Category Archives: Activism

Equality and Equity

I once told a colleague that I didn’t believe in objective marking, and she enthusiastically agreed. “I don’t think it’s possible to be objective,” she said. I told her that I didn’t think we should try to be objective, or … Continue reading

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The Waystation to the Dump

Many people do not realize that their house or apartment is merely a conduit for the landfill. They imagine that each thing they bring into their house to be valuable on its own, as if they intend to keep it … Continue reading

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The Choctaw and Irish Nations

Fifty percent of the Choctaw people had only just survived the forced relocation from Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana into Oklahoma (the aptly named Trail of Tears), when a member of the tribe heard about An Gorta Mór, the great famine … Continue reading

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An Island Overrun with Prisoners and Soldiers

When William Golding imagines his feral schoolboys in Lord of the Flies, he thinks that they will inevitably shed the shallow indoctrination of the arbitrary and recently acquired rules of polite society and fall back upon their baser instincts which … Continue reading

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Canada’s Difficulty with Reconciliation

The rediscovery of unmarked gravesites at the Kamloops residential school in the summer of 2021 brought a grisly history into the public eye. Although people had found bones on the site before, the use of ground penetrating radar went a … Continue reading

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Pondering the Media During the 2022 Ottawa Trucker Convoy

The various media systems of the world are overworked, and in the case of many of them, underpaid. This is exposed by the request, below most online news stories, to report any errors. With editors in short supply, the news … Continue reading

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Cultural Covid

Now that Covid-19 has been with us for two years, its profound effects on the different societies of the planet are becoming more obvious. Relatively democratic societies, for all their flirtation with fascism, are descending into mob rule as unscrupulous … Continue reading

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Teaching Farley Mowat

Farley Mowat occupies a curious position in Canadian letters. He is a kind of Ernest Hemingway of the north, but in the academic world of English study, he is never dressed well enough to be invited to the party. Some … Continue reading

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Always a Working Light Bulb

No one who has lived in the west and has observed the rampant consumerism and waste will be surprised by yet another example of still functioning goods thrown away, but when people learn about the light bulbs, many are still … Continue reading

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Racist Rob and Corrupt Politicians

I’d only been teaching a few years when I had a student who was so racist that I was forced to confront several of his statements in class. As anyone knows who has dealt with such behaviour, this demands a … Continue reading

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