The Tartan is a student run, written and produced subsidiary semesterly magazine to The Peak, Simon Fraser University’s Student Newspaper, focusing on long-form journalism and creative fiction writing. It is currently a pilot project being launched for SFU’s 50th anniversary and its success in terms of contributor and reader engagement will be used to determine the future of a semesterly Peak Publications Society magazine.
The Tartan Contributors (Issue 2)
NON-FICTION
Tamara Connor (Culture of Detachment) is a fourth year Political Science student. When she isn’t writing up a storm, Tamara can be found with a good book or watching her favourite television series, Murdoch Mysteries. She advocates for Canadian content broadcasting, the floppy disc, and the creation of a *drops mic* emoji.
Jasdeep Gakhal (An Artwalk to Remember) is a fourth year English major and History minor at SFU.
Michelle Hickey (Renaissance Man) is a student of Communications and Health Sciences. She enjoys learning and sharing people’s true and unheard stories.
Albert Kho (SFU’s Box in the Attic) is a second year student transitioning from Engineering to Actuarial Science. If he’s not in class, at the pool, or in front of a computer writing, he’s probably asleep.
Jonathan Pabico (The Best and Worst Movies Filmed on Campus) is a third year Philosophy Major. He is currently a writer at The Peak and continues to be involved with it on a weekly basis. He also knows how to play the drums.
Tessa Perkins (Oh, Maggie) is a proud alumna, student, and staff member of SFU who is a former Arts Editor and current contributor for The Peak and writes for publications such as Dance International. She has a BA in English and French literature (with a minor in Publishing) and is working on a post-baccalaureate diploma in Communications.
Oscar Lira Sanchez (A Space for Art & Get With The Program!) is a student lost in the Visual Arts and History programs at SFU. Constantly confused and flustered, he is an artist and writer just trying to understand where he’s going and where he’s been.
Hannah Urquhart (An Artwalk to Remember) is a fourth year English and French Literature joint major.
Adam VanderZwan (“I Can’t Get Into My Classes Again?!”) is a fifth year Communications and Political Science student, currently working as The Peak’s Opinions Editor. Apart from consuming copious amounts of coffee and washing dishes to jazz music, he enjoys pensive walks on the beach and deep conversations.
FICTION (PROSE)
Sam Fraser (Who’s Afraid of Thomas Wolfe?) is a fourth-year English major with a passion for Batman, bow ties, and bad movies. Sometimes he makes videos about these things and posts them on YouTube under the name “Adaptation Nation”.
Jesse Gotfrit (Thank You for Understanding) is a third year English major who writes both poetry and fiction, and who would love it if his stories made just a little difference in how people perceive and interact with the world.
Stephanie Hefti (Rattrap) is a fourth year English and History double major with a World Literature minor who presently bursts into tears each time she tries to think about choosing between serious grad studies and her plan to pursue creative writing alongside a teaching career.
Ryan Hoben (The New Denny’s) is an English major who occassionally can be found smoking cigarettes and working on his first novel from the comforts of his tiny one bedroom apartment in East Vancouver.
FICTION (Poetry)
Anisa Maya Dhanji (Atlantis and You) is a third year Linguistics major and French minor. She enjoys Canada’s lengthy coastlines and really great puns.
Lukas Grajauskas (Nebula III) is a fifth-year student majoring in Behavioural Neuroscience.
Rajdeep Grewal (Run River) is a fourth year Psychology & Dialogue student who loves writing and performing poetry, as well as connecting with other creative people.
Kyle Michels (Blason for a Stranger) is an English major completing his studies this semester
Sam Weselowski (Consortium) is a fourth year student who has recently began the English Honours program and will hopefully be writing a sensible thesis on the poetry of Jack Spicer.
Rachel Wong (145) is a second year student pursuing a Communications major and an International Studies minor. She is an avid blogger, foodie, and would like to one day read news to you for a living.
Iker Zarebski (Here) is a second year Cognitive Science Major. He is mainly interested in existential and erotic themes. Some of his influences are Pablo Neruda and Charles Bukowski.
ILLUSTRATION
Serena Chan (Here) is a Computing Science major as her second-degree, doodle-maker, and wannabe.
Zach Chan (145 & Who’s Afraid of Thomas Wolfe?) is a third year Interactive Arts and Technology student, where he explores connections between humans and technology in order to design interactions that will be memorable, defining experiences for others. Having only just started delving into the world of drawing a few years ago, pencil and ink are his main tools but digital art is slowly becoming another part of his tool belt for creating fan art and illustrations for school publications like The Peak and Tartan.
Momo Lin (Consortium) is a second year Kinesiology major currently in her my fourth year in Canada. Her personal website is built for all kids and adults (2amconference.com) and she believes in the truth of illustration that reflects the reality of the world.
Ariel Mitchell (Atlantis and You) is a 4th year student currently pursuing a Joint Major in Health Sciences and Philosophy. Her favorite flavor is bubble gum, followed closely by mint and vanilla.
PHOTOGRAHY
Jonathan VanElslander (A Space for Art & Run River) is a fourth year Environmental Science major specializing in forest ecology. He spends his free time taking film photographs of beautiful places and people and getting lost in the woods.
EDITORIAL STAFF
Andrea Bolland (Designer) is a fourth year Communications major with a passion for photography and design.
Austin Cozicar (Associate Non-Fiction Editor) is a third(ish) year Communications major. He formerly worked as The Peak’s Sports Editor, but is still on the ground covering SFU’s sports scene. He also works as the marketing coordinator at SFU Hockey. He also hopes he is immortal.
Brad McLeod (Managing Editor) is a fifth year Communications major who will soon be graduating. He is the creator of this magazine.
Amneet Mann (Associate Fiction Editor) is a first year student, a fan of good stories, bad jokes, and the people who tell them.
Introduction to The Tartan (Issue 1)
On September 9, 1965, Simon Fraser University officially opened its doors. There wasn’t much here at first — even the fourth wall of the Academic Quadrangle was still under construction — but one thing it did get very quickly was a student publication.
Printing its first rough, mimeographed, stapled-together issue on September 17, The Tartan was SFU’s “instant” student newspaper. It ran for six issues before the creation of a rival paper forced a merger for what would become The Peak.
While The Peak is the only publication that has survived, it was not alone in SFU’s early media landscape. For the first two years, the students also produced an extremely professional Yearbook which did not feature the typical pictures of the graduating class, but instead told the story of the year with photos and text which are to this day some of the finest historical records we have for the early years of Simon Fraser. There was also a briefly published monthly opinions-magazine entitled Compass which went beyond the capabilities of a newspaper and gave students a place to voice their uncensored thoughts on a broad range of topics.
Both Compass and the Yearbook faced the same demise due to one simple reason: lack of money. Since 1965, there have been countless publications which have come and gone due to funding problems. From the off-colour science newsletter The Purple Period, to Cheap Thrills: a magazine dedicated to “the unprogrammed exposure of what’s going on around us”, to SFU Komix: “the only REAL SFU comics”, to Vulcan Mail: “the semesterly magazine of The Gamesters of Triskelion”, as well as a number of literary magazines from The Peak and other student groups, SFU’s desire for broader and more diverse media has never been fully realized.
In 1995 however, in becoming fully autonomous from the student society, The Peak Publications Society was created. While the organization has grown exponentially since the society began, it has continued to attempt to do everything under one publication. While news has stayed as a consistent focus of The Peak, a lot of other writing has never had a permanent place. Fiction and poetry have never had a consistent home and long-form features have never quite got the space or spotlight they deserve either.
The new Tartan is an attempt to hopefully inspire an increase in a variety of publications and media at SFU. This special first edition of The Tartan magazine is not only a celebration of the milestone of SFU turning 50 years old, it’s a pilot for what we hope can become a regular semesterly publication. While it may end up being just another here-today, gone-tomorrow SFU publication, we believe that, with your support, The Tartan could be the start of something wonderful.
Vondel Park
Did you know?
As you dreamed your dreamless sleep
Within that temporal existence
You were with me at Vondel Park
You stowed away on the back of some scent-filled freesias
It was just when I thought of missing you
That you came to me
Such a serendipitous arrival
Was it you entering my dream,
Or me entering yours?
I sat on a bench to catch the phrases
In front of the bird refuge
And, as if on command, a pelican-like creature glided by
Stirring the Sunday morning air
She came to rest upon her tall perch
A nest in the sanctuary-sky
And her love was waiting for her there
Thick
I woke with the moon
The morning thick in fog and exhaustion
A swelling sleeping underneath my heart,
and pressing against my spine
I can only imagine the feeling looking the way a forest does;
when the cold October clasps woodland on wet, soulful mornings in her fingers,
a balloon of smog knitting braids around forlorn trunks, tattered leaves, morose branches
A dense thicket of somber trees grown to absorb the blood leaking from the space
so absent, so vacant in between my leafy organs.
‘Her Spirit Rose Under Its Influence’
Crossed in love, dusting the few
flawed flowers in a window box,
an imponderable falling of snow
begins in the town square.
It is gently scheming,
it is skating
and all coming downwards.
The snowflakes are fluent
in the sound of
touching the earth.
The low sky is brushed white
though somehow puzzled-seeming,
charged with smaller particles
than I it comes to diffuse
our feelings that need
a weightless snowfall–
it is beginning to
cover the bells of a church.
These snowflakes dandle the air
and descend, filling a street for
snowmen then purely repeating–
a white woven into a town square
with no one there.
It is difficult to explain
where it ends.
We watch the unmodulated
falling snow
quiver the air / it is rote white.
21 January 2015
Berlin, Germany.
What it’s like
Mom came over in the 70’s.
The oldest of nine, she set the shining example of the possibility of the Western ideal. She never talked about racism or discrimination, the loneliness of being the only one. Multiculturalism is a new term but its reality is the back this country was built on. I suppose it was easier being the other – clearly defined and separated – than having one foot in and one foot out. She had to earn her nationality, her sameness rooted in difference – it’s everybody’s story here right?
“I don’t like purple yam.”
Her expression is mock outrage. Since when? Since always. The beef stewed in blood. Blood. Blood. No. But Sinigang. Sour sour with the radishes I can’t pronounce. Taro root (not potato), spinach, tamarind broth, fall off the bone beef you don’t need to cut. Add the fish sauce. Bowl of white rice. A spoon to ladle it in. Slurp it up. Finish off with coconut floats or sweet tofu and tapioca drowning in brown sugar-syrup. Mom makes all the western staples too, Meatloaf, Shepherd’s pie, Salisbury steak. Bridge the gap. When I have dinner at my friends’ houses, I use a fork and knife but at home it’s always a spoon. You eat this food with a spoon.
Filipino-Danish.
“Ohhhh, Filipino.” And half Danish. “Isn’t that a pastry?” I started saying Danish- Filipino. That would keep them listening for the other half. It is a pastry. A European pastry. They tell us to say “racial heritage” because we’re all Canadian now and it doesn’t matter. Tell that to all the other kids. I didn’t know I looked different until Chris told me he knew a really good Chinese restaurant up the street. He wanted to take me there. We were 8. I came home and asked Mom what he meant. “He thinks you’re Chinese.”
The rest of the family immigrated just in time to condense the cultural differences with my teenage angst. Instant ‘heritage’. Alive and growing. Tita! Tito! Ate! “Maganda!” Hyper-awareness of a culture I didn’t know but was meant to be a part of. Respect your elders! Don’t talk back! Eat, Eat! Kutsinta, adobo, fry the bananas! White rice, red sausage, sugar on the sweet potatoes, palabok! Grandma made the best palabok. Although she never made us call her Lola.
It’s a funny thing growing up culturally unaware of your heritage then having it weaponized and thrown in your face. “You Filipina?” The first time one of them asked I thought I heard it wrong, then realized I’d been saying it wrong this whole time. “You speak?” How FilipinO am I exactly? “You ever go back?” Hot, wet heat, showering in the warm rain, jeepnies, icy Halo-halo from the roadside carts. Don’t sit on that rock, there’s a monster who lives there. Succubus in the forest. Brown puddles and noise. Snakes in the kitchen. Flying roaches. I’ve been back but now I’m here. I can’t speak but I can understand you.
This Racket Seems to Like a Good Poem
First off, my poem only shuffled the
deck chairs of the digital. Perfect
pixel smear into e-waste. No geography
except streets, wires, toxic dumps, etc.
Like a modernist sympathizing battery
fire, my poem got sunburned by all these
transatlantic cables. My poem doesn’t
internet date. My poem yawns and retires.
I’d rather configure rain storms a drop at a
time. Or play Candy Crush. Same same.
As the sun sets across the English Bay oil
slick, I’d rather go for a coffee with you.
