Sage Duquette – President
Growing up as a single child to a single mother, my story and hers are inherently intertwined. My mother is a feminist, activist, and artist of Cree-French heritage with a complicated background. She was on her own by age fifteen, having dropped out of high school. She had me in her mid-twenties and every decision she made for the following eighteen years was for my benefit. When I was eight or so, she went back to school and a few years later moved us from Calgary to Montreal so she could attend Concordia University. This school is where she completed her undergraduate and master’s degrees, all while raising me.
In addition to advancing her own education, she placed me in the francophone school system, which I followed all the way through CEGEP. As a student, an activist, and a mother, she brought me everywhere. For me, university classes and activist meetings were after-school activities. It was formative. I cared about causes that my peers would not show awareness of until CEGEP and I could and would argue for them with people 10 times my age. I have always been passionate about politics and social justice, because my mother’s passion was ever-present in my life.
When I underwent my own return to studies after a few years of life experience, I turned to Concordia, that institution of my own past. It is an honour to serve Concordia’s Garnet Key Society as its President. Pursuing extra-curriculars like the Garnet Key is a privilege that my mother never had, and I like to think that I am here by equal measures of her parenting and my own merit. I hope to use this opportunity to lend a hand to students like her, who lack the means to pursue all the opportunities our school has to offer.