Well, how about that. A blink of an eye and the summer is gone. For the folks running in October’s municipal election, it's meant weeks of planning, door knocking, phone calls, community events and conversations. Candidates had until August 12 to register (or withdraw) – and now most
This week I attended a lovely event hosted by soon-to-be-retired Senator Marilou McPhedran. It was billed as a symposium on the “Virus of Inequality”, and the evening event and reception was part of a series of events and dialogues that the senator was hosting. Part of the
Rough week and it’s only Wednesday. Yesterday the labour movement was shocked and shattered by the news of the death of a colleague and activist that many of us have known and worked with for decades. Today I woke up to two pieces of news - a murder-suicide in
Well, the deadline for joining or renewing your NDP membership has finally passed. We're in the final stretch of the campaign to choose our next federal leader. It's been an odd campaign. Quote a lot of whispering, chatter coming from supporters of one camp or another,
It just struck me that twenty years ago last week I launched my campaign for city council. Twenty years! So much has happened since then. Two kids. A lot of changes in the neighbourhood, and the city. A light rail system cancelled, then rebooted, then built and (eventually) launched… kinda.
Yesterday's post offered some reflections on rest and the difficulties I have putting my own well-being before other responsibilities. It's something I have been wrestling with a lot, and working on not just personally, but politically. A confluence of things have happened that got me
What does rest mean to you? As we head into the final hours of 2025, I've been thinking a lot about the topic of rest, and my complicated relationship with it. For many years, I have had two modes - go go go and complete and utter shutdown. Between
December 6 is a difficult day for women of my generation. I was 21 in 1989, working on my MA in Dublin, and was getting my hair cut in a Grafton Street salon when I heard the news about 14 women murdered at École Polytechnique in Montréal. Murdered not only
I will never forget the time my mother warned me not to refer to myself as a feminist. It was the mid-eighties, during my first or second year of university, and I was home for a visit. She did so in hushed tones, as if it was a shameful
Last week at the invitation of a friend of mine, l attended a networking discussion and an evening book launch hosted by a really interesting research partnership at Carleton University. They were hosting a conference of researchers on Hate, Conspiracy Theories and the challenge to democracy, and the public component
Here's the thing. Any good campaign - in politics or outside of politics - costs money. Campaigns on a national scale can cost a lot of money. When the NDP announced the rules for its leadership race, there was a lot of chatter about the $100k entry fee. It'
This week we lost my uncle Lee Smallman. OK, he wasn't my uncle - he was my dad's cousin. But for all intents and purposes, he was an uncle to me and to my siblings, and his kids (the closest in age to us in our extended