This interview has been edited for clarity and conciseness.

Charley Tamagno for the McGill Daily (MD): What’s the day-to-day of an RLF like?

Ksenia Boyer Voutova (KBV):

Right now it’s a lot more intense because we’re doing Welcome Week. Being an RLF feels more like an extracurricular than a job. Because it’s part-time, I still have a busy academic and social life. When I’m working, there’s a lot of different tasks – we either have events or office hours. For the events, we plan them and have to attend them. The office hours can happen from 9 to 5 every weekday. During office hours, you work on project planning and advertisements – whether that be making a poster on Canva, making a reel, [or] replying to student questions on Instagram. We have a lot of meetings, whether that be with our manager or with our teams. There we discuss feedback and brainstorm our next events.

MD: How do the first two weeks differ from the rest of the year?

Olivia Morawetz (OM): You work pretty much full time. Usually, throughout the rest of the year, you work six to 10 hours, and then in the first few weeks you’re working 40 hours. So it’s a full-time gig.

MD: Do you feel like these first two weeks are more rewarding than the rest of the year because you’re really meeting the students? Can you see yourself having an impact?

OM: The first few weeks are definitely the best in terms of visibility. We do hall meetings, where we talk to every single student in the building, and that’s really motivating in terms of making sure that they know who we are and know that we exist. During the rest of the year, attendance really goes down, and it makes you feel like nobody wants to attend events anymore. At the beginning of the year, people are really, really motivated to go to events and meet people and see us and find out who we are.

KBV: I would say there’s still some events in the middle of the year that feel more rewarding than others, especially big ones where you go out of the residence or on trips. You feel more connected to the community.

MD: What kinds of questions are people asking?

OM: Mostly about logistics, either the rules of residence or the events themselves.

KBV: Sometimes they can ask us questions unrelated to residence life, just [because] we’re upper year students at McGill.

OM: I wish more students knew that RLFs are a resource of upper year students who can answer questions about registering for classes or homework or certain subjects. Last year in Upper Residence we did study hall events that were specifically for studying. We would post “I’m going to be at the study hall today, and I’m studying biology,” so that students who study biology can come and ask that person for help.

MD: What was your experience with Floor Fellows in place of RLFs? Do you think there really is a tangible difference between the two?

Note: Before the 2023-2024 school year, Floor Fellows were upper-year students who lived with residents year-round in residences, working more hours than RLFs in addition to being a 24/7 support system. McGill terminated the Floor Fellow program ahead of the 2024-2025 school year.

OM: It’s not just not living in residence — the job changed a considerable amount. There were some union restrictions the first year [after the switch] that made it so that we weren’t allowed to do any job that the Floor Fellows did. We weren’t allowed to put door decorations up because that was something the Floor Fellows did. [Now] it feels a lot more interactive. We have a number of required monthly events. My Floor Fellow didn’t do any events, so I never saw him after the initial meeting at the beginning of the semester. It was very hands-off. The only people that were running consistent events were the council, which I was on. RLFs are definitely more connected and
interacting with the resident community than the Floor Fellows were.

MD: Do you feel like it’s hard to odd template

actually make a connection with the community?

OM: It depends on the person. Yes, because there are specific residents or groups of residents that don’t interact with us at all, and that’s fine. But there are definitely people who I’ve found, after a few years of doing this, who will come to as many events as they can because they just like having free events that they can attend.

MD: How do you pitch events to first years, and is it important for them to attend those events?

OM: I feel like something we’ve been trying to do more recently is asking first years what things they want to see. I think asking students what events they want to see is important, and a lot of them don’t realize that they can message us and be like, “Hey, I want to do a masquerade ball,” and we’ll be like, “Okay, we’ll try and do that.”

Feedback is a really important part of the job. Even when they designed the project planning template, feedback was built into it. You have to write down feedback after every single event. They started doing the symposium last year, which is a place where all the RLFs go to present their most successful and least successful events of the year, and provide feedback on how those went. Then we could take events from other RLFs.

MD: How do you get inspiration for different events?

KBV: A lot of the time, it’s just things we want to do. We all have different hobbies, so Olivia wants to do something and then I want to do something and then we end up having two different events.

OM: Or in previous years we’ve had really good cultural diversity [on the RLF team]. We had specific cultural events because we had people on the team that were part of those communities and were able to let us know that these things were happening.

MD: Do you have a favorite memory or a favorite event?

OM: Well, we did a formal last year, which was our biggest event, and it had a really good turnout in November, which is really rare for our late events. Usually by the end of the first semester, attendance starts to dwindle a little bit because people have made their own friends or it’s exam season and they don’t want to go to things. We had a bar where we had a menu of mocktails that we made [and] we ordered 50 pounds of sushi. It was insane. I was like a waiter running around with sushi. We had a dance floor. We hired a DJ who was a student in Upper. Some guy showed up with a saxophone at one point and was playing that on the dance floor. People were attending it because of the event. Obviously, with that many moving parts, things are bound to go wrong. But the things that went right outweighed the things that went wrong by a million times, and it was a really, really successful event.

KBV: I loved going to the PWHL [Professional Women’s Hockey League] game. It was really fun because it was just different. For a lot of students, it was their first time seeing a hockey game. That was my first time seeing a hockey game. What’s good about these events is that students are able to try out new things.

MD: Is there anything else you would like to add?

OM: I love my job. I love my team.

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Gen Z social media culture has blurred the distinction between basic and niche interests by creating a sort of niche-flation. As certain topics grow in popularity online, and more fans of lesser known topics find each other, the standard of what truly counts as a niche interest keeps rising. Geese, yesterday’s alternative band, can become tomorrow’s mainstream trend overnight. As a result, the niche connoisseurs within this fandom must turn on each other to fight for the spot of the “Number One Fan”, or risk joining the rest of the flock of basic, trend-hopping followers.

Although the ‘Niche Connoisseur’ could covet any band, book, or object, they are easy to spot: whether their subject of choice is the highest grossing band of all time, or has 200 monthly Spotify monthly listeners, they will make sure you know they have a deeper connection to said subject than anyone else. They have two ways of achieving this.

In the first case, when the subject is already popular, the ‘Niche Connoisseur’ turns a widely shared opinion about their interests into a unique statement about their own individuality, one that screams “I like this because I am special.” To do so, they delve into the nooks and crannies of the fandom lore. While this involves more mental gymnastics, it can also be more rewarding because it provides the ‘Niche Connoisseur’ with many, many opportunities to show that while others jumped on the bandwagon, they were the ones who drove it.

For example, I once met a ‘Niche Connoisseur’ who insisted I wasn’t a “real fan” of The Beatles because I didn’t truly know The Beatles discography. Apparently listening to only one album, or a few songs, wasn’t a strong enough expression of my dedication to the band. They argued that if someone really liked The Beatles, they would listen to all of their tracks and see that “Number Nine” is the most sonically impressive Beatles song. Further, they continued, the backstory to each song is incredibly important to actually understanding the music, so a real fan would listen to the tapes of the band recording the songs, then read the footnotes cited on each member’s Wikipedia page.

So, those 36 million people who listen to the Beatles each year may think they like the band, but they don’t truly understand the music because they don’t get the band. After all, can you really appreciate a song like “I Wanna Hold Your Hand” if you don’t know why Paul McCartney isn’t wearing shoes on the Abbey Road album cover?

In the second case of the ‘Niche Connoisseur’, where the subject of enjoyment is more obscure, conflict is (paradoxically) much more likely to arise, especially in online spaces. An alternative band may be known to very few, leading each fan to believe that they are the band’s only true follower. The only one who knew them before they got big — that is, until they find other fans online, and now must prove they were the original fan that posers only seek to imitate.

Let’s imagine an indie band called Hard-Kick that has one popular song that blew up on TikTok. Hundreds of thousands can sing the chorus, but only two people have listened to and enjoyed the full album from which it is from. Both criticize their friends for praising Hard-Kick without meeting the ‘Niche Connoisseur’s standards for enjoying the song. Online, they comment under videos of strangers dancing or lip-syncing to the trending chorus, saying that they’re too “basic” to understand the deeper meaning behind the song, and don’t understand the culture behind it. One day, Fan #1 sees Fan #2’s comment reading, “Real ones know Hard-Kick from the song ‘I Kick Real Hard’ rather than the catchy single ‘Kick Quick’.” Instead of agreeing with Fan #2 that more people should enjoy “I Kick Real Hard”, Fan #1 retorts that, actually, real fans would understand that Hard-Kick’s best song (which is somehow also their least known) is “Kick, Hit, Kick.”

A thread then emerges of both fans trying to out-niche the other over their shared love of Hard-Kick, instead of geeking out about it together. They can’t appreciate their mutual interest, because if others like Hard-Kick just as much as they do, then they are just like everyone else. People who could have been friends are turned to enemies by their own insecurity of being seen as basic. As seen in Marvel comic book and movie fans, who respectively claim that a real fan would read all the comics or watch all the movies.

This niche-on-niche violence happens everyday online, with no peace in sight so long as the standards of what counts as niche is gatekept by a wall of over-possessive fans, who would, to protect their egos, rather see their chosen artist poor and unknown than mainstream and, God forbid, basic. Similarly, for the same reasons, they would rather listen to music alone than play it aloud to an equally enraptured friend.

The ‘Niche Connoisseur’ is annoying to meet in person, discouraging to meet online, and above all else harmful to their artist of choice. In the first case, a person puts down the interest of others in order to further their own ego. The second, they turn what could be an engaging online forum to celebrate an artist into a battleground of “If you liked Y, you would know X.” Both create a negative connotation between the subject and a possible fan. Until the terms “basic” and “niche” are deemed neutral, rather than inferior and superior, ‘Niche Connoisseurs’ will continue to deter people not only from getting to know them personally, but from getting to know their obsession of choice.

The post Please Stop Listening to My Favourite Band appeared first on The McGill Daily.

On July 16, the 230-member blue collar workers’ union at Parc Jean-Drapeau voted unanimously in favour of increasing pressure tactics, such as a general strike, following unsuccessful negotiations with the City of Montreal over a new collective agreement. The union voted on this decision a little over two weeks before Osheaga: one of Canada’s largest music festivals, held annually at Parc Jean-Drapeau and one of the busiest weekends of the year for the park’s workers.

“The first thing that comes to mind when thinking about peak season at Jean- Drapeau is the huge number of people that attend the many events held on the island.” says Meera Pande, U3 cultural studies and political science student at McGill. Every summer, Jean-Drapeau receives hundreds of thousands of visitors for major events, with music festivals such as Piknic Électronik, Palomosa, and Osheaga being especially popular. “Osheaga has always been an all-ages event, but definitely has a specific draw to students looking to make the most of summertime in Montreal.” Ahead of these festivals, you’ll most likely see students reselling last-minute tickets on social media or student clubs and organizations offering discounted tickets for specific events. Students’ lives are vibrant in anticipation of the rush that comes from seeing their favourite artists with their closest friends.

The pre-festival frenzy, however, looks a little different through the lens of the Parc Jean Drapeau workers. The Parc Jean-Drapeau union has been working without a contract since December 2023, when their collective agreement expired. Correspondingly, the union has been in negotiation with the City of Montreal over a new collective agreement. The union is represented by the Canadian Union of Protected Employees (CUPE), Canada’s largest worker’s union. A statement released by the CUPE stated that the 230 workers at the park have not received a pay raise despite increased inflation.

In an interview with the Daily, Pierre- Guy Sylvestre, an economist, CUPE negotiator, and staff member, mentioned that the negotiation table includes a mix of grassroots organizers, union representatives and lawyers. He describes how the union has been mainly focused on reaching a new contract with a wage increase that adjusts for inflation as well as back pay for the past two-and-a-half years workers have operated since the previous contract expired. “Sometimes odd double template here are tough negotiations where even after two years or so, there’s no back time pay [included in the agreement]. This is especially in the private sector. But here with the local section, 301 Blue Collars, the back time’s always going to be respected.”

When asked about what exactly increased pressure tactics can look like, Sylvestre stated that, “Preparing for a strike is very hard, so there are other pressure tactics [unions can apply]. Let’s say we’re working with office staff. Just wearing a t-shirt can really offend bosses. …. The best agenda [would be to] go to meetings and meet your members. Some unions don’t go see those members because they have this rank and file, but it’s too much order. A union is a human relations group, you know? You have to go see the members, you have to talk with them. For me, this is one of the best weapons of any social movement, especially for unions.”

The potential strike may not make waves among incoming and returning McGill students as most of the major Parc Jean-Drapeau events of the summer have come to an end, and students’ focuses are most likely directed to preparing for the upcoming fall semester. Many major Montreal strikes typically seem to go under the radar for university students unless work stoppages directly impact their day-to- day lives, such as the Fall 2025 STM strikes, the 2024 McGill law professor strikes, or the 2025 AirCanada flight attendant strikes.

Despite many McGill students only living in the city temporarily, student life is not isolated from Montreal’s labour economy. A report by the Chamber of Commerce of Metropolitan Montreal found that in 2019–2020, over 173,000 students lived in Greater Montreal. The presence of students in the city was not only economically advantageous as a result of their spending, but also by promoting job creation. Hence, Montreal businesses have molded themselves to be as desirable to students as possible. In addition to the never-ending list of major events throughout Montreal, basic needs and extracurriculars often come at a lower price for students: museums and cinemas, transit fares, and even groceries are cheaper for students. There are hundreds of thousands of blue collar and service workers working day in and day out who make this city what it is. While apathy towards labour grievances is only disturbed once a strike shakes our routines, we students tend to forget that worker compliance is what allows us to enjoy what the city has to offer.

As of late, the union told CTV Montreal there is no strike plan. However, if and when one is announced, I urge McGill students to support the movement and stay informed in any way possible.

“We’re everywhere that’s going to [include] a social fight: equity for women and men, or any kind of discrimination against a group,” stressed Sylvestre. “Unions like CUPE and our allies, we ally together and we fight.”

The post The City’s Ours appeared first on The McGill Daily.

This syllabus week, it’s time for the environmental implications of artificial intelligence to take center stage.

It happens in every course. My history professor will gaze wearily at the class and heave a hefty sigh rife with apprehension before instructing us to turn to the last page of our syllabus. We scroll through the PDF on our laptops until we find the subheading “AI Policy,” the complexity of these eight letters concealed behind a sleek 12- point Times New Roman font underlined in black.

About four years ago, on November 30, 2022, OpenAI released an early demo of its generative artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot, ChatGPT. Five days later, co-founder of OpenAI, Greg Brockman, claimed over one million people had used the technology.

In 2026, ChatGPT and AI usage feel ubiquitous. Journalists grapple with the implications of AI in op-eds, business owners eagerly implement the newest generative AI technology to maximize their profits, and tourists’ iPhones gleam with itineraries generated from a chatbot, restaurant and museum recommendations spilling out faster than they can say “ciao.”

In universities, educators confront a challenge different from anything they have seen before. AI is now a major focus when it comes to syllabus week, earning its own paragraph or even a full page.

Professors never cease to pause — sometimes for dramatic effect, sometimes out of apprehension, often begrudgingly — before raising the question of artificial intelligence use in their course.

The class discussion that follows is predictable. One student will wax lyrical about artificial intelligence short-circuiting the creative process; another will raise concerns over the misinformation that often spews from chatbots; a third will say that AI can never replicate the unique tone of a scholar who spent six months digging through archives instead of six minutes on ChatGPT. Conversations about misinformation and well-researched, human academic writing are all fine and well. In fact, they are very important. I, too, am deeply concerned about the implications of AI in academia, especially in creative disciplines that rely heavily on writing, like the humanities.

I don’t think we should stop having these kinds of discussions — about the moral implications of AI on creativity, originality, and academic rigour. But I am worried that AI’s impact on the environment is being entirely left out of classroom conversations.

In 2025, the MIT Technology Review published a comprehensive assessment of AI’s energy footprint, bluntly laying out the real environmental implications of the technology. The authors spoke to dozens of experts who measured AI’s energy and water usage and then analyzed their findings to reveal exactly how generative AI systems work.

For one, before a user can prompt ChatGPT to write a research paper or draft an email, AI models are trained in data centres. These centers are incredibly energy intensive, often requiring millions of gallons of water every day for cooling technology to prevent overheating. In 2023, data centres worldwide consumed 175 billion litres of water and training OpenAI’s GPT-4 model alone consumed about 50 gigawatt-hours of energy — the same amount needed to power San Francisco for three days.

By 2030, global data centres powering AI are projected to consume about 945 terawatt-hours of electricity, according to a United Nations University Institute for Water, Environment, and Health report published in June. That’s nearly three times the annual electricity use of Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Nigeria combined.

While data centers guzzle enormous amounts of water and energy, about 90 per cent of AI’s power use comes from online everyday user requests, according to Miriam Aczel, co-author of the UN study and environmental policy researcher. AI operational requests (like prompting a chatbot to write a LinkedIn post) require substantial amounts of energy, estimated to take up to 10 times more energy than a Google search. While the exact amount of energy used varies based on the prompt, it is clear that the average chatbot query is not as harmless as one might think.

Artificial intelligence is anything but artificial in its very real, measurable environmental costs. Scientific researchers, journalists, and think tanks are spelling this out like flashing stoplights that are impossible to miss.

So why are we not talking about it in the classroom?

Why have we stopped thinking about our natural habitat when it comes to AI? Have we all gotten so swept up in the ethics of using artificial intelligence in the world of academia that we have forgotten about the natural world right in front of us?

It’s time to steer the discussion about AI away from the abstract and toward the concrete. This week, when your professor will inevitably ask your thoughts on artificial intelligence, consider raising your hand to join the discussion.

Your professor may be surprised. They may respond in earnest, or even use your comment as a launchpad for a larger conversation, asking the rest of the class what they think.

Yes, creativity, critical thinking and authenticity in academia matter. But so does the environment. It’s time to start acting like it.

The post The Environmental Cost of AI appeared first on The McGill Daily.

We, Gen Z, are the generation who are constantly told by Millennials and Gen X that we have killed the dance floor, that we drink less and date less than any generation before, that AI will be taking over our pointless degrees, and that climate change will kill us before we can have children or own a home. When we do go clubbing to seize the supposedly fleeting days we have left, we open social media the next morning only to be asphyxiated by hundreds of reels with people advising us to go to the gym, hit our protein goals, stay home, and make zero-calorie-low-fat-oat-milk-chia-seed slop for a sweet treat (as you’re watching these reels, you’ve done none of these things). The irony and the pressure are discouraging.

Wellness Anarchism is a term coined by British award winning brand strategist and entrepreneur Tom Garland in 2025. Garland is an expert with over twelve years of experience in consumer research and trend forecasting, and founder of the brand consultancy edition+partners. Garland’s Wellness Anarchist is someone who strives to lead a balanced yet uninhibited lifestyle, ultimately rejecting the overbearing health and life optimization peddled by the mainstream wellness industry. For example, the Wellness Anarchist could be found at their run club, but always finishing it off with celebratory drinks. A term that began as a consumer archetype has evolved into less of an identity and more a
wide range of daily habits. These habits are particularly enacted by Gen Z for a sense of control over the futurity that has been taken from us. Wellness culture, with its traditionally strict, all-or-nothing framework, has thus been met with Wellness Anarchist resistance. The practices Gen Z appear to be using to combat it include, but are not limited to a notable surge in: smoking; short-term and noncommittal relationships; and making frequent, smaller purchases rather than large savings and investments.

Of course, there is something to be said about seeking instant gratification and rebellion, and their historical connection to youth. Disobeying parents’ wishes, sneaking out, or impulsively changing one’s appearance, to name a few examples, have long been staples of youth culture and the tendency to prioritize our immediate desires over future consequences. Wellness Anarchism, even before the term was coined, has always been a means for young adults to manage the stresses and anxieties of being in such a transitional stage of life. But in the year of 2026, we all have much more on our plates than we ever bargained for — and online discourse of Gen Z’s doom, combined with wellness culture being pushed down our throats, certainly isn’t lightening the load.

Two years ago, Substacker Sarah Noack published her article, “Dump your matcha and have a cigarette, bitch,” that now has over 22.5K likes and 4.5K reposts. Despite the conviction in her title, Noack highlights how the Ikarians, inhabitants of one of the world’s Blue Zones (regions with high population longevity), have never engaged in what we know to be wellness practices. Rather, they simply walk or swim instead of going for spin class, they also nap, eat locally produced food, and most importantly, enjoy substances like alcohol and tobacco for pleasure rather than as vices. A portion of Gen Z is arguably no longer just following in the footsteps of our predecessors’ reckless youth but also using these habits as what Noack describes as a “necessary escape.”

The latest Canadian Tobacco and Nicotine Survey from 2022 shows young adult smokers (20-24) decreased from 10 per cent in 2021 to 8 per cent in 2022, and smoking reached generational lows worldwide. However, we do not yet have data from the past year, when smoking cigarettes made a dramatic resurgence online. Whether it’s Kylie Jenner lighting one on the cover of Vanity Fair or countless images of Connor Storrie and Hudson Williams with cigarettes in hand, we’ve all watched the revival of the cigarette as a symbol of rebellion, an aesthetic, and, for some, an escape from everyday pressures.

Earlier this year, the CBC released an article titled “Smoking is making a pop culture comeback (even if the risks haven’t changed),” which fully explains how smoking has made a large return to mainstream media. In the article, Jared Oviatt, who runs the popular Instagram account @cigfluencers, said he saw the pop culture resurgence of smoking as separate from other mundane daily habits. However, through his social media presence, Oviatt has expended time, effort, and energy towards the aestheticization of the cigarette. It works directly in his favour to argue that the pop culture spotlight on smoking has no real effects, hence avoiding culpability for perpetuating smoking as an aesthetic, while maintaining his own habit guilt-free. Oviatt’s prediction of the ultimate demise of the trend ignores the fact that cigarettes are an addictive chemical substance, not something as innocent as a polka dot top from Brandy Melville. While we do not yet have the data to assess the real-world impacts of the cigarette’s cultural renaissance, celebrities can influence what we find cool, what we purchase, and where we go. Hence, it would be naive to say their actions are totally distinct from our own and have no impact on our individual choices.

Where I can agree with Oviatt is his theory on why young people smoke. Oviatt acknowledges that broader economic and social pressures are at play: “The anxiety over climate change, general burnout … it’s all part of it.” There has always been a traditional appeal to doing something taboo, recreationally sharing substances to foster a sense of community, and emulating your idols. Still, smoking has been on the decline for decades now. What’s different today is the pressure our generation faces, and a resulting inability to conceptualize our futures.

What’s more, Gen Z is notably dating less than previous generations, notoriously choosing more low-commitment, non-exclusive romantic relationships. The Atlantic declared that we are in a “Great Romance Slump”, with declining marriage rates and exclusive relationships, with 42 per cent of single adults under 40 in 2019 having never been in a committed relationship. Moreover, Gen Z has been spending more on everyday, smaller purchases to make their day-to-day lives easier, rather than saving for large future purchases. I would argue that the loss of our capacities to imagine a successful and secure future, and our consequent sense of general despair, contribute to a lack of commitment present both in romantic relationships and in the fruits of our spending power. Of course, low-commitment, non-exclusive romantic relationships have always existed. Gen Z has only legitimized this dynamic by giving it a name: the “situationship.” Even then, it appears to be more present than ever before.

Alongside a discernible revival of the cigarette, a decline in committed exclusive romantic relationships and an increase in short-term spending, it seems paradoxical that sobriety is on the rise. A World Finance Report found that Gen Z averages around 20 per cent less alcohol consumption than millennials. There are many possible reasons for this: a better understanding of the dangers of drinking, inflated prices, wellness culture, to name a few. If all of this data is factual, then why do we throw caution to the wind with our wallets, lungs, and love lives, but not alcohol?

No matter how one looks at the data, Gen Z appears to take the hit. We are smoking more, meaning we suck; dating less, meaning we suck; and drinking less. Though supposedly healthier, the narrative remains that we are less fun, and thus suck. In contention, I would argue that it is not Gen Z who is responsible for the death of the dance floor, but our predecessors. With their wellness culture and talk of doom and despair, they have made us the generation of Wellness Anarchism: the same generation that has brought back smoking and rejects commitment more than ever, who will always buy the overpriced latte.

I don’t speak from a place of judgement, but of deep understanding. I am proud to be a Gen Z, so it is hard to be unbiased. But I believe our actions, individual and collective, are valid responses to the state of global affairs, to the overbearing influencers on our phones, and to the way we have been treated by older generations, which has altered our perception of what the future holds and its meaning.

However, as much as these small patterns can bring great relief, we are far from as anarchistic as we may believe. Even if we are using these habits as fleeting escapes from the precarity we face, they are still merely attempts to cope; not, as we saw with Noack’s article, a sign of genuine, carefree living. There is power in Wellness Anarchism, but we are engaging in it out of necessity, not real interest. The $10 matchas are not just simple pleasures, but pinpricks of light amidst a seemingly dreary present and future.

Documentary photographer and poet Sophia Borzilleri articulated it best in an Instagram post, where she described her smoking habit as a means of reminding herself that life doesn’t always have to be taken so seriously, that she can do things that are objectively bad and be at peace with it. This frame of thought counters the dominant narrative in all our lives, that everything is that serious and that everything won’t be okay.

However, Borzilleri adds nuance to this perspective when she says “For me, when I smoke a cigarette, it’s a moment for me to step outside and breathe and realize nothing is that serious. But I want to be able to do that without the cigarette. I want to be able to realize that I don’t always have to be curated, [planned, perfectly healthy] and whatever in order to be okay. I can live in a balance.”

As we begin a new school year, it’s important to be conscious of our habits, not in pursuit of condemning them as either good or bad, but rather to recognize why we engage in certain patterns. Acts such as smoking or spending provide us with a moment of control in a time when we are told we have so little. However, our generation is entitled to living in the present, not because the future does not exist, but because it is something worth looking forward to.

The post The Death of Futurity appeared first on The McGill Daily.

Paris is the world’s most popular travel destination and welcomes around 48 million people every
year. The economic benefits of tourism clash against the city’s efforts to conserve what they deem to be historical landmarks — including residential buildings — breeding tension among the city’s inhabitants. Along with other so- called “Eurosummer” destinations, Paris is slowly turning itself into an open air museum for the sake of its visitors — at the expense of its residents’ livelihood.

Like many other European cities, Paris is dealing with a housing crisis and has faced a steady population decline since 2012. Parisians are struggling to find decent affordable housing, which is in large part linked to the rise of short term home rental services like AirBnB. Landlords would much rather rent to tourists for short term stays than to residents all year round for less money. Unlike other destinations like Barcelona and Berlin, where home-sharing of single rooms is a common practice, 87 per cent of Paris’s short-term rentals are entire apartments, which otherwise could have been all-year round rentals.

Parisian architectural design poses an additional challenge for its residents, as the emblematic 19th- century Haussmannian buildings can be a pain to live in. As of 2024, zinc roofers’ craftsmanship on Parisian Haussmannian buildings has been added to the UNESCO cultural heritage list. Though very beautiful on the outside, those iconic zinc roofs do a deplorable job at regulating temperatures inside the home. This issue has been especially pressing in the past few years during the repeated heatwaves in Western Europe, with temperatures reaching 40°C this summer. Renters living on top floors of Haussmannian buildings have described “going crazy” in the heat with temperatures reaching 35°C inside, which can cause dehydration, heat exhaustion, or even heatstroke. Students are particularly an affected demographic as they often choose these lower-rent apartments. However, switching out the zinc roofs for a more sustainable alternative is out of the question, especially now that these designs have been listed by UNESCO.

The increase in short term rentals and the conservation of old landmarks feeds into the housing crisis which itself is a factor in the decline of population in the city. While this decline is partly due to the aging population, many Parisians end up moving out of the city to find affordable housing with more space. In terms of preserving residents’ quality of life, other touristic destinations such as Barcelona have elected their mayor on a promise to fight the housing crisis by revoking short-term rentals licenses, for instance. Paris has yet to take actions to protect residents against short-term rentals.

Furthermore, tourism often comes along with mass consumption, which can damage the social web of the city and accelerate gentrification. While high rates of tourism might stimulate economic growth and employment, it can create friction with the residents of these areas. In 2025, the city of Paris profited €24 billion from tourism, and 1 out of 10 jobs in Paris are now dependent on the tourism industry.

The tourist’s appetite for sightseeing takes shape as a “tourist gaze” that shifts urban planners’ focus away from residents and towards the marketability of the city. For instance, the city’s current focus is shifting towards a “luxury” clientele with higher purchasing power to maximize profits. As tourists come to a certain city, retail businesses shift around them. Neighbourhood services such as grocery stores, local markets, or even laundromats are being replaced by boutiques, high- end restaurants, and American-style coffee shops. “Authentic French restaurants” tend to pop up in neighbourhoods such as Montmartre, le Marais, or le Quartier Latin with English-only menus providing “typical French food” any tourist would expect to eat in France at an inflated price. Social media leads mass tourism to operate in a snowball effect, a viral video is enough to replace a shop’s local clientele with an interminable line of transients. In fact, the small local bakery my brother used to frequent has been deemed “the best bakery in Paris” on TikTok and now has a permanent waiting line. As the city is
slowly changing in order to appeal to its many visitors, how can it live up to the expectations of people traveling for an “authentic” experience?

The issues Paris faces are observed in any given city with an increasing reliance on tourism to drive their economy. Tourism grew exponentially from 25 million international tourists in 1950, to 1.3 billion in 2017, and that number is expected to go up to 1.8 billion in 2030. In many places like Paris, tourism is one of the main embodiments of unchecked capitalism. Tourist attractions today are consumed quickly, a moment captured in a photograph or a video, which is then posted on social media to join thousands of almost identical posts. People’s real, everyday lives become a piece of entertainment, a bullet point on someone’s bucket list, an “exotic” highlight on someone’s Instagram profile. Entire neighbourhoods’ livelihoods wither away, while the architecture of the city slowly but surely freezes itself in time.

The post My Midsummer’s Nightmare appeared first on The McGill Daily.

The move-in and move-out periods generate a significant amount of waste in the Milton Parc neighbourhood. The dumpsters outside of residence halls overflow with cardboard boxes and single use packaging. Piles of black trash bags line the sidewalks from Lorne to Hutchison. Even just the packaging that comes with furnishing a dorm room or an apartment results in a massive amount of trash when multiplied by thousands of students.

The truth is that stopping the move-out mass littering begins at move-in. The reality for many McGill students is that we are temporary residents in Montreal, and many of us will leave the city after graduation. As much as departure seems far away upon arrival, we must remember that many of our possessions will not come with us when we leave.

As university students, how often are we thinking about the afterlife of our belongings when contemplating a purchase? It’s easy to imagine the missing piece for a shared living room or a shoebox dorm room when shopping after move-in. Much less often are we thinking of a piece of plastic that will take thousands of years to break down. The expectation should not be to buy something that will serve its purpose for a few years before being tossed away. Rather, moving into one’s apartment should come with the understanding that we have a responsibility to be sustainable for the sake of our neighborhood, environment, and wallet.

Instead of buying mass-produced items, turn to second-hand. when it comes to filling up your space. In addition to being better for the environment, buying second-hand will likely save you money in the process. Montreal has a vibrant Facebook Marketplace community, where you can find all sorts of furniture and unique decor for low prices, or even free of charge. And once you’re ready to move out of your university apartment, you can easily re-list items online or simply donate them to a local thrif store.

McGill runs its own on-campus thrift store out of University Hall. Launched in 2024 by Student Housing Services with the support of the Office of Sustainability, ThriftMcGill has since received over 10,000 donations including clothing, home decor, books, kitchenware, and board games. All items are free of charge for McGill students, making furnishing an apartment readily accessible.

When moving out, think of non-profit organization Sollicite’s Trash2Treasure initiative: a circular, volunteer-based program which redistributes used furniture and household items to charitable organizations across the island. Since 2017, the organization has dedicated itself to cleaning up the neighbourhood for a good cause. During the late-April move-out season, the team collaborates with the Students Society of McGill University (SSMU) to run multiple days of free home-collection services in Milton Parc. Volunteers pick up discarded items, including electronics, furniture, and small appliances, that can be recycled for those in need. In 2025 alone, they collected over 18 tonnes of material and gave new life to 96 per cent of it.

Frosh soon follows the excitement of residence move-in and OAP brings thousands of students to the lower field in the first week of classes. Both events have dedicated coordinators who work with McGill’s Office of Sustainability. In September 2025 OAP earned a gold sustainability certification, while the Management, Engineering, and Music Froshes earned platinum. In order for these events to happen, we have to be respectful and responsible participants and clean up our waste.

The beginning of the fall semester brings a lot of excitement to McGill’s undergraduate community, but we must remember the neighbourhood’s permanent residents while having fun. When attending back-to-school parties or other events in Milton Parc and beyond, dispose of cans, cups, and other plastic waste responsibly. Not only will cleaning up after partying help you avoid fines from your landlord, but it’s the right thing to do for our neighbours and our planet.

Moving into a dorm or returning to an apartment is, for many students leaving home to study, one of the most exciting parts of the university experience. But ultimately, Canada produces nearly five million tonnes of plastic waste each year, less than seven per cent of which is successfully recycled into new products. Bottom line, it is our responsibility to be mindful of the ways we can keep Milton Parc and Montreal clean throughout our time as residents on the island all year round.

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The book has an interesting concept, as it addresses the harsh reality of living with a terminal illness. Noah is diagnosed with Huntington’s disease as a young adult, and his diagnosis catalyzes much of the conflict in the novel as it causes him to push AJ away. While I appreciated the author’s attempt at portraying life with a terminal illness, I felt as though it was only employed superficially as a roadblock to the protagonists’ romance instead of as something essential to Noah’s character.

Rather than portray the difficulties of navigating a relationship while dealing with a terminal illness, the book uses Noah’s diagnosis to pit the protagonists against each other as they disagree about what his medical course of action should be. Noah’s uncertain future is a point of contention between him and AJ for almost the entire novel. While that conflict is understandable and realistic, it never truly gets resolved until the end of the story. The book details their on-again, off-again romance fueled by their opposing beliefs on Noah’s future. However, the story would have been much more compelling had the two protagonists navigated the conflict together, rather than let it tear them apart for thirteen years. After a while, their arguments became repetitive, causing me to lose interest in their relationship. It also felt as though neither of them grew emotionally over the course of the story, and instead remained trapped in the same mindsets they had when they first met. This lack of character and relational development left so much unfulfilled potential for mutual growth and understanding of one another. Hence, the story as a whole fell flat for me.

Moreover, despite AJ and Noah’s bond surviving thirteen years of uncertainty, their situation is not one that should be romanticized. They meet when AJ is in high school, do some improv together, and kiss once before Noah leaves town. AJ is then hung up on him for the rest of the novel—even when she is engaged to another man, and would rather watch Noah, who has become a famous actor, attend the Oscars on television than plan her wedding with her fiancé.

Second chance romances are nothing new, present in beloved romance films such as The Notebook and used to show an unbreakable love between two characters. However, this novel presents AJ and Noah’s bond as something that AJ cannot seem to escape from, even after a decade. While some may find that romantic, I certainly didn’t, and I spent most of the book hoping that AJ would finally get over Noah and move on with her life. Their relationship seemed to hold AJ hostage emotionally, never truly benefiting either character until the end of the novel.

While the romance in itself is undesirable, the book’s main problem is its writing. The first section of the novel follows AJ in the third person during the summer before her last year of high school. The writing, while meant to reflect the mind of a teenager, is at times downright cringeworthy. When AJ first encounters Noah at her job at a video rental store, she describes him as being “so big, he made the DVD case look like baseball cards” (page 12) — an unrealistic and frankly ridiculous line, which is a perfect way to summarize the writing in this novel. Noah can be stripped down to a tall, brooding type while AJ is the quirky loner who pines after him. These tropes have been overdone for decades, so to see them in such a new work — especially one that has received numerous good reviews — is strange and worrisome.

Not only did the juvenile, shallow writing provide an unpleasant reading experience, but it demonstrated the amount of effort that the author put into the development of the protagonists’ bond. On page 33, AJ describes Noah’s eyes as “not ugly” when they change colour in the sun. The lack of effort put into this line irritated me so much that I had to close the book and take a deep breath. Though cliché, this line could have depicted the intimate act of a character observing the small details about a loved one that most people might not notice. However, in this case, the author does not even bother to choose a single compelling adjective to end the sentence with, instead providing us with a useless statement that lacks substance and meaning.

There was potential for Brodie to create a powerful story about navigating romantic relationships in the face of terminal illnesses and the hardships that come along with them. As much as I wanted to love this book, I was disappointed multiple times: first by the poor writing style and then by the weak narrative. Rather than depicting how love can conquer all, this novel showed how no story can conquer a mediocre composition.

The post Into the Editing Room appeared first on The McGill Daily.

As Premier, Fréchette had the opportunity to act in one legislative session before the upcoming election, likely the last session with a CAQ majority until the following election. During this time, CAQ administration attempted to pass 27 bills. The Fréchette government’s first bill was particularly symbolic: an early renewal of the notwithstanding clause protecting the controversial Bill 96/Law 14, which consolidated the role of the French language in public, professional, and academic life by strengthening Bill 101. The Fréchette administration further expanded Bill 101 for vocational and adult education as well as changes to the application process for low-cost housing, with specific provisions regarding students. With limited time, these were abandoned. Still, a ban on selling energy drinks to youth under 16, the regulation of ticket resales and subscriptions, the Gabie Renaud law (granting individuals the ability to inquire about a potential partner’s domestic abuse history), and nine others were passed.

While Fréchette initially championed bills concerning language, they seem to have lost steam in the national assembly as they neared the session deadline. Due to the need for the opposition’s consent to further major legal projects, the CAQ government instead focused on achieving “results without drama.” This meant focusing on bills that wouldn’t get stuck in debate or in committee before the session ended. This also created distance between Fréchette and the famously confrontational Legault. She further distanced herself by criticizing Legault’s “economic interventionism,” referring to the auditor general’s report published on June 10. Despite the deliberate change in “tone,” Fréchette still sees Legault’s policies on the French Language and Quebec Culture as successful and intends to continue in that direction. On the abandoned Bill 101 expansion, she stated, “I understand that if we bring back this bill and we will, should we be reelected, we can modify the process to consult the English community.”

In the same interview on June 15, the only formal English language interview with Fréchette since becoming Premier, she praised McGill and Concordia as “important, world-class institutions.” A day later, on June 16, Fréchette’s higher education minister, Martine Biron, announced a deal with McGill, Concordia, and Bishop’s offering $20 million a year as long as 60 per cent of out-of-province students reach level 4 proficiency in oral French. In addition, these schools will have to pay fines if they fail to reach the quota. This does not change the tuition hike, which remains in effect despite the Quebec Superior Court deeming that the near doubling of fees for out-of-province students is “unreasonable.” As the former Minister of Immigration, Francization and Integration, this does not only represent a continuation of her predecessor’s policies, but of her own.

Recent polling by Leger shows that language is not among the highest priorities for most anglophone and francophone voters in Quebec, with the cost of living and quality of health services ranking as higher priority issues. That said, 12 per cent of voters still view Quebec’s language and culture as one of their highest priorities, while 24 per cent of anglophones who intend to move out in the next two years cite language in some form as the main reason. Anglophones also clearly diverge in their voting intentions as well, with 55 per cent support for the Quebec Liberal Party (PLQ) and 20 per cent for the Conservative Party of Quebec (PCQ). By contrast, the general Quebec population sees 24 per cent and 13 per cent respectively, with the separatist Parti Québécois (PQ) leading at 30 per cent support and the CAQ competing for second with 20 per cent.

There is no scheduled English language debate between the party leaders as the CAQ and the PQ declined their invitations, and the PLQ will not participate in debates without the other four parties. The last English-language debate in Quebec’s provincial history occurred in 2018, with the only other one occurring back in 1985. The “Dialogue jeunesse des chef·fes” planned by the Institute du Nouveau Monde (INM). This event was scheduled for August 25th meant to allow youth to directly ask questions to party leaders, yet it was also cancelled. This raises questions about whether young anglophone Quebecers are being adequately included in conversations about the province’s future.

For Quebecers, and particularly for students at McGill, these debates are about more than abstract questions of language policy or provincial politics. They shape who can study in Quebec, how accessible its universities are, and whether young people see a future for themselves here. For McGill students, the effects are especially tangible. The provincial government can directly affect their education and their decision to remain in Quebec after graduation. Regardless of how one feels about the CAQ’s approach, these policies matter because they will help determine who feels they have a place in Quebec’s future.

The post Premier Christine Fréchette on Language appeared first on The McGill Daily.

The evening of June 25 saw Fortner perform a solo show at Gesú Concert Hall, near the end of a packed first day of the Montreal International Jazz Festival. Fortner darted quickly onto the stage, phone in one hand and a paper cup of steaming hot tea in the other, smiling at the crowd. “As per usual, I don’t know what I’m gonna do,” he said, and the audience responded with a nervous chuckle. “Bear with me.” 

Seated at a Kawai grand piano, he began with a crowd favourite, “Don’t You Worry ’Bout a Thing” by Stevie Wonder — an interpretation long-time Fortner fans knew from his 2023 album Solo Game. 

“Don’t You Worry ’Bout A Thing” began with a sparse and fleeting arrangement of the famous verse.  Throughout the tune, different sporadic ideas, bubbling up from the deepest depths and raining down from the highest registers of the piano, began to enter into a clear conversation with the main melody, creating a shimmering veil of harmony. In interviews, Fortner has said that he sees harmony as a “set of simultaneous melodies” — an idea stemming straight from classical counterpoint and Ellingtonian composition. As he broadened his harmonic and rhythmic horizons over the course of the song, it became clear that this was not just a catchphrase: it was a core philosophy of Fortner’s playing. It would be easy to imagine each finger having a mind of its own, constantly in a battle between its own desires and the resolution of the larger harmonic theme. The melody, which is ordinarily relegated to the highest voice of an arrangement, was shifted time and again between hands and across different octaves, much as Ravel or Beethoven would transfer thematic motifs through different sections of a symphony orchestra. All of this was overlaid with a masterful articulation and touch, where different voices would come out of the blue, suddenly taking dynamic precedence at times even over the main melody. While many may think of harmony strictly as a way to embellish melody, the care and attention Fortner gave to every harmonic idea made it clear that he didn’t view things in such a straightforwardly hierarchical way. 

He deconstructed “Don’t Worry ’Bout a Thing” piece by piece, peering at each harmonic and rhythmic idea from a few different angles before returning it to its place to fiddle with a new theme. Throughout this demonstration of mastery, Fortner maintained an air of ease and a playful touch. His tapping foot, a quiet onlooker for most of the tune, gradually became a participating accompanist, matching the instrument’s volume as Fortner entered a dynamic peak before fading again into the background of the simple verse. Fortner ended the tune just as he’d started it: with the simplicity of the Stevie Wonder classic.

Fortner’s trademark harmonic exceptionalism and his favoured use of deconstruction were put on pause for a profoundly simple rendition of Oscar Peterson’s L’Impossible. While interpreted by Peterson in certain instances as a Bossa Nova, Fortner’s performance skewed more towards a genre-ambiguous, sine-like purity. A steady offbeat chordal ostinato sounded for nearly the entire duration of the piece, providing a novel departure from the pianist’s relentless explorative rhythmic and harmonic forays. He kept Peterson’s simple diatonic melody relatively free of ornamentation, allowing the audience space to focus on the sound of the piano, the beauty of the melody, and his precise articulation. The peaceful etude seemed to wind its way through gentle hills and across expansive valleys before ending abruptly to nearly everyone’s surprise. The audience was left almost offended: what happened to the melody?! The steadiness and timelessness? Perhaps that’s just what happens, and it is certainly what Fortner intended. 

In addition to being one of jazz’s most cherished legends, Oscar Peterson grew up in the heart of Montreal, where he is now celebrated as one of the city’s most prolific artistic innovators. Fortner evidently took advantage of the location of this venue to highlight Peterson’s legacy — In addition to L’Impossible, his set included a piece from Peterson’s Canadiana Suite, entitled Place St. Henri in honour of the composer’s childhood neighbourhood in south-west Montreal. 

Place St. Henri showcased Fortner’s expertise and knowledge of the jazz repertoire in fiery fashion. Jumping into the tune from a tense silence, his hands slid rapidly from the polar ranges of the concert grand towards middle C, before converging and floating into the higher register in synchrony. This synchrony proved to be short-lived, however, when Fortner proceeded to enter into the familiar out-in left-hand stride pattern championed by everyone from James P. Johnson and Art Tatum to Oscar Peterson. While stride piano is well regarded at all tempos, Fortner decided to employ it at a virtuosically fast clip while his right hand flew around the upper keys in a blur evoking the song’s composer. The audience was already in awe, but Fortner took it further up a notch, dialing up the tempo and the intensity with unwavering precision. An audible murmur and dispersed laughter could be heard throughout the audience. 

Even as the fiery rampage of the piano reached an immensity in volume that seemed to overtake the man at its keys, there was no question that he alone still held the reins. Fortner, who had been peering at the audience and swaying back and forth throughout the show, was now 100 per cent focused. Hunched over, he kept his eyes glued to his darting hands. Just as the heat reached peak ferocity, Fortner dialed back to his tempo primo — a masterful demonstration of tension and release. Then, before anyone could even get the idea of relaxing, Fortner gave a bold flourish, halting the momentum completely with a bang on a low note and jumped clean out of his seat, bolting off the stage. Almost instantly, the audience erupted in almost disbelieving applause. Fortner walked back onstage moments later to a standing ovation.

Once the audience had collected themselves, a final ballad resonated through the concert hall, contemplative and lush. Fortner rounded out the soft tune before following it with a sweeping final cadenza, paying homage to the dualities that had characterized the whole show: a blend of fast and slow, complexity mirrored against simplicity, order balancing chaos. These are the ingredients with which Fortner works, and from my experience are highlighted especially during his solo performances. 

After all, Fortner is not simply a pianist. He is, first and foremost, an arranger — an expert at organizing and rearranging complex webs of rhythm and harmony to create something with as much scope as an orchestral composition within the 88 keys of his instrument. Every tune he plays is orchestrated with a distinct texture, evocative of a range of feelings. With a back pocket full of arranging techniques to pull from, built up over a lifetime of training and experience, every set Fortner plays is guaranteed to be completely unique. What unites them is his humour, insight, and musicality, which suffuses every piece he plays with his distinctive musical fingerprint. Fortner frequently tours with acclaimed vocalist Cecile McLorin Salvant, and his piano trio with Tyrone Allen and Kayvon Gordon (releasing an album, Leave That In There, in late August). While these groups are all incredible in their own ways as distinguished faces of modern jazz, an opportunity to see one of Fortner’s rare solo shows should not be missed.

The post Review: Sullivan Fortner Solo at Gesú Concert Hall appeared first on The McGill Daily.

Every year, I fall for it: the sun sells me a fantasy, and I’m its number one customer. Summer always seems to promise a better body, a new love affair, a different personality, more spontaneity, more invitations, and the illusion that life will become cinematic. The season is never just about the weather. It is my annual opportunity to imagine becoming someone else. June feels like a dare; I start thinking I am the kind of woman who drinks wine at 4:00 p.m., and suddenly my closet is filled with clothes designed for a version of my life that does not exist. I’m spending money with the same carelessness that belongs to girls with family money and naturally good skin. By the second week of June, I start moving through the city with the sort of confidence that can only come from heat and self-deception.

Summer is cruel because it publicizes the body. It strips away its protective layers, physically and socially, and every year I feel the same little panic begin to hum under my skin. As the weather warms, the questions arrive right on schedule: Is my summer body ready? Have I somehow failed the season before it has properly begun? This is where summer begins to feel punitive. Bare skin is sold to us as freedom by an entire culture obsessed with women looking beautiful in heat, when in reality it often feels like surveillance in better lighting. The higher the temperature climbs, the stronger the pressure to look effortless, bronzed, toned, and flirtatious. The more relentless the heat becomes, the more absurdly aware I am of everything: my legs, my stomach, the shine of sweat, the smudge of my makeup, the betrayals of hair in humidity. Summer afternoons gleam in a way that feels almost taunting. They make you more visible yet less secure at the same time. That is the tragedy of the season: it asks women to look relaxed at the precise moment they are most exposed. It is hard not to compare yourself in a city full of girls who look as if they were invented by July, girls who seem to have emerged fully formed from sunlight, while the rest of us are left trying to pass off self-consciousness as a kind of glow. As if enough bronzer, enough confidence, and enough pretending might turn discomfort into beauty. 

In the same fashion, summer’s pleasures are never really free, no matter how naturally they try to present themselves. Patios, vacations, beach weekends, cottages, festivals — all of it is made to look casual by the sort of people who can afford for leisure to seem unplanned. But who gets to disappear for August? Who is serving drinks to the people participating in the summer? There is something especially bleak about being broke in a season organized around pleasure, having to work while everyone else performs freedom online. This is my real grievance with the fantasy of summer we are annually being sold: it pretends to be democratic because the sun shines on everyone equally, but the good version belongs mostly to people with money, time, and somewhere nicer to be. 

Another cruelty of summer is men, desire, and the stupidity that arrives with the heat. Summer makes us behave as if desire is a simple matter. Who, after all, does not enjoy the idea of a little low-commitment seasonal flirtation? But the hotter the days get, the bolder and less interesting men seem to become. Summer gives them the confidence of people who mistake being outside for having a personality. Suddenly, every man with a drink on a terrace thinks he has become charming, when really he has just become visible. Still, there is something tempting about the performance. Summer romance is a genre people insist on reenacting, no matter how often it ends badly. As the days grow longer, so does the annual hope that this time I will have fun and not end up humiliated. I have come to believe that, collectively, we confuse heat with excitement, boredom with spontaneity, and loneliness with chemistry. Summer flatters desire by making it feel ambient and easy, when in reality, that atmosphere often hides how unstable and disappointing romantic attention can be. Summer is very kind to mediocre men. It gives them a little shimmer, and they almost always confuse it for substance. I say this without judgment, because I am hardly innocent myself. I know exactly what can happen when the night is warm, the light is flattering, and your standards begin dissolving as quietly as the ice in your drink.

Underneath all the brightness, summer can be profoundly lonely, perhaps because it is the season most aggressively associated with sociability, romance, and fun. And while I would never be gauche enough to admit to something as vulgar-sounding as the Fear of Missing Out, I do find it difficult not to feel that everyone else is out enjoying the leisure that is promised with the season. Summer creates a peculiar pressure not only to avoid empty weekends but to be seen having a good time. There is a quiet shame in staying in on a beautiful night and an even quieter fear of wasting the season altogether. There is shame, too, in not being transformed by it, in remaining stubbornly yourself while everyone else seems to have been improved by absorbing ample sunlight. Summer creates a special kind of sadness: not just unhappiness, but the humiliating sense that you are failing at pleasure. In winter, sadness at least feels seasonally appropriate. In summer, it feels impolite. Have you ever felt the strange violence of a beautiful day that does absolutely nothing for you, as if even the light has joined in to make you feel inadequate?

If summer disappoints so reliably, why does it remain so seductive? Because people need a season for projection. Summer offers a socially sanctioned period for hope, fantasy, erotic possibility, and the delicious idea that life could still become more beautiful. Its optimism is cruel, yes, but also strangely necessary. People want a time of year that seems to forgive ordinary life, to suspend its drearier facts for a few golden hours at a time. The point is not that the fantasy is false. The point is that we know it is false and still dress for it anyway. We buy the outfit, answer the text, stay out too late, and let the light persuade us one more time. I find myself on another hot evening in another summer dress, standing on another city sidewalk, with the air itself persuading me to smoke another cigarette. As I light it, I think: summer may be a lie, but it is the kind of lie that keeps people alive. Its cruelty is not that it fails to be pleasurable, but that it teaches people to mistake pleasure for transformation, visibility for freedom, and temporary brightness for a changed life. Summer is when everybody starts confusing good lighting with personal destiny. That, perhaps, is its real genius: not that it transforms us, but that it makes us briefly willing to believe we could be transformed. By August, I usually know better. By next June, I am once again willing to ruin my life for a sleeveless dress, a warm night, and a little golden light.

The post The Cruel Optimism of Summer appeared first on The McGill Daily.

Since 1980, Jazz Fest has attracted world-class musicians and music lovers alike with a dazzling week of free shows and musical exploration. In what has become the largest jazz festival in the world, both established legends and rising stars of jazz and adjacent genres take to public outdoor stages in and around Place Des Arts during the 10-day event. Over the years, the festival has hosted a plethora of household names, including Miles Davis, Oscar Peterson–a jazz pianist and hometown hero raised in Little Burgundy, Ray Charles, Dave Brubeck, and Aretha Franklin. This years’ festival highlights some of the brightest global talents in music from veteran Charles Lloyd to Earth, Wind & Fire to Immanuel Wilkins.

In addition, many local Montreal talents are bringing their own homegrown vibrancy to the stages. In this year’s edition of Jazz Fest, many local jazz groups are scheduled to play major sets, showcasing Montreal’s robust jazz culture to festival attendees. Below, I chose to highlight one official McGill ensemble, one McGill student-led group, and one faculty-led group, all of which are performing sets you definitely will not want to miss:

The McGill Jazz Orchestra 1: June 26, 5:00 pm, Rio Tinto Stage (Free)

The McGill Jazz Orchestra 1 is an ensemble made up of talented students from the Schulich School of Music at McGill University. They will play a large outdoor set at Jazz Fest, free of charge. Incidentally, this is not the orchestra’s first major gig. Every year, the Jazz Orchestra plays an array of shows throughout the city at different venues, with members of the orchestra leading bands that perform regularly at jazz clubs across Montreal. 

The ensemble is directed by acclaimed Canadian pianist and composer Marianne Trudel, who has performed extensively with l’Orchestre National de Jazz de Montréal, and with major names such as Chucho Valdés, Kenny Wheeler, and Ingrid Jensen. Trudel also composes an extensive contemporary repertoire for the McGill Jazz Orchestra 1, giving the 18-piece group a unique sound that will undoubtedly capture listeners’ attention.

Professor Trudel told The Daily that audiences at the Jazz Orchestra’s upcoming Jazz Fest set can expect “a broad spectrum of styles, energies, and colours” spanning “really early on in big band music to nowadays.” Trudel highlighted the importance of audience participation and the vibrant festival atmosphere in bringing out the best in performers. “I’ve been presenting concerts with the McGill Jazz Orchestra 1 at the Montreal Jazz Fest for a few years now, and every time, I can see that the students are really motivated to play in the largest jazz festival in the world . . . it gets them in a mindset where they play super well.”

Najib Fenaoui: July 4, 6:00 pm, Le Studio TD (Free)

Najib Fenaoui is a McGill student and vocalist who will lead his ensemble, Najib and the Alter Egos, in a free set taking place at Le Studio TD. Fenaoui has a diverse range of musical influences, from Ella Fitzgerald to Bobby McFerrin, and this versatility is clearly expressed through his witty, darting, lyrical phrasing, bringing unmistakable personality to jazz standards.

Fenaoui was the recipient of this year’s Oliver-Jones Prize, which rewards university-level musicians of visible minorities who show extensive musical promise and talent. The reward was created in honour of local legend Oliver Jones, a pianist who traversed local clubs in his home neighbourhood of Little Burgundy to major international stages and festivals. Fenaoui’s reception of the prize comes with the opportunity to perform at the renowned Jazz Fest. “I’m honoured,” Fenaoui tells The Daily regarding winning the esteemed prize. “It’s like a stamp of approval from people that have been doing this for much longer than I have. It’s nice to be recognized by my mentors.” 

Fenaoui sees his first performance as a bandleader in the Jazz Fest as a means to introduce himself to a new, broader audience. For this reason, he is seeking to represent a wide variety of artistic themes in his set. 

“People should expect to see a lot of variety in both vocals and styles, but all within the jazz idiom. Bossa Nova, Blues, swing, Ballads, some Soul and R&B. People should expect to hear my voice explore all of these different styles in a comfortable way. I feel at home in these styles of music and try to blend all of them the best I can.” 

Camille Thurman with the Darrell Green Quartet: June 27, 7:00 pm, Upstairs Jazz Bar & Grill (Paid)

Camille Thurman and Darrell Green are perfect examples of the excellence of the Schulich School of Music jazz faculty. Together, they lead the Downbeat Award-winning McGill Jazz Conglomerate, an ensemble featuring McGill vocalists. They also teach several classes at McGill and serve as indispensable mentors to students in the program. Both are widely considered first-call members of both the New York and Montreal jazz scenes. The two star musicians lead the award-winning group, Camille Thurman with the Darrell Green Quartet, which tours regularly both within North America and beyond.

Camille Thurman is not a performer you want to miss. Known for her rich and dark tone, blisteringly accurate phrasing on the saxophone, as well as her virtuosic abilities as a vocalist, Thurman has built a rich career for herself in the jazz scene. She has played extensively with the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis and was a featured soloist in the ensemble’s 2021 tribute to John Coltrane’s magnum opus, A Love Supreme. She has also performed alongside numerous greats, including George Coleman, Chaka Khan, and Erykah Badu.

Darrell Green is a dynamic and forceful drummer who joined the Schulich School of Music Jazz faculty in 2021 alongside Professor Thurman. Professor Green is known for his deep musicianship, extensive experience, and technical expertise. 

For this performance, Thurman and Green will be joined by bassist Paul Beaudry, pianist Yago Vazquez, and trumpeter Greg Glassman. There is no doubt that this all-star ensemble will be in prime form and ready to swing.

Their quintet set will take place at Upstairs Jazz Club, with a cozy, intimate atmosphere that will highlight the ensemble’s nuance and artistic breadth. While this show costs $40 (and a food/drink purchase is required), listeners will not leave the club disappointed.

The musical endeavours highlighted above are far and away exceptional even by the already high standards of the Jazz Festival. Whether or not they’re from McGill, audiences can expect to have a blast witnessing the talent and musicianship being nurtured in our very own Schulich School of Music.

For a complete list of Jazz Fest sets led by current Schulich School of Music students or faculty:

Mafuba (Opening for The Bad Plus): June 26, 9 pm, Théâtre Jean-Duceppe (Paid)

Jean-Michel Pilc Trio: June 28, 6 pm, Le Studio TD (Free)

Ranee Lee: July 2, 7 and 9:30 pm, Upstairs Jazz Bar & Grill (Paid)

Doxas Brothers: June 25, 6 pm, Le Studio TD (Free)

Lex French “Sketches of Miles” 100 ans: June 25, 9:30 pm, Diese Onze Jazz Club (Paid)

Al McLean Quartet Coltrane 100ans: June 27, 9:30 pm, Diese Onze Jazz Club (Paid)

Marianne Trudel Trio: July 4, 9:30 pm, Diese Onze Jazz Club (Paid)

The post The McGill Community takes on the Montreal International Jazz Festival appeared first on The McGill Daily.

Warning: spoilers ahead.

Interviews have been edited for clarity and conciseness. 

On Wednesday, March 26, 2026, the Strand of the Night Theatre’s production of The Seagull, by Anton Chekhov, opened in Moyse Hall. The following evening, I had the opportunity to attend the show and interview the cast; as well as Henry Kemeny-Wodlinger, director and founder of Strand of the Night Theatre. Kemeny-Wodlinger established the theatre company in 2022 to provide young, emerging artists with a platform.

The Seagull takes place at the Sorin estate, where family and friends, many of whom are artists, gather every summer. Over time,  scenes of the quotidian reveal a set of complex relationships and struggles that pose disconcerting questions about what it means to be an artist and a human being. 

“This play, not to be too reductive, is very much about unhappy people,” I began. Kemeny-Wodlinger leaned back and laughed, “But there’s also very much a comedic element to it. So I was wondering how you balance these seemingly contradictory points?”

“The way that Chekhov does unhappy people: they’re very ridiculous. They’re very, very serious about everything they say, and there’s so much passion in everything they say,” replied Kemeny-Wodlinger. He added that on opening night, the audience laughed more than he thought they would at the uncomfortable moments, perhaps purely out of discomfort. Kemeny-Wodlinger elaborated, “[Chekhov] tears down those traditional, uncomfortable or cathartic places. And if it’s an uncomfortable moment, it’s really uncomfortable because there’s a kind of raw violence happening.”

When asked how he got involved in this particular production, Kemeny-Wodlinger recounted his experience with The Seagull, which he had seen for the first time in 2023: “It was the first play that I ever saw where I felt like the characters were saying things that I thought sometimes […] A lot of the characters were artists who were about to go out into the world, about to start making art, and that really connected with me because I feel I’m at the same stage myself. From there, I got really interested in this specific translation of the play [by Simon Stephens].”

As a native Russian speaker who has read the original non-translated text, I was curious about the contemporary nature of the chosen translation. Kemeny-Wodlinger spoke on his choice: “It’s a modern translation set out of time. It’s not really in the original late 19th century, and it’s not extremely modern […] it’s very alive, and it strips away all of the place.” Besides the mention of horses and carriages in Act 2 and Act 4, the play was successful in creating an immersive, timeless setting.

“Some characters dress like they’re from the 80s. Some of them dress like they’re Gen Z. It’s a bit all over the place. And somehow, I feel like it comes together,” said Kemeny-Wodlinger, adding that in working with the costume designer, Sylvia Dai, “there was a certain time period that was the most effective for conveying a character.” This primary focus on the “aesthetic” is evident in Irina’s 50s/60s colorful outfits which are, in my mind, somewhat reminiscent of Emily Gilmore; as well as in Marcia’s 80s leather jacket and emo-inspired look, which ties into the original text’s description of her wearing all black due to her unrequited affection for Konstantin — the protagonist — and detachment from her father Leo (Luca McAndrew). 

What I found especially striking about the costumes was how often they changed.

“There’s 36 costumes in the show, one for each character in each act,” says Kemeny-Wodlinger. In Act 2, the characters all either shed layers of their Act 1 attire or put on lighter summer outfits, corresponding to more emotionally vulnerable scenes where the characters remove some of their mental armor. The one exception is Konstantin (Kit Carleton), a young, struggling playwright who is in love with Nina (Noa De Gasperis), the neighbor who has a difficult home life and dreams of being an actress. Konstantin wears the same outfit for the first three acts of the play: jeans and a trench coat. Perhaps this stagnant wardrobe reflects Konstantin’s inability to adjust his perspectives on life and art until years have passed, when Act 4 is set.

Meanwhile, Nina’s clothes become darker and less carefree as the story and her illicit relationship with Boris (Sam Snyder) — a writer in his forties who is in a relationship with Irina (Celeste Gunnell-Joyce) — progress: she begins with her hair down — clad in delicate white dresses, transitions to a blue and white checkered frock, and finally, in Act 4, dons a black turtleneck, jeans, sneakers, and a trenchcoat, with her hair up in a ponytail. Interestingly, the trenchcoat she wears is Konstantin’s, which, according to the script, he has worn “for the last three years.” Whether this wardrobe choice is meant to imply that Konstantin gave his jacket to her, she took it, or that its meaning is more symbolic of how her mindset has shifted to reflect his more cynical one is not entirely clear. Additionally, the modern sneakers Nina wears hint at a shift away from a stereotypically feminine passivity reflected in her dresses, as she takes charge of her life.

Incidentally, the costumes were certainly not reflective of late 19th-century Russia. The modernization of the text, and the anglicization of character names made the production inherently Chekhovian. Historical context and setting matter quite little in Chekhov’s plays, where the universality of the human experience, and especially human suffering, is foregrounded.

This production excelled at bringing that humanity to each scene and character. Irina, for instance, is a famous middle-aged actress and a blatant egotist. Obsessed with retaining her beautiful, youthful image and celebrity, she constantly sabotages her relationship with her son, Konstantin. While her character is amusing, one would assume by these characteristics that she is villainous; yet, Gunnell-Joyce’s Irina is anything but. There are but a few scenes where Irina explicitly expresses vulnerability or affection, such as when she begs Boris not to leave her for Nina or when she bandages Konstantin’s injured head. Nevertheless, these moments are some of the most powerful. Perhaps even more impactful is how the insecurity and humanity displayed in these scenes are subtly expressed in Irina’s character throughout the play. Even though I was familiar with the characters beforehand, I was still greatly impressed by how difficult it was to hate Gunnell-Joyce’s Irina.

While the play could have opened with a bit more energy, it quickly picked up with Carleton’s powerful opening dialogue. Many characters have striking dialogue, made even more compelling by the actors’ choices. One particularly memorable moment was Boris and Nina’s conversation in Act 2, where, as Kemeny-Wodlinger says, “they each exchange very vulnerable monologues about what they want out of life and their fears.” Boris opens up about his obsessive-compulsive behavior, which taints his work. This neuroticism is brought to life on stage through the physicality of Snyder’s performance. Snyder explained what drew him to this character: “He’s a bit of a tough guy to figure out. He goes through a lot of twists and turns, and there’s some complexity there.”

Shea McDonnell, who plays Hugo, shared a similar sentiment in navigating the intricacies of his character. While McDonnell described Hugo as “a well-established doctor” who displays “arrogance” and “very high self-esteem,” he clarified that Hugo is also “not fully secure inside, [and] could be very anxious about certain things.” This insecurity was most openly displayed in McDonnell’s scenes with Pauline, Marcia’s mother (Naomi Decker). Unhappily married to the estate manager Leo, Pauline has a secret affair with Hugo. McDonnell elaborated on this dynamic: “that really is where those cracks begin to show in his relationship, because he’s a very strait-laced, kind of very clinical person, but his big vice is really sex, and […] every time that she tries to make it more serious, he shuts it down and gets really nervous.” At the end of Act 1, McDonnell also brought this vulnerability to the surface when comforting Marcia (Ellie Mota). 

Even Peter (Griphon Hobby-Ivanovici), the elderly owner of the estate and brother of Irina, whose main role seems to be comic relief, is anything but two-dimensional. As he grapples with old age and regret, I could not help being touched when Hobby-Ivanovici wistfully delivered the line: “I want to live.”

While this is a dialogue-driven play, especially given that Chekhov provided minimal stage directions, some of the most powerful moments are found in its silences. Boris and Nina share multiple searing stares: the first when they initially meet and shake hands for notably longer than necessary; and again in Act 2, standing at opposite ends of the stage after Boris jokingly mocks her. Additionally, Nina gazes out beyond the audience numerous times: in Act 2, for instance, she smiles off into the distance. 

Perhaps most notably, the play is bookended by parallel silent moments. As the play begins, the entire cast walks down the aisles. They freeze in place, spaced out along the rows of seats, and look around at the audience, breaking the fourth wall. Similarly, when Hugo utters the last words of the play, the entire cast, sitting around the dining table on stage, turns their heads to look beyond the audience, falling motionless. This ending’s power is strengthened by the parallel nature of the scene, and its impact is solidified by the meta-quality that rearticulates the play’s themes.

The self-referential aspect of The Seagull is also delved into through the play’s exploration of the human desire to narrativize “disparate events,” as stated in the media release, as well as each of the characters’ unique relationships with art. 

When asked where he stands in relation to the different ideas about art offered in the play, Kemeny-Wodlinger answered that he was not entirely certain, but that he agreed with Konstantin’s sentiment at the end of the play: “I often try to mimic a certain genre or a certain form, but what’s the most powerful to me is something that comes from just deep within that. It just naturally flows out of you as an artist.”

Despite addressing these rather abstract concepts, the production manages to keep the play rooted in a sort of ambiguous reality. The set, designed by Claire Labrecque, plays a big part in this. Vines line the front of the stage, and patches of vegetation sit stage-left up front and stage-right in the back. My personal favorite feature of the set is the plastic pink flamingo that appears amidst the plants at the start of Act 2. The real world seeps in again during Act 4, when rays of sunlight shine through the window of the door Nina enters from stage-left. Though some scenes are set indoors, this natural element remains ever present, perhaps calling on a connection between literal nature and human nature.

Another fascinating element of the set is the shrinking of the stage as the temporary back wall is pushed forward with each act. This choice increasingly adds tension to each subsequent scene while also seeming to signify the claustrophobic oppression many characters experience in the Sorin estate.

The background noise, designed by Kyla Resendes, also plays a big role in the set design. The sounds of unintelligible muttering, chirping birds, running water, and instrumental melodies are interspersed throughout the production; sometimes helping to physically place the characters, sometimes intensifying emotional scenes. 

Another memorable auditory feature of the play was the overlapping conversations heard while characters moved off stage or out of view. In Act 2, the group is heard leaving the Sorin estate, their voices dissipating as they walk further from the stage; and in Act 4, the family is heard once again, eating and laughing in an unseen room stage-right while Konstantin and Nina reunite. The latter scene creates a stark contrast between the happy obliviousness of the off-stage dinner and the emotional turmoil on-stage. Nina’s separation from the bliss beyond the wall is further emphasized when De Gasperis presses her tear-stained face against the door separating her from the meal and Boris, who left her disillusioned but still lovestruck after ending their affair.

From set design and costumes to stage directions and dialogue, the well-thought-out intricacies of the Strand of the Night Theatre’s production of The Seagull combined to create a profound exploration of the human psyche.

The post The Seagull: An Automorphic Play About Art and Humanity appeared first on The McGill Daily.

Sciences/Applied Sciences: Jennifer Sidey-Gibbons 

Originally from Calgary, Alberta, Canadian Space Agency (CA) astronaut Jennifer, “Jenni” Sidey-Gibbons graduated from McGill with honours in mechanical engineering with the class of 2011. She went on to earn a PhD in engineering from the University of Cambridge where she then became an assistant professor. Subsequently, she was selected by the CA as the third-ever woman to join the ranks of their astronaut candidates, completing her training in 2020. Currently, she is a backup crew member on the Artemis II lunar flyby mission. Gibbons has also acted as ground communicator on a number of International Space Station spacewalks and has mentored astronaut candidates. 

Fine Arts: Sheree Spencer 

Born in Toronto to parents of Barbadian descent, stage director and producer Sheree Spencer, attended McGill’s Schulich School of Music with a minor in Drama Performance from the Faculty of Arts. After graduating with her BA in 2012, she freelanced as a stage performer, featured in productions at the Vancouver Opera and the Toronto Fringe Festival. She also went on to earn accolades such as TD Emerging Producer of Toronto Fringe 2016 as well as international recognition for her direction of the opera Plaything: Spencer has since relocated to New York to take up the position of a Mellon Producing Fellow with Beth Morrison Projects, where she continues to produce and direct new works. 

Politics & Activism: Emmanuella Lambropoulos 

Sitting one row from the back and four seats in from the aisle in the House of Commons chamber, Emmanuella Lambropoulos has represented the constituency of Saint-Laurent since 2017. Growing up in Saint-Laurent’s Greek community, she graduated from McGill University in 2013 and was president of the university’s Hellenic Students’ Association. She then moved on to a short career in education, working in the local Saint-Laurent school district. Having volunteered with Stephane Dion, who represented Saint-Laurent from 1996 to 2017, Lambropoulos reported that she’s always been interested in politics. After canvassing door-to-door every day for weeks, she won the Liberal nomination and ultimately a seat in an upset over a seasoned provincial politician, Yolande James. 

Sports: Sylvia Sweeney 

An induction to the McGill Athletics Hall of Fame in 2021 is only the latest accolade in Sylvia Sweeney’s decorated basketball career: Not only playing for McGill, Concordia, and Laurentian, she joined the Canadian national team in 1974 and played in two Olympic games. As a native Montrealer, she studied classical piano performance at McGill University from 1973 to 1975. In 2017, she was appointed a Member of the Order of Canada, the highest honour a civilian can receive. In 1994, Sweeney was inducted into the Canadian Basketball Hall of Fame. Every year since then, the Hall recognizes a female university player with the Sylvia Sweeney award for outstanding achievement on and off the court. After her time in basketball, she began a second career in television, commenting on sports and current affairs and then moving into production. Passionate across disciplines, Sweeney also founded the international ArtsGames competition to celebrate the arts. 

Media: Allya Davidson 

Amidst an ever-evolving media landscape, Emmy-winning journalist and producer Allya Davidson, an alumna of The McGill Daily, still believes in the power of investigative reporting. Graduating from McGill in 2009 with a degree in cultural studies and world religions, the Mississauga-born Davidson earned a master’s in broadcast journalism from the City St George’s, University of London. She went on to produce documentaries for global networks such as VICE, PBS Frontline, and ABC Australia. Davidson is now the first Black executive producer of CBC’s The Fifth Estate, a weekly program that airs investigative documentaries on Canadian and international issues. Davidson also mentors young BIPOC journalists through the Canadian Association of Journalists. Trail-blazing and accomplished, Davidson points to her time at McGill as foundational: “At McGill I learned to live, work with and understand people who were from all over the world, from different backgrounds and religions. I had always been a nerd interested in the world around me, and McGill proved that there were and are thousands of people like me.” 

Business: Ritika Dutt 

Recognized by Forbes in their 2020 30 Under 30 list for Law & Policy, Ritika Dutt co-founded Botler AI in 2017 to help victims of sexual harassment better understand their rights. Born in India and raised in Hong Kong and Singapore, Dutt moved to Montreal to attend McGill and graduated in 2013. Soon after, an experience with a stalker left her scared and confused. “The more I researched about sexual harassment,” Dutt told McGill News, “I realized there were many women, and men, like me, who didn’t know their legal rights in these situations.” Partly inspired by her circumstances and the rise of the #MeToo movement, Dutt co-created Botler AI, which analyzes user reports for free and predicts whether they constitute sexual harassment. It also indicates which laws may have been broken and generates a report that can be sent to the respective authorities. In 2021, the Canadian government invested in Botler to help produce the Pan-Canadian Triage System for Sexual Harassment, Misconduct & Violence. Relaying her belief to CTV News that there is an “urgent, vital need for an easy, accessible solution that empowers individuals to seek justice on their own terms,” Dutt continues to lead Botler as its CEO.

The post Spotlighting Powerful McGill Alumnae appeared first on The McGill Daily.

This interview has been edited for clarity and conciseness. 

The McGill Daily (MD): After graduating from McGill and entering the workforce, you didn’t originally anticipate becoming a journalist. In what ways did your education at McGill and prior experience in economic research prepare you to become a journalist?

Luca Léry Moffat (LLM): To maybe give you a bit of background, in my third or fourth year, I got really into economics. I was doing a different major, did ECON 416 that was about topics in economic development, and sort of fell in love with it and decided to switch to the honours program. By the end of my third year, going into my fourth year, I was pretty set on applying for economic research. As I said in the lecture, I applied to a bunch of different pre-docs; most of which were very academic. 

Then, of course, I went on to get this job at a think tank. It was a kind of pre-doc as a research analyst, but it was at a think tank, so [it was] less academically focused. Policy is a bit different from academia. It’s more about being a messenger between academia and policymakers. So, as an economist, I was reading lots of academic stuff, policy papers, and then trying to communicate it clearly to another audience. 

I think it was actually during my first job when I picked up a lot of the skills that I needed in journalism: the ability to read a lot, synthesize that information, spin a story, figure out what the most important story is, and what the key messages you want to get across are. Something else I got from my first job was a network. So, I started building a network in Brussels, and those people have become invaluable in [my] pivoting to journalism because being a journalist is basically knowing lots of people and getting them to tell you stuff. I mean, that’s literally all it is – anyone could do it. 

I would say that one thing that I got from McGill in the economics program was the ability to use data. I think that has given me a real edge in my journalistic career because not many people can make a graph. Data visualization is something which journalism is really shifting towards. People don’t have [long] attention spans anymore, so we like to see pretty graphs and pictures while scrolling through these interactive articles. The ability to code and knowing how to use an Excel spreadsheet was very attractive to prospective employers. I’d say that’s something I got from McGill which really helped me. 

MD: You mentioned that you were also a graduate of POLI 331. With regards to knowledge concerning Ukraine, Russia, and their histories, what piqued your interest in Eastern European affairs during your undergraduate degree or even when working in economic research? 

LLM: I was talking to Professor Popova about this – I loved my time at McGill. I had amazing professors, learned so much, and got a really good quality of education. Having said that, I feel as though I was taught economics and Russian both quite badly. I don’t think that’s McGill’s fault, I think that’s just education in the West. 

On the economic side, you learn all of this economic theory which comes from the 1970s and 80s. But you don’t really look at finance at all even though finance has, over the last 40-50 years, become such a crucial part of the economic system. International financial flows have real ramifications for the economy, whereas that’s not integrated into a lot of the economic models that we study. On the Russian side, we were studying all of this literature without looking at it through the lens of colonialism. I think in the West, the idea that Russia is an empire is sort of a bit of an odd one when you’re first confronted with it. But actually, it’s one of the last standing empires from this massive period of colonialism. The US still exists, but many of the others have kind of disintegrated, or are now a shell of their former selves. I would study Russian literature and I remember studying, for example, A Hero of Our Time by [Mikhail] Lermontov, and at no point did I stop to consider, “Why is there this Russian guy in the Caucasus? What is he doing there?” Well, of course, it was part of this expansion of the Russian Empire. So, that’s just something which I’ve sort of reflected on since leaving McGill. 

In terms of what piques my interest in Eastern European affairs, I think it was classes like POLI 331 or HIST 226, which were about the Balkans, Greece, and Turkey throughout the 20th century. What I found so interesting about it was how it’s really complicated – borders changed all the time throughout the 20th century, and people moved. After World War I, borders moved and people stayed where they were. After World War II, borders pretty much stayed where they were and people moved. There’s so much packed into European history, which is really difficult to unearth because it’s complicated. The Russian, poli-sci, and history classes I took at McGill started to shed a light on that, or even just scratched the surface of those really complicated events. And it left me hungry for more. 

MD: During the Zoom call, you mentioned that you often feel conflicted as the journalistic field often emphasizes objectivity and neutrality, while the reporting you do and the publication you work for are staunchly supportive of Ukraine’s sovereignty. How do you navigate this conflict and adhere to journalistic integrity while fighting for a cause you feel so strongly about?

LLM: I find no trouble navigating it whatsoever because I think many things can be true at the same time. I’m staunchly supportive of Ukraine. I believe the facts clearly show that Ukraine is in a war for its own existence, that this is a war for two competing visions of society: one is dictatorship, and one is democracy and liberal values, and I am more partial to the latter. 

At the same time, I believe that Ukraine has a lot of work to do when it comes to implementing certain reforms. Some articles I’ve written have been sharply critical of the government. In other articles, I have been less critical or even praised the government. I’m not writing op-eds. I’m a reporter, so I’m interviewing people, I’m putting in their quotes, and I’m telling the story. I [will] always try to tell a story that I believe is factually accurate and where I’ve quoted people in the way that they would want to be quoted. 

At the end of the day, Ukraine is fighting for a future where it’s a democracy and it has its own sovereignty. Freedom of the press is a key tenet of a democratic, rules-based, sovereign state. So I think as a reporter, it makes complete sense that I’m writing articles which [can be] more critical of the government.

MD: To my knowledge, you are proficient in Russian and currently learning Ukrainian. What has the process of learning the Ukrainian language been like for you, and what is it like to report for a primarily English-language newspaper when English is not the official language of Ukraine?

LLM: First of all, learning Russian [at McGill] was amazing because I had incredible professors. I have to shout out Maria Ivanova, I think she’s still there, as well as Daniel Pratt, and a few others. Having had a series of other language teachers since who weren’t so good, it made me appreciate how incredible [my McGill ones] were. At McGill, the quality of education in the Russian department was really phenomenal. I’m really nostalgic about it. 

The process of learning Ukrainian started when I arrived here on the 17th of April, exactly 11 months ago. When I first arrived, I figured that my Russian would be reasonably helpful, even though I understood that people were speaking less Russian nowadays because they’re being invaded by Russia and also wanting to put [the] Ukrainian [language] into the limelight. Kyiv used to be a very Russian-speaking city up until the full-scale invasion in 2022, but has [now] massively pivoted to Ukrainian. You still hear Russian around quite a lot, but out of respect I wanted to learn Ukrainian. For me, it was very clear that a lot of people didn’t want to be spoken to in Russian. As a way of just being respectful, I wanted to learn Ukrainian. 

What I think the most crucial element of learning any language is completely immersing yourself. It’s been very humbling because learning a language from scratch is not easy. Ukrainian is a very difficult language. It’s massively helped me to have such a good quality of education at McGill on the Russian side of things because they’re both Slavic languages. Even though they’re very different, lots of the grammar is the same, [and] lots of the endings are sort of similar. Not having to start from scratch on the grammar side has been really helpful. 

MD: How have you perceived reporting from journalists in Ukraine on the Russo-Ukrainian war to be different from reporting published by Western media? 

LLM: I’m thinking of a time when I went back to the UK last summer, and we had a big gathering [with] a bunch of McGill alumni. I brought back a bunch of caps with the Ukrainian flag on them to give to some friends. Someone said, “Oh, you’re the one who’s working as a journalist in Ukraine,” and made a joke about not being neutral [in the war] because of my friends who had these caps on. I think there is a desire amongst some reporters, and a desire in the public rhetoric of the West, to believe that this war is political and that you can be neutral in it. 

What was always clear to me but really crystallized when I arrived in Ukraine was that this war is happening because of Russia’s intent to erase Ukrainian statehood, erase the Ukrainian language, and to absorb Ukraine as part of Russia. Putin has some really peculiar historical fantasies which all mainstream historians reject entirely: that Ukraine isn’t a real place and that it’s the Bolsheviks’ fault that Ukraine exists. The reality is that Ukraine is a real place. It has people who really care about their country, [and] demonstrably so because there are 900,000 people in the army. There are hundreds of thousands who have been injured or have died defending their country. There are so many Ukrainian civil society activists who care about their language. You see Ukrainian flags everywhere. People have backpacks with Ukrainian ribbons. 

Ukrainian society is complicated. There are lots of different perspectives within the country. But I’m actually rather impressed by the homogeneity in supporting Ukraine, Land] not wanting [it| to be part of Russia, especially in a country that has a long history of entanglement with Russia. Given everything that I’ve just said, it’s pretty easy to define this war as a genocidal war because it is an attempt to erase a nation. And that is the definition of genocide. 

In the Western media, this is not always made explicit. I think it should be made explicit. This is essentially an anachronistic empire. If you know anything about history, you can see this [repeating]. I mean, it rings throughout the ages. If you look at recent history, you can see Georgia in 2008, which Russia invaded. You can see Crimea in 2014. You can see interference in Ukrainian elections in 2004 [and] 2005 (the Orange Revolution). 

Western media sometimes doesn’t always do a good job of portraying that. But for me, those are the facts and a journalist’s job is to report the facts. And it’s very difficult for me to see it from any other perspective. I love hearing other people’s views, even if I find them abhorrent sometimes. I really enjoy trying to understand where people come from. For me, it’s so clear that the facts are [that] this is an imperialistic, genocidal war.

The post Reporting in a Warzone appeared first on The McGill Daily.