Derek Wall

Gern performs at the United Steel Workers' CD release concert earlier this year in Montreal. Photo by Flickr by Tristanbrand.

Recently, I was fortunate enough to sit down and chat over the phone with Gern from the touring United Steel Workers of Montreal. The Steelworkers have just released their third studio album, Three on the Tree, and are scheduled to bring their rootsy, bluesy, country sound to the Apollo on April 16.
For those reading that are thinking, “I hate country! Forget it!” then I encourage you, read on!
Q: There’s a strong emphasis towards the working class in your music, especially in tracks like “Shot Tower” and “Union Man.” Why is that?

A: Most of the guys in the band come out of a blue-collar background. All our folks, […] our dads, were welders and truck drivers and carpenters and […] these were things we sort of followed them into over the years. I certainly did my fair share of blue-collar work over the years. I was a truck driver, I worked as a carpenter for a while and a farm worker.
As well, most of us all live down in the southwestern area of Montreal; down in the neighbourhoods like Saint-Henri, The Point, and Verdun and they are all real blue-collar gritty neighbourhoods. You hear the guys telling stories and […] it just sort of permeates the songwriting I guess.

Q: Judging by the reaction to your tours across North America and Europe, your music seems to resound with many people internationally. Does this surprise you in any way?

A: No. I don’t think so. These are sort of common threads, the stuff we sing about and the stuff we’re doing. Certainly Americana has been pretty big in North America and Europe for the last seven or eight years. It’s all similar to what we do, a sort of messy style of folk. I think it’s common. We play music that most people can get into. Most people have lost jobs, even if you work in an office. Our style of music sort of rings true with people.

Q: When USWM gets together to write material does one person bring most of the new stuff to the table or is it more of a collaborative process?

A: Very collaborative, actually. We have four songwriters in the band at this point. We’ve always hovered around two to four. The one songwriter will bring a song to the band and then we all start jamming it out and that’s where it starts to be less of a “song” and more of a Steelworkers’ song.
The subject matter usually comes out of the songwriter but then we start tossing it around and the solos and the harmonies and the shape of the song all sort of comes out of the band. That’s how we make all of the songs, no matter whether they’re slow or fast or sweet little songs or songs about murdering people.

Q: I’ve heard it said more than once by people that, “I hate country music… except for the USWM,” so I find it interesting that you, Gern, on your webpage bio also confess to being a ‘Country Music Hater.’

A: (Laughs) It’s true! Country music’s like that. There’s what […] should probably be classified as “New-Country” or, “Garth Brooks Country” or what has become “Nashville Country” and I think that rubs a lot of people the wrong way. And certainly now, you can’t swing a dead cat without hitting a country band or an “alt-country” band or something like that and it having very little to do with the “Nashville” sound or “New-Country” or hasn’t been inspired by Garth Brooks.
My own issue is that I grew up in a small town and there were the rocker kids and there were the country kids. I was on the rocker kid side of things. It’s sort of weird that it came full circle years later. I did sort of come back to country, which was a big part of my life when I was growing up. I happen to be on the other side of the fence about it being a big part of my life but it was certainly there.
It has its grounding quality; it’s part of what ground rock and roll. Country can be omnipresent a lot of the time and like I said, it’s easy to write it off like I said in my own damn bio! But it really has a lot to do, especially in alt-country, with what’s going on today.

Music legend returns to Thunder Bay in April

Josh Fewings
A & E Editor

Gordon Lightfoot will bring his timeless music to the TBCA in April.

If you grew up like I did, than some of the first songs you heard were Canadian folk classics like “Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald,” “Sundown,” “Canadian Railroad Trilogy,” and “Black Day in July.” These works were written by the world-renowned Canadian singer/songwriter, Gordon Lightfoot.
Hailing from Orillia, Lightfoot was a crucial part of the Mariposa and Toronto folk scene of the late 1960s, along with such Canucks as Joni Mitchell, Neil Young, and Bruce Cockburn. Now in his 70th year, Lightfoot still loves touring, and during a recent interview on CBC Radio’s “Q” with Jian Ghomeshi he made it clear that he loves “the show and the feel from the audience.”
The legendary musician has reached number 1 on several charts, including in the U.S. and, of course, in Canada. Focusing on the true essence of telling a story, many songs by Lightfoot bring a historical bend to the fabric of our culture. Take “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald” for instance, the song is about a ship of that name that went down in Lake Superior, when the “gales of November came early.”
If you’re not planning on going to see Lightfoot when he hits town in April you are surely missing out on a once in a lifetime event. Although the show is a pricey $75 at the Thunder Bay Community Auditorium on April 17, it will be worth every dollar to experience Lightfoot’s music live. A chance to see a man that Bob Dylan tried to emulate is surely priceless.

Gordon Lightfoot

• Born: November 17, 1938, Orillia, Ontario
• Has recorded twenty original albums, with fourteen compilation albums
• Endured a six-week coma following a ruptured abdominal aortic aneurysm
• Companion of the Order of Canada (2003)
• His music has been covered by Johnny Cash, Bob Dylan, The Dandy Warhols, Olivia Newton-John, and Sarah McLachlan, among others.
• Was named Canadian male recording artist of the 1970s

Charmaine M.J. Romaniuk

MP, Justin Trudeau, shown here at a previous engagement, spoke last Friday at the Valhalla Inn.

Last Friday, the Valhalla Inn hosted a fundraising event with Justin Trudeau, to raise money in support of the Thunder Bay Regional Health Sciences Center. Many people attended the $50 luncheon to see the son of the beloved Pierre Trudeau, and to hear his views on our role as individuals in society.
Trudeau, as charismatic as his father, touched on issues relevant to the leaders of tomorrow: the youth.
During his speech, the Liberal MP, from the Papineau riding, expressed a need to strengthen communities starting as individuals. He said that we must build on our shared values in order to create a stronger society.
Youth, and their future, was integrated into many areas of his speech, yet the demographic most represented in the audience was middle-aged adults. Trudeau’s message, nevertheless, was to build support for younger Canadians through the actions of today’s leaders and by voting accordingly.
The speech ended with a few questions from the audience and a chance to get a photo and an autograph.

Africa Matters to host fundraising concert, April 1

Brandi Cameron
News Editor

Africa Matters, will host an outdoor concert/BBQ to raise funds, and to collect and fix bikes for Bicycles For Humanity. The event will occur near Lake Tamblyn, on Wednesday from 11am-4pm.
People are encouraged to donate their used bicycles, or to give $20 to send a bike to Africa.
“Transportation can be a huge problem in these and other developing countries,” explains Neva Bassingthwaite, coordinator for Africa Matters. “Not only can a bicycle make individuals mobile and therefore more able to gain employment or education, but supplying bikes actually creates job opportunities as maintenance and parts are required.”
Performing at the event will be Marley Giunta, Mike Filipowitsch, Clay Breiland, and Sarah Bresnahan. LU Radio will have DJs playing throughout the day, and the BBQ promises to be delicious.
“A number of local bike shops, Fresh Air Experience, Rolling Thunder and possibly Cyclepath, will also be on site if students would like to get their bikes tuned-up for summer,” says Bassingthwaite. “The event is free, although we are really encouraging students to make donations so that we can help get the bikes shipped.”
While the concert will be the prime entertainment at the fundraiser, Bassingthwaite says that other diversions will also take place.
“For those of you that did not get the chance to browse the display of jewelry made in Uganda from recycled paper (from a previous AM fundraiser), Caring Hands will be set up once again. In addition, we are going to try to raise some money through a pie-in-the-face contest. We have numerous Lakehead figures participating, such as Richard Longtin, Brent Cuthbertson and Rob Stewart.”
The club is looking for new members who care about these issues in Africa and around the globe. Most of the students involved with Africa Matters are in their fourth year, and new leadership is needed to continue the success of this group.
For more information, check out Lakehead University Supporting Africa on Facebook, or e-mail the club at africamatters@hotmail.com.

Smart Soups about mingling and sharing passion for research

Stacey Goyan
Argus

Student’s gathered in the Braun Building “snake pit” to take part in Lakehead’s third Smart Soup session. The presentations were done by the Faculty of Forestry, and included a complimentary lunch and an opportunity for students to mingle and learn more about research happening in the faculty.
While many in attendance were graduate students looking into their colleagues’ work, some undergrads were present to take in the offerings over some punch, a bun, and a warm bowl of potato and leek soup.
Dr. Brian McLaren and three PhD students were on hand to share their passion for forestry and research. McLaren discussed various techniques involved in forestry research, which focuses on hypotheses that look for surprises, as well as working within forest settings.
He describes a “bottom-up” approach to forestry, which starts with soils and works upward to determine relationships. McLaren stated that the best questions in science are those that can be transferred to different ecosystems, as well as make people appreciate nature more.
Julee Boan, a PhD student in Forest Sciences, said that she was inspired to return to school when she gained interest in the plight of the woodland caribou. In her research, she looks at the declining habitat of the caribou, which has halved over the last century.
Anthony Taylor’s research looks into forest productivity and the carbon cycle of enforced ecosystems. His research into anthropogenic climate change focuses on managing forests to mitigate carbon problems with techniques such as partial cutting, forest fire suppression, and reforestation. He called for new graduate students to take up the highly relevant work.
The session concluded with David Pelster’s discussion of his work on how nitrogen cycles through forests.
Thursday’s Smart Soup Session marked the second session this year.
“Mastermind” behind the sessions, Brendan Hughes, plans to continue the events next year, but with more frequency. He hopes to have four seminars in 2009-10, building towards three every semester in subsequent years. Hughes notes that several faculties are involved in the program, with possible upcoming sessions focusing on research in engineering, medicine, and behavioural sciences.

Evolutionary questions ants’ered

Ian Kaufman
News Writer

Dr. Ehad Abouheif, presented his research on natural selection in ants, last Wednesday, at the ATAC. Photo by Patel Lab.

One hundred and fifty years ago, in his seminal On the Origin of Species, Charles Darwin wrote of “one special difficulty, which at first appeared to me insuperable, and actually fatal to the whole theory.”
This was not an advance warning about creationists; the real challenge to his theory of evolution comes from a much larger and better-organized group: ants.
Most of us, understandably, don’t think too much about ants, except perhaps when we are warding off one of their perennial springtime home invasions. A presentation last Wednesday by evolutionary biologist Dr. Ehab Abouheif gives us reason to rethink this nonchalance.
Abouheif, who studied at Duke and Berkeley and is now a Canada Research Chair in Evolutionary Developmental Biology at McGill, points out that not only do ants outnumber humans worldwide, but collectively, they even exceed total human biomass. Their level of social organization, he says, is second only to humans.
Abouheif’s interest in them coincides with the above-mentioned “special difficulty,” what he calls “Darwin’s greatest dilemma.”
In short, the problem was this: many ant species have developed “sterile castes” – worker ants incapable of reproduction. These species rely instead on a queen ant to produce offspring.
This phenomenon baffled Darwin, who struggled with the seeming contradiction of naturally-selected sterility. As Science Daily now puts it, “if adaptive evolution unfolds by differential survival of individuals, how can individuals incapable of passing on their genes possibly evolve and persist?”
At the time, Darwin hypothesized that perhaps natural selection was working on a broader level: that of the group or “family” rather than the individual.
Abouheif’s recent research has now confirmed that idea.
“Evolution has tinkered with the molecular signals that are used [by the workers’ eggs] to determine what’s going to be the head and what’s going to be the tail, to stop the worker ants from producing viable offspring,” he explains. He calls this “reproductive constraint.”
As for why sterility would be a trait selected for in evolution, it apparently leads to higher cohesion, as there is no competition with the queen to reproduce, and allows worker females to instead lay “trophic eggs,” which serve as a food source.
As Abouheif commented, after learning about the complexity of ant society, you’ll probably think twice the next time you consider bringing your shoe down on one.