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In Other News…

Note: This article is hosted here for archival purposes only. It does not necessarily represent the values of the Iron Warrior or Waterloo Engineering Society in the present day.

Perils of Not Getting Vaccinated

As a follow-up on my article last month on measles, health authorities in the Lanaudière region of Québec have reported an ongoing outbreak in their schools. Over 100 cases of measles have been reported among children attending three schools in the vicinity of Joliette, QC. It is believed that the outbreak started due to a family vacationing at Disneyland in California.

Many of the cases were among members of a new religious movement known as La Mission de l’Esprit-Saint, which believes that its founder Eugène Richer, a cop in the Québec police force in the early 20th century, is a human incarnation of the Holy Spirit. Contrary to the mainstream Christian belief that Jesus saved the world by his death, they believe that Jesus failed in his mission and it’s their job to carry it on. Their mission? “Regenerating humanity through eugenics”, where by “eugenics” they mean an eccentric metaphysical belief that a spiritually faithful woman can improve the state of their soul and give birth to superior children.  And yes, the group opposes vaccination.  A Québec judge once called the group “a harmful influence on the psychological well-being of children.”

Health officials are dealing with the issue by asking all unvaccinated children to get the measles vaccine ASAP, or face a two-week suspension from school.

Frozen

According to data published by Environment Canada, Kitchener-Waterloo has just gone through one of its coldest winters. An all-time low for temperature for K-W was set during reading week, on February 16, 2015, when −34.1° C was measured at Waterloo Airport, breaking an eight-decade-old record of −33.9° C set on February 9, 1934.

The average temperature recorded at the Waterloo Airport over the month of February 2015 was −14.8°C, almost 10 degrees colder than the 30-year average of -5.5°C. This is the coldest month ever recorded (records began in 1914) in Kitchener-Waterloo, breaking the previous record low for monthly average of −13.3° C set in February 1934. It is also only the fifth month since records began when the temperature did not once go above freezing (in case anyone’s wondering, the others are Jan. 1918, Feb. 1934, Jan. 1977, and Feb. 1978). We actually went 63 days in a row this year without a positive temperature.

It’s a far cry from my first winter term in Waterloo, when there was a heat wave. I distinctly remember being able to play beach volleyball in a T-shirt and shorts in the middle of March. I was sort of surprised, because all I’d ever heard growing up in BC was how cold the winters were in the rest of Canada. But nature always gets her revenge. Little did I know…

Of Niqabs and Women

Last month, the Federal Court of Canada announced its opinion that the Citizenship Act required government officials to permit the wearing of the niqab, a veil which covers all of the face except the eyes, during citizenship ceremonies. The niqab is a common article of clothing in Arab states and in South Asia, and is often worn for religious reasons – some schools of thought within Islam consider the face to be a private part of the body which should be covered in the interests of decency. However, other schools of thought reject it – notably Sheikh Muhammad Tantawi, the longtime Grand Mufti of Egypt, refused to teach anyone wearing a niqab and once denied a veiled woman access to his library.

Face veils have been controversial in North America and Europe, and are currently banned in France, Belgium, and some parts of Spain, Switzerland, and Russia. The controversy pivots around the question: Is the niqab a sign of female subjugation? If so, then it would make sense to banish the niqab in the interests of gender equality. If not, however, then it would hardly be right to ban an article of clothing just because it made others feel awkward. A poll from Forum Research earlier this month showed that 57% of Canadians believe that the niqab is oppressive to women (but, of course, there is still a significant minority who disagree with that view).

The Federal Court decision permitting face veils in citizenship ceremonies opened a wider debate about the niqab’s place in Canadian society. Harper made it clear where it stood, describing the niqab as “rooted in a culture that is anti-women”, and he does have the majority of Canadians on his side on this issue at least. Conservative MP Larry Miller went further, asking women who want to wear the niqab in a citizenship ceremony to instead “stay the hell where you came from” – a comment he later had to apologize for. The Quebec separatist movement is also anti-niqab – bad enough that “Quebec values” are being threatened by English-speaking Canadians, now they’re being threatened by immigrants as well!

On the other hand, Liberal leader Justin Trudeau accused the government of fear-mongering and compared this situation to Canada refusing Jewish immigrants in the years before World War II. This also got a lot of people pissed, as you might imagine. Opposition leader (NDP) Thomas Mulcair also defended the niqab, which made him the subject of a Bloc Québécois attack ad: “Hide your face and vote NDP.” Charles Taylor, professor of political philosophy at McGill, also weighed in, calling Harper “tone deaf” for calling the niqab offensive. Taylor sees it as counter-productive because terrorist recruiters have been banging on the “Canada/America hates you and will never accept you” drum for a while, and thinks that anti-niqab sentiment is just causing young people to believe these recruiters and radicalize.

At the end of the day, very few women, even within the Muslim community, actually veil their faces. A study published by Concordia University estimated that only a few hundred Canadians wear a niqab. Perhaps all this bickering is just a massive fuss over practically nothing.

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