On February 1, 2021, Laurentian University in Sudbury, Ontario, announced that it was filing for creditor protection under the Companies’ Creditors Arrangement Act (CCAA). It faces the likelihood of massive program cuts and job losses. Reuben Roth is a labour studies and sociology professor at Laurentian. Katlyn Kotila and Darius Garneau are both fourth-year undergraduate …
Month: March 2021
Fantastical absurdity and wry amusement at human (and nonhuman) foolishness. I read a scant handful of books from Pratchett’s famous Discworld series when I was a teen and enjoyed them, but they didn’t captivate me sufficiently for me to go out of my way to find more of them at the time. But recently, on …
Middle grade. Translated from Japanese. A classic that has also been made into an animated film, though I’m not familiar with it. Kiki is a witch. When a witch turns 13, she and her cat must fly on her broom from the town where she grew up to find a new town to be her …
Jonny Sopotiuk is a visual artist, a curator, and a community and labour organizer. Zandi Dandizette is a new media installation artist and an arts and culture worker. Both are founding members of the Vancouver Artists Labour Union Co-operative (VALU CO-OP), a workplace owned and run democratically by its workers, and of the Arts and …
There’s a genre of scholarly left nonfiction which I think of as “capitalism and ____” which is organized around talking about capitalism as understood through some novel lens, with a specific focus, or highlighting some feature with hitherto underappreciated significance. I’ve read my share of these books, and I’m sure I’ll read more in the …
Memoir – I’d even say lyric memoir, a la Maggie Nelson. Not sure I’m using that category quite correctly, but it seems to me that there are two broad areas of writing that distinguish lyric memoir from more conventional life-writing: the artfully (if intermittently) nonlinear flow of ideas, images, events, and reflections, and the play …
Thank-you to Reuben, Katlyn, and Darius for speaking to me about the mobilizations in response to the financial fiasco at Laurentian University and to the moves to use its insolvency to impose a radical austerity agenda. Listen for it soon on Talking Radical Radio!
Thank-you to Irina Ceric for the great interview just now about her long history of work as a movement lawyer and about her research on legal support collectives in North American movements over the last few decades. Listen for it in April on Talking Radical Radio!
Mary Kelly is an undergraduate student at the University of British Columbia and she is a national board member of Canadian Students for Sensible Drug Policy (CSSDP). Alex Bestos works at a health research centre focused on substance use, and they are the international liaison for CSSDP. Scott Neigh interviews them about the current state …
Scholarly. Listed as “Indigenous studies” and “health studies”, but also contains lots of important history and at least a little attention to social struggle. Focused on the role that the medical establishment has played in genocide and colonization in Canada – that is, medical colonialism. Written by a pediatric emergency physician who practices in Montreal. …