Wednesday, August 27, 2025
Home Blog Page 540

On the road again

Dalhousie Gazette Staff
-
0

By Nick Laugher, Staff Contributor

“(In Winnipeg) there’s this beautiful sense of potential. I think that if you really want to do something, you can do it here.”
It’s this kind of humble sincerity has embedded itself in the veins and flows out of the mouth of John K. Samson, lead singer and songwriter for Canada’s beloved indie stalwarts The Weakerthans. Aside from being the driving force behind one of Canada’s most accomplished independent acts, Samson is also responsible for running the small but dedicated publishing company Arbiter Ring, which tirelessly contributes to a plethora of musical projects outside of the band.
Recently, Samson has embarked on a solo venture: a series of three seven-inch vinyl and digital releases over the course of a year and a half, all inspired by roads and highways in Manitoba. This is Samson’s first release as a solo artist since sharing a six-song split EP with Manitoba punk band Painted Thin in 1995. Opting to release a series of vinyl and digital releases in lieu of an album, Samson believes it was the challenge of the medium that lured him in.
“I liked the idea that I have eight minutes to say something about this one place, this one road,” says Samson. “It was kind of an exercise, I had to be concise and direct … plus, (The Weakerthans) have never had a seven-inch … and I really like vinyl.”
While admittedly sharing a love/hate relationship with his home province – “One Great City!” Is a prime example – Samson is more than willing to cite growing up there as central to his identity and affectionately pays homage to it with this solo venture.
“Growing up in Manitoba, if you said you were a publisher, a musician or a poet, people took you at your word – and you were,” says Samson. “The centres of the country, they require you to have some kind of qualifications to do these things.”
Samson, who indeed does succeed at pushing boundaries as a brilliant and influential poet, musician and publisher, has just stepped off a small European tour as the opener for German band Kettcar in support of the first release of his solo project entitled City Route 85. Samson admits that the aspect of the tour that appealed to him the most was the beautiful architecture and ambiance of the venues.
“The Weakerthans have played a lot of big, ugly rooms, so it was nice to play rooms that were gorgeous and had some soul, because at least if I sucked, then the room was still beautiful,” says Samson, tongue-in-cheek.
Beautiful venues and the love of a humble, honest city are also responsible for attracting Samson to Halifax, where he will play a solo show at St. Patrick’s Church for the Dead of Winter festival on Jan. 29.
“I’ve always really loved Halifax and when they invited me and I thought, ‘Well no one’s really invited me to this kind of thing before,’ and I heard the venue was beautiful,” remarks Samson. “It just sounded like a very enjoyable evening.”
Weakerthans fans fear not – the band is by no means deteriorating. Samson is quick to announce that this solo project is not an attempt to begin a new career as a solo artist.
“This was a fun, personal thing that I wanted to do – very low key,” Samson explains. “It’s not that I didn’t think it would work with The Weakerthans. The idea just felt like a solo project.”
Though they’re slowly working on a new album – “Bits and pieces at a time” says Samson – The Weakerthans are, and always have been, predominantly a live band. Samson attributes this largely to getting his feet wet playing bass and touring with Canada’s politico-thrashpunk alumni Propagandhi before leaving to start The Weakerthans.
“It made me realize that I love playing for crowds and, though it’s a hard lifestyle to adapt to, I love touring,” says Samson nostalgically.
The Weakerthans are certainly well known for their energetic live performance and workhorse dedication to touring. In 2009 they embarked on a cross-Canada tour from St. John’s to Whitehorse dubbed the “Rolling Tundra Revue”. The tour included two sold out hometown shows at the Burton Cummings Theatre in Winnipeg which the band will release as the live CD/DVD “The Weakerthans: Live at the Burton Cummings Theatre” on March 23. Samson admits it’s an idea that’s been kicking around in the back of their minds for a while and that the welcoming embrace and energy of the Winnipeg shows inspired them to finally take the plunge.
Following Samson’s solo performance in Halifax, The Weakerthans plan to head down under for an Australian tour before settling back down in Canada to immerse themselves once more in the crafting of their forthcoming album.
Samson’s City Route 85, which is available through Epitaph and ANTI records, continues the intricate character-based storytelling approach that Samson lyrically embarked on with The Weakerthans’ 2007 album Reunion Tour.
“I’ve always wanted to be a writer,” says Samson. “My first goal was always to write fiction and this is the only way I really know how to do it – in three minute pop songs. I’m interested in human beings, not so much in my own daily life … I’m interested in exploring and trying to understand other lives, to spread those stories around to people. I think everyone goes through a phase where they’re more interested in themselves. There’s always that misanthropic phase that writers go through, but some people stay with that … they refuse to find anything good about humanity. But me, I’m just completely captivated by it all.”

You can bask in Samson’s unique blend of deeply profound, intimate folk music, storytelling and dry humour as he performs songs from his new solo release and The Weakerthans’ catalogue on Jan. 29 at St. Patrick’s Church in Halifax.

Edible Campus

Dalhousie Gazette Staff
-
0

By Gwendolyn Muir, Opinions Contributor

The local food movement in Halifax is on the rise. Animated market-goers crowd Saturday buses and sidewalks around Hollis Street at sunrise. Students in Halifax rally for more local, ethically-sourced food, and seeds are sowed for the coming summer’s urban gardens. Yet there may not be enough home-grown handouts to meet demand.
On bleak January mornings, Saturday market stands are often emptied well before noon. Exclusive contracts at Dalhousie and SMU allow corporations such as Sodexo and Aramark to dish out food sourced from across the globe, supplanting local production while student gardeners are confined to a few raised beds. In a world of growing food insecurity and environmental degradation, the importance of local food is taking on new dimensions. Not only is locally-sourced food often healthier and more ecologically sound, it’s accessible too; when the weather is right it can be grown in backyards and even on our own university campuses.
According to the Federation of Canadian Municipalities, at least half of Canada’s greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions (350 million tonnes) are under the jurisdiction of municipal governments. Sourcing food locally comes hand in hand with the needed ‘greening’ of our own urban campus and consumer habits: local agriculture means reducing waste, packaging, food miles, salvaging reusable plastic containers, promoting composting, and minimizing the “heat island” of hot concrete spaces. Urban gardening allows us to be a part of the food process, while making use of underutilized, neglected or leftover spaces in urban areas. In addition, gardening fosters a sense of community. Gardens provide an opportunity for people to come together and share in what they’ve helped to create, promoting active community and social cohesion. Maybe above all, gardens teach their growers hands-on skills and can alter lifestyle choices for coming generations.
In the past few years, Canadian universities have begun successful urban agriculture initiatives, including at UQAM (Université de Québec à Montréal), the University of Toronto, and McGill University. McGill University’s “Edible Campus” is one that has made headlines across Canada and internationally and was featured by the BBC as the winner of the 2008 National Urban Design Award. It is a partnered initiative between the McGill School of Architecture’s Minimum Cost Housing Group and two Montreal NGOs, Alternatives and Santropol Roulant.
The project site is not that of a typical garden: a concrete-covered courtyard surrounds a 13-storey building, with the whir of Sherbrooke Street traffic only a few metres away. In 2008, the project consisted of 123 large plastic containers that produced 177 kilograms of produce. Last summer, the number grew to 225 containers, and a 100-square-metre raised garden bed was set up on a concrete rooftop, yielding an even greater harvest.  All the vegetables and fruits produced in the garden are used by Santropol Roulant, a local food-focused group that helps to maintain the garden as well as cook and deliver meals to community members with a limited mobility.
Christopher DeWolf from Spacing Toronto writes: “The Edible Campus has given a real sense of place to what was previously an empty space. Put a bunch of plants in some boxes on a concrete tarmac, it seems, and you’ll not only grow a large volume of healthy fruits and vegetables, you will create a spot where people can meet, mingle and interact with food they might otherwise find, processed and packaged, on supermarket shelves.”
This coming spring a new student group, Campus Action on Food (CAF), hopes to be a part of a similar initiative here on campus along with other supportive societies. The containerized garden model as developed at McGill is easily adaptable, made from mostly recycled materials such as large buckets, election signs, yogurt containers, tubing, pop bottles and tie wraps. Food would be grown by and for the community in container gardens situated on the unused, open concrete spaces here at Dalhousie, transforming the university into an edible campus.
The group hopes that this project would provide students and community members with nutritious and ethically-sourced food, while challenging the corporate food monopoly that exists on campus.

I volunteered for Santropol Roulant last summer and worked at the Edible Campus at McGill, and now am also a part of Campus Action on Food. So yep, pretty involved with the subject matter… whatever you decide is OK with me.

Rethink security

Dalhousie Gazette Staff
-
0

By Leyland Cecco, Staff Contributor

Fresh off a botched attack by Nigerian national Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, who was allegedly acting at the behest of al-Qaida, the apparent best response by aviation authorities and governments is to deny people from getting out of their seats an hour before the flight lands and installing body scanners in airports.
The Gazette previously published a denunciation of these scanners, so we can skip over the privacy issue. These Orwellian machines are touted in the name of enhanced national and international security. But are they really a necessary addition to the swath of security measures in place? Come to think of it, how worried should we be about terrorism?
Undoubtedly, Abdulmutallab’s botched Christmas day attack highlights the fact that terrorists (especially Al-Qaida) are still trying to attack airplanes.
The U.S. had all the information they needed on him prior to his flight. Information from Yemen had sounded alarms within the bureaucracies of the CIA and NSA. The problem arose from miscommunication between the agencies and the aviation authorities. As Obama noted, the “dots weren’t connected.”
If the bits and pieces of information had been aligned, would the attack have been prevented? Probably. Would have he been stopped with a body scanner? Maybe not.
Here’s why: without crucial communications, body scanners can be ineffective.
Prior to 9-11, the threat of terrorism was not a new phenomenon. There were hundreds of lives lost to hijackers and bombers targeting airplanes. Security measures were in place. But the attacks still happened.
Subsequent reports written afterwards point again to miscommunication. While there were many documents warning of an al-Qaida attack prior to Sept. 11, poor intra-agency discourse rendered the information useless. To counter this fault, stricter security standards were in place. But if enhanced security measures prevented attempted attacks, we wouldn’t be discussing Abdulmutallab’s underwear fiasco. Miscommunication and inefficient handling of sensitive information are the problem, and the answer isn’t a body scanner.
So maybe we need to focus on better handling of information. But isn’t al-Qaida a huge threat? Isn’t that what Fox News so eloquently tells us? Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh seem to think so. It’s what Obama is accused of being so soft on.
If you want to play the statistics game, the best place to look is statistics-smith Nate Silver. Silver gained mass recognition for his number crunching during the 2008 presidential election, where he successfully predicted the results (except for two states.) He had also predicted Obama’s primary victory when he realized the polling done by many major groups was just plain shitty.
So Silver, on his website, www.fivethirtyeight.com, tackles the ‘Odds of Airborne Terror’. He notes that for every 16,553,385 departures, there is one terrorist incident. Over the last 10 years, the odds of boarding one of those flights were one in 10,408,947. Not bad. For reference, he calculates the odds of being struck by lightning as one in 500,000. Pretty good.
If numbers aren’t really your thing, there’s another way to look at it.
Is al-Qaida getting stronger, or weaker? Slate.com’s Timothy Noah confronts this question. After the 9-11 attacks, the U.S. essentially decimated al-Qaida’s infrastructure. More than two-thirds of its leadership was killed or captured. Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the ‘architect’ behind the September attacks is in jail and will soon be tried in civil court.
Citing Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Lawrence Wright, Noah claims 80 per cent of al Qaida’s Afghanistan membership was killed, and al-Qaida’s numbers are probably around 200 to 300.
“At the very least, U.S. forces set back the al-Qaida hierarchy by several years. At most, the United States may have destroyed permanently al-Qaida’s ability to operate as a centrally run enterprise, reducing its chairman, Osama Bin Laden, and its CEO, Ayman al-Zawahiri, to symbolic figureheads rather than hands-on leaders,” says Noah. This also looks pretty good.
According to Noah’s thoroughly researched evaluation of the situation, the threat of terrorism isn’t as bad as it used to be. So why are we letting more and more security measures be implement to counter a dwindling risk?
It seems as though the move to implement body scanners isn’t so much a product of risk calculation and analysis of the threat, but a move to suggest that airborne terrorism is a bigger danger than it might actually be.
Governments need to get back to the drawing board, but first rethink their communication skills and ability to handle sensitive information before they head into the future like it’s 1984.

Justice, not charity, needed in Haiti

Dalhousie Gazette Staff
-
0

By Dave Bush, Staff Contributor

Is Haiti cursed? The question seems to be asked by westerners every time Haiti goes through some crisis, whether it is a flood, coup or earthquake.
“From this catastrophe, which follows so many others, we should make sure that it is a chance to get Haiti once and for all out of the curse it seems to have been stuck with for such a long time,” said French President Nicolas Sarkozy days after the recent 7.1 earthquake devastated Haiti.
There it is again, the curse that supposedly lurks behind all of Haiti’s problems.
Poverty, political instability, debt and economic backwardness are apparently not the products of historical, economic and political processes but are the result of 200 years of a voodoo deal with the devil.
That obvious fantasy aside, maybe Haiti is suffering from a curse: foreign meddling. Sarkozy, Bush, Obama, Clinton and Harper are merely the latest incarnation. This earthquake destroyed Haiti, but didn’t do it alone.
While any earthquake of that magnitude would have caused profound damage in any city, it struck Haiti’s economic and political situation, and profoundly exacerbated the earthquake’s impact. Now those countries and institutions that have done the most to repress, invade and crush Haiti are now swooping in to “clean up”, “rebuild” and occupy.
With friends like these, who needs enemies?
If you want to help the people of Haiti, the first step is to understand the situation. We know that Haiti is the poorest country in the hemisphere. Seventy-five per cent of the population lives on less than $2 per day, and 56 per cent live on less than $1 per day. Have you ever asked why?
Haiti, in the 18th century, was the jewel of the French colonial empire. Its slave-harvested sugar plantations were prized above any other French colony. When the French revolution got underway at the end of the 18th century, the slaves of Haiti took the revolutionary slogans more literally than the French radicals. Their demands for radical racial equality culminated in the first successful slave revolution and the founding of the second republic in the hemisphere in 1804.
The British, French and Spanish immediately attacked the new Haitian republic, because these traditional colonial powers feared the spread of slave revolts. The Haitians beat off these attacks but it was at a heavy price. In 1825, France, with warships at the ready, demanded Haiti “compensate” France for its loss of a slave colony. Haiti paid “reparations” to France until 1947.
For over a century, the Haitian government suffered from multiple coups and political instability often at the behest of foreign powers. From 1934 until the mid-80s Haiti was ruled by military dictatorship, the Duvalier family and the dreaded paramilitaries, the Tonton Macoutes, all with foreign backing.
In 1990, after popular uprisings in the mid-80s, Haiti elected Jean-Bertrand Aristide, a Roman Catholic Priest, as their first democratically elected president ever.
Aristide was quickly deposed in an American backed coup in 1991. The coup regime committed some of the worst human-rights abuses in modern Haitian history murdering over 4,000 political opponents of the regime.
The Haitian military dictators, forced by international pressure and growing unrest in Haiti, signed a compromise with Aristide. The Americans reinstalled Aristide on the condition he support the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank proposals implemented during his exile. Aristide left office at the end of his term in 1996.
Aristide won his second election in 2000 despite overt American support for his opponents. The response by the Americans and others was swift and harsh. The Bush administration withdrew $512 million in Inter-American Development Bank loans to Haiti.
The Bush Administration also pressured the World Bank, the IMF, and the European Union to follow with reductions of other planned assistance. Aristide was a thorn in the side of the American, Canadian and French governments. France was particular disturbed when Aristide asked that the 21 billion that France stole form Haiti be returned.
In January 2003, as reported by Michel Vastel in l’Actualité, Canada hosted The Ottawa Initiative on Haiti. This was a conference to determine the future of Haiti’s government. Canada, America, France and Latin American governments attended the conference. No Haitian officials were present.
In little over a year a rebellion by former Haitian death squad leaders was marching on the capital, Port-au-Prince. Aristide, who had been begging for some kind of assistance in dealing with the rebellion, was taken at gunpoint by American soldiers, forced to sign a “resignation” letter and dumped into the Central African Republic. A cabal of elites backed by U.S., Canadian and French Troops then ruled Haiti. After the coup, assassinations, imprisonment and intimidation of members of Aristide’s Lavalas movement were commonplace.
The United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti, a 10,000-member police, military and administrative regime has been accused of directly and indirectly facilitating this political repression in Haiti. In 2005, a report undertaken by Harvard Law Student Advocates for Human Rights claimed that the UN stabilization force “effectively provided cover for the police to wage a campaign of terror in Port-au-Prince’s slums.” The UN mission spends $600 million per year – almost double the national budget of the Haitian government.
Haiti, in the years since the coup, has been subject to complete political repression backed by the international community. In the 2006 presidential election lauded by Canada as a free and fair election, Fanmi Lavalas, the biggest political party, was banned along with 13 other political parties.
Throughout all the coups and political turmoil Haiti’s debt ballooned. Between 1980 and 2004, Haiti’s debt to international organizations and foreign governments more than tripled.
Neoliberal policies pushed by the IMF and World Bank destroyed small farmers in Haiti. In 1995, for example, the IMF forced Haiti to cut its rice tariff from 35 percent to three per cent, leading to a massive increase in rice-dumping, the vast majority of which came from the U.S.
Unable to compete with subsidized agricultural products from the North American and European markets poor and desperate peasants flooded the cities throughout the late 1990s and early 2000s. They cut down trees for firewood, settled in hastily-built slums and on treeless hills. They built their homes where they could, with whatever they could.
The food crisis of 2008 and the massive floods caused by hurricanes led to the cancellation of $1.2 billion in debt. However, Haiti still owes about $891 million.
Just a few days after the Earthquake, the IMF issued a $100 million loan that came with neoliberal conditions, such as wage freezes (the conditions were repealed due to public outcry).
George Bush and Bill Clinton, two Presidents largely responsible for the economic and political destruction of Haiti, are now playing prominent roles as saviours. This is the type of “help” Haiti has been cursed with. Haiti is now flooded with foreign troops – over 32,000 – obsessing with militarizing a humanitarian operation and “securing” Haiti.
Haiti’s path to security, however, lies on the road of justice.
As Richard Kim recently wrote: “(It’s) time to stop having a conversation about charity and start having a conversation about justice – about recovery, responsibility and fairness. What the world should be pondering instead is: What is Haiti owed?”

Climate change goes carnal

Dalhousie Gazette Staff
-
0

By Megan Tardif-Woolgar, Opinions Contributor

Humans are consuming more meat. The climate is changing. Is there a connection?
The beefy fact is that unsustainable agricultural practices used to meet the ever-increasing demand for animal products have been identified as one of the greatest contributors of greenhouse gas emissions worldwide.
According to the 2006 report published by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the livestock sector alone generates more greenhouse gas emissions (equated to carbon dioxide) than transportation over the entire planet.
First, let’s look at land use. When you eat meat, you require more land to produce your food than a vegetarian who eats no meat, and a vegan who eats no animal products. In fact, it takes an average of 10 grams of vegetable protein to generate one gram of animal protein.
This extra land required to grow this livestock feed-grain, usually soybeans, is often generated from clearing rainforest in Brazil.
According to the FAO, the livestock sector is by far the single largest human-generated user of land, accounting for 70 per cent of all agricultural land and 30 per cent of the land surface of the planet.
Once this land has been deforested, it is stripped of most of its carbon sequestering abilities (the ability to store atmospheric carbon or act as a carbon ‘sink’). Valuable habitat is also lost to species that aren’t soybeans. In addition, livestock production can cause erosion, degraded riparian zones, desertification, sedimentation and nutrient loading of watercourses. All of these issues contribute either directly or indirectly to human-induced climate change.
Poor land use is not the only way livestock racks up the unsustainable points.
The Global Warming Potential (GWP) of a greenhouse gas is a way to quantify how much a specific gas contributes to global warming. The GWP of carbon dioxide, the gas most of us associate with climate change, is one. According to the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations, the livestock sector accounts for nine per cent of human-related emissions from land use issues.
Let’s compare this to the nitrous oxide that comes from manure. Nitrous oxide has a GWP 296 times that of carbon dioxide, and the livestock sector accounts for 65 per cent of human related nitrous oxide emissions. It also accounts for 37 per cent of the methane (with a GWP 23 times that of carbon dioxide). That’s right: cow burps and farts are playing a role in our changing climate.
While a diet rich in beast-flesh is helping our climate get nice and toasty, livestock is also a huge drain on our fresh water resources. To produce one kilogram of beef, it takes about 43 times more water than producing one kilogram of grain. How? Producing one kilogram of beef requires about 13 kilograms of grain and 30 kilograms of forage (animal feed) – and that grain and forage needs water to grow, and the cows need water to survive. That means less fresh water.
So what can you do to reduce the environmental impacts of livestock?
I am not suggesting that you become a level five vegan: not eating anything that casts a shadow. Small reductions in meat consumption can have a huge impact. For example, if every Canadian replaced chicken with a vegetarian meal once a week for a year, it would equal approximately the same reduction in greenhouse gas emissions as taking 55,000 medium sized cars off the road.
Along with reducing your overall animal product consumption, you can support less environmentally degrading agricultural practices by buying locally produced meat. The farther the meat travels, the more carbon dioxide gets emitted into the atmosphere due to transportation and you can also help out the local economy. Buying organic meat is also helpful since herbicides and pesticides applied to feed can have detrimental effects on the environment.
The world’s population is on the rise. To be able to feed a growing population, we as a society need to look at the best land- and water-use practices so that we are not faced with future shortages. Going vegetarian (if only for one day a week) will allow you to literally put your money where your mouth is, supporting the environment by making informed choices.

Megan Tardif-Woolgar is a member of Campus Action on Food.

We are what we eat

Dalhousie Gazette Staff
-
0

By Rebecca Hoffer, Opinions Contributor

Good to digest. Globally unimpressed. Economically oppressed. Politically obsessed. Abuses unaddressed. Land dispossessed. Social unrest. Radical protest. Deep-fried chicken breast. Cardiac arrest. But morally-expressed, green labels suggest. Have we digressed?
The food movement consists of overlapping and interconnecting issues surrounding the consumption and production of food. It is environmental, political, industrial and agricultural. It varies from human labour rights to animal welfare, from local farms to distant markets, and from world hunger to an epidemic of obesity. And more recently, from social activism to the consumer bandwagon.
However, the food movement, in its various forms, is subject to a fair deal of criticism. In response to the complexities of the problems it challenges, it has become an ideology – one that can attract and convert, but also repel and restrict. It has been packaged and simplified in dualistic terms in order to appeal to the broad audiences it depends upon for its success.
“They have to show that they really are different … for without such practices it’s very difficult to get any political project going,” says Kregg Hetherington, an environmental and political anthropology professor at Dalhousie. “On the other hand, you can’t be too different, or you won’t be able to grow and get a lot of people interested in your cause, or, in the case of organic farming, consuming your products.”
However, there are particular dangers associated with any claims of certainty – whenever a single voice purports to provide the answers. In this “packaged” food movement, this voice can easily take on a tone of self-righteousness: moralizing and judgmental.
Ideological assumptions and exclusions can be distracting from a movement’s practical material aims, leading to misdirected efforts and the potential loss of realistic and viable solution.
“Science, which holds life as mysterious and wondrous, unfairly bears the brunt of the blame apportioned out by the food movement,” explains Daniel Morrison, food activist and dedicated member of the Grainery Food Co-operative.
Though he is a proponent of organic food, Morrison explains how an “outright rejection or ban of synthetic compounds” may not be the answer.
“It seems a shame if a farmer is forced out of business due to a pest infestation, simply because a single, targeted application of pesticide that would save, for instance, an entire orchard of trees, is considered unacceptable,” he says.
The food movement is based on a foundation of legitimate and rational concerns, but these are obscured when the emphasis is placed on the exclusionary, puritanical and hypocritical. If the food movement can be relegated to the fringes or dismissed as unreasonable, or alternately, when it is green-washed into meaninglessness, the critical issues avoid being confronted.
Patricia Bishop of Taproot Farms is a local farmer in the Annapolis Valley, offering a weekly community supported agriculture (CSA) vegetable box with its Halifax drop-off point at the Grainery. She explains that the global issue of struggling farmers, and the food security that is threatened, is not hype.
“Farmers are going out of business,” she says. “When this happens we lose skills and knowledge, employment, communities, and in some cases, the agricultural resource: land.”
Direct exchanges between farmers and customers, found at farmers’ markets and CSAs, play a significant role in ensuring the continued existence of local farms.
“The food movement is people,” Bishop says.
Here in Nova Scotia, there is a strong movement of dedicated, knowledgeable, and critical thinkers. There are concerted efforts in the university scene under the minds of Campus Action on Food (CAF), Seemore Green, NSPIRG, SustainDAL, the King’s Alternative Food Co-operative Association (KAFCA) and the King’s Agricultural Committee among others. There are plans to enliven our campus space with an Edible Campus, and ideas for a student-run food co-operative. We are part of a growing network of universities, farms, individuals and organizations.
“These fads may come and go, but we should see them as a chance to keep a public conversation alive about how the long-term consequences of our consumption habits, and to diversify the systems of food production and distribution beyond the petroleum-intensive ones that still provides the bulk of our diet,” summarizes Herrington.
Although the food movement has grown from grassroots to large-scale corporate advertising campaigns, neither its new packaged image nor its overly-moralizing or exclusionary manifestations should be mistaken for the core of the food movement.
“I do realize that our culture moves in waves of trends,” says Bishop. “I am hopeful that this trend will translate into a way of being and that citizens will come to a local-first mindset.”
Rather than a subscription to a prepared set of beliefs, it is a movement towards awareness, informed decisions, critical thinking, and localized solutions. It is a movement toward what Morrison calls food literacy: “The knowledge of how to grow, prepare and consume food.”

Rebecca Hoff is a member of Campus Action on Food and a second-year student at Dalhousie.

Radioactive campus

Dalhousie Gazette Staff
-
0

By Tim Mitchell, Features Editor

“That’s a little un-easing,” says a wide-eyed Kayti Bates upon learning of the existence of a nuclear reactor right below her feet. Bates is a fourth-year kinesiology student. In all her time studying at Dalhousie, like most staff and students, she hadn’t heard anything about it.
“I think it is quite a significant undermining thing that we don’t know,” she says. “I think more people would be interested to know exactly why it was put there, the history of it, and what it’s doing now.”
Dal has used the “SLOWPOKE” (Safe LOW POwer Critical Experiment) nuclear reactor for research since 1978. It can’t be used as a power supply, and it doesn’t contain enough uranium to make a bomb, but it is radioactive.
There are four similar nuclear reactors at other universities across Canada: Polytechnique in Montreal, the Royal Military College in Kingston, the University of Saskatchewan and the University of Alberta.
The Slowpoke nuclear reactor at Dal has been used by the chemistry department for Neutron Activation Analysis (NAA). It’s a process that can very accurately determine the concentration of elements that make up a varying number of solid or liquid objects. The benefit of this technology is that it doesn’t destroy any sample object that’s tested. What it involves is bombarding the nuclei of the atoms of materials with neutrons, making them radioactive, and then studying which atoms have become radioactive, and by how much.
The process is useful in determining the purity of metals, levels of arsenic in water, or even anthropologically investigating historical native trade routes by matching the substances of artefacts in different locations.
At the moment, it’s just sitting there, not being used for any kind of research. The university has decided to decommission the reactor – a process that will happen over, at least, the next two years.
“It’s in maintenance mode now. It’s basically warmed up once a week,” says Ray Ilson, director of environmental health and safety at Dal. He’s the man overseeing the decommissioning process.
“It’s really just used to test to make sure everything’s functioning properly, because when the decommissioning begins, we’ll need to run all the controls again. We just want to make sure everything’s ready to go.”
The decommissioning process will involve the collaboration of Dal’s board of governors, the Dalhousie University Community Committee, the city, the province, the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission, as well as the Halifax Regional Police, fire departments, the hospitals and emergency medical teams, and HAZMAT (Hazardous Materials) – just in case anything goes wrong.
“That’s all part of the plan in case there was to be an incident and you had a person who was potentially contaminated,” says Ilson. “We’d have to take them to the hospital and treat them.”
The same model of nuclear reactor was used for research at the University of Toronto until it was decommissioned from 2000 to 2001. It was 25 years old. At the time, Ilson was manager of radiation protection services at U of T, and oversaw the decommissioning process.
“The defueling was completely uneventful,” he says. “The dismantling was uneventful. There were no doses (of radiation) received. There was some contamination that was discovered on decommissioning, which is what we’re doing now.”
Ilson says the good news was that it was discovered, and it was cleaned. He also says that during the decommissioning of the reactor at U of T, nobody went above the allowable limit of radiation exposure.
“The highest dose received was 3.2 per cent of the allowable limit.”
Ilson was the one exposed to that radiation.
“I was exposed to 1.6 millisieverts of radiation. I’m losing my hair, but nothing else,” Ilson says with a laugh.
A millisievert is a measurement of radiation exposure. The allowable limit of radiation exposure for members of the public is one millisievert per year according to Ilson.
“That’s for the man in the street, the barber, the taxi driver, anybody. For nuclear energy workers – people who work in radiation areas – the limit is 50 millisieverts in any given year.”
The Slowpoke reactor is located below the Life Sciences Centre. The facility itself is several rooms, and the reactor is in one of them. The fuel for the reactor, Uranium-235, is six metres below the floor, underwater in a concrete pool, and has concrete blocks on the surface. The facility is equipped with motion detectors, alarm systems and cameras. Security checks are routine.
Now Dal has decided to get rid of its nuclear reactor for a few reasons; Advancements in technology have made the reactor somewhat obsolete; the director of the facility, Dr. Amares Chatt, is retiring; and the cost of decommissioning the reactor in the future would only become more expensive.
“Labour costs go up,” says Ilson. “Transportation becomes more difficult if you think, the University of Toronto one was done in 2000 to 2001 – the actual decommissioning. That was prior to 9-11. Security has changed since then. It has become much more expensive – security of materials, storage, but also transportation. As well, getting rid of hazardous waste is now much more expensive, and the fuel and the parts and that are considered potentially hazardous waste. So the costs have gone up a lot.”
The decommissioning of the Slowpoke nuclear reactor will cost the university about $6 million dollars.
“The actual removal process is very, very safe,” says Ilson. “Essentially, when it’s decommissioned, (the facility) can be released for public use, in what’s called unrestricted use, so the university can move any other research they want there and you don’t have to worry about any radioactivity. There’s nothing left.”
The fuel from the reactor will be shipped back to the U.S. government. The reactor parts, because they’re radioactive, will be taken to at a long-term waste storage facility in Chalk River, Ontario.
“The whole process will be over in two years,” says Ilson.
He says he can’t get into specific dates of when everything will happen for security reasons.
“Right now the fuel is beneath six metres of water and surrounded by concrete all around it and on top and below it in alarmed rooms. The security requirements for that are less than when it’s sitting on the floor in the room. It’s much more accessible if a terrorist wanted it. So we don’t talk about when that will happen. Shipping would be a security concern so we don’t talk about shipping dates, or routes.”
For the decommissioning process, Ilson assures students, such as Bates, that they have nothing to worry about.
“Explode?” says Ilson. “No. Not that I know of. If it were to become uncovered, with no water, there would be radiation dose. But don’t forget it’s surrounded by concrete as well. The alarms would go off because they would start picking up the radiation. It’s automatically reloaded with water too. We would be called to investigate. There are backup electrical systems in the event of a power failure so to make sure those pumps work. They are tested routinely.”
“I would hope,” says Bates, “that if the school knows about a nuclear reactor being under our feet, that they would have taken all precautions.”

Dal professor takes a look at the listeriosis outbreak

Dalhousie Gazette Staff
-
0

By Scott Beed, Staff Contributor

Ever since the listeriosis outbreaks two years ago, Maple Leaf products likely invoke thoughts of stomach aches and violent illness. But a Dalhousie University professor is trying to dispel fears surrounding certain food borne bacteria.
Rafael Garduno, an associate professor with the department of microbiology, focuses his research on listeria and legionella. The former plagued Maple Leaf meat products two years ago. When eaten, the bacteria can develop into listeriosis, an illness with severe flu-like symptoms. According to the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, the 2008 breakout caused nine deaths with 38 confirmed cases.
Garduno says even though listeria and legionella are dangerous and can harm people, they aren’t the most dangerous food borne bacteria out there.
He has worked with several bacterial pathogens since starting at Dal in 1997 and he says his work is designed to build a basic understanding of bacteria in general.
“We focus on bacteria, not any bacteria but bacteria that are transmitted to humans through either water or food products,” he says.
Garduno says that to understand outbreak prevention methods, his research must determine how these bacteria survive and thrive in our food and water.
Legionella survives in temperatures ranging from 25 to 45 degrees Celsius and can sometimes develop into Legionnaires Disease, which is a form of pneumonia. Garduno explains that this type of pneumonia can’t spread from person to person, so it’s considered an environmental disease.
“Imagine legionella in the water,” he says. “Here in Canada, the average water temperature throughout the year is not ideal for the survival of this bacteria. But it can survive, and it makes its way into distribution centers in cities or something, where it encounters chlorine or other treatments, but still makes it into drinking water and when its consumed it causes Legionnaires’ Disease.”
Garduno explains that he’s trying to understand why legionella is able to survive in such adverse situations.
Garduno also does research on fish proteins, peptides, enzymes and marine toxins with Dalhousie’s Department of Food Science and Technology. Tom Gill, a professor in Dal’s food science program, is one of Garduno’s research partners.
His work focuses on marine toxins and the safe handling of seafood when processing and shipping these products. Garduno and Gill have collaborated to determine the effects of the listeria bacteria on salmon, shellfish and other marine wildlife.
Gill’s lab has studied paralytic shellfish poison, which can be contracted if contaminated clams, mussels, scallops or any other shellfish are consumed. Because shellfish are filter-feeding organisms, they can absorb bacteria that are found in the water where they live. This kind of bacteria can accumulate in their tissue and they can become highly toxic to eat. These toxins can cause localized paralysis in certain organs. For example, Garduno says if these toxins infect the lungs, a person can suffocate.
Garduno says he wants to develop methods that could reduce the harm bacteria have on the general population. He says he hopes his research will help in the development and implementation of new and better methods of water treatment and food processing.
This type of research isn’t new, he adds.
“The research itself was relevant before and it continues to be relevant, but because of potential outbreaks I think the perspective has changed.”

Lacing up for a cause

Dalhousie Gazette Staff
-
0

By Samantha Chown, News Contributor

Walking barefoot is usually a luxury associated with pristine beaches and lazy days spent at home, but to Kyle Warkentin, being barefoot is a death sentence.
The 19-year-old has spent the last two years volunteering around the world. In the fall, he will attend Dalhousie for microbiology. He plans to go to medical school and eventually wants to work for Doctors Without Borders.
Last May, Warkentin went to the city of Kabwe, Zambia in Africa through a humanitarian initiative organized by the Rock Church in Lower Sackville. He spent three weeks attending to the sick, cleaning wounds and playing with the children.
“When they’re well, they’re so active,” he says. “But mostly all are running around barefoot and they don’t have actual toys. They have to play with trash.”
During his time there, Warkentin noticed an alarming fact: Kabwe has no waste collection system. Everything – from used condoms to feces – ends up in the streets. This makes the city a breeding ground for bacteria and disease. It’s a major problem in Zambia – a country with one of the highest AIDS/HIV epidemics – that even a minor cut on someone’s foot can cause an infection that leads to death.
When he returned to Canada, Warkentin says he had an “I have to do something” moment.
“I’ll have a shoe drive,” he says, reminiscing. “It just popped into my head randomly.”
So, in November 2009, Shoes for Souls was born.
The idea was to hold a massive shoe drive across Nova Scotia from January to June 2010 with a goal of collecting 4,000 pairs of shoes.
Warkentin says providing shoes to the residents of Kabwe can help prevent disease and infection, meaning the kids can play freely without worry.
“They’re going to be comforted by the fact that someone actually cares about them,” says Warkentin.
Since then, local organizations have been quick to offer support and donate their facilities. Metro Self-Storage has donated a storage container to house the shoes until they head to Africa.
He also partnered with Pacrim Hospitality Services, who will run a separate shoe drive from January 25 to February 14 through their four hotels in the Halifax area.
On Feb. 6, Warkentin will travel to Newfoundland to collect shoes that have been donated.
It’s been less than a month, and they’ve already collected at least 1,000 pairs of shoes. Warkentin says the container is already bursting.
“It’s been this small thing that just exploded,” he says.  “It’s pretty cool.”
On June 4, Shoes for Souls will host a gala event at the Halifax Club. Each room will display photos of the people of Zambia. Warkentin says the event is meant to be personal.
“The photos are going to represent the amount of shoes we’ve collected and the lives these shoes are going to touch.”
As part of the Order of Canada Mentorship Program, Warkentin has been partnered up with Dr. Mark Wainberg, Director of the McGill University Aids Centre.  Wainberg has been advising Warkentin on his return trip to Zambia in June when he will distribute the donated shoes over a 10-day period with a team of volunteers.
“If you have shoes, donate them. They are literally going to prevent death,” says Warkentin.

Brains for Change

Dalhousie Gazette Staff
-
0

By Hayley Paquette, Staff Contributor

Over 150 students from Dalhousie and King’s College gathered last weekend for two days of interactive workshops and discussions. The Brains for Change conference, hosted by Dalhousie, focused on visioning and action planning to improve the university community through creating a ‘culture of leadership’.
The walls of the McInnes Room in the Student Union Building were covered in oversized sticky notes quoting ideas and action plans from the visions of students from all faculties. They showed the collective brain power of Dalhousie and King’s students who chose to stand up and participate in their futures at the workshops.
Sarah Chamberlain, a fifth-year science student at Dal, volunteered for the weekend.
“It’s sort of like a time capsule for thoughts,” she said. “We are documenting all the discussions and visions that come out of them this weekend to help build a base for future students to add to, so we don’t start from the beginning every four years.”
At university, students often learn about what is wrong with the world, and even the many different solutions. But the hardest thing is often learning how to implement those solutions.
Students from all Dal faculties and campuses were invited to be part of the discussions and share their different views and ideas. They had the chance to discuss ways to improve their sense of community at the university and between faculties.
“The idea is to bring together students from every faculty at Dalhousie. To decrease the distance between faculties and motivate a feeling of community across Dalhousie University,” said Daniel Boyle, a fifth-year arts student helping with the weekend’s activities.
“There is definite disconnect between faculties at Dalhousie,” Boyle said. “With the three different campuses these are particularly tough gaps to close.  We hope to work on uniting the university community through discussions this weekend.”
Boyle participated in Brains for Change before. Last year, he helped co-ordinate the event.
“It’s a great way to get students talking and give them a feeling of empowerment and belonging in their university community,” said Boyle.
Another major theme was the gap between students and the community outside of the university.
Emily Rideout, a fourth-year environmental science and international development student, said, “There needs to be a better integration of the classroom into the community, and vice versa.”
Justin Partridge, another fourth-year environmental science and international development student, agreed. He said students need to put their ideas to work outside the campus community.
“What is the point of all of this if we aren’t using what we’re learning here in the real world?” he asked.

1...539540541...567Page 540 of 567

EDITOR PICKS

POPULAR POSTS

POPULAR CATEGORY

ABOUT US

The Dalhousie Gazette is the main student publication at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada. The paper first began publishing in 1868, making it the oldest continually operating student newspaper in North America followed by The Harvard Crimson and The Columbia Daily Spectator

Contact us: admin@dalgazette.com

FOLLOW US