Articles
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Business as Unusual
When you elect people who think they can run a city or a country “like a business,”you get to see what happens when the normally-hidden stupidities, inefficiencies, and mistakes of the corporate world are applied to the public realm. When men who’ve lived their lives fuelled by luck and privilege and connections, who think their success is due to their own awesomeness, skill, and perspicacity, enter public service, they fall to pieces. Used to speaking candidly to ‘inferiors’ who are too afraid to repeat their words in public, or peers who think it’s all very manly and shoot-from-the-hip, they blab every stupid thought that enters their silly heads. To reporters.…
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Some ideas for women and allies on International Women’s Day
For International Women’s Day, I’d like to ask that you choose some of the following things from this list and try them on for size: – Never use the words ‘selfless’ or ‘tireless’ to describe any person ever again – If you’re on stage as an emcee introducing a woman-identified person, never use the words ‘lovely’ or ‘beautiful’ (Edited for clarity) – say to yourself “trans women are women.” If it’s a phrase that feels weird to say, think on that for a while. – If you’re an employer, take a look at what you pay your employees and recognize where the women are being paid less for their work.…
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Rest is not Idleness
In the midst of a new year, setting new goals and looking ahead to a year full of hard work and promise, it’s important to remember that whatever you want out of life, and whatever the people in your life want out of you, it’s vital to take breaks, take time for yourself, and recharge for the work ahead. Remember that rest is not idleness. In a year which we’re all anticipating may be very difficult, it’s important to have reminders to stop, breathe, and rest so that you’re a the top of your game. It can be so tempting to push through, to ignore mental or physical weariness, to…
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Let’s do this, 2017
By all accounts, 2016 has been a pretty miserable year for most people. I haven’t been immune to that, but there have been loads of good things, too, and I’d much rather think about them! In the Winter, I started running regularly, and was pretty close to being able to run 5K when Bronchitis hit and put the brakes on my running for a while. This is kind-of a big deal for me, as running (or any other physical activity besides dance) isn’t something I’ve ever been into, and it’s nice to have a milestone like that. I’m hoping to hit that goal in 2017, if only so that I…
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NXNE PRESENTS A SAUSAGE FEST
From a piece I wrote for Electric City Magazine: “The Canadian music industry is a diverse, varied place, but you wouldn’t know it from the endless parade of white guys with guitars wanking across the festival stages and conference panels of the nation. Over the past month, NXNE have been releasing the lineup for their Portlands festival, and the list, while appearing more racially diverse with the most recent release, is still very dude-heavy. With three women-fronted bands and one genderqueer artist out of 16 total acts released so far, I have to ask: where the fuck are the women, NorthBy?” Read the rest at Electric City Magazine.
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14 tools for dealing with Depression
NOTE: There are a few links to things you can purchase in this article, but I don’t make any profit if you click those links or buy those products. These are things I use and find useful, and I don’t profit or benefit in any way if you buy them or use them. I was diagnosed with Clinical Depression about 10 years ago; these are some of the tools I use to make living with mental illness a strength rather than a liability. There are fourteen things on this list, most of them cheap or free; you don’t have to do all of them. Just pick one or two, and…
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Sparkle and Shine, 2016
The year opened stressfully but closed fairly peacefully. Along the way, it was packed full with projects, music, friends, and good hard work. At the beginning of the year, I had no thought of joining the Board of Directors for the Shelter Valley Folk Festival, nevermind becoming the Chair, but as things unfolded, it was clear that if we didn’t all jump in and pull together, the festival was done. So we did, and I couldn’t be more proud of the amazing people, both on the Board and in the community generally, who worked so hard and with such a good will to keep this beloved small festival running. Work…
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Not too shabby, 2014!
Not a bad year, not an amazing year. A good, solid year without major setbacks, 2014 has been pretty good to me. The biggest achievement of my year, without a doubt, was achieving my long-held goal of paying off my student loans. It happened in October. After a decade of confusion, ((To this day, I’m not quite certain what my total amount loaned was – the system changed several times during my undergrad, leading to Federal and Provincial loans all over the place.)) getting the run-around from various banks and student loan services, and low-paying contract work in Peterborough, I finally had the kind of dependable income that allowed me…
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Solo in Morocco
I spent a month Solo in Morocco in November, 2010, and prior to travelling, I did a fair amount of research on the country. So many people were so helpful in answering my questions; I owe a lot to the Thorn Tree Travel forum, my Rough Guide, and WikiTravel, as well as individual bloggers. Here I’ve brought together some of my experiences and observations, in the hope that they’ll be as helpful to other travellers. I wrote it right after I returned, to give back to the community on Thorntree that had been so helpful to me, but recently a lot of people have been talking to me about Morocco, so I thought…
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2014: Shining like a National Guitar
In my year-end wrap-up for 2012, I wrote the following: I’ve cut my commitments down to almost nothing in preparation for – well, I don’t know exactly. But if something comes along and I need to leap, I’ve got nothing tying me to where I am. I could go tomorrow. And I want to. Less than a month later, I was scrambling to find somewhere to live in Toronto, and scrambling to wrap up my remaining commitments in Peterborough, as I leapt into a new job and a new life in a new city. Despite my belief that I was ready to go, I wasn’t – it was hard. Leaving…
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Three Big Ideas for Peterborough
I’ve had three big ideas for Peterborough for a while – industries that I think could & should be pursued by my hometown, the city with the highest unemployment rate in Canada. Below, I briefly outline why I think they’d fit our town, and what one issue I think needs to be overcome before they can move forward. Film With the film industry a powerful part of Toronto’s economy, Peterborough has already been host to several film crews, and has lots to offer: friendly, cheap, and close to Toronto, we’ve got well-preserved heritage neighbourhoods which could fairly easily be dressed to look like many different eras. We’ve got all the…
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Lentils with Fennel and Sausage
My sister Cassie and I visited Paris last Spring, and by the time we’d gotten from Charles de Gaulle to our hotel in Montmartre and thrown our bags in our room, we were starving. We struck out looking for someplace that would satisfy both me and my vegetarian sister, and found this little corner restaurant with arborite tables and a friendly atmosphere and some vegetarian options on the menu. The waiters were super-nice (as was almost everyone in Paris), complimenting my pathetic attempts at speaking French, and my meal of lentils with fennel and sausage completely floored me. I love lentils in just about every way they can be served,…
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How I got into this mess in the first place
As a kid growing up in a village of about 500 people, pre-Internet, I was a dedicated patriot with a great faith in Canada but almost no exposure to Canadian ideas. Sure, there was CBC, and maybe TVO, but when you’re 13, you want to watch The Fresh Prince of Bell Air, not Adrienne Clarkson Presents. ((I applaud the CBC’s attempt, at the time, to give us more Canadian arts, but I’m sorry to say that they went about it the wrong way, in my opinion.)) I wished that there were Canadian artists to like, but as far as I knew, there weren’t. We, as a nation, had a smattering…
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Lucky 2013
Oh 2012, you pretty little thing. You haven’t been good to many people I know, but you’ve been pretty good to me, with a few notable exceptions. Sad things In fact, 2012 started off pretty badly. My sassy, flirty, funny Nana Cynthia died in January. I’ve been trying to write about it in all of the intervening months, and haven’t been able to get anything meaningful down, but it’s a loss that our whole family is feeling, still, very deeply. Mum’s spent a lot of this year scanning Nana’s WWII diaries and posting them, with photos and transcripts, on her website, which are really interesting reading. Nothing in the early…
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On Audacity and Possibility.
I do a lot of things, and I’m not the best at any of them. I can usually think of scads of people who are better at pretty much everything I do; from performance to organization, being a decent friend or a good videographer, I am well aware of how I think I stack up against other people. Which isn’t to say I’m bad at what I do, nor that I’m not proud of my accomplishments. I’m pretty good at a bunch of things, and very good at a few. But still, still not the best at anything. But while you can arguably say that Usain Bolt is the best…
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Canoe Journey Through Waterways and Lifeways
This article first appeared in the Winter 2012 edition of The Newcomer Bulletin. So much of the history of Canada is the history of the newcomer; because few written records exist of the Indigenous peoples in this country before the Europeans arrived, our impressions of our nation are almost always seen through the eyes of people experiencing each other’s culture for the first time.  No where is that more clear than at the Canadian Canoe Museum, which chronicles the individual struggles and  triumphs of people making their way through the land with little in common besides their mode of transport – the canoe. Â
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Je suis fou a Paris
Paris: a city that’s , surprisingly, pretty much as good as people say it is. My sister Cassie and I got a last-minute deal on air and hotel for seven days in Paris at the end of March, and we jumped on it. While we were there, the sun shone every day in a picture-perfect blue sky, the temperature stayed steadily around the 18C mark, the flowers were blooming and the grass was green. We walked or took the Metro everywhere, saw most of the things we wanted to see, and really packed our days full of some of the best things that the city has to offer visitors. I…
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Lift up your heart and let out your voice: Peterborough Needs PCVS
When I started high school in 1991, I was nervous and excited, like a lot of kids going into Grade 9. Â Coming from a very small rural elementary school at the edge of the village of Keene, walking through the doors of this 160-year-old urban high school was like a dream. Â One of 50 students accepted into the Integrated Arts Program that year, I knew only two other people at PCVS, and I couldn’t have been happier about it. Elementary school had been, for me, completely brutal. Â Our family moved to the village when I was in kindergarten, and in a place where many families could trace their roots back…
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Beauty On, 2012
It’s become a tradition of sorts for me to write something here on December 31, a sort of summing-up and looking forward I would have scoffed at myself for doing a few years ago. But, as arbitrary as it is to do this on a particular date, it feels useful for me to say to myself ‘this is what I’ve accomplished, and this is what I hope to do now.’ This has easily been one of the busiest years of my life, and I’m thankful to have come through it with relative equanimity. A busy year at the museum meant that I’ve run more discrete events this year than I’ve…
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Not too shabby, 2014!
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Chickens in the sewing room
I got a call from the Co-op on April 5 saying that my chicks would be in the next morning between 9am and 10am. I made my final adjustments to the brooding pen, putting in the feed and the waterer, and adding a teaspoon of sugar to the water, which I'd been told to do the first time to pep them up after the trip. I popped over at lunch on April 6 and picked up the smallest of a pile of cheeping boxes, stopping quickly on my way to the car to take a look. When I got them home, I turned on the heat lamp, and grabbed each…
