Education value risingFalling economy fuels university applications ELISABETH BENNETT

Continuing Education Bureau

Policing our schools

N Sync this Saturday!

God vs. not God

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University of Toronto’s community newspaper

Independent since 1978

February 5th – 11th, 2009

Vol. XXXI, No: 18

1 Spadina Crescent, Suite 245, Toronto, ON, M5S 1A1Phone: 416 593 1552thenewspaper@thenewspaper.cawww.thenewspaper.ca

Shane Philip does it all

Salman Rushdie enchants

Roommates from Hell

the artsthe news

the newspaper

Wavelength Review#448 an eclectic music festJAKE STEINMETZ

Musical Arts Bureau

the newspaper

write between the lines

For many of us nearing the end of our studies at U of T, those celebrated last few months of student life are often spent in anticipation and excitement about what comes next: landing that dream job, right? Erm, maybe not.

More and more jobs demand a university education in today’s information and knowledge geared market. However, factor in the shrinking job prospects due to a lacklustre economy, the less-than-positive forecasts for growth in the immediate future, and the fact that the positions that do open up are likely to be snapped up by experienced professionals who have recently been laid o�, then nope, it’s not looking so good for current grad hopefuls.

If you’re one of those people who, like me, fears Life After School, numbers suggest that you are not alone. The Council of Ontario Universities recently reported that there has been a 10 per cent rise in non-high school applicants to Ontario universities for the 2009/2010 year, contributing signi�cantly to what is the highest total number of university applica-tions since the double cohort year in 2003 when grade 13 was phased out and two graduating high school classes applied simultaneously. Many graduate schools have also seen a signi�-cant increase in applications, with the University of Toronto receiving approximately 9 per cent more grad school applica-tions to date than it had at the same time last year.

Linda Franklin, president and CEO of Colleges Ontario, says that “people, in a bad economic time, are starting to think more about coming back to school,”

Ashley Minuk, the newspaper’s News Editor, is one who knows the value of a

good education. Photo: Matthew Pope

be it for an upgrade or an extra degree. According to Paul Genest, president of the Council of Ontario Universities, this is a trend that has also been seen in past recessions. But as high school students are competing this year with 21,128 (a number that is still growing and could potentially double) non high school applicants, competition for space will be tough: last year, there were only 64,000 spots available at Ontario’s 20 universities.

Genest notes that while enrolment numbers in Ontario are very healthy, in other areas of the country, such as Alberta and Atlantic Canada, numbers are $atlining or dropping – �gures that he cannot explain. The only Ontario university that has seen a drop is York Univer-sity, where applications fell by 10.8 per cent. Apparently, the union strike that lasted nearly three months has lowered the school’s desirability factor

(shocking, right?).So, should one continue with

school or try to get a (gulp) job? This has been the crisis that has consumed my life, and that of my peers, for the past few months – one which is only exacerbated by the doomsday gloom of persistently fatalistic economic news reports. My sister smugly reminds me every time I see her that, being in grad school, she exists cozy and warm in her little microcosm of academia, protected from the Big Bad World of Recession.

Truth be told, taking advan-tage of the economic downturn to build skills and credentials probably can’t hurt, as many applicants this year would attest. If you choose your program wisely and come out of it with marketable skills, you might just gain the edge you need to stand out among your peers when the new job hunt begins.

If, this past Sunday, you had your head stuck in your books, paralyzed in anticipation for the week’s busy workload, you missed a truly eclectic spectacle: Sneaky Dee’s Wave-length Music Series this week proved to be the most bizarre and abstract demonstration of creativity yet.

The night kicked o� with the exploding melodies of Fire Hydrant. Jon (listed by �rst name only), who holds down lead vocals and guitar, led cap-tivating musical alternations: from a lulling guitar to a twisted burst of the chorus to a quick reversion to the sullen verses, the polar shifts in melody were successfully backed by Jon’s strong voice. The songwriting betrayed a distinct likeness to the post-Pablo Honey work of Thom Yorke (Radiohead), especially The Bends (1995). All in all, Fire Hydrant set the stage ablaze, with the audience giving them their deserved attention.

Next up, Electroluminescent

and his shadow swayed in front of the acid yellow backdrop that perfectly suited his space rock sound. The hazy electric noise, reminiscent of Boards of Canada, instilled a melancholic transcendental feel in the be-wildered yet curious audience. Electroluminescent managed to probe the outlandish and unknown, hiding behind the shelves of eclipsed electronic gizmos and keeping secret the bizarre musical ways of a single guy with a guitar in one hand and hoards of hidden knobs controlled by the other.

The grand �nale was led by Mein, a keyboardist and guitarist duo whose steady $owing beats underlay grinding guitar picking and ab-stract ambiance. Mein evoked a psychedelic journey that oftentimes evoked the sounds of Black Rebel Motorcycle Club and sometimes mirrored the catchy pop of Supergrass. Overall, Mein’s performance put an exclamation point on the motley nature of the night,

leaving the audience bewildered but satis�ed.

Wavelength #449, which takes place at Sneaky Dee’s on Sunday, February 8th from 9-11:45pm, will feature Ma-chetes, Sadie May Crash and Key Witness.

Electroluminescent’s warm, looped sound lights up

Wavelength. Photo: Helene Goderis

2 the newspaper February 5th – 11th, 2009

the inside

the mission statementthe newspaper is proud to be University of Toronto’s ONLY independent

news source. We look to our readers and contributors to ensure we provide a

consistently superior product. Our purpose is to provide a voice for university

students, staff, faculty and U of T’s extended community.

This voice may at times be irreverent but it will never be irrelevant.

write between the lines

Administrative AssistantCaroline George

the newspaperPublisher

Matthew Pope

News EditorAshley Minuk

Arts EditorHelene Goderis

Copy EditorsElisabeth Bennett, Michelle Ferreira

Tayyaba Jiwani

Layout & DesignJe!rey Spiers

Photo EditorSam Catalfamo

ContributorsLudwik Antoniuk, Elisabeth Bennett, Caroline George, Kabir Joshi-Vijayan,

Nicole Lowden, Lisa McDonald, Mathiaus Poe, Andy M. Potter, Semra Eylul Sevi,

Thomas Shifrer, Jake Steinmetz

Editor-in-chiefAri Simha

Ads & MarketingPeter Josselyn

ads@thenewspaper.ca

As the philosopher Jagger once said:

“You can’t always get what you want. But if you try sometimes, you just might "nd you get

what you need.”

Calling all writers, copy editors and artists!Have you ever wanted to work in journalism?

Would you like a chance to have you work published?

the newspaper is U of T’s ONLY independent newspaper, distributing across all 3 campuses as well as the surrounding community. This is an open call to all potential contributors. We want writers for politics, current events, sports, "nance, arts and more! We are looking for creators to submit %ash "ction, prose, poetry, photography, art, comics and anything else that falls out of your head. If you’d prefer to work behind the scene and help to edit and re"ne a weekly publication with 15,000 copies in circulation, then come see us.

One more important thing: we o!er free food! Yes! Come to our weekly open sta! meeting, EVERY Thursday @ 5pm in our o&ces. We will feed your face! Awesomeness!

We are on the South-West corner of St. George campus. Just North of College on Spadina.

We want YOU to write between the lines.

it’s a free-for-all!THE TABLE OF

CONTENTS

the front page . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

the inside . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

the editorial . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

the news . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

the arts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

the jumbler . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

the comics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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the newspaper 3February 5th – 11th, 2009

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the editorialI hate PeopleReturns

MATHIAUS POE

Opinion Column Bureau

Welcome to another edition of the hotly debated “I hate People” column. With no single issue pressing on me this week (at least, not one that I would unnecessarily unload here), I’ve decided on a collection of mini-columns to !ll your miserly void.

First I want to ridicule the innumerable fools I see wan-dering around the city, and particularly on campus, who are not dressed appropriately for our Canadian winter. These People are clearly not dressed for warmth or comfort, but primarily for fashion. Let me tell you this: you look like an idiot.

If I see someone wandering around in -20°C weather wearing only a hoodie and sneakers, with no headwear, or in a short skirt and heels, I do not think “wow, they look cool” or “how attractive.” My !rst thought is “wow, what an idiot.” The fact that you are dressing for looks and not warmth in this kind of weather tells me a number of things, such as: you are so vain that you would rather freeze than look un-

attractive; you are so insecure about your appearance that you are willing to sacri!ce health for social acceptance; you didn’t think to check the weather report; or maybe, you just don’t know any better. Either way, all of these boil down to the same thing: you being an idiot.

True beauty, grace or at-tractiveness cannot be hidden; certainly not beneath a hat and a few layers of clothing. So e#orts to exhibit your attract-iveness in the face of a massive wind-chill e#ect indicate how little of it there really is. It is also clear that you have such an alarmingly poor sense of prior-ities that it makes me wonder what other meaningless and arbitrary criteria you put ahead of basic and important ones. If you are someone so daft that you wear one of those half-jacket numbers in February, then you probably can’t even read above a 3rd grade level. If you make an argument like “I’m just going from my car to X,” I’d like to help you fall into a snow-bank before I hear any more. Get some boots, get a hat and

get your priorities straight.

Next I would like to give a nod to the thoughtful and un-expectedly kind individual who found something important to me this week and investigated the contents only so far as it took to !nd my email address. There are not nearly enough people of this ilk in the world because, if there were, it would be a much better place to live. Thank you for doing the right thing.

Most importantly, I have a cat that is very ill. His future is uncertain and, while I !nd nothing of value in religion, I am holding fast to my spiritual beliefs for strength. If any of you have positive thoughts to send to the most loving animal to ever grace the Earth then please do, regardless of what you think of me.

Lastly, I would like to ac-knowledge some of the people who have written to me over the last little while. I don’t always get a chance to men-tion everyone, but I’d like to

make a point of mentioning a few of them now. To T, who wrote in asking me to refresh their memory on a line they found quotable: thank you for your interest in the column and I hope the article I sent you with the highlight was what you were looking for. To A Fan: thank you for writing. There are times when I fear that no one understands what I am trying to do here, but a letter like yours renews my faith. Individ-uals like you stand apart from People because of your critical thinking skills and a healthy sense of humour.

It is thanks to the responses of a few fans who took the trouble to write that I proudly change the name of this column back to “I hate People.” If you don’t like it, I don’t care. Write in and tell me about it. thenewspaper@thenewspaper.ca, Subject: I hate you.

the campus comment

the newspaper asks you about your roommate.

Photos: Helene Goderis

Alex Ling, 3rd year, Commerce

“My roommate tried to poison me.”

Meng Yuan Xue, 3rd year, Visual Studies

“She snores so loud I can’t sleep”

Suganthan Thivakaran

“I had a roommate who boiled beetles and

drank their juice to cure his eczema.”

Sherry Pom, 3rd year, Art History Major

“My control-freak roommate demanded I make

a portrait of her. I made her into a collage using

the “instruction” notes she posted all over the

apartment.”

Brett Lee, 4th year, Architecture

“Him and his friends came into my room

dressed as monsters while I was sleeping and

scared the shit out of me. I slapped him.”

HELENE GODERIS

4 the newspaper February 5th – 11th, 2009

CAROLINE GEORGE

Community Concerns Bureau

Fighting homelessnessROM sheds light on crisis

Synchronized swimming is a challenging, dynamic, and artistic sport with a rich history in Canada. U of T has its own synchro teams, which compete within the Canadian Univer-sity Synchronized Swimming League, CUSSL/LUCNS. The league continues to expand, and this year over 200 swim-mers from 13 universities across Canada will be competing at nationals on Saturday, February 7th – to be hosted right here at U of T.

In its earliest form, synchro was commonly known as water ballet or ‘ornamental swimming’. This experimental hybridization of swimming and dance originated in the earlier part of the 20th century, but was popularized in the 1940s and 50s.

Over time, synchronized swimming developed and evolved into the highly tech-nical sport it is today. In 1984, synchronized swimming became an o%cial summer Olympic sport. Russia, Japan, the United States and Canada are generally regarded as the top competitors on the international circuit.

In university level syn-chronized swimming, experienced athletes and novices can compete in solo, duet, and team events. A routine, which lasts between 2 minutes 45 seconds and 3 minutes 15 seconds, consists of arm sections, leg sec-tions, and highlights (aerial and acrobatic techniques). With the greater number of swimmers in team routines, more can be done stylistically such as chain reactions and interesting changes of pattern.

In competition, swimmers wear elaborately costumed bathing suits and waterproof make-up to accentuate facial

features. Goggles and bathing caps are not worn, so hot gelatin is applied to the head to keep hair out of the face (really!). Music is played using

an underwater speaker to facilitate synchronization, with favorite genres tending towards movie soundtracks, techno, pop, and hip hop. This year, the

experienced team is swimming to string covers of popular music, while the novice team has selected the Sex and the City movie soundtrack.

For the U of T teams, training starts early in Sep-tember, and at *rst consists mostly of aquatic work-outs to get back into shape. Then, the swimmers work collab-oratively with coach Jennifer Morin-McKee to come up with a routine. In November, the teams travel to McGill University for an invitational competition, where this year the novice team placed 6th and the experienced team placed 4th. Another competi-tion follows in January, held this year at Queen’s, where the experienced team came 6th and the novice team placed 4th.

The nationals this year will take place on Saturday,

February 7th in the 50m pool at the U of T athletic centre. Solos and duets run from 12-3 pm and team events are from 3-6 pm. Tickets are only $5, or $3 with a valid student ID, so come on out and show the U of T syn-chronized swimming team your support.

The swimmers this year are:[A Team] Samantha Allen,

Rachael Fels Elliott, Carolyn Hicks, Rebecca Jasper, Lauren LePage, Nicole Lowden, Sarah Luckett-Gatopoulos, Johanna Saunders and Joanna Smeeton.

[Novice Team] Noemie De Vuyst, Lila Fontes, Catherine Ng, Alicia Puritt, Yiqing Liang and Joyce Siu.

the news

NICOLE LOWDEN

Campus Recreation Bureau

N Sync...In swimsuits

Karl Schmidt chatters excit-edly as he describes what’s new in his life. Recently, he received the keys to his new home.

In his *fties, Schmidt has lived on the street for years, including two years in Tent City, the defunct shantytown erected along the shores of Lake Ontario in 1998. Schmidt is one of the lucky few to have re-ceived government assistance, and he now lives in a bungalow on Woodbine and Danforth.

“The reality of Tent City was good,” Schmidt says about the community’s location. However, after receiving government housing far from the city, his attitude changed: “It was good that I got housing, but the place of the housing was not good. After three and half years, the whole of downtown died to me.”

Despite Schmidt’s dissatisfac-tion with his home’s location, not all Tent City residents were

so lucky, su1ering the con-stant fear of eviction. Director Michael Connolly evokes this reality in his documentary “Shelter From the Storm,” which follows the struggles of some residents of Tent City to remain on the land. “I wanted to show a wider picture of homeless-ness,” Connolly says of the *lm, in which Schmidt and other former Tent City residents discuss the relief they feel in having a place they can call home.

As part of the Royal Ontario Museum’s informal panel discussion on homelessness in Toronto, which took place Jan. 28, the *lm complements the ROM’s current street art exhibit, Housepaint, Phase 2: Shelter. Organizers hope the *lm and ongoing lecture series will raise public awareness and spark

debate over the current home-lessness crisis in Toronto. Some attempts at *nding solutions have taken place in the recent past: a group of city advocates and residents banded together to declare homelessness a crisis, which is what prompted the formation of the Toronto Disaster Relief Committee to lobby for better housing on the industrial site.

Unfortunately, Connolly believes that, despite current progress, little has changed for the homeless in the six years since he produced the *lm. “I’m disappointed that not more has been done,” he says of the gov-ernment’s lack of response to the One Percent Solution imple-mented by the TDRC more than a decade ago to resolve the homelessness crisis.

Connolly notes that advo-cates such as Schmidt have pressured the government to act: “There’s some movement

about housing at the federal level, but it’s still happening too slowly.” Schmidt agrees, with his resentment visibly increasing as he ponders the lack of resources available to those still reliant on shelters.

“Too much help that is given [to the homeless] gets spent on the way before it gets there,” says Schmidt. “The government is paying $85 per person in the shelter, but where is that money going?” Unfortunately for those still out on the street, this remains a near-impossible question to answer.

For more information about the ROM exhibit, and to *nd out ways to get involved, please visit www.housepaint.ca

Routines are performed in all-deep water. A popular misconception is that

synchro is performed while standing on the bottom and doing handstands.

This is not so. The entire A Team is picture here Photo: Damien Frost

The whole A Team is assembled under-

neath, using eggbeater kicks to propel

Catherine Ng high out of the water.Photo: Damien Frost

The Novice Team shows their pride and their pearly whites.Photo: Anne Smeeton

The Scott Mission is a resource and support outreach centre for those who,

like Schmidt, are left out in the cold. Photo: Matthew Pope

the newspaper 5February 5th – 11th, 2009

It was nearly impossible, this past few weeks, to have avoided the bombardment of !yers around campus adver-tising a public debate over the age-old question regarding the existence of God. The argument was taken up by Dr. James Robert Brown, a professor of Philosophy at U of T, and Dr. Wil-liam Lane Craig, a professor at the Talbot School of Theology in Mirada, California. Not sur-prisingly, Craig argued for and Brown argued against.

Co-hosted by the student groups Campus for Christ and the University of Toronto Secular Alliance, the event saw great attendance, and for good reason: it was a very intellec-tually stimulating debate. Dr. Craig began by putting forth three strong issues in support of God’s existence: evidence from cosmology, intelligent design, and the existence of ob-jective moral values. However, in using the resurrection of Jesus and the “immediate” experience of God as viable arguments for God’s exist-ence, Craig came up short.

Dr. Brown, on the other hand, argued against Thomas Aquinas’ “"rst mover unmoved” theory – the notion that any chain of causes must have sprung from some "rst cause, an in"nite and wholly necessary being – and he raised some interesting points against intelligent design. However, the rest of Brown’s arguments were comparatively weak; his ‘evi-dence’ that God is not needed for objective moral values to emerge, as well as his argument against cosmology, did not succeed in thoroughly refuting Craig’s perspectives. In the end,

Craig managed to dominate the debate overall – the introduc-tion, rebuttal, dialogue, as well as the closing remarks.

But really, this isn’t the point.Yes the debate was men-

tally stimulating – I enjoyed it immensely – but anyone who walked into the Isabel Bader Theatre that night thinking, “Finally, this question will be cleared up for me!” would have left dissatis"ed, to say the least. The question of God’s existence is one that virtually every indi-

vidual person ponders, but the conclusion must be one that each of us comes to on our own. If you haven’t thought about

it before (yeah, right), take a while to consider the Big Ques-tion; take a look at both sides of the argument, and realize that God’s existence can never be de"nitively proved or disproved (barring His descent from heaven and public declaration, “I am God, I exist”). After all, the existence of God isn’t a ques-tion of logic – it’s a question of faith.

The Toronto District Public and Catholic School Boards have recently implemented a program stationing a fully uniformed and armed police o$cer in at least thirty high schools spanning the city. The pilot program was proposed, designed, and is being "nanced by the Toronto Police Services (TPS).

Toronto Police Chief Bill Blair submitted the initiative after the release of the Falconer Report last January. The report was commissioned by the Toronto District School Board (TDSB) to look into school safety issues after the tragic killing of Jordon Manners at C.W. Je%erys high school in 2007. The o$cial TPS statement explains the new program aims to build “healthy and trusting relationships” between police and students, based on the hope that crime and violence will be prevented when stu-dents are more inclined to report incidents.

Yet, of the 136 recommen-dations listed in the Falconer Report to improve school safety, not one involved the sta-tioning of police inside schools (armed or otherwise). Lawyer Julian Falconer, the author of the report, says he is at a loss

as to why the School Boards implemented the program. However, the report did criticize the school boards’ habit of concealing security problems, and he recommended open dialogue and discussion with students and communities about issues of safety.

Approval for the initia-tive to be implemented in any one school only requires support from the trustee, the school principal and the superintendent of education. Ironically, communities that have since been allowed input on the issue have declined the o%er. At The Student School, where the students have a say on school policy through frequent assemblies, students vehemently rejected the proposal.

The distrust and fear of police that students express are not based on youthful misconceptions, but on actual lived experience. Poor and black youth are common victims of overly aggressive policing in their communities, making them resent further surveillance. One police o$cer notes that besides bonding with students at the school, his role entails the surveillance of students at a nearby mall over

lunch and at a local community centre after school. This allows him to “get to know the charac-ters.”

This is not the "rst cooper-ation between the police and the schools. Thousands of Ontario students and their parents felt disenfranchised under the 2001 Safe Schools Act and subsequent “Zero Tolerance Policy” which gave teachers and principals greater authority to suspend and expel students for a range of safety and discipline issues, and to involve police. Under the current TPS pro-gram, there have already been instances where educators have clashed with police o$cers desiring to charge students with criminal action. For at-risk youth whose motivation to remain in a dysfunctional education system is already teetering, cops in schools could be that extra nudge that knocks them out.

The Toronto Police have their own motivation for the pro-gram. The pilot project is being paid for by the department of community policing, the funds for which come out of the provincial money pot shared by the department of education. Such police programs justify soaring police budgets against the backdrop of fading social services budgets, including cuts to education. The program is seen by some as an expensive public relations campaign designed to de!ect criticism of police behavior while doing little to address real problems, like public accountability by the police services.

A coalition of students, parents, educators, and com-munity activists have initiated a campaign against police in schools, going by the acronym NOCOPS (Newly Organized Coalition Opposed to Police in Schools). They work to educate youth, parents, and community stakeholders about the inherent risks in this initia-tive, especially for the already marginalized and criminalized youth. To get involved please contact NOCOPS at nocops.to@gmail.com

the newscont’d

SEMRA EYLUL SEVI & KABIR JOSHI-VIJAYAN

Education Bureau

Play time is overPolice in public schools

Battle of the theistsFact, Fiction, or Faith?

THOMAS SHIFRER

Theological Affairs Bureau

An unnamed police o$cer who was kind enough to pose for this article. His fear about being “photo-

shopped screwing a donkey” were, fortunately, unfounded. Photo: Matthew Pope

VS.

6 the newspaper February 5th – 11th, 2009

What was the last good work of Canadian political !ction you enjoyed? Alright, let’s make it easier: try to name one work of Canadian political !ction. The political !ction we are fam-iliar with largely comes from abroad, whether it is a comical piece like the American movie “Man of the Year” (2006), or a serious one, like the British television mini-series “The Amazing Mrs. Pritchard” (2006). But Canada’s own centuries-old political tradition deserves to have its own genre of political !ction. Surprise! It does. Enter Scott Gardiner’s book, “King John of Canada” (2007).

Given the state of our current political environment, “King John of Canada” emerges as a particularly timely piece. The book imagines a not-so-unlikely future, one wherein Canada is plagued by uncooperative deadlocked minority govern-ments. The prairies form a government with the support of the Quebecois, and the Gov-ernor General loses all authority when the British monarchy in England suddenly ends. Then, triggered by the sar-castic commentary of a media magnate, Canada decides to appoint a monarch to replace the Governor General through a national lottery. Heightening the sense of chaos and discon-nect even further, this story is told from the perspective of an American foreign observer.

Any fool might have had the luck to become Head of State and make a mess of things, but Canada got lucky with John. Instead of bowing to the whims of the Prime Minister, John assumes the authority of his o%ce, combining the common sense of Laurier and the ambi-tion of Trudeau. The new leader is faced with familiar issues

from separatists to terrorists, often yielding thought pro-voking results.

The structure of the book, however, sometimes makes it a frustrating read. Composed of a series of diary entries, the narrative is chopped up into a string of non-chronological &ashbacks. Sometimes typical of a postmodern or avant garde text, the actual story does not begin until about the tenth diary entry. This format appears to be employed in order to link a series of interesting events that are otherwise weakly con-nected; the result is that it reads like watching a horse run in a stroboscope.

Overall, the book is strong and serves as essential reading for anyone pessimistic about an outdated Canadian consti-tution. The appeal also lies in the book’s dramatic moments: certainly, it is only in !ction that one is permitted to say anything so politically incorrect as “the purpose of a citizen in Toronto is to make money for an accredited citizen in Quebec to spend!” Canadian Politics hasn’t been this fun since Louis Riel.

Salman Rushdie is famous – in some quarters, infamous – for his literary bravura. The free-wheeling religiosity of his fourth novel, The Satanic Verses, was considered blasphemous by some Muslims; in 1989, Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini issued a fatwa (edict) allowing Rushdie’s death. Fortunately, he not only survived, but continued writing. His latest novel, The Enchant-ress Of Florence, explores familiar territory - the marriage of East and West; in this case, the Mogul Empire and Renais-sance Florence.

Rushdie’s novels are not necessarily easy to get into; the &orid prose and rambling plot lines deter many readers. The Enchantress Of Florence is no exception. You have to leave your logical mind at the front cover, suspend disbelief, and jump in. But if you do so, you’ll be justly rewarded. Sure, you might experience frustration at times, maddened by Rushdie’s fondness for lavish details, but you’ll also dive into a richly rendered world, peopled by characters of mythic propor-tions.

Rushdie is no James Joyce, but, like Joyce’s Ulysses, The Enchantress Of Florence can be appreciated as much for its language as its narrative arc. He writes of enchantresses: “Witchcraft requires no potions, familiar spirits or magic wands. Language upon a silvered tongue a+ords enchantment

enough.” On three Florence friends: “The most voluble of the trio was one of a throng, a jostle, an argument of Ves-puccis living cheek by jowl.” On seeking harmony: “The curse of the human race is not that we are so di+erent from one an-other, but that we are so alike.”

This vivid and imaginative work is sure to serve as a warm refuge from the cold winter nights, and from the mounting textbooks, technicalities, and theories of our university coursework. A wonderful escape and a highly recom-mended read.

LUDWIK ANTONIUK

Literary Review Bureau

Fiction fit for a KingKing John of Canada

the arts

ANDY M. POTTER

Literary Review Bureau

The Enchantress of FlorenceSalman Rushdie’s silvered tongue enchants

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the newspaper 7February 5th – 11th, 2009

the artscont’d

Shane Philip does it allLive at Baker Studio CD review

LISA MCDONALD

Musical Arts Bureau

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Recorded live o! the Baker Studio "oor in Victoria, BC

The new 2009 musical release from Shane Philip

Showcases a self-taught and self-motivated style

Of a one-man multi-instru-mental powerhouse

In addition to didgeridoo, his #rst instrument

Shane Philip plays 6-string acoustic and electric guitar

Weissenborn and kona lap steel guitar

Along with djembe, kick drums and shakers

And yes, he sings too!The grungy and crispy

sounds spin only a positive message

Along with a swirling vibe of organic dance grooves

Most certainly appealing I would think

To the colourful under-ground alternative and hippy culture

But Philip did have some help in the recording studio

Enlisting the talents of Joby Baker as co-producer

And sharing a writing credit on one song with Shawna Audet

The music has been categor-ized as folk

World fusion and island soul music

And I am reminded of Jamaica

Listening to the swaying reggae beat of

Sweet Ocean and Cool Clouds

But Shane Philip is a Canadian boy and a British Columbia native

Sending his positive vibra-tions from this, his fourth release

Direct from the island of Quadra

Secret Garden is the song that stands out for me

With a softer sound than the other 11 tracks

A Zeppelin-esque quality catches my ear

Shane Philip, a former high school social studies teacher

Creates thought provoking dialogue with his listeners

In a song asking...“what if we decide to stop

using Plastic Bags every time we shop?

Such a simple step to take and

Oh what a serious change it would make

To the worldKnow we’ve got to change in

this worldCan’t stay the same in this

world”Having never seen Shane

Philip perform liveI still think it’s safe for me to

sayThis musician would be

popular in the jamband com-munity

Especially in an outdoor environment

Where fans can spin around in free-"owing tie dye

Grooving with the music while leaving only footprints

On grass and festival mud of concert sites all over the country

Philip has been a non-stop touring musician since 2005

For more information on this artist and to see his full calendar

Shane Philip can be found in cyberspace

At either one of these two websites...

www.shanephilip.comwww.myspace.com/shane-

philip

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8 the newspaper February 5th – 11th, 2009

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