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Bad news in Canada: Yesterday Bill C-61 was tabled and it doesn’t bode well. Among the rights at risk:

• time shifting (no, not sci-fi time travel but recording television now to view later
• transferring media (music, video, etc) you own to a portable music/video device that you own (like an iPod)
• format shifting — transferring media from analog to digital (records to dvd, vhs tapes to dvd)
• unlocking a cellphone — want to switch providers? you’ll have to buy a new phone
• unlocking media so you can watch it on a Linux machine or Mac. If it’s made to only work under windows then you’re breaking the law to run it on anything else

Find your MP here: Members of 39th Parliament - Canada, list updated March 2008. Call them!

The legalese details of Bill-C61 here: Bill C-61

There’s a a Facebook group called Fair Copyright Canada started back in December by Michael Geist. It’s a great place for updates. He also has a list of 30 Things You Can Do — so check it out and Do Something. In general, Michael Geist’s blog is an incredible place to keep up with Canadian laws on copyright, technology, internet, etc and the activism necessary to make Canada a great place to live.

I joined the facebook group a few months ago and I phoned my MP, Brian Masse, this morning. I’m going to go through that list and see what else I can do. Canada’s dropped the ball this time around. Instead of a leading model of fair use and fair copy protection we have big business protection and jail time in our futures.

You must go see yesterday’s Toothpaste for Dinner comic.

Hat tip to Alexandra.

A bunch of local bloggers have started meeting up on a monthly basis. The February meetup is tonight at Taloola Cafe, start time 7:30, everyone is welcome.

There’s a wiki here with details http://windsorblogs.pbwiki.com/

and the signup for February is here http://windsorblogs.pbwiki.com/February+2008

Last month there was a mix of blog topics — technology, photos, food, navel-gazing, local politics…and looking at the sign up so far it looks like it will be that way again. Hopefully something for everyone.

I’ve known for years (almost 14 — the age of my oldest child) that breastmilk is the absolute best thing in the world. Now there’s one more reason why it’s awesome:

Breastmilk contains stem cells. Seriously. Check out that article.

flickr photo by Hoover Family Photos

Today is Family Day in Ontario. It’s a government initiative to help families with the crazy pace of life by giving everyone the day off so they can spend time together.

Except Family Day isn’t retrospectively applied to court orders signed before today. If your kids go to their dad’s on Mondays you are out of luck. Unless you want to go back to court…(Hah!)

And for the many people living in border towns and working in Michigan and other states, Family Day doesn’t apply to you. Get the kids to the sitter and get yourself to work already!

And if you work in retail, hospital, or at the university library you and some of your co-workers will be at work today.

And if you work for the school board and your contract was negotiated before Family Day was announced, you cannot go to work today but you will not get paid. You’re not entitled to any more days off this year. Sorry!

And if you’re a student, you’re busy preparing for mid-terms and writing major papers so keep in mind, if you take the day off today, you will probably FAIL!

But I’m not bitter.

Want to know what to do for your Valentine this year?

Call Kathleen Wynne, Ontario’s Minister of Education and ask when the already promised Women’s and Gender Studies course will be added into the Ontario Secondary School Curriculum.

Kathleen Wynne’s Office: 416.325.2600
TDD/TTY: 1-800-263-2892

Today, February 14th 2008, between 9 and 5, pick up the phone and help stop sexual harassment.

Touching, grabbing, gang-style rape. These are just some of the incidents revealed in the Falconer Report. Sexual and gender-based violence is reaching epidemic-levels.

According to the Canadian Centre for Addiction and Mental Health:

“four percent of males in grade 11 admitted trying to force someone to have sex with them, while 10 percent of males and 27 percent of females admitted being pressured into doing something sexual that they did not want to. Not surprisingly, the data shows that girls are feeling this pressure more than boys, with 15 percent reporting that they had oral sex just to avoid having intercourse.” Is this okay with you?

Here’s more from the Miss G_ Project for Equity in Education:

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Please join us in our most crucial campaign yet!

“No More Miss Nice G__” is a phone calling campaign taking place on February 14, 2008. HAPPY VALENTINE’S DAY! We are asking all supporters of the project to call the Ministry of Education expressing that we cannot afford to wait any longer for a Women’s and Gender Studies course to be added into the Ontario Secondary School Curriculum.

**** Calling the Ministry of Education is absolutely not as stressful nor as intimidating as it may sound. In fact, you are a citizen and it is the Ministry’s job to listen to you and to take your calls.

PHONE #s:
Kathleen Wynne’s Office: 416.325.2600
TDD/TTY: 1-800-263-2892

WHEN: between 9am - 5pm Thursday, February 14 (If that doesn’t work for you, anytime is better than never).

WHAT TO EXPECT: This number will take you directly to Kathleen’s office, where her assistant will either pick up, or you will be put through to her assistant’s voicemail. You can leave a personal message or voicemail recording for her assistant to pass on to Minister Wynne.

WHAT TO SAY: Identify who you are and where you are from. State that you are leaving a message for the Minister of Education, Kathleen Wynne, and express your support for a Women’s and Gender Studies course being implemented into the Ontario Secondary School Curriculum. Ask when Minister Wynne will honour her promises and policy-commitments to introduce WGS into the provincial curriculum. (There are more ideas for things to say below.)
—> Bonus points: Talk about a personal experience that proves to you why addressing this issue is so important and urgent.

WHAT TO REMEMBER: You are fabulous and intelligent, you have an opinion, and your voice needs to be listened to!

If you have any questions or need any encouragement, do not hesitate to leave a post or to contact themissgproject@gmail.com.

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JUST THE FACTS MA’ME
(or, why would I want to do this anyway?)
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FACT: The recently released “Falconer Report” found that sexual assault and sexual harassment are alarmingly prevalent in Toronto schools and the authors recommended that the Toronto District School Board should “develop a sexual assault and gender-based violence policy” and partner with community agencies to provide services for women and girls experience violence. (http://www.thestar.com/News/GTA/article/292869)

FACT: All students, regardless of their race, gender, sexual orientation, deserve to go to school in a safe environment. In fact, government policy guarantees “all students… a safe and secure environment so that they can participate fully and responsibly in the educational experience.”

FACT: In response to the Falconer report, Minister Wynne stated, “we know prevention is better than reaction,” and speaks frequently in support of “inclusive learning environments.”

FACT: A women’s and gender studies course in high schools — which the Miss G Project has been working with the government to implement for the last 3 years — would be one highly effective way of creating that inclusive learning environment and preventing sexual assault and harassment THROUGH EDUCATION. From the experiences of teachers and students taking locally developed WGS courses across the province, we know that opening up a space for dialogue and providing information on issues of gender-based violence and harassment is an effective and desperately needed way of addressing and PREVENTING injustices occurring in schools.

FACT: A Women’s and Gender studies course would address issues of sexism, homophobia, gender roles, violence and harassment as well as infuse information about women’s history, writing and experiences into the curriculum (which it is now sorely lacking).

FOR MORE INFO ABOUT WGS, visit…
“Why Women’s & Gender Studies in High Schools?” and
“Everything You Ever Wanted to Know about WGS”

No More Miss Nice G__!!!

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The Shameless blog has put together a bit of a script to help:

RING THE MINISTRY’S BELL: Some ways to have your say.

The best message is one straight from your heart (wink), but if you’re like many of us and prefer a prepared message, may we suggest some of the following:

“Hello, my name is____, and I’m a [student, parent, teacher, concerned citizen, etc.] from ____, and…

… I would like to leave a message for Minister Wynne asking when a WGS course will be implemented in the Ontario secondary school curriculum.”

… I am getting tired of waiting for a WGS course to be introduced to the provincial curriculum.”

… I wish that i had had WGS when i was in high school, and hope that future generations will have the knowledge to make better decisions and oppose oppressions.”

… I am tired of the gender-based injustice that goes on in schools and believe a WGS course would be an effective form of prevention.”

No need to ask, I’m still not all that engaged in my school work. At least I’m crying less this term.

I had to present a statement of my research project this week. (For those who forget or are tuning in mid-journey, I’m looking at something about childbirth on Pelee Island in Southern Ontario in the early twentieth century. Think isolated, no hospital, women all giving birth 30+ kilometres over water by boat or plane by 1950.)

This week, we were required to draft a one-page statement describing the research focus/question and discuss one relevant historiographical work on the topic. I had a really hard time with it. I keep changing my research question, trying to tune it into something that will be useful to me after this degree is over. I also need it to be something very interesting (to me) so that I can keep with it for the next half a year or so. And it must be feminist. Once I’ve begun it will be difficult to change and a very large number of words will need to be written about it. I’m finding it hard to do something history (maybe since my background is Women’s Studies?) that will translate outside the academy afterwards. Assuming I will be leaving the academy afterward. If I stay in, I don’t know what discipline I’ll land in. I need something with some transferability.

So, still playing with my general topic of childbirth on Pelee, I thought, instead of looking at the physiologic/medical process of childbirth and how that changed maybe I could look at the communities of mothers on the Island, and how that changed. Maybe something about women and community and the influence of a patriarchal medical model of childbirth on the larger community of Island women/Islanders.

The thing that ties me to this project is the anticipation I have of talking to the women about their lives. There are a handful of these mothers who are the age my grandmother would be if she was still alive. Women who have had incredible lives and their history is unrecorded. I presented a research statement on this idea but it was lousy. My heart is obviously not in it and it’s hard to be passionate when you aren’t really present. I fumbled for words to talk about it, the interest from others was poor, my own interest weak.

So now I’m thinking back to what it is that gets me excited about a project. I realized that it’s when I believe in the purpose of what I’m doing. When there’s learning involved or sharing, or building connections. When I believe that what I’m doing is important on a larger scale, when it goes beyond myself. When I believe that what I’m doing is going to make a difference.

I don’t believe that writing a 40-60 page paper is going to make a difference in anyone’s life. I think it’s important history that deserves recording, but to have it sit on a shelf in the university library? What’s the point of that? Is this merely an act in methods and discipline? /sigh/ For many, that answer is yes. It’s a stepping stone to a PhD program or to a job in government policy or else teacher’s college or ?? History is too often done in isolation, buried in the archives, with findings published intermittently in journals. Not always, but this is the way of the Ivory Tower.

I want to make a connection. I want what I want to do to matter. I have another idea now — and maybe it could work. It bridges History and Women’s Studies/Activism but what did they expect from me, really?

Please cast your vote to support the nomination of Henry Morgentaler for the Order of Canada.

Henry Morgentaler is a Holocaust survivor.* He survived Auschwitz, and after the war he accepted a United Nations scholarship that was being offered to Jewish survivors. With this, he went to medical school in Germany. He came to Canada and set up as a general practitioner in Montreal. In 1967 he told the Government of Canada that he believed that any pregnant woman should have the right to a safe abortion.

He was first arrested in 1970 for performing illegal abortions and the process of arrest - appeal - acquittal continued until 1983. Finally, in 1988 the Canadian Supreme Court declared the law he was convicted under to be unconstitutional in the case of Morgentaler et al. v. Her Majesty The Queen 1988 (1 S.C.R. 30). This ruling essentially ended all statutory restrictions on abortion in Canada. In 1993, he challenged provincial abortion regulations and won again before the Supreme Court.

image by tattingstar2

Morgentaler received an honorary Doctor of Laws from the University of Western Ontario and the 2005 Couchiching Award for Public Policy Leadership for his efforts on behalf of women’s rights and reproductive health issues.

In 2008, in conjunction with the 20th anniversary of this legal decision, a campaign has been launched by a group of pro-choice activists to nominate Henry Morgentaler for the Order of Canada.

Morgentaler has been nominated twice already, and passed over both times. He has recently suffered a stroke and his health is failing. The Order of Canada cannot be awarded posthumously.

The Globe & Mail is conducting a poll on the question of whether Morgentaler should receive this award. So far, the ‘no’ side has received overwhelming support. (SC: 86% no at 2:30 pm)

Please cast your vote.

Anti-choice activists tried to stop the University of Western Ontario from conferring the honorary doctorate but were unsuccessful. Here’s hoping that this anniversary of Canadian women’s right to choose can be celebrated with recognition of the doctor who advocated for us.

*biographical data from Wikipedia

Here it is, almost the end of January and I’m still calendar-less. Every year there’s a special place on my office wall for Sue Richard’s Breast of Canada Calendar. I have most of them still, starting with the premier edition from 2001. This year, Sue’s taking some time off for medical reasons and while she’s trying to get better my wall sits bare.

Out of desperation I bought a cheesy retro-style calendar at the grocery store last week on 75% clearance…but it stinks. The space for writing on it is Huge but I’m not in need of a datebook (I do all that on the computer). I want beautiful Art, pictures of Women, support to a good cause!

Please Sue, get well and make me a 2009 calendar. pretty please?

In the meantime, are there any calendars out there that are in need of a good home? I’d appreciate any links you might care to leave in the comments. Thank you. :)

I have been collecting frames for the past two years or so. When I see a cheap or clearance frame I buy it and stash it away because framed photos make great gifts and because I’ve always wanted a home with treasured photos hung all around. I did that a little bit at my old house before we moved this summer but this past weekend was a photo marathon. I sorted through hundreds of photos, picking out my top favourites. I printed out about 30 of these and now they are hanging all over the place around the upstairs here at Rob’s.

Some are from our trip to Venice Beach a few years ago. We stayed in nearby Marina del Rey when we went to E3 in 2005. Hanging up the pictures of that and the Santa Monica pier at night bring it all back. There’s also a photo from Catalina Island near where we went snorkelling. That was a different trip — for E3 2006.

On another wall are photos from Vancouver, Pelee Island, and someplace in farm country between Windsor and Wasaga Beach. The trip to Vancouver was for NorthernVoice/Moosecamp 2007, Pelee Island was for beginning work in the archives there related to my history research project, and the farm is from the trip home from our two-family vacation this past summer.

In the kitchen there’s a picture of budding echinacea from a garden in Scarbourough where my dear friends Karen & Mitch live. There’s a picture of my grandparents’ Pelee farm that I have yet to hang.

Tucked in a collage frame is a small picture of me. Apple picking with two of my own children and a friend’s daughter, before my third baby was born. I am part of all of this too.

I’ve got one or two hanging frames left but I have some standing frames that I will probably adapt for hanging on the wall. It makes my heart sing to see all these wonderful things that I’ve done, all the wonderful places that I’ve been. It reminds me that I want more experiences like these in my life and that a goal of living is to do the things you enjoy.

It’s been a frustration of mine that so many digital photos sit on hard-drives, gathering virtual dust: unloved, unshared, un-experienced. Hanging the pictures on the walls opens conversations with friends and family about travel, adventure, people, other family, other friends, and all of our histories. It reflects who we are: the people that live here have identities and we can share that via what we choose to show on our walls.

A la Judith Butler, we communicate who we are through our representations of ourselves. I am more than a blank wall - I am Pelee Island, Vancouver, Venice; a boat, a barn, a bike. I am my children, my lover, my garden, my friends. I am me.