By: Esther Liu, Contributor
The Silhouette: What is the IMPACT study?
Marla Beauchamp: With the start of COVID-19 and the public health recommendations on social distancing and staying home as much as possible, one of the things that concerned us was: "How could this be affecting older peoples' mobility and their social participation?"
We know that mobility is a really really critical aspect of health for older people and when you lose mobility, you're at risk of falling, of negative health outcomes, of hospitalization. So our team wanted to understand the impact of these social distancing recommendations on peoples' mobility and participation over time.
[/media-credit] Marla Beaucamp
Brenda Vrkljan: Our sample is focused on people in Hamilton and one of the things that we wanted to do with this study was to be very thoughtful about who is gonna be included in the study. We aim to have a random sample, but that's a very loose term because when you say “I want a random sample,” it's not really that random because you still need to obtain informed consent and those kinds of things [and] you still need to recruit people. But what we did was we sampled people in different areas of the city, different economic statuses, different social determinants of health.
How did this study come into existence?
Beauchamp: I do a lot of work with people with chronic Lyme disease. Some of the guidelines for people include that you should remain at home completely, you should not go out at all. And so I was really concerned that we were telling people not to move, right? And I wanted to understand the impact of staying at home and not going about doing their usual activities, what that could do to their health.
So that was part of the reason for doing it. Also, Brenda and I are always talking about ways that we can support older people to live in their homes and to live independently. So if we were going to think more long term about this pandemic, we really needed to understand what has been the impact: what are people doing, what are people noticing?
Vrkljan: Like any good idea, there tends to be what I called the idea stack. So, Marla goes: "I have an idea," and I go: "Oh what if we did this too?". This might draw some other people in too and then what hopefully happens is that it's picked up in a better place. One thing we have is that we involve older adults in our initiatives. Of course, we might talk to our families, but that's not quite the same as talking to somebody who's not so close to us.
Marla and I have parents who are aging. . . and we also had an older adult partner who said that we're asking her lots of questions, but one thing that we're missing out on was the impact of the quarantine. We were missing out on the experience of living through a quarantine. So we've added interviews to our study with questions about their lives before the pandemic, during the pandemic and how they foresee their lives after the pandemic.
We're calling it the trilogy approach — it's not quite Star Wars — but this idea of thinking about your life in segments and trying to understand how people manage is our next step. We want to see what strategies people are using that are helping them do really well and see if those strategies could be implemented to help more people.
We're calling it the trilogy approach — it's not quite Star Wars — but this idea of thinking about your life in segments and trying to understand how people manage is our next step. We want to see what strategies people are using that are helping them do really well and see if those strategies could be implemented to help more people.
What are some highlights from the study so far?
Vrkljan: As an occupational therapist, I'm very interested in things that occupy peoples' time — their ability to do things that are important to them. For example, being able to get out to Tim Horton's could be really important to some people, that could be where you get your socialization. When you can't do those things, it could mean that you're not getting rest, that you're not moving around as much. So together, we're very interested in how people manage their mobility and manage their social participation because we want to leverage that.
Resilience is something . . . interesting as well. It's interesting to see that some of our participants actually reported that they're having such a hard time that they would actually have symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder. It's not a diagnosis, but it's a real struggle. Now, we don't know how they were doing before, but we just had their snapshot in time.
[/media-credit] Brenda Vrkljan
Beauchamp: I just want to emphasize that it is a small proportion of people, but obviously concerning still and not nontrivial. Another big concern with our study is that almost half of respondents said that they were very worried about falling and of the people that had a fall in previous years, almost 40% said they had a fall in the last 30 days. That is a high number of calls during a pandemic where you're supposed to be with your family at home and less in the community.
So it just speaks to the fact that if you're less active and you do have problems with mobility, it can really have an impact on your health. These are all routes highlighted by the survey that are going to be important concerns going forward as we come out of the pandemic.
By: Kashyap Patel
The safety and wellbeing of the student population should be the top priority of any respectable university. On Jan. 29, McMaster University chose to prioritize profits over the safety of their students.
Despite heavy snowfall and icy conditions, McMaster remained open because “crews [had] spent the night clearing snow and cleaning walkways.” The university simply advised their students to take care when travelling to campus.
Crews have spent the night clearing snow and cleaning walkways. The University will open for classes this morning and all events and activities will take place as scheduled. Please take care travelling to campus.
— McMaster University (@McMasterU) January 29, 2019
McMaster’s Storm Emergency policy states that the university will be closed “when severe weather poses a danger to students, staff and faculty while on campus or if the weather would prevent large numbers of them from coming to campus or returning safely to their homes.”
For students living on-campus, the inclement weather did not pose as serious of a concern. However, for students and staff who live off-campus and commute, this decision put their safety at risk as roads and pathways leading to the campus were not adequately cleared.
In the opinion of many students on social media, the cancellation of classes should have been deemed a necessity. Students used the closure of the Hamilton-Wentworth District School Board schools, which are located in the same area as McMaster, to support their views.
Due to the inclement weather, all schools and administrative buildings are closed and transportation is cancelled today, Jan 29. All exams scheduled for today will be written tomorrow, Jan 30.
Enjoy the snow day! ❄️ pic.twitter.com/WpmHYJnFAD
— HWDSB (@HWDSB) January 29, 2019
Many students could not make it to campus due to Go bus cancellations and delays. The university clearly overlooked these legitimate concerns despite the potential negative impacts on students’ academic standings.
This incident begs the question: does McMaster value profits over the safety of its students? Given this instance, I believe the answer is yes. This decision was careless and irresponsible considering that most students attending McMaster either commute or live off-campus. These severe weather conditions also made it impossible for students using accessibility devices to safely reach campus.
Furthermore, many students that braved the conditions and commuted to campus found out that their instructors had cancelled their classes. The lack of coordination between the university and its faculty led to students unnecessarily putting their safety at risk.
Students also pointed out that several walkways on-campus were not cleared even though the university claimed otherwise. McMaster should be more truthful about the statements they disseminate to the public. Students use this information to make decisions about their commute and how they navigate the campus in a safe manner.
https://twitter.com/obeng_lily/status/1090300759802109952
It is difficult to pinpoint what sources of information the university used to inform their decision. The weather forecast predicted a snow storm at approximately 4 p.m. the day prior. The local facilities in Hamilton such as the YMCA and public libraries were also closing for the day. Buses and trains were also delayed or canceled in several locations throughout the southern Ontario area.
McMaster University should take a multi-faceted approach when making weather-related closure decisions. Transportation, safety and the effectiveness of the clearing crew needs to be evaluated before making a decision that can impact the safety of thousands.
Student safety should be of paramount importance to educational institutions. There seems to be a disconnect between McMaster and its students regarding the implementation of the inclement weather policy.
McMaster should re-evaluate the actions it took on Jan. 29 and learn from this incident. Students need to know that their safety is valued and plays a key role in the decision-making processes of their university.
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Karen Wang
Graphics Editor
My immediate reaction is a gut-wrenching, petrified revulsion.
The photo portrays an attractive redhead in her fifties, naked except for a pair of garters and stockings, looking directly, intensely, into the camera.
But it wasn’t just the stark nakedness or the sexually provocative posture that shocked me. What was haunting was the caption “mum” juxtaposed against the imagery of lingerie, sagging breasts, pink skin against blue-toned backdrop and a pair of suggestive, demanding eyes. It was like having just drunk sour milk too quickly and being unable to spit. To what have I just subjected my eyes – and my mind?
Yet, fascinated by the obvious abomination, I couldn’t look away.
This image is from a collection of more discerning photographs published in 2008 in a book titled, Pretend You’re Actually Alive by an artist named Leigh Ledare. The model is his mother. At fifty, Tina Peterson’s natural beauty is intensified by an ageing elegance and astuteness. The album captured her in a myriad of postures: trying on clothes at a thrift shop, posing as a corpse, styling her hair half-naked, doing the missionary…
On the other side of the camera is thirty-seven-year-old Leigh Ledare. Born in Seattle, Ledare is an artist and a teacher. As discomforting as the photos are to a layperson, it is unimaginable what it must be like for Ledare. What could have been his motivations in the beginning? What kept it going for eight years? I mean c’mon, did he not think it’s weird?
Asked how he felt shooting the series by The Guardian, Ledare replied: “I moved between different feelings – uncomfortable, absurd, funny.”
Sitting in Starbucks, my face purple with embarrassment, my curiosity is at its peak. What is it that turns my stomach but simultaneously causes me to take sneak peaks for more photos? Am I as sick as these “artists” must be?
It might be easy to dismiss this as a simple case of artistically licensed insanity: an Oedipus exploration gone too far. Getting over the initial shock, I began to feel a sense of admiration and increased curiosity. The purpose of “shock art” is to challenge taboos and commonly accepted notions through images that are discerning and provocative. Hence the big questions: what is the message here, and can this be considered art?
The book is a narrative of Tina’s struggles and vulnerabilities with life and aging documented through her sexual prowess over a period of eight years. Beneath the obvious absurdity are strangely and truly beautiful images showing her vulnerable, confused, poignant, mourning, and inevitably, orgasmic. To Ledare, it must be a daunting, though initially terrifying, realization that Tina Peterson wasn’t just his mother. She was also a ballet dancer, featured in seventeen magazines.
A stripper. A sexual being. A vulnerable woman fearing ageing and menopause. For Tina, the amount of courage it must have took to be stripped bare, naked in emotion and weakness, for her son to witness and analyze.
Having grown up in a very conservative Asian family who never even calls sex by its name, Ledare’s world is an alternate universe from mine. When I was fourteen, while looking for a pair of pantyhose in my mother’s nightstand, I found a pack of Trojans. My reaction was utter denial. I’ve never opened a drawer since. When parents cross that asexual boundary, there is just no turning back. The fear isn’t just sex itself. The fear is that our parents are neither asexual nor perfect. They are human, with their own set of flaws, failures, prejudices and needs.
With all genres of art, there are good and bad. Successful “shock art” not only disturbs the eye, but also generates discussion by questioning the norm. Ledare’s series of images wasn’t simply sensational. Sure, the idea of a son photographing his mother having sex has a gripping, abominable dimension. But shock isn’t all – there are depths to his art that can withstand some critical thinking and pondering by any average audience. At least for me, I haven’t been able to keep it off my mind.
