Interesting people cancel each other out at Massey talk

What happens when a former Massey lecturer and world renowned researcher sits down with an internationally acclaimed author for a chat? Judging by last Tuesday’s informal discussion between Ursula Franklin and Ruby Wiebe at Massey College’s Upper Library, not much.

The two scholars did, however, exchange pleasant banter on the subject of their complicated Canadian identities: Franklin, a German Jew who immigrated to Canada soon after World War II; and Wiebe, whose Mennonite family was faced with in Western Canada after fleeing Soviet Russia in 1930.

At one point in the evening, the two clashed on the topic of eating whale blubber, and the Inuit experience. Franklin thought the division of First Nations and Inuit into reserves and territories such as Nunavet was a kind of apartheid, and decided that other Canadians should be allowed to eat whale blubber with the Inuit to even out the score. Wiebe maintained that the subject shouldn’t be entered into lightly: whale hunting is a difficult art to learn.

In the end, the two celebrated Canada’s multiculturalism as a model of acceptance. “We are teaching the world something interesting in terms of the acceptance of other kinds of people in our society,” said Wiebe.
-Bronwyn Kienapple

Apparently, newspapers come in languages other than English

The Department of Near and Middle Eastern Civilizations hosted the Canadian Media in Middle East Languages (CMMEL) and Feminist and Women’s Press of the Middle East exhibitions. Organized by students of NMC 357 (Mass Media and the Middle East), the CMMEL exhibition displayed the many publications in Middle Eastern languages from the Greater Toronto Area.

Newspapers in Arabic, Farsi, Turkish, Urdu, English, Hebrew, Kurdish, Azeri, Armenian and Pashto, among other languages, were on display, while students and professionals flipped between English and native tongues at will. Editors, publishers and writers attended, all representing Toronto’s lively ethnic media market, while a Turkish-language television crew captured the action.

A panel of representatives also gave an English-language discussion of the Southern Ontario ethnic media scene.

Ghasedak, a Persian language paper published at U of T, was the only campus publication on site.

The financial difficulties plaguing alternative publications was a common theme throughout discussion. According to one Arab News representative, “It is a labour of love. The more we are local, the more we are successful…we are paid by the smiles on the faces in our community.”

The Akkad representative told the story of one editor who had been jailed and tortured in Iraq under Saddam Hussein’s regime but who had found freedom of expression in Canada.

But according to Thomas Saras, president of the National Ethnic Press and Media Council of Canada, the federal government has to do more to maintain Canada as a refuge for the diversity of the printed word: “We used to be 860 publications, last year we went down to 600 and this year we lost another 100. Why? Lack of government support.”
-James Sayce