Broke and broken men came back from World War I with hopes of a better Canada. Today we are told they fought for democracy and liberty, free speech, and so forth. They gave their bodies for the empire. But the empire gave them nothing. Injured men had to protest for pensions, widows and orphans starved, workers found meagre wages and closed factory doors. Veterans of the war took to the streets en masse; do we remember their march down Portage Avenue during the Winnipeg General Strike? Our veterans were marked as Bolsheviks, their papers shut down, the freedom of speech they fought for taken away.

Or what about the women? Forced into factories to survive, on average getting paid a third of what men were, they kept the war effort moving every step of the way. Work safety was relaxed, thousands lost limbs or were exposed to toxic materials. Hard-fought strikes were crushed or won. Suffrage was given and taken away. No women meant no war, yet their stories are forgotten.

Then came the Spanish Civil War. You may not know about it, because the Legion never built those brave veterans cenotaphs or monuments. They are not spoken about on Remembrance Day. Their dreams for a better world, their dedication, and their sacrifices are forgotten. The Mackenzie-Papineau battalion fought Hitler’s fascism on the front lines of Spain. Among their ranks was Norman Bethune, who developed blood transfusion on the field. These heroes were our finest, and they deserve to be remembered.

We remember World War II in similar shades of gallantry as World War I. Canadians, Brits, and Americans wanted to destroy fascism – but our leaders were playing empire. They wanted to prolong the war, to let Soviet soldiers be murdered by the millions in combat with the Germans. To appease the impatient Soviets, longing to bring home the troops, a ploy was set. Sacrifice thousands of troops but don’t open a front, to give the impression of effort. The generals must have known the beach was made of small rocks: tanks became stuck, men tripped, most died. The Battle of Dieppe was lost before it ever began. The generals and politicians would only open the Western Front, despite most Canadians’ best intentions, when the Eastern Front had been won by our Soviet Allies. We landed in 1944, five long years after we declared war.

We need to challenge conservative complacency when thinking about the past. Many times, when we look at the past, we mistake our values for facts, our ambitions for reality, the truth for lies. The true act of remembrance criticizes everything. It searches deeply and begs difficult questions of our allegiances and who we are as a nation. Our veterans, living and gone, deserve it.

White Poppies are meant to make us stop and rethink what war means: the civilian tolls, the imperialist legacies placing us against our friends and family who moved beside us from across the world. We know McCrae wrote in the style of Rudyard Kipling, a man who advocated subjugating the Philippines, pillaging India, and colonizing Africa. For these white poets, and many, World War I was an imperialist war, meant to maintain the last bloody vestiges of empire. Our foes were not much different than ourselves. Was this our quarrel?

During World War I, while most Canadians were suffering in poverty or in the trenches, an elite few made millions off the war effort. Can we simultaneously remember their sacrifices abroad and the pain at home and the injustices around the world? When our veterans returned home in 1919, they fought for redistributive taxes and created the beginnings of the welfare state and a strong union movement. When fascist imperialism swept Europe many took up the call, and fought for a better world. Lest we forget.

Jimmy Gutman is a U3 Canadian Studies and History student. To get in touch, email commentary@mcgilldaily.com.

The post Rethinking Remembrance Day appeared first on The McGill Daily.

McGill Dean of Arts Christopher Manfredi has called for 100 Arts courses to be cut for the next academic year. In a town hall meeting with Arts students he emphasized the infeasibility of so many small classes. He spoke in the language of austerity, referencing how “lucky” we were not to be getting across-the-board cuts. Mentioned briefly were the cuts of course lecturer positions and the need to have tenured professors stop teaching small courses in order to teach bigger classes. A professor-turned-manager on Manfredi’s wing of the room delivered a jovial and lively anecdote about how an Arts education was not unlike rowing, and firing course lecturers was merely making sure students got to intimately row with senior rowers (the tenured professors). Larger classes taught by tenured professors would somehow improve education. The implication was that course lecturers are bad rowers and their PhDs and talents are worthless in comparison to tenured professors who are supposedly all great lecturers. It was cute. Many students spoke out passionately for and against the cuts. Many feared the loss of intimate and critical conversation to the impersonal GPA rat race.

I left confused. These cuts are deep and the explanations were contradictory. Some of it made sense. There are, of course, retired courses that need to be removed and under-enrolled courses that need to be rationalized. There are some legitimate needs for housekeeping, sure. But the cuts come articulated against smaller courses in the language of efficiency. The courses that require higher ratios of paid staff to paying students are losing the University money. Put simply, Manfredi wants to minimize the amount of courses that produce less revenue for the University. There is a conversation going on behind closed administrative doors. The belt of austerity is tightening. The global race to privatize and cut public assets and services is being internalized. If the public sector must become profitable, McGill is the front line.

It is a luxury as a McGill Arts student to complain about large classes. I don’t deny this. Many of my friends in other faculties lament the unimaginably large sizes of their courses. Perhaps this is why the Huffington Post rated McGill, out of all universities in Canada and the United States, the university with the most inaccessible professors. If revenue is progress, are we moving forward?

Massive Open Online Courses (MOOC) have been heralded as the way of the future. Imagine classes of thousands students, but no classrooms. Imagine those students enrolled in Montreal, but assessed on the other side of the planet. Imagine no professors, no course lecturers, and no teaching assistants.

At the last Senate meeting MOOCs were presented. The reasons were clear: less spending, more revenue. The difference between sitting in the back of a class of 600, and watching a lecture online isn’t huge. There are some benefits. Free MOOCs – which McGill will probably not adopt – allow students to prepare for university and expand their knowledge. For the students who can’t access McGill’s campus, an online course that forwards your degree is a pleasure and a necessity.

In Senate and at the town hall with Manfredi, there was skepticism and resistance – perhaps only headed conservatism, refusing to change to progress, or perhaps something deeper – a grasping desire for learning and critical debate against the seductive efficiency of profits.

Jimmy Gutman is an Arts Senator. He can be reached at artssenator2@ssmu.mcgill.ca.

The post Curriculum crossroads appeared first on The McGill Daily.

But Montreal is cold. In the winter, temperatures can drop to below thirty degrees Celsius. This cold and damp weather chills the bones. No one should have to live through the cold without adequate housing.

The majority of McGill students are renters. We sign leases, fill our fridges with food and booze, and hope our exams and essays get good marks. But what happens when something breaks? What happens when the little place you call home becomes uninhabitable? What happens when the landlord doesn’t answer the call to fix this or that? What happens when the whispering draft chills you to the bone and the thermostat doesn’t seem to work?

Students, like many people who don’t own much and don’t make much money, are extremely vulnerable. Landlords can take advantage of this. They can try to force students into unfair leases, raise the rent unilaterally, and withhold services. If you don’t know your rights, you’re in trouble. If you know your rights, you’re in for an uphill battle.

To make your landlord do anything, unless you have a good lawyer and money, you need to go to the Régie du logement, the rental board of Quebec. There you file a complaint and hope for the best. For some people, it takes three years to get a hearing. These delays are denials of justice. When you’re freezing, three months is too long, three years unthinkable.

I’m calling on students to stop being trampled on by unfair landlord practices, and I’m calling on SSMU to start lobbying for an end to the delays. We are tenants and we have rights. These are not just student issues, these are human rights issues.

We need to fight this injustice. Join me and Project Genesis on Thursday, October 25 at 11 a.m. at the Régie, 1425 René-Lévesque West to call for justice for those who will be spending the winter in the cold.

If you have any stories, email me. If you have any current problems, I encourage you to go to Project Genesis, talk to legal aid, or go to the Régie du logement. Tell your SSMU politicians to do something.

Get angry and get active.

Jimmy Gutman is an Arts Senator. He can be reached at artssenator2@ssmu.mcgill.ca

The post Let’s take rental action appeared first on The McGill Daily.