On Oct. 25, the Sackville Commons was transformed from a quiet community centre to a vibrant, bustling hall full of town residents and students from around the world. Tables were set up throughout the main hall, with dozens of international students from nine different countries showcasing their local cuisine. Students waited in line to have henna art painted on their hands, searching through their phones for the perfect design. This was the World Bazaar’s 16th year in operation, and it was as lively as ever.

The World Bazaar, run by Mount Allison’s International Centre, was first organized in 2003 and has been an annual tradition since. The event allows international students to cook food from their home countries, and members of the local community are welcome to purchase tickets and try a variety of cuisine.

The Bazaar has traditionally been held in the Sackville United Church at the same time as Sackville’s Midnight Madness event; however, this year, the Bazaar moved locations and opened two weeks before Midnight Madness.

“This year Midnight Madness fell during reading week, and so for students, it’s not convenient,” explained Christa Mason, Mt. A’s international student advisor.

“In the past, we were in the United Church. It’s a great venue, but they don’t have as big of kitchen facilities,” said Mason. “The Commons allows for students who don’t have kitchens in residence to participate.” The Bazaar’s venue change did not appear to harm its success, with students from nine countries participating in the event.

“There’s so much diversity in the food [at the Bazaar],” said Mt. A student Oorja Gonepavaram. “You don’t get to eat like this when you live in residence and eat at Jennings every day. This is a great mix of foods, and it’s cheap and tasty.”

“This is Coca-Cola chicken. It has some sweet and sour flavours together, and it’s very complex,” said Weiting Li, a Mt. A student from China, as she proudly displayed the Southern Chinese specialties she had spent two hours preparing earlier that day. “And these are rice cakes made with brown sugar that are sweet and sticky.” In under an hour, both dishes had sold out.

Other dishes included Scottish shortbread, Liberian fried greens, Lebanese tabbouleh and Taiwanese braised pork. In addition to food, visitors to the Bazaar could also purchase mehndi designs on their hands, drawn with henna that Gonepavaram had brought from India over the summer.

Many of the international students had participated in the Bazaar in previous years, and could anticipate what to buy in advance in case certain supplies or ingredients were not available in Sackville; however, many dishes still required innovation to adapt to which ingredients were available in Canada.

Minaho Ae, a member of Mt. A’s multicultural organization MOSAIC, prepared takoyaki, Japanese grilled balls traditionally filled with octopus. Instead of octopus, Ae filled the takoyaki with sausages and fish powder to create a “Canadian version,” and used sauce she had brought from Japan in anticipation of this year’s event.

Maisaa Al Tamki, an international student from Syria, participated in the World Bazaar for her third time this year. This time, she prepared stuffed grape leaves filled with rice, vegetables and meat, as well as a fried eggplant dish with yoghurt and tahini. She went on to describe the importance of accommodating multiple diets, noting that, “There is beef in the grape leaves, and not all people eat beef, so I made one with beef and one that’s vegan.”

[su_carousel source=”media: 10920,10921,10922,10923″ link=”lightbox” target=”blank” width=”900″ height=”400″ responsive=”no” items=”1″]

Many of the students who prepared food for the Bazaar expressed an appreciation for the event’s ability to unite students from all backgrounds and open up a dialogue about various cultures.

“It’s nice because you make people know about your culture,” said Al Tamki. “Food is a part of all cultures. People usually stop when they come to get food, and ask ‘Where do you come from?’ and ‘How do you make this?’ and all these questions about your country. I think it’s good.”

Mason seconded these thoughts, emphasizing the event’s ability to create cultural connections: “I think it’s a way to experience and connect with other cultures in a really fun way. Students love sharing a piece of their culture in this way, and I think that food really brings people together.”

Last Friday, Sackville’s Vogue Cinema underwent a transformation. For one evening, instead of projectors, moviegoers and film reels, the cinema was alive with wigs, glitter and false nails. Upbeat pop songs played on the theatre’s speakers as an excited audience of families and students alike cheered for a series of energetic and engaged performers.

Sackville’s Drag Extravaganza, organized by community member Dawn Boorne, showcased eight drag performers from Fredericton, including drag queens, drag kings and nonbinary drag performers. Because many drag performers make a significant part of their income from audience tips, vendors sold “drag dollars”: fake money with drag queens’ faces on them worth a dollar each. This allowed the audience to tip the performers in increments of less than five dollars without needing to use coins.

Before getting started, the show’s host, a drag queen performing under the name Amour Love, warmed up the audience with a speech about self-acceptance. She then walked around the theatre, greeting various audience members and thanking them for attending.

The drag artists – Amour Love, Angellica Good, Dia Monde, Justin Toodeep, Roxie Champagne, Sasha Stratus, Venom Devine and Rex on the Beach – each performed a dance and lip sync routine to two different songs, with a brief intermission in the middle. The songs ranged from an energetic rendition of Aladdin’s Friend Like Me, complete with high kicks and magic tricks, to an emotional lip-sync performance of Lizzo’s power ballad Cuz I Love You.

Drag is an art form in which individuals wear costumes and perform as their “drag persona,” a personal character representing exaggerated forms of masculinity or femininity. Drag has historically been persecuted as a form of gender-nonconformity; however, the past five years have seen drag brought increasingly into the mainstream as a result of media like RuPaul’s Drag Race, a competition reality show featuring drag queens. Despite this increased visibility, many of Drag Extravaganza’s performers cautioned against mainstream audiences basing their perception of drag on a single show.

“Having the multimedia system that we have today in 2019 can be a double-edged sword,” said Amour Love. “We have overexposure of certain things we don’t want to showcase so much, and then that becomes the staple of what people think drag is, and I think it’s good to challenge that. It’s good to remind people that we have drag kings, we have drag queens and we have nonbinary performers.”

Drag king Justin Toodeep hopes that showcasing drag kings and nonbinary drag artists will help local communities learn more about varying types of drag. “Unfortunately, it’s still kind of a man’s world. But it has to start somewhere: when I started, there were no other drag kings in the province, and now there are drag kings that I’m not even related to!”

After the show, all eight performers visited local record shop Dave’s Rock Emporium, where they met with audience members and took photos together. During the meet-and-greet portion of the show, many fans expressed their excitement at the opportunity to see and meet drag performers in a small town like Sackville.

“It’s important to showcase different varieties of living, being and thinking,” said Amour Love when asked about the importance of drag in small communities. “It’s not wanting everybody to just pick up a flag and a fan and start to dance to our music and live the lifestyle – it’s more or less just [wanting] acceptance and appreciation that there’s a diverse lifestyle out there that, unfortunately, our small towns don’t get to represent all the time.”

“It’s important that everybody gets to experience [drag] in their own town and that everybody feels like they have their moment to be proud,” said Angellica Good.

Although the Drag Extravaganza event is now finished for the year, it leaves behind memories of acceptance, diversity and fun. Happy Pride!

The Convocation Hall lobby is decorated with dozens of candles and string lights. An unfinished rangoli sits in the corner, inviting attendees to help complete it. By the end of the night, it will be finished: a collaborative effort to create a unique, vibrant design. Organizers are putting the finishing touches on the evening’s meal, a full menu of hearty Indian cuisine including chana masala, raitha and dhal. This is MOSAIC’s Diwali celebration, and it is already bursting with liveliness and cheer.

“To me, [Diwali] means home. It makes me feel closer to home,” said Nikky Kundliwal, one of the event’s organizers. “It’s a time of celebration; it’s a time of forgiving and giving.” Diwali is a five-day Hindu festival that celebrates the triumph of light over darkness. Although it originates from India, Diwali is an official holiday in eleven countries. Now, for the third year in a row, Sackville is joining these countries in their celebrations.

Dr. Roopen Majithia, a Mount Allison professor of philosophy, opened Sackville’s Diwali celebration with a speech detailing the meaning of the festival with a particular focus on the cycle between light and darkness. The core message was the belief that one must endure the dark and cherish the light. After the speech, the attendees were each given a candle to hold. One candle was lit, and the light was spread from one candle to another to symbolize how anyone can bring light to others’ lives without diminishing their own. The ceremony was followed by two musical performances by students Jaelyn Audette and Tyson Miller, featuring John Lennon’s Imagine and George Ezra’s Blame It On Me.

After the performances, the highly anticipated dinner was served. The celebration boasted a variety of delicious Indian dishes, with ample left over for seconds, and dessert. As everyone ate, participants were encouraged to contribute to the rangoli art, traditional Indian art involving the creation of patterns from coloured rice. This was a new and welcome addition to the annual celebration. The organizers had coloured the rice for the rangoli the previous Monday in preparation. While Kundliwal noted that colouring the rice was “a long process,” the result was a beautiful and meaningful collective experience. The celebration ended in a dance circle where attendees followed along to Bollywood dance moves with organizers to songs like Gallan Goodiyan and Badri Ki Dulhania.

Rangoli art was not the only new feature in this year’s Diwali event. “Previously, students have been the primary body participating in the festivities,” explained MOSAIC president Maddy Bedard, “but this year, our focus was centred on making Diwali not only for students, but also for members of the Sackville community.” Indeed, many of the celebration’s attendees were Sackville residents rather than Mt. A students.

Bedard also added, “Festivities and celebrations like Diwali are great opportunities for our community to come together as one so that we can learn and celebrate the many important cultures of the world.” MOSAIC’s festival of light certainly granted Sackville an evening of celebration, learning and fun. Happy Diwali!

Then I clicked on the link.

As it turns out, the Campus Freedom Index (CFI), run by legal non-profit Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms (JCCF), is not the crusader for justice and freedom that it claims to be. Rather, it is yet another politically motivated attempt to preach hypocritical values and defend only conservative ideals. While there is nothing wrong with an organization that promotes a particular viewpoint, couching their agenda in a supposedly neutral framework is reprehensible.

What caused Mt. A to earn a D rating? According to the Campus Freedom Index’s website, the University’s rating is based on both its Sexual Violence Prevention and Response policy, which bans sexual harassment, and its Racism and Racial Harassment Prevention and Response policy, which bans discrimination, slurs and physical violence. According to the CFI, both of these policies constitute violations of free speech.

Mt. A’s F grade comes from its Student Union Policies rating. The Campus Freedom Index condemns the MASU for following the aforementioned racism policy, and for its election policies. The MASU’s discretion to disqualify candidates for inappropriate conduct was presented as a heinous violation of students’ freedom, rather than a choice not to spend its own money on funding campaigns based on attack ads or slander.

The JCCF was founded by conservative lawyer John Carpay, who, in June 2017, wrote an opinion piece for the National Post. In this piece, Carpay criticized students at McMaster University for protesting in a “noisy” and “disruptive” group outside a talk held by Prof. Jordan Peterson, who earlier that year stated that he refuses to address people using their preferred, gender-neutral pronouns.

Carpay then claimed that the characterization of the protests by McMaster’s president as “peaceful” was “more worrisome than the noisy mob,” pointing to the protests as an example of the silencing of unpopular speech. He also posited that universities are “far too tolerant” of such protests, and that it is disingenuous to consider obstructionist protests an exercise of free expression.

Indeed, few reasonable proponents of free speech believe that all speech should be free from consequences; if someone calls in a bomb threat or publishes libel, they are still responsible for their actions. The same naturally applies to both sexual harassment and racism, both of which constitute tangible harm to others and interfere with the academic environment that the JCCF claims to support. Threatening the safety of students through sexual harassment and racist conduct does not promote learning; rather, it hampers it.

The JCCF clearly understands that some forms of expression are potentially detrimental to the purpose of a university, as per Carpay’s article. Even so, the only expressions of speech that are defended by the JCCF are those promoting conservative views, and the nonprofit’s most prolific cases have all been in defence of conservative speech. The irony of a free speech crusader banning opposing viewpoints is tangible.

Of course, none of this is to say that the question of free speech at Mt. A is of no concern. As students, we must remain vigilant of potential violations of our freedom, and fight back if, and when, such violations do occur. However, the CFI should not be taken as a legitimate measure of any university’s freedom of expression. For now, I would rather Mt. A take measures to avoid an environment of sexual harassment and racism.

Upon entering the doors of the Ralph Pickard Bell Library, you will see a series of photographs hanging above the glass display and computers, portraying images of Meiji-era Japan. These photographs, which are on display  until Thanksgiving, depict scenes of daily life in Japan and traditional clothing. Beautifully composed and detailed, the photographs provide a look into Japan during a time of significant change.

The photographer, John Cooper Robinson, was an Anglican missionary from Ontario who moved to Japan and lived there from the late 19th to the early 20th century. The first ever Canadian-sponsored missionary to Japan, Robinson depicted a Japan in the transitional stages between feudalism and capitalism in his photography.

Robinson lived all over Japan, spending time in Hiroshima, Nagoya and Niigata. He was also a writer, having published an essay about the country titled The Island Empire of the East: Being a short history of Japan and missionary work therein. The essay focused on several aspects of daily life in Japan, including the country’s transportation, language and spirituality.

Alongside some of Robinson’s photographs, the library also features a display case detailing the history between Mt. A and Japan. This includes a write-up on the history of MASSIE, a program at Mt. A that brings 20 to 40 Japanese students to the University every semester to study English, as well as a portrait of Reitaro Okuro, the first-ever Japanese student to attend Mt. A.

MASSIE, which began in 2000, offers three programs per year. The program pairs visiting students with conversation partners to give these students the opportunities to practice English and develop friendships with Canadians. It also includes frequent trips to other provinces, such as P.E.I. and Ontario, to learn about Canada’s history and geography. The program therefore provides not only an opportunity for MASSIE students to practice and develop their English skills, but also a cultural connection between Japan and Canada.

While these photographs are historical, they are still meaningful in the present day. Indeed, Mt. A recently welcomed the photographer’s great-granddaughter, Jill Cooper Robinson, who introduced a Sept. 26 lecture by Professor Hamish Ion about the longstanding relationship between Japan and Mt. A.

The exhibit provides not only a reminder of the positive connection between Mt. A and Japan, but also of our relationship going forward. Be it through exchange programs, Instagrammed travel pictures or international friendships, one thing is certain: these photographs are only the start. Be sure to stop by!

Young-joo, a Korean immigrant who has taken courses in Japanese cuisine, said that the most popular items on his new menu are the sushi rolls and ramen. Downtown Diner also features bento boxes, a lunchtime favourite in Japan, as well as appetizers like spring rolls and agedashi tofu.

The change in menu, however, has left some locals feeling confused. “This used to be a Canadian food restaurant, so we have the same name and the same sign,” Young-joo said. He explained that some people enter the restaurant and are surprised to see that it no longer offers fries and sandwiches. “One day, we need to change the sign and the name…. Now, we are just focusing on the food.”

Still, the change has been positively received overall, and Sackville is largely happy to welcome new food options to the table. “Honestly, it’s exactly what Sackville needed,” wrote Sackville resident Hannah Anderson in her review of the restaurant.

Manami Onishi, a second-year exchange student from Japan’s Kwansei Gakuin University, was similarly excited that Japanese food is now available in Sackville, and was impressed by the food at Downtown Diner.

“The miso ramen which I ate was very close to Japanese style ramen,” Manami said, adding, “The taste was delicious for me…. I missed Japanese food.”

Young-joo says that he is happy to bring Japanese food to Sackville, and that he plans to add more Japanese food to the menu in the future. “We have some plans to provide a lot of [Japanese food], so one day we will add to the menu.” He also adds his thanks to Downtown Diner’s patrons.

“We just want to provide some good and healthy food,” Young-joo said. “So thanks for coming here.” With a beloved location and a dedicated owner, Downtown Diner’s Japanese menu is certainly a welcome addition to the town’s plate. Itadakimasu!