Have always taught me but more importantly shown me that anything is possible

Darin Barney is an inventive, inspiring and courageous scholar who doesn’t shy away from struggle and stands up for what he believes in. I have been in luck to enjoy the supervision of someone I admire as a thinker, as well as a human being. Will Straw is a compassionate mentor, impassioned teacher, and loyal friend. Jenny Burman, Carrie Rentschler, and Jonathan Sterne are important thinkers who have been nothing but helpful and obliging to me over the past two years. My collaborations with these professors in the Graduate Programme in Communication Studies have been the most rewarding of my academic career, and I owe each of them endless thanks. I would also like to recognize my past teachers, whose influence is palpable throughout this and all my work: Barbara Godard, Stephen Guy-Bray, Kate Sirluck, Janice Stewart, Priscila Uppal, and Lorraine Weir.

I spent a lot of my time at McGill teaching in the Cultural Studies program, where I thoroughly enjoyed working for and with Derek Nystrom and Alanna Thain. Teaching these courses not only developed my skills as an educator, but also sharpened the focus of my own scholarship in important and often surprising ways. Throughout these courses, I was uniquely privileged to work for and with outstanding young intellectuals, each of whom has eased my confidence that we can and will build a better world. Specifically, I would like to recognize Kate Bass, Clayton Beugeling, Laura Biggar, Chloe Castonguay, Samantha Chrisanthus, Tess Edmonson, Zoe Engberg, Martha Hunter, Eli Keshet, Olivia Khazam, Daeun Kim, Justin Linds, François Macdonald, Michelle MacKinnon, Natania Marcus, Michael Marotti, Cameron McKeich, Holly Millar, Adam Nanji, Tarek Simon, Caylin Smith, Chrys Vilvang, Kelsey White, and especially Danny Wilson.

My Mom and Dad, Gregory and Elizabeth Sutton, have always taught me but more importantly shown me that anything is possible. I owe them more thanks than I can ever put into words, as I do the rest of my family – Edith Bruton, Lara Sutton and Geoff Turner, Adam Sutton and Jane Castillo, and Phoebe and Annabel Turner for their limitless care, support, and confidence.

I am a better person and scholar for the friends I made while at York and McGill, especially Nav Alang, Don Beith, David Borkenhagen, Suzanne Bouclin, Andrea Braithwaite, Matt Cornett, Ryan Diduck, Tara Elliott, Margo Gouley, Enoch Guimond, Dave Hollingshead, John Hoskins, Gregory Ko, Natalie Kouri-Towe, Kate MacKay, Shannon Meek, Adrien Scheffer Meubus, Michele Orain, Justin Pfefferle, Kyle Purves, Lilian Radovac, Scott Scambler, Anita Slominska, Shiloh Whitney, Julia Wright, Kat Wrobel, Heike Zieher, and the rest of the False Consciousness All Stars. In particular, I would like to recognize our Thursday lunch group, where mostly gossip but sometimes serious work was shared: thanks to Morgan Charles, Paulina Mickewicz, Heather Mills, Yasmine Nachabe, and Cayley Sorochan.

I have many more personal thanks to give: to Andrew Brett, whose politics and agitations are as admirable as they are inspiring and necessary and totally dead on; to Andrew Brudz, for his gentlemanly hospitality whenever I’m in Toronto; to Kendra Coulter, as without her influence I never would’ve started writing about neoliberalism; to Holly Foxcroft, for her always timely friendship despite my incessant tardiness; to Nathan Gauld, for his ambitious love; to Carey Hill, for teaching me to feel how to make a better world; to Parker McLean and his poems, both of which changed my life once; to Jared Sager, who has enough friends but bonded with me over baseball, anyway; to Rick Telfer and Jeffrey Andrus, for their joint ability to make every night Friday night; to Lara Vlach, for more than a decade of loyal friendship; and to Michael-Oliver Harding, for showing up just as I was finishing this.

I would not think the way I do were it not for Karen Ward. I try to do justice by her every day.

Rick Hink is probably the person who contributed most to this author and his research over the past two years. I am grateful for the time I happened to enjoy his influence.

Gaïa Orain provides the coziest love of anyone I have ever met. To me, time with her is marked on Montréal’s cartography.

Elaine Chukan Brown is courageous, magnificent, resilient, dedicated to the world, and right about everything. I cherish the time we have spent thinking together and look forward to all our future collaborations. After all, we are attached at the soul.

Because of one night when we sat on the water taxi dock after the Dufferin closed, Adam Wojtowicz and I move across the country for each other. Words can’t express the amount of heart and gratitude I have for him.

I would like to thank Aaron Hay for his lessons in constancy, citizenship, and justice. I think he may have more goodness in him than all of us combined.

Jordan Jenkins and I have been teaching each other how to live in the world for a number of years, now. He moved in upstairs while I was writing this, and since then, everything about me and everything I do has been better.

A few minutes after I moved to Montréal, I met Christopher Ellis, and since then, he has been my partner in crime. Our constant dialogue about our research, our lives, about reasonable accommodation, and about poutine was unexpected, and has been so thoroughly fulfilling. This thesis is cut to the measure of his friendship, so I must thank him most of all.

P.S.
Montréal, Québec
August 2009

For my Uncle Doug, dead at 66.

Contributor: Paul Sutton
Source: Sutton P (2009) Smoking is a Socialist Issue: Health Promotion and Neoliberal Politics in Canada, MA, McGill University