Asbah Ahmad, Editor in Chief
For the last few years of my life, watching the sunrise on early Friday mornings has become a ritual.
Complete with all the trappings of fatigue, stress, and an overall sense of pride, these mornings provided a few solitary hours of silence. On one of those chilly mornings, I getting a call from a source who thanked The Journal for “being bold.”
Aside from the lack of bold typeface used in print or online, my definition of boldness changed—it now correlates with time. With the months flying by this year, The Journal wrestled internally on deciding the best ways to cover contentious items occurring on campus.
It was a hard year to be at Queen’s: budget cuts, an affordability crisis, bureaucracy, racialized and religious violence, interwoven behind the backdrop of a dogmatic war, left many feeling uncertain.
The Journal didn’t have the luxury of time or hindsight—our work was incumbent on local and world events happening in the present, occupying space in campus discourse. Capturing the noise and movement governing everyday life at Queen’s was the responsibility of the beautiful people at The Journal.
These people put their lives and year on hold to provide the Queen’s, local, and even national community a snapshot of life here. They did this silently, with little demand for praise, and sacrificed social lives and GPAs to bring you the news.
Volume 151, I’m teary-eyed writing this. It was the honour of a lifetime working with each of you. Thank you for your grace, comion, and belief in something greater than yourselves. Thank you for pushing yourselves to be better, thank you for putting everything on the line.
Listening to the unique footsteps ing by my office door, I love joking with staff that the world needs more Journal kids. I think it’s true.
In due time, each of you will be leaders and visionaries. I can’t wait to follow along in your journeys—whatever they might be—as you make the world a better place. Vol. 151, your ability to weather the many storms of the year was irable— to invite me to your weddings.
On difficult days, I conjured up an alternate reality where I never worked at The Journal and lived a normal life. In fact, that almost happened.
Aysha, thank you for convincing me to say yes to working here. Your leadership and dedication to people who look like us is why I’m here. A generation of QTBIPOC staff at The Journal have you and Shelby to thank for your labour. Shelby, thank you for giving me kindness and listening to a few of my moments of panic these past few years. I thought about both of you a lot this year.
You might be squirming while you read this, but I owe my love for The Journal to you, Sydney. As an only child, I didn’t know you would become akin to an older sibling, a true role model and leader. Your commitment to pedagogy and the truth is beautiful. With every story I wrote, I thought of you.
Thank you for giving me wings and believing in my sometimes abnormal ideas, Ben. Your commitment to the future of The Journal was irable. Julia, I loved every minute working with you. Your patience and kept me afloat, thank you.
Raechel and Matt, thank you for giving an impressionable first-year a seat on J-Board. You infected me with The Journal virus, and no antivirals have shaken the effects yet.
Monica, Max, Angela, Paige, Bella, and Ali, I don’t have enough words to thank each of you. Just know I’m not leaving your lives anytime soon. You guys deserve the world.
Cassidy, wow, we did it, huh? You were the best part of the year. Every day, I knew we were entering battle together, and that’s the only reason I didn’t run away mid-year. Your ability to lead from the front is why I have no doubt journalism is in safe hands. I can’t wait to see all of your success, I will be bothering you on a regular basis. I will miss my regular Dairy Queen buddy, but life is long, and our paths will continue to cross.
Dear reader, every time I saw you reading a copy of The Journal or browsing our website, I would look over your shoulder, trying to understand what resonated. Please continue engaging with us.
Like any press day, time is ticking, and the sun is setting on my time here. Allie and Skylar, this is your moment to shine. Both of you have every skill in the book to lead this paper. You will make it a better, more efficient, and autonomous entity. why you did this in the first place. The Journal is more than just the house or the print paper, it’s the brutal turnover of people who love and nurture this essential service.
I’m not ready for the silence of being away from The Journal. My heart unflinchingly aches. I’ve read many Last Words during my time here. Maybe for someone reading this, it’s your push to take bold action—take a risk and don’t look back. I know I did.
Our staff always did—never settle for mediocrity.
Asbah is ready to walk into the bright sunrise, degree in hand, pointing towards the next adventure.
Cassidy McMackon, Editor in Chief
It’s Friday afternoon after another all-night press night and I’m sitting on the ledge of the shower when my casual scroll through Twitter takes a turn for the worse.
What’s meant to be nothing more than a quick glance at analytics quickly spirals into a doomscroll through anguished tweets after Metroland announced it would immediately shutter 71 newsrooms and terminate over 600 jobs.
Looking back on the last several Last Words from my predecessors alone, it’s no surprise the state of journalism has been bleak for a long time. I, after all, first stumbled into The Journal’s office the year a pandemic ravaged the globe and sent most people home, the ink still wet on the decision that quashed a provincial policy designed to hamstring its funding.
However, from Meta banning news links on their platforms, to dwindling budgets and the endless news of jobs being cut across North America, this year for journalism has seemed as dark as ever before.
I’d be lying if I said my confidence in the future never wavered this year. But you, my dear Vol. 151, restored my optimism each week.
This year’s team pivoted between their own papers and lab reports to this whirlwind of a job to keep the community up to date. From right out the gate into the heat of the volume, this group of overworked and underpaid reporters, photographers, illustrators, and copy editors rolled with every single punch that was thrown their way.
When the scourge of U of T’s Psychology Department celebrated hateful rhetoric on an engineering exam question, they sourced community input on what counts in education. When devastation swept campus as a war broke out halfway across the world, they soldiered on to showcase its impact. When the budget crisis broke national news on a random Thursday afternoon, they kept their nose to the grindstone to keep tabs on the fallout.
Vol. 151—the pleasure was mine. You proved time and time again that journalism isn’t only worthwhile, but will be okay in the end.
To my dad—thanks for doing your best to keep up with me during the frenzy of it all. Your quiet was a constant in a year of ebbs and flows, ups and downs. Tell Eleanor and Sadie I’ll be home soon.
Raechel and Matt—I never told you how much I’m inspired by your grit and talent, but now seems as good a time as ever. You both inspired the unrelenting love I have for this little newspaper, and your words of encouragement and means more to me than you’ll ever know. I felt your absence at 190 University the second Vol. 148 wrapped, but your warmth has radiated since you left.
Aysha and Shelby—you were the pillars of strength I aspired to be with each ing issue. You both handled some of the most important stories I’ve told in my time here and afforded me grace and comion I’ll never forget. I’ll forever be grateful for running into you, Aysha, in my Beer Store uniform that day in August when you told me I should come back. You both made this place infinitely better, and we are all lucky you left your mark here.
Asbah—you once said working at a newspaper was like getting a front row seat to history, and my god what a show we had this year. From the moment I met you, I’ve been inspired by your curiosity, your diligence, and your intelligence. You believed in me when I didn’t believe in myself, and you were the anchor that kept me from getting lost in the current at countless points this year.
It breaks my heart to know our days of rotting in your office are winding down, brown noise barely drowning out the surrounding chatter in the house around us. As we part on our respective journeys, I’ll still be a persistent presence in your life, getting ready to return the favour. You can always count on me to pick up the phone.
Allie and Skylar—from the moment I met you both I knew you had bright futures, at The Journal and beyond. Like the volumes before yours, there are countless challenges ahead of you and dozens of mistakes to be made, but they’ll all make you even better than you are now. —putting the news out is a marathon and not a sprint, and when it feels like the ceiling is caving in on you, you’ll have each other to pull you out from the rubble.
For most of my time here, Queen’s always felt like some place I kind of just ended up, rather than somewhere I was destined to be. The Journal has been the most thankless job of my life, but I’m endlessly grateful it helped me carve out a home.
Cassidy is ready to on the torch.
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All final editorial decisions are made by the Editor(s) in Chief and/or the Managing Editor. Authors should not be ed, targeted, or harassed under any circumstances. If you have any grievances with this article, please direct your comments to [email protected].