Taking Back the Neighbourhood

“When he moved into a 1960s-era northside bungalow in Lethbridge six years ago, Clint Russnaik liked his new neighbourhood. It was a ‘great place,’ he says, somewhere where “nothing bad happened.” Indeed, the wartime houses and large elms on his street recall a time when people talked about the upcoming summer fair, not drug dealers.”

 

Jeff Doherty – Alberta Views – May 2019

Advertisements

Food Insecurity Is Our New National Crisis

“Across the hall is the Trading Post, a small room stocked with packaged foods clients have received from their local food bank but that they can’t, or don’t, use: cans of Campbell’s soup, Aylmer diced tomatoes, Heinz baked beans, and Zoodles line the floor-to-ceiling shelves. Not all of it is nutritious. Everyone understands that. But it’s something. And when you have a community to feed, you do what you can. The predicament weighs on the centre’s hands-on, energetic executive director, Donna Sutton. ‘People come in the morning for a bagel and coffee,’ Sutton says. ‘They come back in the afternoon for a muffin. That’s breakfast and lunch. Then they just have to worry about dinner.’ With meager earnings and no access to credit, many of Sutton’s clients are facing cold truths.”

Raizel Robin – The Walrus – March 2019

Grave Decisions

“When Rob Mark’s father-in-law died suddenly in a workplace accident, Mark and his wife were in shock. As they grieved, something else began to dawn—they were going to have to go to a funeral home, and no matter what their budget, it wouldn’t come cheap. And they were right. ‘It felt like I was buying a used car from a dodgy dealership,’ Mark recalls.”

Vincenzo Ravina – Maisonneuve – January 2019

Race, Privilege, and the Canadian Wilderness

“Little black boys don’t make compelling sharks, or at least, that’s what I thought growing up in Scarborough. We don’t have gill slits or multiple rows of replacement teeth, and the proportions from our heads to our trunks to our tails are all wrong. I suspect that’s why I failed Shark Level in swimming lessons. It simply wasn’t in the cards. Prior to that moment, I’d successfully convinced people that I was a pollywog, a tadpole, a sunfish, and even a dolphin. Becoming a shark, however, was far more difficult.”

Phillip Dwight Morgan – The Walrus – January 2019

Educating Grayson: Are inclusive classrooms failing students?

“Lisa Kahn developed a daily routine this fall. She’d eat breakfast, feed her family and get her two children ready for school – Grayson, a seven-year-old boy with strawberry blond hair and blue eyes, and his older sister, Avery. After she dropped them off, she’d practise deep breathing with help from an app on her watch. And then she would brace herself for the phone call.”

Caroline Alphonso – The Globe and Mail – January 2019

Two Truths and a Lie

“The game seems simple—until you realize most people don’t have interesting facts about themselves stored away for when a whimsical get-to-know-you game erupts. Though our class was made up of aspiring writers, we seemed to forget our imaginations entirely within the constraints of the exercise. Instead, we relied on safe, sanitized facts that didn’t reveal anything about us as people, but increased our chances of ‘winning’ the game.”

Alicia Elliott – The Puritan – November 2018

An explosive gender revolution is under way. So why isn’t it changing anything?

“But #MeToo is only the tipping point of an even larger women-led uprising triggered by a historic U.S. presidential campaign thatprovided a grotesque 21st-century gender referendum. The man eventually declared president called certain women ‘pigs’ and ‘dogs’ amid boasts of sexual assault as he demanded his opponent—the first female presidential candidate for a major party—be locked up. Months later, #MeToo provided an awakening in revealing widespread power abuses by men who shaped culture, news and legislation.”

Anne Kingston – Maclean’s – November 2018