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Men’s hockey falls in championship

By
EIC
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0

Selkirk College overwhelms SFU to win BCIHL championship

By Andrew Jow

A great BCIHL season came to a close over the weekend as the top two teams from the league faced off in a best-of-three championship series. The Simon Fraser University Clan were pitted against the top ranked Selkirk College Saints at the Nelson and District Community Complex in a highflying affair that lived up to the hype.

The first 20 minutes of game one were the model for everything that followed. At first, SFU was the better team, as they finished their checks and won the battles along the boards.

Clan netminder Graeme Gordon also set the tone for his stellar play over the weekend as he thwarted a Selkirk two-on-one by stacking the pads while diving cross crease.

Gordon’s counterpart, Alex Sirard was equally up to the task, miraculously using his stick to steer a Jono Ceci attempt away from its course to the back of the net. SFU dominated early on, but could not solve Sirard.

The second period started much the same way the first ended, with both goalies stealing the show. Gordon flashed the leather on Scott Swiston, and Sirard was easily Selkirk’s best penalty killer, backstopping his team to two straight kills.

Selkirk ended the deadlock on a power play of their own, as Justin Sotkowy tipped in a Dylan Smith point shot. The Saints’ lead grew to two when Mason Spear jammed the puck home during a power play scramble in front of SFU’s net.

Despite a mass of SFU power plays in the final frame, Sirard was not to be beaten, giving his team the all-important first victory.
Five-on-five play was relatively even throughout the game, so special teams played an important role. SFU’s power play had troubles entering the zone all night as they constantly went offside, leading to an 0–6 night. Coach Mark Coletta was visibly frustrated at his special teams, as Selkirk’s edge in power play goals served as the difference in this one.

Game two started much the same way as game one, with SFU flying around and drawing penalties. Unfortunately, another theme carried over was a lack of success for SFU’s power play.

Simon Fraser finally broke the goose egg with a Kale Wild penalty shot. Wild skated in and froze Sirard with an ankle shattering deke, eventually firing the puck top shelf.

Wild’s effort gave SFU their first lead over Selkirk all season. SFU’s Brenden Silvester added to the advantage on a massive slap shot from the high slot. The visitors were well on their way to forcing a deciding game three until Selkirk’s Cody Fidgett hit Clan leading scorer Ben Van Lare from behind.

Van Lare missed the rest of the game. Shortly after the Fidgett hit, Selkirk capitalized on a skirmish in SFU’s net when Thomas Hardy buried a muchneeded goal. Selkirk found their legs after Hardy’s effort and carried the momentum into the third.

Without Van Lare, SFU had trouble mounting any type of offense in the third period. The play throughout the final 25 minutes of the contest was carried by Selkirk, and mostly took place in the Clan’s own zone.
Gordon did his best to keep his team in it, but could not stop a perfectly placed Jordan Wood wrist shot, which tied up the game. Regulation ended with the two squads tied 2–2, which meant the series would go into sudden death overtime.

SFU needed a goal to keep their season alive, but three minutes into overtime it was Selkirk’s Cody Fidgett who played the role of hero. Fidgett flew down the sidewall and slid a sharp angled shot past Gordon, giving Selkirk their first ever BCIHL Championship.

The SFU men’s hockey team left Nelson with a sour taste in their mouth. They played tough, inspired hockey, but ultimately could not solve the Selkirk Saints. As a good season ends, the boys from Burnaby will put this one past them and look to finish next season on a higher note.

Around the bases with Trisha Bouchard

By
EIC
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0

WEB-Trisha Bouchard-Mark Burnham

Clan senior softball player sits down with The Peak

By Clay J. Gray
Photos by Mark Burnham

If you walk out past Terry Fox field on any given day during the spring you are likely to find Trisha Bouchard, along with the rest of the softball team, perfecting their craft. Wearing number 17, the same number as her cousin and SFU alumni Erin Mclean, Bouchard has dominated center field for the last five years.

Even though softball is not that popular of a sport in her hometown Montreal, Quebec, Trisha started playing softball at the young age of five. However it was not until Trisha entered high school that softball became more than after-school time filler.

Becoming laser-focused at age 13 is no small feat on its own, but for this success Trisha points towards her parents. With an engineer for a mother and a police officer for a father, it’s safe to say Bouchard had a structured and highly motivated upbringing.
Trisha had an easy time selecting SFU, since she already had family ties to the Clan and an even easier time deciding to be a business major. However, when Bouchard redshirted in her sophomore year, she found herself adding an unexpected fifth year to her university career.

As a result, Trisha changed her degree option to a joint major between business and communications. Bouchard said, “I had two separate internships where someone advised me to add communications as an area of study.”

Of course her favourite course still comes from her original faculty: Business Ethics with Todd Green. When talking about what made the class so enjoyable, Bouchard indicated that it was the small class size that enabled her to interact more meaningfully with her fellow students.

Trisha said, “It is where I met most of my friends from business. In this class we had all got to know each other and spoke on a daily basis. It definitely broadened my world in terms of business.”

Yet, the demands of softball and a joint major weren’t enough to occupy Bouchard’s time, so she got involved with the Student Athlete Advisor y Committee (SAAC). Then, as she got further into her university career, she took the position of president within the SAAC.

These demands and responsibilities didn’t dissuade Bouchard, as anyone familiar with Clan athletics is aware of the demands placed on the softball team. Head coach Mike Renney has high expectations for his players both on and off the field.

These expectations are welcome for Bouchard, because she expects a lot from herself as well. “Our softball program is demanding,” said Bouchard. “I remember in my freshman year being blown away by the workload.”

But now that she is in her fifth year, putting out that effort has become second nature. She later added, “When I leave this program, I know I can handle anything anybody throws at me.”

The Bouchards also make double use of Trisha’s softball trip by using it as a sort of family vacation. This is because the Clan is usually the team is able to squeeze in one trip out of the year that is a bit more hospitable than the rest of their rigorous schedule; travelling to locations like Cuba, Hawaii, or Vegas.

Often some of the team members’ families will join them on the trip, something Trisha’s family tries to do each year. “It’s always nice to have my family on those trips. I usually only see them between semesters.”

Word on the Street: Anti-vaccination summit.

By
EIC
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0

Q: SFU held a controversial anti-vaccination conference last week. Thoughts?

WEB-WOTS-Attentionseekers

Anti-Vaccine Movement

Room temperature IQs 

“HEY. VACCINES ARE BAD. HEY, HEY, HEY. COM’ON. LOOK AT ME. LOOK AT WHAT I’M DOING. OOooOoH SCARY AUTISM. AWW HOW COME YOU’RE NOT LOOKING?”

 

 

WEB-WOTS-JonasSalk Jonas Salk

Poli-owned

“Well I guess I spent my career injecting people with cow puss for nothing then. Enjoy your leg braces.“

 

 

WEB-WOTS-Kid

 Shirley Chapman

2nd grader

“I don’t know what Human Pa-ba-loma[sic] virus is, but I bet it’s better than shots!”

 

 

WEB-WOTS-TinFoil

Gregory Barnett

Man in tin foil hat

“Anti-vaccination? That’s the single stupidest thing I’ve ever heard.“

 

 

WEB-WOTS-Virus

Rubella

Viral Vector

“I completely agree, vaccination is untested, unreliable and unsafe. We should all just go back to the time-tested treatment of licking doorknobs.“

 

By Gary Lim

Ski Ninjas: Cash Crab

By
EIC
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0

Colour-SkiNinjas-CashCrab

 

 

 

 

By Kyle Lees

See more at Skininjas.com!

Berthouse: Birdbath

By
EIC
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0

Berthouse By Eleanor Qu and Justin Stevens

The Pope Pipe

By
EIC
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0

With the leader of the Catholic Church still undecided (as of March 12th), the eyes of 1.2 billion Catholics worldwide are sure to be fixed on the bronze chimney atop the Sistine Chapel. True to tradition, if white smoke is seen rising from the chimney a new pope has been elected and if black, the opposite. But while these two signals are the most well known, there actually exist well over 214 different smoke signals according to documents stolen from the Vatican archives by an unnamed newspaper. Peak Humour is proud to present some of the lesser-known smoke signals.

Black — No Pope.

White — Pope.

Gray — Schrodinger’s Pope: the papacy is simultaneously filled and empty.

White followed by black  — Elected pope candidate has in fact been dead for several days.

Pink  — Elected pope turned out to be a woman in drag.

Blue  — Dinner order to Piazilli’s for one Conclave-sized family meal with all the toppings, hold the anchovies, extra cheese. Paying with credit.

Yellow  — Election suspended until the rule that a golden retriever cannot be pope is instated.

Red — Papal coup has seized control of Vatican.

Chartreuse — Non-white pope elected. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, it’s 2013. Just telling you this now so you don’t look surprised when he comes out

White billowing into chimney — Antipope elected

Dark black — Sistine chapel on fire.

An open letter to the person who stole my bookbag

By
EIC
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0

Dear sir or madam,

 

Before I begin, may I be the first to thank you for stealing my book bag? While your act of thievery was neither cunning nor daring, I must thank you nonetheless for taking my bag rather than one of the actual valuables of my fellow editors lying adjacent to it.

Speaking of my bag, it is currently safely back in my possession after I was contacted by Translink telling me they had found it on one of their buses. I do not know what possessed you to leave the bag aboard the 135 bus, but I have my theories.

I imagine you were sitting on the bus ready to pry into my bag with your pig-like hands. But lo and behold, when you found nothing shiny inside (my apologies), in a fit of rage the bag somehow escaped your sweaty trotters. Even more tragic, before you were able to retrieve it you were distracted by some new odour permeating your folds. You then stumbled off the bus in a rush, late for your appointment at the herpes clinic.

But this is just one theory; in another, you step off the bus to skulk around a preschool both hands never visible throughout, and in yet another you have to make it to the dumpster behind Safeway before they throw away the expired eggs. I have many more theories, but I doubt we will ever completely understand what happened, as modern science has only scratched the surface of the effects of syphilis on thinking patterns.

One piece of advice though, rather than leaving the bag inside a bus, next time try throwing yourself in front of one.

But what I’m still struggling to understand (not unlike how you struggle with reading) is why you pinched my bag.

The obvious answer is for money. I must apologize, then, for forgetting to leave my phone or wallet inside my bag. I can only imagine the disappointment you felt when you discovered nothing worthwhile inside it, especially after all the time you spend trying to figure out how to work a zipper.

For future reference, if you are ever again tight on money, might I suggest gainful employment at the dick-sucking factory? Perhaps your estranged mother could give you a reference.

But maybe your motive was not cash, rather the raw unadulterated thrill of getting away with a crime more of ignorance than intellect. If so, I suggest a legally encouraged method of getting your chemically induced jollies. Some sort of gruesome sex act (or in your case, a sex act) perhaps?

Rather than stealing someone’s rightful belongings, try taking a whack at your own genitals, no matter how hilariously, then sadly, then hilariously again deformed they may be. I only tell you to do this yourself because I cannot imagine that any human being or animal being paid any fathomable sum of money would delve into the matted canopy of pubic hair, crusted urine and general disgust in search of your aforementioned sex organs.

Anyways, if my analysis of the situation is completely sound and error-free, let it be recorded in the annals of The Peak that you, my friend, are a ham-fisted, illiterate, piss-soaked, baby penis, obese, pedophile, syphilitic, herpes-ridden, sack of shit garbage eater. However if any detail may be so far as even an iota off then I would greatly enjoy hearing from you.

Warmest Regards,
Gary Lim
Humour Editor

Peakcast #7

By
EIC
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0

This week, editors David Dyck, Alison Roach, Will Ross, and Bryan Scott discuss the SFSS election results and SPORTS! With special guests Clay J. Gray and Adam Ovenell-Carter.

Let’s get physics-cal

By
EIC
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0

physics-cal the peak

Beginner level physics texts need to focus on the facts, no matter how daunting

By Ben Buckley

Why are students in high school and first-year university taught outdated theories?

Physicist Richard Feynman said that if all scientific knowledge were destroyed and only one sentence survived, the most important statement would be the atomic hypothesis: “that all things are made of atoms.” In the 21st century, most people accept that atoms exist, and have some understanding that they’re made up of electrons, protons and neutrons.

But looking through an average first-year physics textbook, you’d think that atoms were a frightening new discovery reserved for advanced students.

The textbook from my introductory university physics course doesn’t mention electrons until page 564, and doesn’t cover the working of elementary particles until the last tenth of the book.

Most introductory physics courses teach the same topics in a similar order. Students first learn classical mechanics, like Newton’s 17th-century mechanics describing the motions of macroscopic objects, mainly celestial bodies and projectiles, or the classical electromagnetism, encapsulated mostly by James Clark Maxwell’s 19th-century equations.

Newton and Maxwell’s theories helped to advance science, and remain a useful approximation of reality, but they are flawed. Both the classical theories predate the proof of the existence of atoms and completely ignore their existence, a glaring omission if I ever heard of one.

So again, why are fledgling physicians taught these outdated theories? Modern theories require more complicated mathematics and are ver y counter-intuitive; classical theories are mathematically simple, and, it is argued, provide a safe introduction to physics. They are lies that happen to be easy to teach.

Because of this, authors and educators often treat relativity and quantum mechanics as spooky, mysterious ideas that no one truly understands. Maybe decades ago, but not anymore. A basic understanding of the principles of modern physics is well within the grasp of a motivated high school student. Even the mathematics involved are only slightly more complicated than Math 12, at least for simple problems.

Left to our own devices, humans are terrible physicists; even with “classical” problems, it took geniuses like Newton and Maxwell to come up with theories that came even close to describing reality. If their theories were really intuitive, undergraduates wouldn’t struggle to learn them. If schools are going to teach a counter intuitive theory, they might as well teach the correct one, rather than clutter students’ minds with falsehoods they have to unlearn.

The top priority of a science class should be to teach the truth. We must get used to the world of relativity, quantum mechanics, and atoms. It is, after all, the world we live in.

If we don’t wise up, our concerns will get U-Pass’d over

By
EIC
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1

WEB-upass-Mark Burnham

By Rachel Braeuer
Photos by Mark Burnham

Of course students want a cheap U-Pass. Of course students want more buses. Of course students want buses to run at more convenient times and until the wee hours of the morning.

Most of us are struggling financially, and we’ve all felt the “will I get off this winter hell mound?” fear. But let’s get real: TransLink isn’t going to invest more resources into an area that, because of the U-Pass, they continually receive a flat rate from.

Right now university students pay $36 per month for their U-Pass, which is $16 less than a highschool student pays for a monthly concession pass that will likely not take them out of the zone they and their school reside in. Given SFU’s large commuter basis and satellite campuses, it’s likely we will be using our extremely discounted pass to travel in all zones, or at least two.

Assuming Translink’s pricing for its regular adult monthly passes doesn’t leave a huge profit margin, for every U-Pass being made use of, they’re losing out on a potential $88–$134 per student. Multiply that by the 25,000 students currently enrolled at SFU and that’s a lot of money.

A lot has been said about the Gondola project, much of it negative. Some are concerned about the impact it will have on the protected environmental area it will run through (although, if you’ve looked out the window while riding the 145 lately, you’ll notice clear-cut patches striping the sides of the mountain, so perhaps this work is already under way).

Residents of the Forest Grove area it will run over are concerned with having a gondola flying over their houses every 20 seconds during peak hours. But TransLink has said “there is not approved funding at this time for the Burnaby Gondola Project.” Right now the Gondola is probably third in line behind both the Evergreen line and the proposed subway on the Broadway corridor.

These projects will likely be heavily subsidized by fees levied at car owners, which seems fair. Both routes are heavily congested even in off-peak hours.

Freeing up lanes makes sense for drivers, but when’s the last time you saw stop-and-go traffic coming up Burnaby Mountain Parkway? Drivers won’t want to fund this project because it doesn’t affect their commute.

If we’re serious about improving transit to Burnaby campus, it’s time we start rethinking the implicit value in our discounted passes. It wouldn’t be heinous to siphon some funds from UniverCity’s residents considering the added property value the Gondola would create for them, but ultimately it’s the students who will benefit the most from it. More than a costly outdoor stadium, I’d wager.

We’ve had a sweet cheap ride these last 10 years with the Universal Pass, but maybe it’s time we started paying our own dues. Increasing U-Pass costs to the equivalent of a concession pass is still more than affordable, and if that helps free up some extra cash for TransLink to throw a few more buses our way in the meantime or a Gondola along the way, all the better.

Better yet, we could look into alternative forms of fundraising for the project. But it’s pointless to lobby TransLink for more services and resources when we continue to pay less for more.

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Simon Fraser University’s independent student newspaper since 1965.

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© The Peak Publications Society

Simon Fraser University’s independent student newspaper since 1965.

For advertising inquiries: [email protected]
For promotional inquiries: [email protected]

© The Peak Publications Society