I wanna give a major shout-out to @AmbivalentlyYou today. I've had the pleasure of being able to hire her for 3 different projects & her work is unreal.
I also worked with her to develop a campaign informing women that despite the lockdown, services still exist in their community if they are experiencing violence.
She created incredible posters and colouring pages for us.
I just recently worked with her again to do outreach to rural francophone women living in Southwestern Ontario.
I have such respect for artists! All I said was "I need to let women in rural areas know they are not alone."
And look what she came up with! Wowzers.
I've also bought countless pieces from her - enamel pins, cards, stickers, tshirts, etc. Every time I give one of her pieces as a gift, people can't stop raving about it!
Thousands of people have needlessly died in Ontario.
The Premier getting emotional about all the wrong things, and then apologizing for being emotional, is a microcosm of his entire toxic tenure as Premier.
If you're a leader & you are dealing with thousands of (largely) preventable deaths, you lose the right to be "emotional" about people being unable to grief their dying loved ones.
And before you praise Doug Ford for getting "choked up", remember that he caused the problem he's so upset about.
In an attempt to challenge toxic ideas about masculinity & sadness, we often OVER correct & immediately praise a man for daring to show emotion.
Until my 20s, EVERYONE I knew smoked. You could smoke wherever. There were smoking sections in restaurants & hotels.
Now you can't smoke anywhere & I know 3 smokers.
I think of this every time someone tells me that culture can't change or that it can't change quickly
When I was a kid, parents simply cracked open a window when they chain smoked in a car with us in it.
Now you can't even smoke at the beach.
So, no. I don't believe skeptics for a second when they say culture change is an impossible dream.
This is a post about hope because to be progressive is to believe that the world can change, so I am profoundly uninterested in snarky "Well, actually..."
That shit is stale, boring and counter productive.
Either move towards progress or get left behind, my dudes ✌🏻
Just to be crystal clear : This email was sent me last year & @OttawaPolice did not deem it criminal.
If the Ottawa police are charging JJ Clarke with multiple counts of online stalking & harassment AND seized all his firearms, they have pretty damning evidence!
I appreciate everyone's kindness here but to reiterate, I'm using this concrete threat as an example of how the threshold for criminal harassment in Canada is HIGH. So, for JJ Clarke to have been charged with SEVEN counts, means there was A LOT of very credible evidence.
But yes, Ottawa Police are not my friend and I could write a whole other book on my experiences of reporting online harassment to police.
Please trust me when I say that if Ottawa Police had enough evidence to charge 'Ottawa's favourite weatherman', then the evidence was damning