Articles Tagged with “politics”

Accepting arbitration now is not the way forward, not when OSSTF should be standing up with the labour movement across North America.

Thunder Bay’s leading Pride organizations provide an object lesson in how not to practise solidarity.

When you see me, you see a survivor.

This blog post is not about the death of the queen, though the bad hot takes on social media are the inciting incident. This is a blog post about white supremacy and white fragility and the fallacy that you can be progressive without feeling uncomfortable about your whiteness or doing a damn thing towards actual change.

Don’t Speak Ill of the Dead

Last Thursday, Queen Elizabeth died, and the internet lost its collective mind. Suddenly,…

Not actually about shoes but rather the need for radical collective action. All of us deserve more than just survival. We deserve luxury too.

If you care at all about other people, you don’t vote Conservative. It is that simple.

Calls from both ends of the political spectrum for education to be neutral, apolitical, etc., are fundamentally flawed. Here’s why.

So Canadians will be heading to the polls on my birthday. Not the birthday gift I wanted from our Prime Minister, but I guess it’s the only one I’m going to get. We had a federal election only 2 years ago. Justin Trudeau claims it’s important to give us all a voice in who will be steering the country out of this pandemic (which is still happening). I am all for participating in the democratic…

When we allow elected representatives to debate recognizing Pride Month and symbols, we send a message that 2SLGBTQ+ people’s rights are up for debate.

Wearing a dress to prom. Figuring out my style over decades instead of a year. Seeing myself represented on TV. Not having to go through the wrong puberty.

These are just some of the experiences from the childhood I didn’t have.

Today is the International Day of Pink, a day started here in Canada dedicated to anti-bullying, and specifically dedicated to stopping bullying against those who experience homophobia, biphobia, and transphobia. So I thought…

What follows is a letter I emailed to city councillors Albert Aiello, Mark Bentz, and Brian Hamilton.

Dear Councillors,

I'm writing to convey my dismay and disappointment regarding your stances on the operation of the Thunder Bay Public Library, as reported in the TBNewsWatch article of Jan 26, "City council eyes cuts to public library."

Closing a branch merely to save money might seem like no big deal for those of us privileged enough to…

The government is keen to make the battle over education all about the money. But it isn't and has never been about that. This is about ideology, plain and simple.

Tomorrow my local district of OSSTF, the Ontario Secondary School Teacher’s Federation, is holding its strike vote. This vote determines whether we union members give our leadership a mandate to engage in job action, once we are in a legal position to do so, if they feel it is warranted. This could take many forms, from work-to-rule to rotating strikes to an all-out strike. It’s not something we do lightly. Although the Ford government is…

Canadian politics is desperately lacking in anyone with as much fire as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and that's a problem.

I can’t take it any more. I have to say something, say something more than just tweeting how disappointed I am and retweeting other people. This Kinder Morgan pipeline approval is the final straw.

So what follows is a letter I am sending to my Member of Parliament, the Honourable Patty Hajdu, Minister of Status of Women.

Dear Minister Hajdu,

I am writing to express my unequivocal disappointment in the Government of Canada’s decisions to…

So it’s Canada Day. Whoo! PARTY TIME! Crack open those drinks, lay out the snacks, enjoy the sun—sigh.

I can’t do it, guys.

Look, if all you want to do with your day off is party, this blog post is not for you.

I can’t just join in this year, for two reasons. Firstly, this year is important, because later this year we are having a federal election. Secondly, I can’t, in good conscience, blindly…

I feel like I haven’t been doing much in the way of online consuming lately. I’ve been creating a lot, mostly writing; and most of my consumption has been in the form of good, old-fashioned literature. Still, here’s a few things that caught my eye!

• It’s ridiculously easy to expose saved passwords in Chrome. Other browsers aren’t much better, mind you. Use a password manager—I use LastPass and am very happy with it.
• The
…

Eight days of school left, and then I get to return to Canada for a month! I had a nice dinner in Norwich on Friday with the math department. My train ride home should have been uneventful, but I stupidly forgot my suit carrier on the train from Norwich. So it’s somewhere in London Liverpool St Station, with any luck, and I get it back.

I didn’t have that many links to share, and I…

It’s been a good week. On Friday night I went to the school’s Year 11 prom. I wore a suit and trainers, with a new bow tie and even some bracers. And somehow I ended up winning Best Dancer (no one could step to that).

Meanwhile, on the Web this week, here’s what I found interesting:

• I fondly remember watching Captain Planet as a kid. Looking back, it might seem cheesy (indeed, it probably
…

I sat in the backyard this morning, and much of this afternoon, and read. The weather was very nice last weekend, and it was nice again on Friday and today as well. Spring has finally crept up on us, and summer is around the corner. I’ve enjoyed a week off of school, taken the time to rest and recharge and read.

It feels so weird that as I sat in the garden, basking in the…