Hey CBC! You know what's not funny?

Men breaking into women's homes to steal things. Yes, even if those things are women's underwear. (Just like the guy breaking into homes in Halifax just to watch women sleep is not funny.)

I'm too tired to get into it. Gayleen is awesome, read her thoughts, for I have none.

Originally posted at http://trouble.dreamwidth.org/528620.html. You can comment here or there using OpenID. Comments at Dreamwidth: .

One of the things I think one does in Canada when studying history at the beginning of every advanced year is read something from or about the History Wars. This describes a bit of time in Canada, about 10 years, when people started having fights about what Canadian history was, what it could do, it's importance, how it influenced things, blah blah blah. The big arguments were between Jack Grananstein and anyone with a lick of common sense many other historians, including Veronica Strong-Boag. [True Confessions: I have an opinion in all of this. I'd recommend you go out and read what people said themselves, but strangely this All Important History War is so All Important that it's not mentioned specifically in the wikipedia article for either Strong-Boag or Grananstein.]

Basically, Grananstein's argument is that, by not focusing on military and political history, we're ruining Canadian's sense of nationalism. We're focusing too much on the "others". He also thinks that Steven Harper is ace.

The reason for my poll is really because I'm bored to death of this, and it's only been a couple of years of reading such things. I was getting that first, exciting history degree back when this was all going down, and it didn't affect my education in any way that I can perceive. I don't know anyone who knows anything about it outside of historians who read these essays and debate the true meaning of Canadian history and if we really are ruining the country by writing about the history of "housemaids' knee in Belleville".

I have never lived in a world where historians have such power, so I admit to being envious of Grananstein's past, since he obviously did.

My biggest irritation about all this is that it seems to me (and this is likely unfair - I really don't know what people are doing and how busy they are) the answer is not to spend a lot of time talking to other historians about how tragic it is that Canadians don't care about their history and history books are not flying off the shelves. To me, the answer is to take the history to the people. To make radio documentaries if t.v. documentaries are too expensive; to give a guest talk at a local high school or elementary school or library; to give that talk tied into something specific. (I've been waiting eagerly for the Robin Hood movie to come out because I want to give a talk about the Historic Robin Hood at the library.)

I mean, I'm all for the necessity of talking things out, of writing them in poorly-read blogs academic journals and sorting out what you mean, of engaging with people in a way where you must be clear and speak what you mean. I think this is an important part of the process. But the History Wars were in 1995. It's now 2009. Can we stop all this navel-gazing and actually do something?

[Which is why I'm going to the local indy radio station on Saturday to learn how to be a radio station person. I want to propose a history half-hour show, and get various people I know who are studying Nova Scotian history to come talk about it. Because I wasn't busy enough.]

Here, have some Kate Beaton Comics. Actually, this one in particular basically sums up the whole Canadian History Problem, with bonus Sir John A.

Originally posted at http://trouble.dreamwidth.org/514871.html. You can comment here or there using OpenID. Comments at Dreamwidth: .

I know Canada is a post-racial utopia where we all hold hands and sing about wanting a Coke, but it seems like only yesterday when the Government was behaving incredibly poorly in regards to the health needs of First Nations people.

Unless that really was yesterday. I've been a bit busy.

[These are selected-for-outrage quotes. Read Expecting Flu Assistance, Reserves get body bags from Ottawa for all context.]

Aboriginal leaders said they were outraged and confused when dozens of body bags were delivered to remote Manitoba reserves after native communities demanded federal resources to fight a second wave of the H1N1 flu outbreak.

...

The federal government was left scrambling late Wednesday to explain the shipments, which also included hand sanitizer, masks and gloves.

Each bag contained full post-mortem kits that included a chin strap, five tie-straps and three identification tags.

...

“Is Canada giving up on the first nations?” Mr. Harper asked in an interview. “We're very offended. It looks like Canada is giving up on us. Or is this the flu preparedness that Canada talks about?”

In many First Nations cultures, to prepare for death is to invite death, he said.

...

The mild flu outbreak in the spring erupted into a full-blown crisis on several of Manitoba's remote reserves. At one point, aboriginals comprised two-thirds of Manitoba flu patients on respirators. Health Canada came under fire for hesitating to send hand sanitizer to native towns because of concerns that people would ingest the alcohol-based gel.

The comments are a crapshoot - there are mods at the G&M, though, and many comments simply say "This comment has been removed because it does not meet our commenting guidelines."

*sigh*

Originally posted at http://trouble.dreamwidth.org/514670.html. You can comment here or there using OpenID. Comments at Dreamwidth: .

You know, as a Canadian, I just want to say:

There is a rest of Canada. No, really. There is not just an Alberta, an Ontario, a Quebec, and a B.C. There is totally a Saskatchewan, a Manitoba, a Newfoundland, a Prince Edward Island, a New Brunswick, and a Nova Scotia, not to mention the Territories: North West Territory, the Yukon, and Nunavut.

Canada has some serious regional differences and issues, and stuff like the following is not helpful:

Universities squabble over research funding

Smaller schools across Canada are up in arms over a proposal from five of
Canada's largest universities to concentrate research and graduate studies
in the biggest schools.

The leaders of McGill University and the universities of British Columbia,
Alberta, Toronto and Montreal have proposed a national strategy for higher
education that would see the top research dollars go to fewer schools, in an
effort to better use the resources available.

( The rest of the article is behind the cut )

There's a lot of push right now in this area to present ourselves as a "knowledge-based economy", and these sorts of proposals do nothing to help our economy.

Originally posted at http://trouble.dreamwidth.org/509379.html. You can comment here or there using OpenID. Comments at Dreamwidth: .

Eee! Busy day! Busy week! Awesome times at Chez Anna!

I'm working on a post for disability (LJ Syndicated Feed here) about a press release regarding the recent BC decision to slash funding for students with disabilities (more details), and it hit one of my pet peeves about Canada.

Dear Canadians [Especially my father, omg]

Please stop acting like Alberta is some horrible throwback to evil where only horrible things happen, while the rest of Canada is a post-Feminist post-Racist post-Ablist Utopia of free love and awesomeness.

"Even Alberta is doing a better job than we are!" is not a good response to your government doing something shitty. Alberta also has some of the best funding for people with disabilities (far better than Nova Scotia), and the Western Canadian Chair of Deaf Studies is at the University of Alberta.

I absolutely promise I can rant about Alberta with the best of them, even better than I can randomly blame our weather on Toronto, but Alberta is not entirely made up of Ralph Klein, Ed Not-Klein, and his minions.

Please look to your own, so that you really are better than Alberta on things like disability, gender, sexuality, and race.

Lots of Love, please do something so Toronto stops making our weather so awful,

Anna

Unrelated, but eeeee! Meeting with Dr T. the thesis adviser in, like, and hour and a half! EEEEE!

Originally posted at http://trouble.dreamwidth.org/50949.html. You can comment here or there using OpenID.

One of the things that we talk about here, on occasion, is how lucky we are that Don is a white man with a disability living in Canada. Things become more complicated in my post-racial utopia of a country when someone of a different race is born with a disability.

Take, for example, the case of Jordan River Anderson, a First Nations boy from Norway House Cree Nation in Manitoba. Jordan was born with "complex health needs" (this is code for Carey Fineman Ziter Syndrome, a rare muscular disorder) and spent the first two years of his life in hospital. At that point, his doctors agreed that he could go home and live with his family, although he would need continuing care.

If Jordan hadn't been First Nations, he would have gone home, and his care would have been paid for by the provincial government as part of his health care costs. However, as a First Nations child, the cost of Jordan's care became an argument between the provincial and federal government. Neither wanted to pay for it, so Jordan stayed in hospital.

He died at age 5, having never been home.

First Nations advocates came together and wrote Jordan's Principle:

Under this principle, where a jurisdictional dispute arises between two government parties (provincial/territorial or federal) or between two departments or ministries of the same government, regarding payment for services for a Status Indian child which are otherwise available to other Canadian children, the government or ministry/department of first contact must pay for the services without delay or disruption. The paying government party can then refer the matter to jurisdictional dispute mechanisms. In this way, the needs of the child get met first while still allowing for the jurisdictional dispute to be resolved.

This was adopted unanimously by the Canadian Government in December, 2007.

In principle.

Special Needs Kids May Be Forced Into Foster Care (May, 2008):

Government infighting has families in a northern Manitoba community in anguish about how to best care for their children.

The Norway House Cree Nation has told the families of children with special needs that they may be forced to give up their children because the First Nation can no longer pay for their care, and federal and provincial governments can't agree on who should pay.

...

Charlene Ducharme works with the Kinosao Sipi Minisowin Agency, a social agency on the reserve, and said she has yet to see Jordan's Principle in action. She said the children of Norway House deserve the same care that other Manitoba children get.

"Our premier said Manitoba would be the first one to implement Jordan's Principle... we're still waiting."

Late in 2008, the Manitoba Government also adopted Jordan's Principle.

However, in reality, very little has changed. According to a UNICEF report issued this year, in honour of the 20th Anniversary of the Convention of the Rights of the Child, First Nations, Metis, and Inuit children in Canada still suffer in comparison to other children:

#
1 in 4 First Nations children lives in poverty compared to 1 in 9 Canadian children on average.

In cities of more than 100,000 people, approximately 50 per cent of Aboriginal children under the age of 15 live in low-income housing, compared to 21 per cent of non-Aboriginal children.

In contrast to the national infant mortality rate of 5 infant deaths per 1,000 live births, the rate is 8 per 1, 000 among First Nations and 16 per 1,000 in Nunavut (where 85 per cent of the population is Inuit).

Only 63 per cent of First Nations children on selected reserves accessed a doctor in 2001; 46 per cent of Inuit children and 77 per cent Métis children did so, compared to 85 per cent of Canadian children on average. [Note: Health care in Canada is free.]

Between 33 and 45 per cent of Inuit, Métis and First Nations children (on and off reserve) report chronic illness.

On-reserve First Nations child immunization rates are 20 per cent lower than in the general population, leading to higher rates of vaccine-preventable diseases.

38: The percentage of deaths attributable to suicide for First Nations youth aged 10 to 19. In 1999, the suicide rate among First Nations was 2.1 times higher than the overall Canadian rate. The rate of suicide for Inuit is 11 times higher than the overall rate of the Canadian population.

[Source] [Report Summary, WARNING: PDF]

Canada's ranking on the Human Development Index, which is used by the United Nations to measure a country's achievement in health, knowledge, and a decent standard of living is 3rd. Evaluating the living conditions of First Nations, Inuit, and Metis people alone, their ranking is 68th.

My country prides itself on being "better" than the U.S. on issues of race.

Jordan died 800 km from home because he was First Nations. First Nations children in my country are not getting the care they need, the care available to other children, because they are First Nations.

This is not an improvement.

[International Blog Against Racism Week]

Originally posted at http://trouble.dreamwidth.org/46426.html. You can comment here or there using OpenID.

I love Canada, but no one quite does Slactivism the way some folks here do.

It was Canada Day on Wednesday. Like most cites, ours did a big to-do about the whole thing, with a parade, a fair-like thing, and fireworks. Lots of fun. Last week, the City put out a little "list of things you can do in Halifax on Canada Day!"

On the very bottom of the list, in bold print: "Show your support for the troops! Wear Red and White this Canada Day!"

Yes! That's right! Every person who was doing their patriotic best to wear Canadian flags, pins, and tattoos, or just wear red and white was supporting our troops! (whatever that means.)

I love the idea of being able to declare National Colours to mean something significant in terms of supporting each other. I know the U.S. is having their Independence Day stuff tomorrow, and to all my American friends: Everyone you see wearing Red, White & Blue tomorrow? Totally supporting the need for accessible emergency housing in your state.

I declare it! So shall it be!

Air Canada is doing an Explore Canada pass this summer which looks quite good. It looks like Don and I will be able to do our trip out east west to Montreal and maybe Toronto for a very reasonable price of $700 plus airport fees - not each, all together.

Sale's on till August 1, which gives one plenty of time to consider it. I'm interpreting it as Air Canada going "Ack, empty planes! Let's get some of those students on them!"

One of Halifax's Indy Bookstores had to move this past week. I knew when I had talked to them that being accessible was a priority, and so when I stopped by their new store a few days ago on my way someplace else, I was sad that my lonely glance through the darkened window didn't show any other entrance but the one up the stairs that I had walked up.

But!

I've been catching up (so slowly) on my email, and look! Right in the email saying they'd moved! Emphasis all in their email!

To our valued customers: We sincerely regret that our new location is not yet equipped with a ramp for accessibility. We tried a wooden ramp on moving day which did not survive the move. Thankfully no one was hurt. Because our customers safety is our top priority we have called in the experts and hope to have a safe and affordable solution very soon. Due to the suddeness of our move we were unable to secure a location that was already equipped with a ramp for access. Please accept our apologies for any inconvenience this has caused. Thank you for your patience and support.

Frog Hollow Books! You win!

Let's play a fun game, shall we?

Thunder Bay mom wants answers after teacher's aide chops off son's hair

(Thunder Bay is in Canada, for international folks.)

Before reading the article, do some guessing.

What race do you think the boy is?

What ability-status do you think he has?

How old do you think he is?

Do you think the teacher's aide is being disciplined in any way?

Are any charges being laid?

( Go on, make your guesses before reading the rest. )

So, an election's been called in Nova Scotia, and we haven't received a single phone call from the NDP asking for donations, volunteerism, or just support at the polls.

Huh. I guess we really are persona non-grata to the Party, after that whole "getting kicked out of the federal rally because 'Hey Jack! Make Poverty History!' isn't 'on message'" incident.

I'm kinda bitter, actually.

Anyway, meeting today! *eeeeeeeee*

[Brief explanation of Canadian politics: NDP = New Democrat Party, which is our so-called left-wing party that would be laughed out of Europe. Jack = Leader of the federal NDP, Jack Layton. I can't find the link to the post I made originally about being kicked out of the rally, but I do remember also emailing the Party and making the point that maybe, just maybe, asking someone with a disability to either "stand up or make it perfectly clear why you are not", when you know that the person you're talking to has a disability, is problematic. I never heard back. Still bitter.]

1) My email this morning included this!

Just in case you didn't know, you've been nominated for Best Feminist Blog - Oh! Canada! English in the 2009 Canadian F-word Awards! First round voting is April 11 - 14 (extended!). One vote per IP addy, please.

What does being nominated for an F-word Award mean, besides glamour, prestige, and a pretty badge to display on your blog? In the big scheme of things, ABSOLUTELY NOTHING! More acutely though, it means that someone who is aware of the awards likes your blog enough to nominate it in our anti-sexist snark festival. It means someone thinks you kick ass! AND YOU DO! W00t!

Come on over and celebrate blogging women - we're having a party and you're the guest of honour!

Good luck, and thanks for participating.

- Dr. Prole and Pale @ A Creative Revolution

EEEEEE! (And the best part is that I got nominated by someone I didn't think knew me from Caine. Note to self: Send Matttbastard a nice note after thesis is done.)

2) Hoyden About Town is putting together a reading list on Disability. Check it out! One thing I love about getting more involved with the internet is I'm no longer the only person in the "room" talking about these issues. Off-line, I mostly get blank looks. On-line, I show my ignorance all over the place. *adds many books to the reading list*

[2.5) Hey folks that have been interested in Dreamwidth. I was poking around there last night when I couldn't sleep and their icon system has built in "alt tags for text readers/people who have visual impairments", and even explicitly points out how to best alt-tag an icon. swooon.]

3) Hullo anyone who came over from the F-Words to check me out! My name is Anna, and all this is mine.

At the moment, every post can be nicely summed up as "omg have I told you I'm writing a thesis? Because I am writing a thesis. And it is a thesis, that I am writing. Also *wibble*" Which is very interesting to me but probably not so much to others. If you're wondering why I'm a feminist blog, please let me point you to some of my better tags.

Disabled people don't exist, where I talk about various issues relating to disability & accessibility.
Race does matter, where I talk about racism and race issues.
The queer agenda has lunch at 1 p.m., where I talk about GLTB issues.
Dead white men is about history.
Fandom & Feminism, where I ... well, I bet you can guess.
and
No, I really *do* care that much, which is a lot of stuff about feminism in general.
[The tagging system is still a work in progress in my head.]

I also have a newly-made Candian content tag, and if you are deeply curious my tags about my thesis (have I mentioned I'm writing a thesis?) are under deaf history snippets and in yr archives writing yr history (as I am witty that way).

And now, I dive back into school work.

The House of Commons’ Standing Committee on Human Resources, Skills and Social Development and the Status of Persons with Disabilities (the HUMA Committee) is studying the federal role for combating poverty in Canada. This Committee’s work comes following:

The advent of poverty action plans for Quebec (2004), Newfoundland and Labrador (2006) and Ontario (2008);
Important studies on poverty by Senate committees over 2007-2008; and
All-party approval, in the House on March 11, 2009, of a motion calling for G8 and G20 leaders to make combating poverty a priority in national economic stimulus plans.

Within the past few weeks the HUMA Committee has resumed hearings that began in 2008. The committee will be in Halifax on Monday, May 11th.

[If you are not in Halifax and want to know the schedule of the Committee, let me know and I will find out for you.]

If you or your organization has not already done so but would like to try to appear as a witness before the Committee, at your earliest opportunity please contact the Clerk of the Committee by email or fax (name and contact information below). In doing so, we suggest that in a few paragraphs you cite your interest and area of expertise, as well as the contribution you might make to the Committee’s deliberations.

Clerk information

Christine Holke David
Clerk of the HUMA Committee
E-mail: HUMA@parl.gc.ca
Fax: 613-996-1626
Tel: 613-996-1542
Address: Sixth Floor, 131 Queen Street, House of Commons, Ottawa ON K1A 0A6

"Hating Toronto can cloud anyone's judgement." - Little Mosque on the Prairie

Today's link is to Broadside Ballads. I love this site - I'm using it for the essay I'm supposed to be writing RIGHT NOW about attitudes towards infanticide in Early Modern England (woo hoo).

Music collections can tell us a lot about other cultures or times. It can be used for protest, to unite people for a common cause, for religious expression, for comfort, for lullabies, etcetera. I like looking at the ones from England because I can connect a lot of them to historic events, but also because they're very revealing of attitudes towards groups. So, this one, The Colours the Ladies Should Wear/Nelly Bly, talks about the expected patriotic role of women during the Crimean War ("The French and the English Uniting/ to the great cause of freedom still true/ What girl would not love the lads fighting / under the "red white and blue") and includes an example of Black Minstrel music. [I learned today about white men from the U.S. going to England to perform banjo songs in Blackface, and I'm assuming this is an example of one of the songs they performed.]

There are a lot of collections of sheet music available online. These are the ones I've at least browsed through, although not thoroughly:

• Canadian Sheet Music Collection
  
• Band Music from the [American] Civil War Era
  
• African-American Sheet Music (1850 - 1920)
  
• National Library of Australia Digital Collection: Printed Music
  
• Western Australia Musical Memories Online
  

It's Women's History Month in Canada!

Every year I promise myself I'll spend the entire month writing awesome posts about awesome women being totally awesome. They'll be full of fun facts and good history and everything will be GREAT!

This year, I'm giving up lying to myself for Lent.

I'm going to try to link to interesting resources about Women's History that may be a bit off the beaten path.

Today's Link:
Forrest Flanders posts scans of old catalogs, and his flickr page.

I really enjoy looking at catalogs as part of understanding history. They give us an idea of how advertising has changed; what the "ideal" appearance was, both in the images used and the clothing or accessories being sold; how fashion has changed over time; and probably ten other things I'm not aware of because this isn't part of how I work with history (yet).

What I most enjoy about this particular collection is the fabulous hats (certain) women in Canada were expected to wear in order to be "fashionable", and the way the fashion catalogs used drawings of women to show the ideal womanhood.

Women's historians can learn a lot about what women's lives were supposed to be like by looking at catalogs. The fun part is applying this to the actual lives of women and seeing how cross-Canada fashion catalogs affected those lives.

[I'm still not up to engaging with people in any meaningful way, I'm sorry. It's rather bad form to post things and not be able to really talk to people about them, but some of this stuff is timely. And now, back to being stressed beyond ability to cope.]

First, a reminder that the Wonderful and New Exciting Budget we've been blessed with thinks it's okay to pay women less than men for the same job. Because Canada is post-feminist Utopia, as we all know. Via The Toronto Star:

In this case, the Conservative attack on pay equity – the idea that men and women should be paid equally for work of equal value – provides the most telling example. Bill C-10 would end the right of federal civil servants to take pay equity complaints to the federal human rights commission. Instead, such issues would have to be dealt with as part of the normal bargaining process between union and management.

And in determining whether wage rates for men and women were fair, any arbitrator would have to take "market forces" into account.

The problem with this is twofold. First, as a federal task force wrote five years ago, collective bargaining involves tradeoffs. But a woman's constitutionally protected right to be paid fairly is hardly something that should be traded away for an extra coffee break.

Equally important is the reference to market forces. Toronto lawyer Mary Cornish points out that pay equity was designed specifically to rectify a failure in the market that permitted systemic wage discrimination against women. To turn around and subordinate equity to this same market is to negate the entire exercise.

( No wait, there's more. )

I was born in Manitoba and lived there for many years.
I don't know if there's any audio - I'm at school.

My Canadian content for today: