individual students’ needs. They were very interested and engaged; it was really special.

ON: While I was tabling this year and last year, a lot of students came up to me saying they remembered PennyDrop’s mentors coming into their high schools, and they now wanted to be a part of it, which I thought was incredibly important, knowing that the program meant enough to them when they were younger that they’d want to continue it.

MD: The theme of this column is “good people doing good things.” In the context of your work with PennyDrops, what does being a “good person” mean to you?

CH: For me, it’s trying to foster even more community within the club this year and more mentorship. That’s part of the lessons, too. You’ll usually wrap up the content, and then the high school students will ask you, ‘What’s university life like? What classes are you taking?’ You have that connection with them, which is so important.

ON: It’s also trying your best to level the playing field and the act of sharing your knowledge. We’re always looking to older people for mentorship. So, paying it forward any way that we can to spread the wisdom that we’ve gained, since people are always going to have questions.

Learn more about PennyDrops and opportunities to get involved on Instagram, @pennydrops.mcgill, or via pennydrops.org.

End note: If you know good people doing good things who you would like to see featured in this column, email news@mcgilldaily.com.

Editor’s note (27/11/25): The online version of this article features the correct spelling of Chayse Holden. The original print edition, which instead notes the Co-President as “Chase Holden,” is incorrect.

The post Dropping Financial Literacy Knowledge for Canadian Youth appeared first on The McGill Daily.

Single-use products have a significant environmental cost. Reusable products are therefore more sustainable than single-use items in any form. Since 2007, The Plate Club, run out of the Students’ Society of McGill University (SSMU), has been championing reusable products. The service provides free reusable dishware to McGill students and community members, with an eye towards promoting sustainable and environmentally-friendly practices.

The Daily spoke with Jamie Silverman, the General Coordinator of The Plate Club and a third-year undergraduate student majoring in Sustainability, Science and Society with minors in Urban Studies and International Development. We talked about The Plate Club’s history, what it means to be sustainable, and making the world a better place.This interview has been edited for clarity and conciseness.

Evan-Platt Goldstein, Co-VP Sustainability (left) and Jamie Silverman, General Coordinator (right). Image courtesy of Enid Kohler.

Enid Kohler for the McGill Daily (MD): How would you describe the Plate Club to someone who has never heard of it before?

Jamie Silverman (JS): So the Plate Club is a free dishware rental service. We essentially furnish dishware to any group on campus or to the broader Montreal community for free. This means that all our dishes are rented out, volunteers package up the orders, and then groups use them, usually for big events like back-to-school barbecues, parties, or end-of-year galas.

JS: The group has their event, they use the plates and glasses and cutlery (it’s not just plates!), and then they wash them and bring them back to us, and then we put them back in the office and do it all over again.

MD: How and when did the Plate Club start?

JS: It actually started in 2007: this has been going on forever. It was originally very avant-garde. It started on a smaller scale with more basics, and then as we grew and people started requesting our service more frequently, we were lacking inventory for like 400-person events, and so we started getting grants and funds to increase our inventory. We have thousands of items right now.

MD: How would you respond to a student club who uses recyclable or compostable products in the hopes of being sustainable, rather than using reusable ones? Why would you convince them to use Plate Club resources instead?

JS: I was actually looking up stats for this. I think you only have to use a reusable plate a handful of times for it to be better than compostables, because when you’re using compostables, it can still only be used once before it goes to the landfill. Whereas we’ve had these plates since 2007. They’re not going anywhere. They’re not breaking because most of our inventory is hard plastic, so they’re meant to last. We have so many people using our stuff that it’s definitely paid off for any kinds of disposables over time.

JS: Sustainability is made up of many facets, but one of them is economic sustainability. Even compostable dishes have to be bought new every time, whereas the Plate Club offers services for free. Let’s say you don’t care about the environment whatsoever. You’re still getting free dishware. Even if you don’t care about the environment, it doesn’t really make any sense, given the Plate Club’s services on campus, in my opinion, to do anything else.

MD: Do you have a favorite memory or an event that stands out to you from the past few years?

JS: I wouldn’t say I have a specific memory, but a continuous reminder of the accumulation of work over the last two years. It’s very physical, right? All of our dishware is material; you see the plates going out and coming back in. It’s a very material way of seeing your impact, quite directly in the orders that we’re preparing. So it’s pretty rewarding.

JS: I don’t know the exact numbers, but I know that every year we have over a hundred orders. We’re trying to create a sustainability report to assess exactly how many dishes we’re diverting. In a report from 2007 to 2017, the service diverted over 60,000 disposable items to landfill. There’s no recent reports, but I’m hoping to put more emphasis on that so that over the years we have a better idea of our impact.

MD: The theme of this column is “good people doing good things.” In the context of your work with the Plate Club, what does being a “good person” mean to you?

JS: For me, as a student studying Sustainability, Science and Society, I’ve always had a very societal outlook on life. And so I think being a good person is living within the collective while trying to better everything around you. And people take that in a lot of different ways. You don’t have to be working in sustainability to be bettering people’s lives. I think ultimately, it is about helping make the world a better place, which is what I see the Plate Club doing for McGill and Montreal.

Learn more about The Plate Club on Instagram, @theplateclub, or place orders for rent through their website, https://theplateclub.wixsite.com/mcgill/plate-rental.

End Note: If you know good people doing good things who you would like to see featured in this column, email news@mcgilldaily.com.

The post More Than Just Plates: An Interview with Jamie Silverman on The Plate Club appeared first on The McGill Daily.

“Bienvenue,” Bouchard said gently, smiling at the small group before her. As she gestured to the open gallery door, I eagerly stepped inside. I was about to experience a taste test of Bouchard’s newest immersive creation, Fragments: celle qui m’habitait déjà.

Bouchard is a Quebecoise theatre artist trained in scenography at Concordia University, and in Dance and Theatre Theory and Practice at the Université de Nice and the Université Libre de Bruxelles. In 2016, inspired by her experience living with a visual impairment, she launched the research collective Au-delà du visuel (Beyond the Visual) to explore the creation and communication of dance and theatre for blind audiences. Bouchard won the Monique Lefebvre Universal Accessibility Award and the Montreal English Theatre Award for Outstanding Direction in for the project’s first show presented at MAI (Montréal, arts interculturelles) in 2019, Camille: le récit.

On October 20, she premiered segments of Fragments to nine members of the media at MAI. Like Camille, Fragments is a form of immersive theatre based on sonic, tactical, olfactory, and spatial sensations. Accessible to both sighted and blind people or those living with low vision, audience members wear eyeshades to engage all other senses but vision.

I walked into the theater, a bright, airy gallery space with exposed pipes along the ceiling and a gleaming hardwood floor. Nine cushioned chairs were set up along the perimeter of an imaginary square, three lining each of three sides. Bouchard invited us to take off our shoes. I placed mine under my chair and hung my coat on a free-standing rack in the corner of the room. Without my shoes on, my feet felt bare, reminiscent of a kindergarten class sitting in a circle in their socks. It fostered a sense of intimacy among this small group of strangers, all of whom were about to experience art together.

Bouchard emphasized this feeling of connectivity. She told the audience that after the show, we would have experienced a story together, a collective encounter. Before the show began, she distributed eye-shades, encouraging us to put them on right away to acclimate to a lack of vision and immerse ourselves in the experience.

Fragments tells the overlapping story of two women who find refuge in the same house at different times, one in 1950 and one in 2025. Three performers use touch to guide audience members or hand them objects, and a live piano score performed and composed by blind pianist Vytautas Bucionis provides auditory stimulation. Smells, such as the aromas of someone cooking and the bright scent of a forest, are intended to transport audience members to the Quebec countryside town of Sainte-Anne-de-Sorrel, where the story takes place.

As written in the show’s press release, the poetic tableaux of Fragments slowly reveals the emotions that the two women share across time periods, as well as the contradictions between them. For both, living in this countryside home allows them to access freedom and break from social obligations.

As I placed the eyeshades over my closed eyes, I felt like a weight of stimulation had been lifted from my shoulders, relaxing slightly into my seat as I listened to Bouchard’s lilting French. We would experience the show with all of our senses except vision, she explained. We would encounter the first two scenes of her typically 90-minute performance, and would be led by a sighted guide to another room during the experience.

“Okay, on peut commencer,” she concluded. As the show began, feet shuffled into their places around us. The first thing I noticed was a manufactured wind sweeping through the room. It tickled my skin viscerally, goosebumps raising the hairs on my forearms. Piano music swept in with the wind, a melancholic wave warming the airy room.

A woman’s voice proclaimed the year 1950. Another voice followed, stating the year 2025, location Sainte-Anne-de-Sorrel. The voices meshed with the piano, wind whirring throughout the soundscape. The sound of pencils scratching against paper suddenly filled my right ear; a frantic sound, as if the writer could hardly wait to ge their ideas onto the page. I felt inexplicably stressed, as though I, too, were hurrying to transport ideas onto paper.

At first, my mind wandered away from the experience to my to-do list, to adjectives I wanted to use to describe the show in this article after it was over. I reminded myself to focus on the show.

The women’s voices continued to overlap as the show went on, weaving over one another like a relay baton, distinctive yet collaborative. At one point, as the narrator declared the month of January, paper snow fell onto my head, gently grazing my hair. I startled at this contact, feeling each of my other senses more intensely with my sight removed.

It took a few minutes, but once I relaxed and let myself surrender to the experience, I was immersed in it — so much so that when a guide gently took my hands, unfolding them from where they lay clasped in my lap and led me to another room, I let them take me wherever they wanted to go. I wobbled slightly as walked without sight, but as I followed their stride, I was surprised at how much I could trust this stranger, never before seen. This blind trust felt liberating.

Guided into a plush desk chair, I sat down, feeling for the arms of the chair before placing my hands
on my lap. Soon, an object was placed onto my open palms. As the narration continued, discussing the names of iconic female authors — Simone de Beauvoir, Virginia Woolf, accompanied by the frantic rustling of papers — I touched each crevice of the object. From its triangular edges at the top and its flat bottom, I concluded that it was a miniature house.

The women exclaimed words like “fuir” (“flee”) and “solitude” into the air, sharing sentiments across time and space. I felt like I was both floating and rooted firmly into my seat, my mind a whirlwind set off by tactical and auditory sensations

The narrators faded into silence, the piano slowing to a stop. Bouchard announced the end of the
scene — “coupé,” she quietly pronounced — and I took off my eyeshade, dazedly blinking at the bright light. My fellow audience members smiled at each other, realizing that Bouchard had been right. We had lived through something together now. The artistic narrative had become a true shared experience between us all.

After the show, I spoke with Bouchard, who greeted me with a gracious smile, thanking me for taking interest in her work. We sat on two chairs on the perimeter of the theater, Bucionis’ continued gentle
piano-playing floating into the space.

For many years, Bouchard recounted, her artistic work wa primarily visual, studying stage design and then working as a lighting designer. In 2009, she completed her master’s degree. The topic of her thesis was the sensoria experience of performers and the history of the senses. “That’s when I realized, ‘Oh, what I do is really visual,’ and it’s kind of ironic becaus I have a visual impairment,” Bouchard said. That led her to question what theatre without sight would look like.

When Bouchard started the Au-delà du visuel collective with a tea of collaborators in 2016, she began
creating art with an eyeshade or with her eyes closed. For the first time, “my handicap was no longer an obstacle,” Bouchard said. “I realize that I [had] created a work environment that was totally accessible for myself.”

For Bouchard, it is important to experience the world without sight especially given the ubiquitous visual stimulation sighted people ar subjected to through digital technology. “To take a moment to turn that off, and be together, and be open to listening to our other senses, that can be really valuable,” she said. Therefore, her artistic team see visual impairments as a “strength to innovate new ways of making art and of sharing art with the audience.”

Bouchard intends for audience members to walk away from Fragments with a feeling o empowerment. She hopes that the audience can learn to let go and trust someone they don’t know to guide them. “That’s something that blind people experience all the time, and I think that we can also learn from that trust.”

Fragments: celle qui m’habitait déjà premiered at MAI on October 22 an runs until November 8. Students can purchase tickets for $22.

The post Beyond The Visual appeared first on The McGill Daily.

In 2024, an estimated 67,219 Quebecers were diagnosed with cancer: in other words, 184 new cases each day. Gabrielle Lavoie, a U4 undergraduate student in Computer Engineering at McGill, knew she wanted to take a stand in the fight against cancer. In honour of her grandfather, who loved the outdoors and recently passed away from cancer, Lavoie launched Le Quémino, an initiative to walk 142 kilometres to raise funds for the Quebec Cancer Foundation. “I hope you can see my support as I carry your strength with me every step of the way,” Lavoie writes to her grandfather on Le Quémino’s website.

Between October 24 and October 28, Lavoie, alongside her boyfriend and uncle, walked from downtown Montreal to Mont-Tremblant along the P’tit Train du Nord trail, walking 20 to 45 kilometres every day. (That is equivalent to walking a half or full marathon for five days straight!)

The Daily spoke with Lavoie about the walk, the wide-reaching impact of cancer diagnoses, and persevering through difficult times.

This interview has been edited for clarity and conciseness.

Enid Kohler for the McGill Daily (MD): I wanted to get started by asking how your walk was. How are you feeling today?

Gabrielle Lavoie (GL): I’m feeling good. It was definitely a challenge physically, but I was happy to complete the full 142-kilometre walk.

MD: What prompted you to begin this project? Where did the idea come about?

GL: Cancer touches so many lives around us: families, friends, our loved ones. So this walk is an act of solidarity to support the thousands of Quebecers affected by cancer. Personally, my grandpa recently died from cancer, but there’s multiple people around us who are also affected, so this was an initiative to support all of those touched by the disease.

MD: Is there a specific moment or memory of the walk that stands out to you?

GL: Looking back to see that I had traveled such a large distance at the end of the walk was very gratifying. Even driving the distance by car to come back home, you could really see just how many kilometres had been walked.

MD: Can you tell me more about the route you took? Was there an intention behind choosing it?

GL: I wanted it to start in downtown Montreal at McGill, where I live and study, and end in Mont-Tremblant. The stops in between all followed the P’tit Train du Nord trail, which is a very popular scenic trail in the Laurentian region. The stops in between ensured the distance was between 20 and 45 kilometres every day.

MD: Did you encounter any particular challenges during the walk? Was there ever a moment where you wanted to give up?

GL: Definitely. It was very physically challenging; every night, my legs were very sore. There were days I walked up to 12 hours, where I would start in the morning and end after sunset. Walking in the dark was definitely a challenge. I was very grateful to have people next to me supporting me on the journey, and I was always proud to be able to raise money for the Quebec Cancer Foundation.

MD: What do you hope will be the long-term impact of this project?

GL: I hope this walk can inspire other people and show them that any initiative, no matter how small, can make a difference.

MD: The theme of this column is “good people doing good things.” In the context of your work with Le Quémino, what does being a “good person” mean to you?

GL: That’s a big question to think about. This walk was really about putting one foot in front of the other, having the perseverance to keep going, and having the overarching goal of doing something good for the world. In general, if someone is able to do small actions and trickle positivity in the world in their own way, people together can make the world a better place.

So far, Le Quémino has raised $2,300 for the Quebec Cancer Foundation. To make a donation, visit canadahelps.org/en/pages/le-quemino.

End note: If you know good people doing good things who you would like to see featured in this column, email news@mcgilldaily.com.

The post Walking 142 Kilometres for Cancer: An Interview with Gabrielle Lavoie appeared first on The McGill Daily.

Menstrual health products should be accessible to everyone who needs them. Period.

Since 2017, the SSMU Menstrual Health Project has been working towards this very mission of accessibility by supplying over 160 washrooms on McGill campus with free menstrual health products. SSMU members pay $2.40 in fees each semester to fund the service, which aims to promote sustainability menstrual equity, and reduce period stigma. Notably, the SSMU Menstrual Health Project does not use gendered language when describing periods in its aim to foster a comprehensive understanding of menstruation that includes trans, non-binary and/or 2SLGBTQ+ students.

The Daily spoke with Momoka Takami, U3 McGill student majoring in International Development Studies and Commissioner of the Menstrual Health Project. We talked about menstrual equity, sustainable hygiene products, and making invisible work visible.

This interview has been edited for clarity and conciseness.

Enid for the McGill Daily (MD): How did you get involved in the Menstrual Health Project?

Momoka Takamo (MT): I had an eye on the Menstrual Health Project since I started McGill in 2023, but then I knew it was a demanding job because it has a time commitment of 10 hours per week. I knew I had to commit to this role if I were to do it. So in January, I saw there was an opening for Menstrual Health Product Coordinator and I thought I was ready so I decided to give it a try.

MD: Can you tell me about your current role as Commissioner? What kind of work do you do on a daily basis?

MT: The role of commissioner really varies. Unlike other student-run clubs, we are a SSMU service, which means there’s one commissioner and multiple coordinators. Since the coordinator’s primary job is to restock bathrooms and they’re pretty occupied with it, I am responsible for everything else. In short: HR, social media, inventory management, and event planning or monthly pickups as well. So yeah, the role is really everything you can think of. For other clubs, they have VP Media, VP Internal, VP External, but I’m just Commissioner, so my role consists of everything combined.

MD: How would you describe the SSMU Menstrual Health Project in a few sentences?

MT: We are part of the student society, so every undergraduate student member pays $2.40 for our service fee, along with other student services fees and tuition. We combine all the $2.40s from each person to buy disposable and reusable menstrual health products to be placed on campus. There are 160 bathrooms on campus, including residences, that we restock. The project is run by five Coordinators, so it is a physically demanding job, but we go to every single bathroom. As for reusable products, we have an event called “monthly pick-up,” which involves us showing up on campus and talking with students and providing products to them. We have reusable underwear, period underwear, reusable pads, and reusable cups, according to students’ needs.

MD: If a student feels skeptical about your organization, perhaps they don’t use menstrual health products themselves, how would you argue that your work is important?

MT: That’s an interesting question. We have many students who come to our pick-up because there was a line or they heard about us somewhere on campus. And they say, ‘I don’t really use it.’ So we usually say, “Oh, if you get a product from us, it’s free because you already paid for it. So you might as well take advantage of the service. The underwear or any reusable products usually cost more than $40 to $50 if you buy it personally, but if you try one from us, it’s free.” So it reduces the barrier to try a new product.

MT: We usually don’t have that much time to convince people at the pick-up. But another approach could be that it’s a sustainable product because it’s reusable, and each unit of underwear should last between five to ten years. So that’s an approach that we can incorporate.

MD: Do you have a specific memory of a moment when you realized the impact of the work you’re doing?

MT: At monthly pick-ups, some students tell us how much they love the project, and how they support us, which is very huge inspiration to continue doing our work. Another one was during the fee renewal that we did in Winter 2025. It was a very tough one to pass, because the SSMU renewal fee campaign in general had a very low vote average – it wasn’t really reaching students. We had to physically table on campus and give out flyers to students to let them know that there was a fee renewal going on. While doing that, I met many students who just passed by, and said ‘oh, no, thank you,’ because they didn’t want to get involved in it. But there were also many students who said, ‘oh, I love you guys, I’ll vote, I hope it passes.’ So that experience really communicated to me that there are students who are constantly supporting us.

MD: The theme of this column is “good people doing good things.” In the context of your work withthe Menstrual Health Project, what does being a “good person” mean to you?

MT: Wow. Good person…well, I’m always someone who wants to help people. That was my goal since I was a kid. As an extracurricular or volunteer community involvement activity on campus, being part of SSMU Menstrual Health enables me to support students with free menstrual products. When we did a survey to students, there were about 180 responses, and many of them said if it weren’t for the Menstrual Health Project, they wouldn’t have thought about using reusable products. Once they figured out about us and they got products from us, it just, like, changed everything. They love the reusable products. So, whenever I see those comments or even interact with students, I know that through my role I’m helping students on campus. I don’t think our work is as visible as it should be., but I think we are a group of students who have similar mindsets about, like, staying behind the scenes but doing small things on campus, small things to help people. So, yeah, for us, being a good person is not necessarily being someone in the front seat, but someone who just secretly supports you to make your day better.

The SSMU Menstrual Health Project’s next pick-up will take place on November 12 between 1:30 and 4:30 PM at the Redpath-McLennan library. Students can follow @ssmumenstrualhealth on Instagram for more information.

If you know good people doing good things who you would like to see featured in this column, email news@mcgilldaily.com.

The post Reimagining Period Equity: An Interview with Momoka Takami on the SSMU Menstrual Health Project appeared first on The McGill Daily.

Margaret MacKenzie is a 2024 McCall MacBain Scholar pursuing a Master of Arts in Educational Leadership at McGill University. She is a citizen of the Métis Nation, British Columbia and is the Indigenous Outreach Program advisor for Branches, McGill’s Community Outreach Program. Margaret worked alongside a team of Indigenous researchers at McGill to create the Critical Campus Tour: an evolving project that launched in 2023. The tour, facilitated by Indigenous students and graduates, visits select sites on McGill’s campus to critically engage with their history and significance. The Daily spoke with Mackenzie about the tour, the importance of community, and why knowledge should evolve rather than remain static.

This interview has been edited for clarity and conciseness.

Enid Kohler for the Daily (MD): How did the Critical Campus Tour come about?

Margaret Mackenzie (MM): It started with the Participatory Cultures Lab, which is in the Faculty of Education and is run by Dr. Claudia Mitchell. In 2023, I was an intern in her lab as part of the IMPRESS program (Indigenous Mentorship and Paid Research Experience for Summer Students) and my task was to formalize the tour, to add more spots on the tour, and then to digitize it. That September, we ran the tour for the first time in-person, at the We Will Walk Together Event. There were three tour groups, each about 15-20 people. Last year, the turnout in my group alone was huge – there were probably over 100 people.

MM: Based on the feedback from our 2024 tour, I have been working with other students to continue working on the tour and make it more concrete for the future.

MD: If you were pitching the Critical Campus Tour to an educator in a nutshell, how would you describe it?

MM: It’s to look at McGill’s campus in an anti- colonial and truth-seeking lens. It’s also about engaging with the sites and monuments at McGill that you walk by everyday, which actually have a deep history or meaning behind them that we don’t pay attention to or recognize. The tour is supposed to provide a basis for critical conversation, discussion, and reflection. The tour guide gives you some points to. consider and then you have what can be uncomfortable or challenging conversations. You need to show up to this tour ready and willing to do that.

MM: This tour is also about uplifting and shedding light on all the hard work that Indigenous staff and students are doing on campus. One of my favourites is Projections: Kwe in the Faculty of Engineering building, which was an Indigenous student group out of the Faculty of Engineering that put up this really cool art display in the lobby. So things like that as well, just uplifting and providing a platform for really amazing work on campus.

MD: You mentioned digitizing the Critical Campus Tour. What is your vision for how the project will evolve in the future?

MM: We’ve been trying to share [the tour] with professors and students to have it be accessible, so that it’s available on days other than just September 30. That’s why we’re trying to move it to a digital platform, because all the information and all of what we would say on the tour is now online. So you can do it yourself. There’s also a map to guide you.

MM: We really hope that it’s a useful resource for classes and for groups on campus, just to continue the legacy of having this tour run because it has so much interesting information. A lot of it gets swept under the rug. So just having people be more aware and using it in different spaces.

MM: I also want to emphasize that the Critical Campus Tour is definitely not just my work; I’m one piece but it’s been many, many people who have worked on this. (Emilee Bews, Samantha Nepton, Sarah Boyer and Rune Hartgerink are Mackenzie’s primary collaborators.) The tour also gets revised every year. It’s like a living document. I hope that it continues to grow and change since it’s not meant to stay the same. We hope that other students will do more work [on the project] and continue it.

MD: What is your relationship with McGill’s Indigenous community like and how has it changed since participating in the IMPRESS program and starting the Critical Campus Tour?

MM: I’ve never seen myself as someone to do a Master’s. That was never really in my plan. I just was like, ‘OK, I’m going to be a teacher.’ And then after I did IMPRESS and research, my mentor Emilee Bews – who was also an undergrad at the same time as me and in the same program – really encouraged me to apply to the McCall McBain program. She was like, “just do it.” And I wasn’t sure. But Emily really pushed me. And then I decided to do a Master’s. And through my Master’s, I’m so lucky to do Indigenous centered research, which is really, really incredible. And I’m really grateful. I fully changed my trajectory.

MM: Working with and supporting Indigenous students in higher education also really changed how I see what I want to do in the future. It’s been a full circle experience. I’m so, so grateful for all the experiences that I’ve had.

MD: The theme of this column is “good people doing good things.” In the context of your research and work with other Indigenous scholars at McGill, what does being a “good person” mean to you?

MM: Well, for me, it’s just supporting my community. It’s not about myself. I think it’s really about uplifting the voice of my community and strengthening my community. And following our values and doing everything with a good heart and good intentions is really important to me. I’ve been so grateful to have so many amazing opportunities. And I just want that also for my community.

The digital version of the 2025 Critical Campus Tour will launch at the We Will Walk Together Event on September 30. Students can find out more about the project and McGill’s Indigenous community and history by attending the event.

The post Reframing Education: An Interview with Margaret Mackenzie on the Critical Campus Tour appeared first on The McGill Daily.

Musical education has shown to benefit children’s cognitive, social, and emotional development, but many primary schools in Canada lack the resources to provide personalized music education to all students. McGill student club, Montréal Heart of the City Piano Program (MHCPP), fills this void by providing free piano lessons to elementary schools in underprivileged areas of Montréal, with an eye towards cultivating an appreciation for music among young students. The Daily spoke with Kasidy Xu, U3 Nursing student at McGill and Co-Director of MHCPP, about the club’s mission, the value of musical training, and what it means to be a good person.

This interview has been edited for clarity and conciseness.

Enid for the McGill Daily (MD): How did you first get involved in MHCPP?

Kasidy Xu (KX): In my first year, I didn’t join any clubs at all and I was looking for ways to get off campus. I felt really stuck in the bubble, living in residence and everything. I was like, ‘I need to get out into the community,’ and I used to be a piano teacher for two years in high school. So I found this club and I was like, ‘wait, this is perfect.’ In my second year, I joined as a volunteer and when they opened up executive positions for the next year, I became volunteer coordinator for the school that I was volunteering at. Now I’m Co-Chair this year. When I first started [getting involved with the MHCPP], it definitely felt a bit uncomfortable but then I got to the school and I thought, “wow.” Just being surrounded by kids and all of them coming up to you, yelling at you, like they have no care in the world, made me feel immediately comfortable and I was like, okay, this is exactly where I should be.

MD: If you were pitching your club to a first year student at Activities Night, how would you describe it?

KX: We are coupled with four different schools, three English ones and one French school. You’re assigned to a school and a student for the entire semester, so from September to December and then every single week, same time, same day, you just teach your students for an hour. Each volunteer gets a one hour shift per week with one or two students, max. It’s never more than two students. You can work on scales, you can work on a song, you can work on music theory, really whatever the student wants.

MD: Your organization is geared towards providing a music education to students who otherwise may not be able to access one. Why is it important for young people to learn music?

KX: I think there’s so many different ways that music education is important. I obviously don’t know all the science and the facts behind it, but I loved playing music growing up. I found it to be not only a good skill to learn but a good way of forgetting about school, forgetting about other stresses in life, and really just giving me something to focus on where I could destress and relax. On top of that, just the process of learning music and learning piano is so transferable to other skills. Learning piano is also really important in terms of working towards a goal.

KX: Through music I also found a great community. People just love to share their take on music, their opinions about it, and I think it’s really wholesome all around.

MD: Are there any specific events you are looking forward to this year?

KX: Our recitals are our biggest events. We hold recitals twice a year, at the end of the semester, around the beginning of December, and then in the beginning of April. All of the kids perform and their parents and friends come, too. It’s always a packed room in Schulich, and it’s so wholesome. The kids dress to the nines. I had my student show up in a full tuxedo. It was my favorite thing ever. To them this is a big thing: coming to McGill University, playing this song that they’ve been working towards all semester. Seeing their work paid off feels really rewarding.

KX: We have lots of parents at the end of the recital speak to us or send emails afterwards saying thank you for having this club, thank you to all the volunteers. Throughout the semester, they hear about their kids going to these lessons at school, but then to see the recital of not only their kid, but other kids in the program, makes them also feel like [their hard work] has come to some sort of result.

MD: The theme of this column is “good people doing good things.” In the context of your work with MHCPP, what does being a good person mean to you?

KX: I think every last volunteer that joins our club is such a good person because they don’t have to be doing this. They’re not getting paid to do this. They are taking time out of their day to go half an hour out of the McGill community. They’re really not gaining anything from this at all, other than just sharing their love for music and hanging out with these kids. And so I’m just so appreciative of all of them, because without the volunteers, we simply wouldn’t be able to provide any of these lessons. I think they’re all good, good people. We’re really just trying to find as many volunteers as we can so that we can provide lessons to all the kids that want them.

Find out more about MHCPP through their website or their Instagram account, @montrealheartofthecitypiano.

If you know good people doing good things who you would like to see featured In this column, email news@mcgilldaily.com

The post Piano for A Purpose: An Interview With Kasidy Xu on Montreal Heart of the City Piano Program appeared first on The McGill Daily.

Hundreds of McGill undergraduate students go on exchange every year. But until this summer, there was no centralized platform to help students sublet their apartments and look for living accommodations in another country. Enter: Exchange Sublet, a student-centric digital platform that serves as a reliable marketplace for students to list their homes while looking for new ones abroad. I spoke with CEO and Co-Founder Morgan Balkin, U2 student in International Development, Economics, and Social Entrepreneurship, over Zoom. We talked about the platform’s recent launch, its features, and how he hopes it will positively impact the McGill community.

This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.

Enid for the McGill Daily (MD): Exchange Sublet launched on Instagram in April. How did the project begin?

Morgan Balkin (MB): My friends in the year above were telling me how they were so excited to go on exchange but how they were really struggling and spending days on days on Facebook marketplace trying to find [subletters]. They made it seem like the most complex, horrible situation. I had also just started my minor in social entrepreneurship, and what they taught us in class was always, when you look for the little problems, a solution to those could be a business or an entrepreneurial venture. And then it was genuinely a shower thought, like, ‘what if there was an Airbnb for subletting?’

I shared my idea with my friend Rami, now my co-founder, and he was like, ‘dude, that’s a really great idea.’ From there it just took off. 

MD: If you were pitching your platform to an investor, how would you describe it? 

MB: We are hopefully going to be the Airbnb for subletting. We see ourselves as a platform that is very user-friendly, safe, secure, and centered around this niche study abroad period where students are going to leave their home city.

I would say the difference between us and what Airbnb or Facebook Marketplace is doing is that we have verified profiles with profile pictures, student emails and a safe and secure payment system. Really trying to minimize any scams and uncertainties. 

MD: How are you going to grow internationally so that students coming to McGill on exchange can use your platform?

MB: We’re going to start in Montreal and then find ways to grow at schools worldwide. We plan to launch an ambassador program where international students who went on exchange at McGill can spread the word at their own schools. And luckily we’ve grown our team a bit to have a good amount of international connections. We know people all over, and that’s the beauty of McGill, that you have such an international crowd that you can tap into. 

MD: What does the future of Exchange Sublet look like? Will it move beyond purely housing? 

MB: We have so many ideas on how to expand. Just a few are a Tinder-esque interface for roommates and having in-depth information about local bars, clubs, restaurants, cafés. We have a lot of excitement in terms of finding a way to implement AI into our platform, having these little quick questions about your city or the currency, the people, the language, whatever it may be. Oh, is that club good? You know, what promoter did you use? Or like, is this place gluten-free? Little stuff like that can really be helpful.

Having said that, it’s good to stick to your bread and butter at first. At our base, we’re a subletting service, an intermediary between subletters and listers. We want to get that cycle going a bit before we start introducing these new features, but honestly the sky is the limit.

MD: The theme of this column is “good people doing good things.” In the context of your work with Exchange Sublet, what does being a “good person” mean to you?

MB: I think everything we put into our site and our whole idea is really just to improve this stressful but exciting experience. We hope to reduce stress, increase security, and just ease everyone’s mind. So I think that’s what we try to do to help people and be good people in a way. 

Students can find Exchange Sublet on Instagram, @exchangesublet, and on their website, exchangesublet.ca.

If you know good people doing good things who you would like to see featured in this column, send an email to news@mcgilldaily.com.

The post Changing the Marketplace: An Interview with Morgan Balkin about Exchange Sublet appeared first on The McGill Daily.

In the following months, it became clear that generative AI like ChatGPT would bring unique potential for AI usage. Unlike earlier AI machine-learning models, which were trained to make predictions based on a dataset, generative AI (GenAI) creates new content. In response to a prompt, GenAI uses sophisticated algorithms to organize large datasets into new material, including text, images, and audio. 

Considering its ability to generate essays, computer code, and musical scores, among a myriad of other possibilities, McGill professors are paying close attention to GenAI in their pedagogy. In an interview with the Daily, Alexander Manshel, Associate Professor of English, said that by the spring of 2023, he had begun to closely follow the emerging discourse that claimed GenAI would “change everything.” For Dr. Manshel, it was not that GenAI was necessarily a transformative technology in itself. He recognized it as “something major that would have to be reckoned with in education.”

Initially, Dr. Manshel was eager to experiment with GenAI. He told the Daily that he was interested in exploring how the technology could be utilized in a classroom setting on an analytical level. “What would it mean to project a generated passage from Toni Morrison or Colson Whitehead, and then spend the class analyzing the features [ChatGPT] is picking up on and testing that against our own sense of the aesthetics of the writers?” Dr. Manshel told the Daily that although such exercises may sound exciting in practice, his classroom discussions repeatedly proved “far more interesting” without ChatGPT. 

Dr. Manshel took his GenAI experimentation further in an introductory undergraduate class in Fall 2023. When he assigned a paper, he told students they could use GenAI without any limitations. Students also needed to submit a document outlining how they had used GenAI. Their papers were then graded without Dr. Manshel and his teaching assistants knowing the extent to which AI had been used. Only after grades were returned did they test the results of students’ writing against the AI disclosure forms.

Dr. Manshel told the Daily that at least in his class, “the majority of McGill students did not have any interest in using [GenAI] beyond sentence-level spell check.” However, some students did use it more substantively. On the whole, the vast majority of those papers received low “B” grades. “It produced — to speak frankly — ‘mid’ work,” Dr. Manshel said.

Now, after seeing how GenAI limits his students’ ability to produce strong, critical work, Dr. Manshel “essentially prohibits[s] the use of generative AI” beyond sentence-level grammar check. 

Jacob Blanc, Associate Professor of History and International Development Studies at McGill, similarly sees pedagogical limitations to GenAI usage in university classes. In an interview with the Daily, Dr. Blanc shared that “in my classes, I try to emphasize that there is no shortcut to doing research well, to doing a paper well.” Simultaneously, he limits the opportunities where students could easily use AI. His final assignments tend to be creative: a historical fiction essay or a podcast episode, for example. This serves a dual purpose of being both “fun for doing history” and “helping students not fall victim to this trap of AI.” 

While Dr. Blanc assigns creative projects for reasons beyond being largely AI “fool-proof,” software like ChatGPT has changed the way he evaluates students on a regular basis. Like many of his colleagues, Dr. Blanc has begun to introduce weekly, in-class quizzes. “Is it useful? Maybe, as a check-in,” Dr. Blanc noted. “But I wouldn’t have done this if ChatGPT hadn’t come around.”

At the same time, Dr. Blanc acknowledges that it is difficult to completely prevent students from using AI. That is why he has recently started requiring students to submit an AI disclosure form to acknowledge how they used AI in their assignments. Dr. Blanc said he is “trying to force students to be honest with themselves and with me. We’re all learning this on the fly, so I really want to know how students are using it more than just when it is obvious to me that they are cheating.”

Samantha Damay, an instructor in the Centre for French Teaching at McGill, uses GenAI in a different way from Dr. Manshel and Blanc. Damay sees unique pedagogical benefits to GenAI for second-language courses. While Damay believes AI lacks depth and creativity, she acknowledges that in second-language classes, creativity is not necessarily the first priority. In an interview with the Daily, Damay said she primarily looks for “abilities to synthesize text, to apply grammar conventions, and to understand the language.” For Damay, GenAI can help students achieve these skills.

Damay encourages students to use ChatGPT to correct their own work. “I think it is essential that students are able to understand their mistakes and then make their own corrections,” she said. “That’s why I asked myself, ‘can Chat-GPT help students develop independent ways of correcting their work?’”

Now, Damay has created specific ChatGPT prompts, which she encourages students to use to improve their French writing skills. One such prompt asks ChatGPT to “indicate” errors but not to correct them. This way, students can utilize GenAI like a professor who highlights their mistakes, while still needing to fix them autonomously. 

When Damay explicitly instructs her students to use ChatGPT, they are often surprised. But she emphasizes that she is not advising them to use it to cheat; rather, they should take advantage of it as a tool. “I really hope that generative AI becomes a reflex for students,” Damay said to the Daily. “Each time they write a text in French, they should take the time to ask ChatGPT to review their work.”

When asked about the future of GenAI in French language learning, Damay raises concerns about ethics and laziness. “We must see AI as a tool and not a solution,” she said. Rather than using it to replace human writing and critical thinking, Damay said students should use it as an “assistant.” 

Outside of the classroom, Damay is worried that AI will threaten social connections, alluding to a growing number of romantic relationships between humans and AI chatbots. “That is what I am scared about: that people will lose their humanity,” Damay told the Daily. She acknowledged that “we are not there yet,” but that it is a real concern.

In many ways, GenAI appears poised to change education as we know it. That being said, speaking from his perspective as a historian, Dr. Blanc acknowledged that we have seen rapid technological advances before. “I guess I have to say that nothing is ever unique,” he noted. “Google was going to change everything, the personal computer was going to change everything.”

Still, he continued, GenAI presents many unknowns: “It’s going to change how we teach. And I don’t think anyone can quite say how it’s going to do that, or when.”

The post The New Student in Class: Generative AI appeared first on The McGill Daily.