We still love each other

It is hard to believe that in one more week, our Tuesday nights will be devoid of lime green walls, buzzing lights and caffeine fueled editorial “writing”. Student newspapers are coldhearted mistresses who draw you in with the promise of affecting change, building up resumes, and creating something tangible every single week. Sure, she leaves you with ink stained fingers and a permanent hankering for a cheeseburger, but it sure is good while it lasts. It sounds melodramatic, but it gets like that here. But for those of you who...

Act first, study later

Let the stress rest; summer, a time to unclench and recover

Despite the diversity of thought, race, sexual orientation, and pretty much everything else in our population, we stand united by a single word. We check it off on government forms, use it to introduce ourselves, and more often than not employ it as a synonym for ‘misery.’ To a certain degree it speaks for our social standing, age, lifestyle, and general lack of money. Self-describing using this word inevitably brings probing and curiosity from old friends, well wishers, and otherwise friendly acquaintances. It generally defines who we are and what...

Accountability rules in Ottawa

We are seeing strange days on Parliament Hill right now. First there’s all the (still-)swirling speculation on a spring election, and (more) rumblings from the Liberal Party that they just won’t stand for Conservative shenanigans anymore. Then there are the two MPs and a senator involved in internal investigations for fraud or contempt of Parliament, and two staffers being investigated by the RCMP. It’s pretty easy to think that Canadian politics has never been more broken. I have a slightly different point of view. I take it as a potentially...

Poll March 18

http://www.snappoll.com/poll/363670.php

Lay it all out for me, could U?

Every year, the student body at StFX elects a students’ union president and vice president, and every year, we are promised many things, among which transparency is the most prevalent. On a campus such as ours, secrets are not often kept. With what seems like two degrees of separation between each student, rumours spread like wildfire, and it becomes pretty difficult to separate fact from fiction. This can be toxic for an organization that collects $553,992 from student fees and generates revenue of just under $2 million. The first thing...

Canadian publishers in crisis, want no foreign entry

Lifting ban on foreign investment for Canadian publishing would devastate local content

Rant of the week Looking back on my distant pre-university days of leisure reading, a few authors come to mind particularly fondly. Michael Ondaatje, Margaret Atwood, Alice Munro, L.M. Montgomery, Yann Martel, and I must say I was quite fond of my Raincoast Books editions of the Harry Potter series too. So what do all of these household names have in common? Aside from general fabulousness, it’s either Canadian authorship or Canadian printing. As it turns out, the Canadian publishing industry may be facing some large changes in the imminent...

Keep your politics out of my uterus

Former Governor of Arkansas, rumored Republican Presidential candidate, and one of countless Fox News Channel bigots (I mean, television hosts) Mike Huckabee has had a helluva lot to say about what’s going on in Natalie Portman’s uterus as of late. He astutely observes: “…one of the things that’s troubling is that people see a Natalie Portman or some other Hollywood starlet who boasts of, ‘Hey look, you know, we’re having children, we’re not married, but we’re having these children, and they’re doing just fine. I think it gives a distorted...

MPs miss votes in Ottawa for good reason

Balancing time between voting sessions and constituencies makes for better representation

On March 7, the Globe and Mail published a special report on what seemed like an urgent topic: MP participation in Parliamentary votes. The results, on first glance, were somewhat shocking. First of all, attendance records for MPs are sealed - no one knows, and no one is counting, how many sessions of Parliament our elected officials actually show up for. A secondary means of measuring attendance is counting each MP’s participation in voting in the House of Commons. According to this measure, many of our representatives aren’t representing very...

To dare to speak

Last Tuesday, the Globe and Mail published an article, written by Margaret Wente, that claims the 21st century “belongs to women”, and that “The war for women’s rights is over. And we won.” This purposefully ignorant argument hardly deserves a response. Unfortunately, this does not seem to be an uncommon opinion. The Chronicle Herald published an article on the same day that began with the phrase “[This 22 year old] grew up in the post-feminist era”. Shoot, maybe I should reconsider my career path. I don’t disagree with Wente’s statement...

Questioning Women’s Day

International Women’s Day a celebration of victory for some, reminder for others

Tuesday, March 8 marks the 100th observation of International Women’s Day. And although women’s issues are oft explored in universities and reported on by Canadian media, I am continually in shock at how many twenty-somethings simply don’t think that they deserve any attention. So many people out there think that equality was a finish line that we triumphantly ran by some time in the past. Others have a vague perception of a disturbing undercurrent, but remain too passive to really think about it. Still others carry the misconception that it’s...

Justin Bieber, Imma tell you one time to mind your business

I am a Belieber. I saw Never Say Never in theatres, half of the 479 180 276 views on Bieber’s “Baby” on YouTube are from me, and I can’t help but go “SQUEEEEE” when I see him do that spastic hair flip thing (that unfortunately he can no longer do, RIP Bieber bangs). Bieber holds a special place in my heart, alongside puppies and The Muppets. That being said, I was enraged to see Bieber’s terribly misguided opinions voiced in this month’s Rolling Stone. The following comes from Rolling Stone’s...

Want a byline? Better have a Y chromosome

Male dominance runs rampant throughout media sources

Women journalists and magazine writers have recently shown up as the subject of, rather than the producers of, news. These stories should make us pause and consider what “progress” has actually been made in terms of equality. Anne Hays, a journal editor and graduate student in New York, posted an open letter to the editors of the New Yorker on her Facebook page, which was quickly picked up by multiple news sources, including Jezebel, MS. Magazine, and the Village Voice, and subsequently went viral. In the letter she called out...

Poll!!

http://snappoll.com/poll/362984.php

Broadcasting lies

Part of what makes living in Canada so great is that we have the ability to fight ignorance and make ourselves aware. We can turn on our televisions, open our laptops or pick up a newspaper and instantly know what is happening on the other side of town and on the other side of the world. While we can never be 100 per cent sure that what we are reading or watching is unbiased and truthful, we expect and trust our media outlets to do their best to ensure that...

Sled dog outrage stretches beyond mere cruelty

Revelation of the killing should have been swift, instead it was happenstance

Rant of the week If you ask me, the complete unadulterated fury expressed by Canadians following the revelation of the Whistler sled dog killing is completely understandable. The “cull” of between 70 and 100 dogs after the Olympic closing ceremonies last year came to light only after a Worker’s Compensation report confirming post-traumatic stress for the employee in question was leaked. Despite claims to the contrary from the employee, Joey Houssian, owner of the company in question (Outdoor Adventures), claims to have known nothing about the numbers of dogs killed...