There are several aspects of today’s Argosy for which readers can thank former staff member Sylvan Hamburger. Previously an illustrations editor, editor-in-chief, news reporter and contributor, Hamburger has been awarded the Crake-Sawdon Award for his substantial and varied contributions to student journalism.

The award was established in the honour of William Boyle Sawdon, a former editor at the Argosy and Sackville Tribune Post. It is awarded annually to a student who has made outstanding contributions to student journalism on campus.

Before working at the Argosy, Hamburger contributed illustrations to the McGill Daily in Montreal, where he was a student. After a year, he transferred to Mount Allison and eventually pursued work at the student newspaper here.

Hamburger was interested in illustrating, but was not hired as an illustrator when he first applied. Through the encouragement of Richard Kent, the editor-in-chief at the time, he continued to contribute occasional illustrations and written pieces throughout the year. The following year, he was accepted for the position of news reporter. Since then his involvement with the paper has grown in multiple directions, eventually coming full circle to the position that initially inspired him.

Hamburger said his interactions with the illustrations editor at the McGill Daily gave him the idea to implement a similar position at the Argosy. Previously, the Argosy had employed only one illustrator, and much of the visual content was clip art and unoriginal content which Hamburger said “felt like a real shame given the artistic community in Sackville and at Mount Allison.”

As editors-in-chief, Hamburger (then in his fourth year) and Tyler Stuart hired Jeff Mann as the first illustrations editor at the Argosy. Along with production manager Hayley Guzik, the pair created a newspaper with a stronger emphasis on student artwork. They also promoted more investigative content and established fairer pay for some positions, particularly reporters. However, Hamburger adds that the pay increase, “given what [reporters] were putting in, still wasn’t enough. There’s always room for it to grow.”

Author to over 30 articles and well over 30 illustrations, Hamburger has covered important stories of the University and Sackville community. His investigative work includes coverage of the Women’s and Gender Studies department cuts (co-written with Tyler Stuart), a topic that reached national attention; the spiking of students’ drinks at local bars (co-written with Catherine Turnbull) and more recently, Mt. A’s history of faculty strikes and the town’s vital connections to its foundries.

Investigating the foundries was one of Hamburger’s most memorable experiences as a staff member. “The opportunity to report and really engage with the local history of Sackville and talk about the foundries and the way artists in the community engaged with the foundries was a really fruitful experience to go through,” he said.

Hamburger is graduating with a BA in fine arts and a double minor in English and geography. He hopes to find work as an emerging artist-in-residence and plans to pursue work opportunities independent publishing. Hamburger, whose artwork engages local histories and archives, sees “quite a few parallels between my work at the paper … and some of the visual work I’m making.”

Working at the Argosy has significantly shaped Hamburger’s time at Mt. A. “I feel like I learned so much more from working at the paper and the people I met … than I could have ever in just one class,” he said. “I’m really thankful for that and that there’s still a publication that’s independently run and that has the creative freedom the Argosy has.”

For some graduates, finding employment and means for independent living are more challenging than for others. Employers often emphasize strong communication skills, which can create barriers for job-seekers with social disabilities.

This barrier, among others, was pointed out by Margaret Tusz-King, the executive director of Open Sky Co-operative, at a workshop for their volunteers. Located in Middle Sackville on an 11-acre farm, the co-operative is modelled after European care farms and provides residence and vocational and skills training for adults who face social barriers due to autism spectrum disorder and other social disabilities.

Tusz-King often describes the post-graduation challenges that adults on the autism spectrum face as falling off a cliff. In a press release this April she said, “Students have often fallen off the cliff at the end of high school, with huge gaps and no clear sign posts between where they are and how and where they want to be employed or living as adults.”

Several years ago, the co-operative began having conversations with Mount Allison and Tantramar Regional High School to connect and build on their existing programs to help students avoid falling off these cliffs. Called Transitioning for Life, the program is set to begin this fall and will offer functional skills and social skills–building programming to assist students’ transition into employment and independent living situations.

“A lot of the struggle in finding employment is around the social aspects in finding employment,” said Anne Comfort, the director of the Meighen Centre, which provides services and accommodations to Mt. A students with disabilities. “So by helping to build on those skills we hope that the employment will come.”

The program will connect university and high school participants with peer mentors recruited from Mt. A’s student body and the Meighen Centre. As volunteers, peer mentors will receive training and participate in social activities at the high school and University as well as social dinners at Open Sky.

The program emerged from the ideas of Jocelyn Young, the resource teacher at Tantramar High. She noticed how some students who had excelled academically were still living at home and not finding volunteer or employment opportunities after graduation.

“Everything we were doing was not really sustainable,” Young said, referring to the programs already on offer at the high school. “Because while we were working on these things here, [the students] are still graduating and not doing anything.”

One in 66 Canadian youths between the ages of five and 17 are on the autism spectrum, according to the Public Health Agency’s most recent report. The number of youth on the autism spectrum has been rising, although the reasons for this are unclear.

At Tantramar High today, about 65 students are on personalized plans, including students with autism and ADHD. Young believes all of these students could benefit from the program. At the University, about 12 students a year have diagnoses on the autism spectrum, particularly Aspergers, according to Comfort.

The overall hope for the program is that “when we graduate our students we’re not just seeing them go home, because that’s what happens now – they go home,” Comfort said. “I hope that through this they build those skills so that they’re going to work, or that they’re living alone, or are going to graduate programs.”

Transitioning for Life is funded by a $38,000 grant from Autism Speaks Canada (ASC), a charity affiliated with the controversial US-based Autism Speaks. However, most of the labour and resources involved with the program (approximated at $150,000) will be delivered in kind from Open Sky’s program coordinator Jennifer Longpre, Tusz-King, the resource department at Tantramar and the Meighen Centre. Open Sky is not affiliated with Autism Speaks nor Autism Speaks Canada.

Transitioning for Life will be offered through the Meighen Centre at the University and the resource department at the high school. Eligible participants include students who are on the autism spectrum, experience social anxieties or other social barriers, and see themselves benefitting from the program. No documentation is necessary to participate and programming is free.

The Argosy continues to print on a weekly schedule, and has shifted from being a smaller tabloid with clip art to a larger and more polished-looking broadsheet paper showcasing a range of student artwork.

But the digital age has pushed many newspapers to re-evaluate themselves. Two years ago, the U.K.’s Independent switched completely online, becoming the first national newspaper to do so. Just last year, the Globe and Mail announced its cut to daily print circulation in the Maritimes, citing the expenses of printing and distribution.

Changes have also been happening at university papers. The Baron at the University of New Brunswick St. John went online in 2012 after having been a bi-weekly print edition. Canada’s oldest official student publication, the Brunswickan, switched two years ago from a weekly to a monthly print edition and now publishes online continuously.

The Argosy should not excuse itself from the trend of self-evaluation. Now that there is the option of online publishing, the Argosy’s weekly printing schedule is looking to be more burdensome.

For one, printing is expensive. Last term, printing costs made up almost half of the Argosy’s expenditures. The budget, sourced mainly from a yearly $33 student levy, is potentially facing future reductions due to the decline of student enrolment. If the Argosy continues to print every week, it will have to allocate more of its budget proportionally to printing.

With more of the budget reserved for printing, staff pay might have to be reduced. Fewer positions might be paid. Exciting projects like videography or web design might suffer due to insufficient funding. Currently, the cost of a single print run is more than what the Argosy can afford to pay a reporter for the entire year – and this is considering that a reporter’s pay has more than doubled in the past two years, although not enough for it to be considered fair compensation.

A weekly print schedule also limits what reporters and editors can write about. When emphasis is placed on filling a paper every week, stories that can be finished faster are prioritized over longer or more investigative pieces.

A weekly print schedule also means that editors and production staff suffer frequently from burnout. This is because it takes hours to lay out and review pages to prepare for printing, and the routine is repeated every week. Some editors and production staff spend up to eight or 12 hours in the office on a school night. High burnout and turnover rates are an issue not just at the individual level; they eventually affect the paper’s quality within and over the years.

I think that the first step toward a less problematic publishing schedule would be to print bi-weekly newspapers and to publish online in the time in between. For example, halving the number of print issues saves enough money that we can consider paying reporters per piece. Or we could pay for new positions, like web design or social media management. We could fund our website or our videography project more.

My point is that what we save with eliminating print costs can fund more interesting and important projects. By giving reporters and editors more flexibility over their schedules, it can reduce burnout and turnover and lead to more in-depth coverage.

Unlike many news publications, the Argosy is fortunately not in a position where it has to compete with other outlets or care about print ad revenue to maintain its budget. It is, however, in a position where its print schedule should seriously be re-evaluated because there are more innovative, equitable and sustainable possibilities.

The decision to publish online with bi-weekly print issues has not yet been officially made. We are currently in the stages of thinking about what structural changes the shift would entail and how we can meaningfully spend the freed budget. These stages will also involve consulting our funders and readers.

As a paper written by students and for students, the Argosy should be directed by student input. Join us at our next funder’s meeting on Thursday, March 29 from 5:30 to 6:30 p.m. to discuss the potential transition in more detail. The meeting will be held in the Wallace McCain Student Centre in room 125. If you cannot make the meeting and would still like to give us feedback, direct your messages to argosy@mta.ca. I look forward to discussing the future of the Argosy with you.

For a significant part of her childhood, Ashley Cummings struggled with allergies. When she went to school, she would frequently develop hives, and would regularly take an over-the-counter, and sometimes, when the reactions were particularly bad, she’d leave school early.

At one point in time, the reactions occurred so frequently that she stayed at home and was homeschooled.

It was clear that something was wrong, so her family scheduled allergy tests with a doctor. But in order for this to happen, she had to travel over 2,000 kilometres by plane.

Cummings is from Pangnirtung, Nunavut, a small town of roughly 1,500 people located on the southern tip of Baffin Island and at the base of Mount Duval. The town looks onto an ancient riverbed that has been eroding over thousands of years, forming the iconic Akshayuk Pass, formerly known as the Pangnirtung Pass. Surrounded by mountains, the unmistakable tundra appears barren to those who are unfamiliar, but is rich with berries, willows, and heather to locals.

Today about 30 businesses dot the town, including several outfitting stores, a courier service, seven contractors and an arts and craft gallery. An airport strip parallels the pass, an essential service for many whose remoteness requires trips to towns like Iqaluit, Happy Valley-Goose Bay and sometimes more distant places like Ottawa.

Cummings did fly to Ottawa, more than once. Although she never found out what she was allergic to, the trips weren’t unusual occasions for her.

“Doctors are usually fly-in, or people fly out of the community to see a doctor,” said Cummings. “All the other communities beyond that, they have a couple nurses, and they have social workers, but there’s no registered counsellors. There’s no doctors, no dentists.… There’s really nothing, and that extends beyond Labrador, that’s across Inuit Nunangat.”

Health-care services are essential to everybody, but residents of northern communities are in particularly urgent need of them compared to their southern counterparts.

As of 2008, children and teens in the Nunangat have a five times greater risk of death than their cohort in the rest of Canada. They’re 11 times more likely to succumb to an injury or an infectious/parasitic illnesses, and twice as likely to succumb to a non-communicable disease.

But out of all the reasons for Inuit mortality, suicide is the leading cause, occuring at one of the highest rates in the world. Among children and teens in the Inuit Nunangat, suicide is 30 times more likely to occur than among youth who live in the south of Canada, as reported by Statistics Canada for the period between 2004 to 2008.

Part of the problem is the lack of access to services, with mental health resources among the scarcest in the Nunangat. When Cummings was in elementary and middle school, she recalls that there were no mental health programs or education.

“The problem that arises in the northern communities is that there’s no opportunity to learn more about [mental health]. That lack of mental health education is what ends up perpetuating and making the [mental health] stigma more obvious than in a southern community like Sackville,” Cummings said.

In addition, years of colonization, high costs of food and other goods, and intergenerational trauma brought by the residential school system have compounded the effects of the area’s lack of health-care resources, resulting in high rates of untreated mental illness.

It wasn’t until Cummings moved to Nova Scotia that she realized the suicide rate of her community was abnormal. “When I moved to Nova Scotia, there was one suicide that year,” Cummings said. “And the whole province was in shambles about it, over one person. I was like, ‘Why is this a big deal?’ I didn’t understand. I thought it was a normal thing to commit suicide.”

Cummings, who moved to Nova Scotia when she was 12 years old, also felt for a long time that her own depression was incurable. “I just thought, ‘What’s wrong with me? I’m messed up, I’m unhealthy, I’m crazy’ – all these stigmatizing thoughts.”

She was eventually diagnosed with depression about seven months after moving to the Maritime province. This was when Cummings started “talking about all the suicides [she’s] faced, about her own thoughts about it” and learned that depression is curable and suicide is preventable.

“It was just eye-opening to find out that this doesn’t need to happen,” Cummings said. “That my grandma won’t have to lose another grandkid, I won’t have to lose another cousin, another friend, another classmate to suicide.”

Since then, Cummings has been motivated to reduce the number of suicides in her community and others across the north. In high school, she participated in Students on Ice (SOI), an organization that educates youth about the Polar Regions through immersive expeditions. This was when she met her future team members, Eva Wu, Gabrielle Foss and Patrick Hickey, whom she would later work with to promote mental health in the north.

At the time, Wu, now a student at McGill, and Foss, now a student at Western, had been working with Art with Heart, a project that involved creating original photo books for hospitals and retirement homes in Toronto, which they co-founded in 2014.

After learning about the prevalence of untreated mental illness through their expeditions with SOI, the pair expanded their project to include mental health and renamed it North in Focus (NIF).

Hickey joined the pair in 2015 as the education and mental health program coordinator, and in 2016, Cummings became the northern consultant, alumni and ambassador coordinator.

NIF specializes in leading after-school programming for youth over the ages of 12, combining art, physical recreation and meditation with mental health promotion and anti-stigma education.

Cummings’ involvement with NIF brought her to Nain, Nunatsiavut, for her first workshop experience with youth in 2016.

The week started with a game called “hand up, hand down” that Cummings said was to “show kids they have mental health.” Children answer a variety of questions like “Do you like sushi? Hand up, hand down,” “Do you like dancing? Hand up, hand down.” The hands are meant to be raised, because once the final question is asked – “Do you have mental health?” – everybody’s hands should be in the air.

The organization emphasizes that communities maintain a certain amount of resources once it leaves. Before workshops even begin, “We locate local resources. We talk to social workers. We talk to doctors, if we can,” Cummings said. “We connect with social workers so we can get them in to speak to the youth, and tell them you can speak to us [and them].”

Most recently, Cummings’ involvement with NIF brought her to Reykjavik, Iceland, in Oct. 2017 for the fifth annual Arctic Circle Assembly, where she and her teammates presented a proposal on their work promoting mental health and suicide awareness to youth.

The assembly connects “leaders around the Arctic Circle, as well as different allies, who connect on the basis of the Arctic, caring for the Arctic, and ensuring it has a future,” Cummings said. Over 2,000 participants representing over 60 countries attended that year.

In its short history, the assembly has not had a major health component, instead focusing primarily on “infrastructure, climate change and supporting people in the Arctic,” according to Cummings. As mental healthcare advocates, Cummings and her team at North in Focus had decided to apply.

“We put in an application on a whim – the worst they can say is ‘no’ – and then on some miraculous occasion we got in,” Cummings said. She found out they had been accepted on her birthday, which she shares with National Aboriginal Day, an occasion that was “so special.”

Among the speakers at the assembly was filmmaker Alethea Arnaquq-Baril, whose film Angry Inuk was screened at the Ralph Pickard library on Jan. 18. Due for a second screening in Sackville, the film documents the history of anti seal-hunting propaganda and its effects on Inuit communities.

Also among the assembly’s other attendees were Canadian politicians Carolyn Bennett, Minister of Crown-Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs, and Stéphane Dion, the ambassador to Germany and Special Envoy to the European Union and Europe.

“It almost felt alien, seeing these very important people take us very seriously, because although we’ve been lucky and we’ve been endlessly supported throughout, we’ve always expected when we’re around certain people, or if they’re important, they might not have the time for us, and we’ve accepted that,” Cummings said.

Instead, the Arctic Assembly surprised Cummings with its “instant dialogue, instant connection, instant discussion on mental health and our passion for it.”

Duncan Phillips, vice-president of Mitacs, a national non-profit research support centre, was impressed with the group’s presentation at the assembly and nominated it for the Arctic Inspiration Prize. As finalists, North in Focus is waiting to learn the prize results, which come out at the end of January.

A national Loran Scholarship finalist, Cummings is in her second year at Mount Allison pursuing a B.A. in psychology and English. She is currently preparing for NIF’s upcoming summer workshops in Nunavut, and wants students to feel comfortable approaching her about the topics she’s passionate about.

“Talk to me,” she said. “I’m always happy to talk if [you] have any questions regarding mental health in the North, Inuit culture, whatever. I want dialogue.”

Mount Allison has been listed in one of the largest data leaks in history. Known as the Paradise Papers, the leak reveals the offshore activities of some of the world’s wealthiest companies and individuals. Over 3,000 Canadian names, including former prime ministers and the Montreal Canadiens, have been identified with connections to firms in low-tax and tax-free jurisdictions such as Bermuda and the Cayman Islands. Mt. A and the University of Toronto are currently the only Canadian educational institutions included in the leaked documents.

Over 100 other universities and colleges, mainly American, were added to the Offshore Leaks Database by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists on Nov. 17. The educational institutions were found in the client database of law firm Appleby, a prestigious firm that has been a source for most cases in the Paradise Papers.

Mt. A is listed as a beneficiary of two entities in the Cayman Islands, the Alice I. Campbell Settlement and the James G. Campbell Trust. Both entities appear to be trusts and were settled by individuals of the same names almost 50 years ago in 1969.

A trust is a fiduciary arrangement involving a settlor who transfers assets to a third party, usually a law firm. The trustee acts on behalf of a beneficiary and ensures the beneficiary receives the trust’s benefits over time. Sometimes beneficiaries are not made aware of being named in a trust because they have not been notified by the settlor or trustee.

The entities connected to Mt. A were registered with trustee Appleby Trust (Cayman) Ltd, the Cayman Islands office of Appleby, that serves high net worth individuals. Mt. A is among five other beneficiaries in the Settlement and five others in the Trust. The Offshore Data Leaks entry does not give details of what kind of holdings are inside the entities or how much is held by them.

Robert Inglis, Mt. A’s vice-president of finance and administration, reported that the University has no record of having received money from either of the trusts.

“This is the first that we have ever heard of these two entities,” Inglis said. “In addition, the University, as far as I know, has never had any dealing with the firm Appleby, which is the firm from which all the records came.”

Trustees are obligated to notify beneficiaries if they will be receiving income from a trust. Since Mt. A has not heard from Appleby, it is possible that no assets have been placed in the trusts or that the terms of the trust have not yet begun. Why the trust was registered in the Cayman Islands is unclear.

Mt. A’s relationship to its offshore trusts does not resemble the offshore business relationships of the other universities listed in the Offshore Leaks Database. American universities such as Dartmouth, Columbia and Princeton are listed as shareholders, meaning that they have investments in offshore firms.

Universities, particularly in the U.S., are increasingly investing in offshore hedge funds and private equity funds to grow their endowment and pension funds further. Riskier and potentially more lucrative than investments in mutual funds, these specialized investments contradict the charitable tax-exempt mission of a university and open it up to taxable consequences.

“In order to keep their tax-exempt eligibility, they’re not allowed to have what’s called ‘unrelated business income,’ ” said Ben Pershick, the head of hedge fund services at global advisory firm Maitland. Under U.S. law, unrelated business taxable income (UBTI) refers to investment earnings of charities that are considered for profit.

“The only way that these large foundations and pension funds can invest in hedge funds is actually done best offshore through ‘blocker’ corporations,” said Pershick, who has worked at Maitland’s Cayman office for eight years. “Blocker” corporations are identified by U.S. federal income tax law as corporations taxed separately from their owners. “What the ‘blocker’ corporation does is it stops the trail of income,” allowing universities to avoid paying taxes on the capital gains of their offshore investments.

The Canadian Revenue Agency does not specify an equivalent to UBTI or blocker corporations, but its Income Tax Act has regulations with offshore investments, according to Rhonda McIver, a professor of business administration at St. FX. The ITA specifies that foreign investments deemed business-related by a “purpose test” are subject to a fee each year. Additionally, McIver said that “there are huge penalties now for not filing what they call a T1135, a form you have to file if you own any foreign property out of Canada.”

U of T is currently the only Canadian educational institution identified with offshore investments in the Paradise Papers. It became a shareholder of WLR IV Loans AIV Feeder (Cayman), Ltd., a company founded by U.S. Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross, 10 years ago.

In an article published by the Varsity, U of T economics professor Michael Smart stated that the University invests offshore not to avoid taxes, but because the investment firms of its endowment and pension funds receive tax advantages in tax havens. He also said that offshore investment in general has the added benefit of secrecy, which can hide inappropriate attempts at tax avoidance and obscure controversial holdings.

U of T administration released a statement that said its annual pension and endowment statements do not reflect its investments in the Cayman Islands or Malta, prompting concerns over the transparency of the University’s investment strategies.

Mt. A’s transparency regarding its investment holdings has also been a subject of scrutiny from students and faculty, but its name in the Paradise Papers is not connected to its investments.

“There’s the problem of tax avoidance and evasion, [but] that’s not [a problem at] Mt. A so much as it is a wider problem,” said Mt. A economics professor Stephen Law.

The Paradise Papers taps into growing concerns over rising income inequality and the structures that permit the gap to widen and persist. Although legal, tax avoidance redistributes financial support that wealthy individuals might otherwise put into the public sector.

“There’s a wider problem that wealthy individuals who have been under-taxed relative to their level of income, their reliance on public services and public infrastructure have influenced the laws that then permit them to legally move income into places where it is untaxed or less taxed,” Law said.

Concerning Mt. A’s name in the Papers, the University “looks like it got in with a bunch of bad kids by accident mainly, so it’s less of a concern.” However, he added that there’s still “the issue of Mt. A’s endowment and its transparency and how it’s invested.”

The revelation of Mt. A’s offshore trusts came after the Board of Regents agreed to make public the stock and bond holdings of the University’s pooled funds earlier this year on April 26. Accessible on the Mt. A website since this fall, the 71-page Endowment Fund Holdings Report lists the underlying equity and fixed income holdings of the University’s 150+ million dollar endowment fund as at Dec. 2016.

Details of Mt. A’s trusts can be viewed online on the Offshore Leaks Database.

Fascinated by the interrelationships between historical events and current politics, Taplin incorporated his academic interests in history and storytelling to his involvement in sports journalism.

“[Sports journalism] articles are really fun articles because you get to learn more about the athletes involved, the stories behind the sports…the history of the sport. There [are] always stories to tell,” Taplin said.
Before acting as a section editor, Taplin had never contributed to the paper, but had read the sports and health section and seen room for improvement.

“I wanted the [sports and health section] to be more in depth,” Taplin said. “I really wanted a sports section that people would read, because I didn’t feel that people read it.”

A longstanding sports spectator and avid reader of sports journalism, Taplin envisioned refurbishing the sports and health section by pushing for more involvement from contributors and interviewees and strengthening its health-oriented sports coverage.

Taplin’s interest in health-oriented sports coverage can be traced back to his basketball career in high school. After being diagnosed with an anxiety disorder, Taplin discovered that connections formed with his high school basketball teammates gave him a sense of control over his personal life. Since then, Taplin has held a keen interest in the health-related aspects of sports, a fascination that has substantially influenced his coverage of sports and health in the Argosy.

One of the most memorable stories Taplin wrote profiled Mountie football broadcaster Steve Ridlington, whose involvement in broadcasting dates back to 1974.

“[Ridlington] was such a wealth of knowledge. [It’s rewarding] just seeing the passion for college sports that he brings and the enjoyment he gets out of [broadcasting],” Taplin said.

“He had really cool ideas about what Sackville means as a community,” Taplin said, referencing Ridlington’s sense of community that spans from Mt. A’s athletics teams to the greater Sackville community. Taplin explored this interconnectedness through his own sports and health journalism.

Taplin would like to thank the students who recommended his work to the Crake Foundation, the numerous sports and health section contributors, his section reporter Hamza Munawar and the support he received this year from the Argosy staff.

In the fall, Taplin will return to Mt. A for a fifth year to complete a course-based honours in history.

Established in the honour of William Boyle Sawdon, an editor of the Argosy and the Sackville Tribune Post who passed away in 2001, the annual Crake-Sawdon award recognizes Mt. A students who have significantly contributed to print journalism.

We sat down with the festival’s directors, Corinna Paumier and Sadie Donahue, and volunteer coordinator Katharyn Stevenson to discuss the past seven hectic months of organizing the music festival. They divulged the laborious process behind forming a “dream” lineup, working as a female team within a male-dominated industry, and the personal rewards associated with putting together a festival – getting us all hyped for this weekend’s festivities.

Argosy: You mentioned hearing positive comments about the lineup. Can you elaborate on the process behind forming it?

Corinna Paumier: We put out our online application in June and kept it open until the middle of October. We go through who has applied and then build it on a rolling basis.

Once we closed the application, we sat down and looked everything over to see if all the bands fit well together. This year we had almost 80 bands apply.

Q: How many [bands] do you accept?

CP: 21. This is the biggest year yet. Once you find your dream schedule and you think, “This is how it’s going to go,” then you get disappointed because you have to deal with the reality of people’s lives and schedules. Realistically, every band wants to play at 10 p.m. on Friday, but that’s a lot of bands to play in one night.

Q: What aspects of a band do you take into consideration when making a lineup appropriate for Stereophonic?

SD: A lot of genre stuff was considered because last year there was a specific genre, Halifornia pop – which is great, but this year we wanted to expand.

CP: It’s usually been younger, smaller bands that are in the Maritime area, and those tend to range from surf rock all the way up to heavy punk, like garage punk. This year, we have a little more electronic, some heavier instruments, some bands with saxophone, and we have noise bands. So there’s a little bit for everyone this year. And there’s some softer stuff, much more folky.

Q: What kind of crowd does Stereophonic traditionally draw, and what kind of crowd are you intending to draw this year?

Katharyn Stevenson: We want to appeal to more students, make it a more inclusive environment for people that may feel intimidated… A lot of people may not feel welcome attending something like Stereophonic, but with the new programming we are adding this year, it’s our hope to expand and appeal to other people that may not want to go to a loud punk show on a Saturday night.

Sadie Donahue: The bonus and benefit of having a multimedia aspect on the Saturday is that there is going to be a lot of family and underage people who wouldn’t necessarily be able to go to a bar and party until whenever.

Q: Can you guys elaborate on the structure of your team? Is there any kind of hierarchy?

CP: I think we’re really lucky that this hasn’t worked too much as a hierarchy. Doing this alone would be awful, right?

SD: Terrifying.

CP: Creating a hierarchy, I don’t think, is really conducive to having a successful team. Really everyone is helping out with what they can. Obviously, we each have roles that we are doing specifically, but that’s [informed by] what our strengths are.

It’s been really great having Katharyn, since she worked for Sappyfest in the summer…Katharyn jumped right in and saved my ass multiple times. Besides having position titles, it being such a small team, I would never put a hierarchy on it. Also being three females, I feel like it’s much more empowering to work together than try to one-up each other.

Q: Do you feel you encounter any biases working in a primarily male-dominated music industry?

CP: It’s really hard sometimes to get male members from bands to listen to you or to even credit you with what you’re doing, or listen to you at all. When you [say], “I need you on in ten minutes,” and they’re like, “Yeah, yeah,” and I’m like, “No, I want you on in ten minutes, and if you aren’t, I’m not going to put you on,” then they’re like, “Oh woah, you’re crazy.” But it’s just like, “I’m trying to do my job!”

I’ve found sometimes people respond to my name differently when I use Cori versus Corinna. Just the tone of the email – and not in all emails – but I’ve noticed the tone in some emails when I’ve used Cori, people address me differently than they do when I use Corinna. Probably because they assume that I’m a male.

KS: Dealing with male industry personnel – it’s not nice. Especially being a young female, and also still [being] a student…is really frustrating because they don’t take you seriously. They also, I think, don’t take the festival as seriously, because it’s “Oh, three girls running a festival.” But this festival is still going to be kickass. Just because we’re three women still going to school doesn’t mean we have any less time or energy to give to the festival.

CP: [There have been] instances where…[people] have directly messaged Scott [Brown, program director of the radio station]….[Even though] he has nothing to do with the festival apart from being a great support and definitely helping out, he has no [role] in this. And I’ve had the experience where I will be next to or around a male counterpart and they will go to him instead of me, and that’s infuriating. It’s very frustrating. This year, bands aren’t going to have an option, they’re going to have to go to one of us—

SD: It’s going to be a vagina regardless!

CP: Honestly, I’m really proud of all of us, because we are all women who are not going to take shit, we’re not going to allow people to treat us like that because, again, we have ownership and take ownership [of] this festival.

Q: Has planning the festival been a community effort in any way?

SD: The artwork that was done – we had BFA students doing that work. It’s pretty inclusive in the sense that these students dedicated some of their time aside from personal art and school art to do something for the festival and keep in mind the style we wanted. It was a really good support to have.

Q: Were you able to compensate the artists?

CP: Yes, they were all paid fair wages for their art. It’s been really important to us for any artist we’ve employed that we’ve paid them a fair wage for the artwork. For instance, the snake we have used on everything. So it’s not fair to pay someone only $20 for a drawing that has become the symbol of the festival.

KS: Savannah [Mileen Harris] did the T-shirts, Hailey [Guzik] did the larger posters, Izzy [Francolini] drew the snakes. They were all super accommodating and very willing to help us out and keep in mind our artistic vision for the festival.

Q: What are you most excited about for Stereophonic 14?

CP: I’m really excited for the Vogue short film screening. I feel that’s something that has really been lacking in Sackville. I love the Sackville Film Society, but those are big-budget, independent movies, whereas these are mostly New Brunswick artists who are just starting out, or they have not been in the field for a while and are making films that are absolutely amazing and intriguing. I’d love to see people have more access to that because I feel like it’s an untapped market in Sackville.

KS: Going off of Cori’s point, I like the idea of marrying different aspects of the arts this year. Stereophonic has been strictly music for a really long time, and there’s nothing wrong with that, but in the same way with Sappyfest this summer, we were really trying to expand and cater to different crowds.

CP: It’s really satisfying when you have people coming up to you and being like, “That was so much fun and I can’t wait for tomorrow.” We’ve had lots of people saying, “This show is going to be so great.” That’s really exciting for people to express that already, that they are already feeling that excitement.

KS: Having the small comment of “The lineup looks really great,” that makes you feel good.

SD: Especially when other bands say, “The lineup is great, I’m excited to be a part of it.”

CP: It makes you feel like you’ve done something right.

KS: It’s so much stress leading up to it, no matter how prepared you feel…when you’re at the show, even though you might be working, you are seeing people have a good time. It brings that special aspect knowing you were part of making something really special happen for people, and that’s really rewarding…Seeing other people happy makes it all worth it.

Open Sky offers young adults with self-identified mental or developmental impairments the opportunity to learn vocational skills in a supportive environment. Participants can choose between day programs and longer-term residential arrangements, with fees determined on a case-by-case basis to best suit applicants’ individual and financial needs.

Modelled after the European care farm, the charitable co-op combines farming with vocational training and mental health care. “We started [Open Sky] because we felt that the farm environment – working with plants and animals ­– was inherently healing,” said Margaret Tusz-King, executive director of Open Sky.

With a background in adult education, Tusz-King incorporates alternative teaching methods into Open Sky’s program.

“We had to come up with different ways of teaching,” Tusz-King said. “Most of our learning tools that you and I are successful in are written words, and not all of us learn well that way.”

Methods such as emphasizing schedules and the use of visuals characterize Open Sky’s educational curriculum. Posters decorate the recreational and outdoor spaces and kitchen. Inside the barn, step-by-step photographs outline the task of distributing hay bales to the goats and donkeys.

Third-year Mount Allison student Diane Ortiz-MacLeod contributes to the co-op’s visually oriented curriculum by overseeing an art program.

“When it comes to art programs, they’re not always readily accessible to people with disabilities,” Ortiz-MacLeod said. “I want to make the arts a more accessible learning tool.”

Liz Kent, an Open Sky employee and Mt. A graduate, said that daily activities at Open Sky may seem initially trivial, but in fact provide essential practices that gear participants to become and feel more independent.

“It might seem like ‘why am I getting paid for this?’ at first,” Kent said. “[Since] a lot of the things we focus on are activities.”

Activities like tending to the farm’s gardens and animals, playing board games and working on DIY projects under Ortiz’s art program offer participants the opportunity to apply new tools at their own pace with the support of mentors.

Secondary schools often fail to equip youth living with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) with the necessary tools to thrive after graduation. Consequently, young adults with ASD are less likely than their peers to hold a job or be enrolled in postsecondary education.

In addition, onsets of most mental health illnesses occur during secondary school years, creating another impediment for youth finding employment after graduation.

Tusz-King and many other parents of children with disabilities refer to this transition period as a cliff. “People who have kids with disabilities talk about ‘the cliff’ at the end of formal schooling; there’s a cliff that everyone falls off,” Tusz-King said. “There’s not a lot to catch them.”

Offering a safety net, “[Open Sky] is a possibility where a possibility may not have been,” Kent said, referring to the educational gap the co-op fills.

“It sounds like a lame metaphor, but we have stuff growing,” Kent said, alluding not only to the vegetables in the gardens, but also to the youth who arrive at Open Sky and “find their own way of being independent.”

Open Sky seeks to hire and train students as volunteers and paid staff over summer and into the school year. The co-op offers training in organic farming and sells its organic produce at the Sackville Farmers Market.

To learn more, direct any questions to  Tusz-King at info@openskyco-op.ca or visit www.openskyco-op.ca.

The post Open Sky fills gap in education system appeared first on The Argosy .]]> https://www.since1872.ca/features/open-sky-fills-gap-in-education-system/feed/ 1 https://www.since1872.ca/arts-culture/joseph-boyden-enlightens-mt-a/ https://www.since1872.ca/arts-culture/joseph-boyden-enlightens-mt-a/#respond Wed, 05 Oct 2016 21:36:13 +0000 http://www.since1872.ca/?p=5395 Award-winning author Joseph Boyden returned to Mount Allison on Monday for a reading of his internationally recognized novels and upcoming work, Wenjack, which will be released this October. To a fully packed Brunton auditorium, Boyden shared stories of his youth, advice for aspiring writers and some of his deepest secrets. “My first secret to share […]

Award-winning author Joseph Boyden returned to Mount Allison on Monday for a reading of his internationally recognized novels and upcoming work, Wenjack, which will be released this October. To a fully packed Brunton auditorium, Boyden shared stories of his youth, advice for aspiring writers and some of his deepest secrets.

“My first secret to share with all of you tonight is: Every time I sit down to create a short story or an article for Maclean’s or when I especially try to create a new novel, I’m scared,” Boyden said. “Can I do this? Do I have it in me to put what’s here into someone else’s head?”

Of Anishinaabe and Celtic descent, Boyden’s emotionally evocative stories bring light to Indigenous resiliency with historically inspired characters. His upcoming novella, Wenjack, tells the true story of an Anishinaabe boy, Chanie Wenjack, who died while running away from a residential school.

“You learn about [residential schools] in the textbook. You learn that these were the institutions, this is what happened, but you don’t actually learn about the people,” said  Diandre Stacey, a first-year Mohawk student. “He does bridge the gap. He puts a face to the people in the schools.”

The realistic and powerful characters in Boyden’s stories have captivated thousands of readers and Boyden himself.

“With me as a writer, I truly believe that it’s the characters who create the story…I don’t sit down and say, ‘I’m going to show Canada [and] wield my hammer of righteousness,’” Boyden said.

“When I went to Belgium to go see the trenches again, to go see where Xavier and Elijah, my imagined characters, [walked], I felt like they were really walking around,” said Boyden, referring to the protagonists of Three Day Road. “I can’t shake that, and I wrote that novel a decade ago. I think [the characters’ experiences] certainly become a part of my make-up.”

As if destined to be an internationally acclaimed storyteller, Boyden received from Elder Basil Johnston the Anishinaabe name “One Who Enlightens,” which translates in English to “Shining Bridge.”

“[The name] is a gift, but gifts carry weight and a gift gives and you’re going to have to give,” Boyden said. “I am always thinking ‘How do I be a bridge? How do I be one who enlightens?’”

In the manner of his namesake, Boyden enlightened the audience with the Anishinaabe phrase for “everyone counts,” a motto succinctly capturing Mt. A’s theme for 2016, the Year of Indigenous Knowing.

As outlined by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of 2015, Canada’s universities are offering increased educational programs on Indigenous affairs.

“In the spirit of reconciliation, ‘everyone counts’ is the idea that we all count,” Boyden said.

Boyden’s motto resonated with Spencer Isaac, a Canadian studies major and Mt. A Indigenous affairs intern.

“When he mentioned ‘everyone counts,’ I can only think of it as everyone should count. Unfortunately, that’s not the case,” said Isaac, a member of the Listuguj Mi’gmaq First Nation. “For me, personally, it’s missing and murdered Indigenous women and men, a statistic that’s really big…It’s a stat that isn’t being talked about either.”

Isaac’s brother, Chris Metallic, went missing in 2011 after attending a party in Sackville. “I’m still trying to keep my head up ever since my brother went missing,” Isaac said.

His mother a schoolteacher, Boyden and his ten siblings grew up learning the value and ubiquity of education. He and seven of his sisters followed in her footsteps and eventually became teachers.

“Education takes so many different forms. There’s the obvious education of sitting down and learning the specifics taught in the classroom,” Boyden said. “Education is everywhere. I always hope to be educated.”

As part of Mt. A’s Year of Indigenous Knowing, the Canadian studies program distributed 600 copies of Boyden’s bestselling first novel Three Day Road, now a popular part of several Mt. A course curricula, to the first-year class.

“I had to read it for two of my [English] classes,” said first-year Julianna Rutledge while clutching an annotated copy of Three Day Road.

Boyden hopes the distribution of his works and the works of other Indigenous authors can help push for a day of national recognition for the Indigenous lives impacted by residential schools.

“We’re going to release our projects into the world [with] the whole point being that we want not just the federal government, we want Canada to have a national day of recognition for both the survivors and those who didn’t survive residential schools,” Boyden said. “I think it’s high time, and I know that the government thinks so too, but it’s not about the government, it’s about us understanding that.”

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