Empowering Girls in Haiti

TORONTO
BOOKSTORE CLOSES
WOMENS
IN HAITI
GIRLS
EMPOWERING
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INTERVIEW
PIEPZNA
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SAMARASINHA
THE
CAREGIVING
CRUNCH
THE
CAREGIVING
CRUNCH
WHEN
WOMEN
BLOW THE
WHISTLE
WHEN
WOMEN
BLOW THE
WHISTLE
WHY
COUGARS
DESERVE
RESPECT
WHY
COUGARS
DESERVE
RESPECT
Vol. 26 No. 3
Winter 2013
HERIZONS WINTER 2013 1
UNITE
AGAINST
AUSTERITY
R E T H I N K T H E E C O N O M Y
Tell governments and corporate CEOs that more
cuts are only making matters worse for most
Canadians. Spending cuts are hurting services;
and corporate tax cuts are fuelling inequality.
We need good jobs.
Infrastructure projects building much needed
roads, green energy, schools, water and transit
systems is the right approach. This cant happen
without adequate public funding.
news
STORY ENDS FOR FEMINIST BOOKSTORES . . . . . . . . . 6
by Andi Schwartz
LESBIANS WANT FERTILITY SERVICES. . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
by Kaj Hasselriis
DOMESTICS FAMILY DNA SOUGHT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
by Sandhya Singh
APPS BRING ON PERIODIC DISCOMFORT . . . . . . . . . 10
by Sarah-Jean Krahn
WHY COUGARS DESERVE RESPECT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
If you thought actors Susan Sarandon and Demi Moore
rendered those nasty cougar stereotypes extinct when
they paired up with younger men, youd better think
again. Why are women who partner with younger men
still targets of sexism?
by Jeanie Keogh
WHEN WOMEN BLOW THE WHISTLE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
When companies or public agencies breach ethical
boundaries, employees often put their careers on the
line to blow the whistle. Do women blow the whistle
for different reasons than men? We examine how fe-
male whistle-blowers perceive their experiences.
by Barbara D. Janusz
EMPOWERING GIRLS IN HAITI . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
Unique international aid projects for girls are aimed
at reducing sexual assault and empowering girls in the
aftermath of Haitis catastrophic 2010 hurricane.
by Nadia Todres and Mandy van Deven
THE CAREGIVING CRUNCH . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
As the boomer generation reaches retirement, there is
a growing anti-senior sentiment that wrongly charac-
terizes seniors as a drain on the economy. This article
explores the ramifications for women, who make up a
majority of caregivers for elderly family members.
by Lillian Zimmerman
WINTER 2013 / VOLUME 26 NO. 3
6
18
28
features
2 WINTER 2013 HERIZONS HERIZONS WINTER 2013 3
VOLUME 26 NO. 3
MANAGING EDITOR: Penni Mitchell
FULFILLMENT AND OFFICE MANAGER: Phil Koch
ACCOUNTANT: Sharon Pchajek
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HERIZONS is published four times per year by HERIZONS Inc. in
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The purpose of HERIZONS is to empower women; to inspire hope
and foster a state of wellness that enriches womens lives; to build
awareness of issues as they affect women; to promote the
strength, wisdom and creativity of women; to broaden the bound-
aries of feminism to include building coalitions and support among
other marginalized people; to foster peace and ecological aware-
ness; and to expand the influence of feminist principles in the
world. HERIZONS aims to reflect a feminist philosophy that is
diverse, understandable and relevant to womens daily lives.
Views expressed in HERIZONS are those of the writers and do not
necessarily reflect HERIZONS editorial policy. No material may be
reprinted without permission. Due to limited resources, HERIZONS
does not accept poetry or fiction submissions.
HERIZONS acknowledges the financial support of
the Government of Canada through the Canada
Periodical Fund (CPF) of the Department of Canadian Heritage.
With the generous support of the Manitoba Arts Council.
Publications Mail Agreement No. 40008866. Return Undeliverable
Addresses to: PO Box 128, Winnipeg, MB, Canada R3C 2G1,
Email: subscriptions@herizons.ca
Herizons is proudly printed with union labour at
The Winnipeg Sun Commercial Print Division on
Forest Stewardship Council
-certified paper.
columns
PENNI MITCHELL . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
Blow the Whistle Louder
SUSAN G. COLE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
Can Feminism Thrive Without Feminist Bookstores?
EVELYN C. WHITE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
Japanese Internment Revisited
JOANNA CHIU . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
The Gendered Face of Hurricane Sandy
LYN COCKBURN . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
Boycott Catholic Church Housework
arts & ideas
MUSIC . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
Run Body Run by Holly McNarland; Tug of War by
Lesley Pike; The Living Record by Christina Couture.
Reviews by Cindy Filipenko
WINTER READING . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
The Juliet Stories by Carrie Snyder; (you) set me on fire
by Mariko Tamaki; Sleeping Funny by Miranda Hill;
Most of Me: Surviving My Medical Breakdown by
Robyn Michele Levy; Polar Wives by Kari Herbert;
Eating Dirt: Deep Forests, Big Timber and Life with
the Tree-Planting Tribe by Charlotte Gill; Practicing
Feminist Mothering by Fiona Joy Green; Gentrification
of the Mind by Sarah Schulman; Western Taxidermy by
Barb Howard; Life Stages and Native Women by Kim
Anderson; True Confessions: Feminist Professors Tell
Stories Out of School edited by Susan Gubar; Joni: The
Creative Odyssey of Joni Mitchell by Katherine Monk.
POETRY SNAPSHOT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40
Monkey Ranch by Julie Bruck; Between Dusk and Night
by Emily McGiffin
Reviews by Mariianne Mays
AUTHOR PORTRAIT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44
Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha
by Anjana Balakrishnan
FILM REVIEWS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
Twilight Portrait, directed by Angeline Nikonova; Hemel,
directed by Sacha Polak; Francine, directed by Brian M.
Cassidy and Melanie Shatzky.
Reviews by Maureen Medved
MAGAZINE INK
FRANKLY FRACKING
In your Fall 2012 issue, Joanna Chiu shared her interview
with Elle-Mij Tailfeathers, one of three Blood women who
were arrested in September 2011 for their blockade of frack-
ing vehicles on the Kainai/Blood reserve.
I was surprised that a true hero of this blockade story, Lois
Frank, was not even mentioned. Tailfeathers, Jill Crop Eared
Wolf and Lois Frank were the thee women arrested and
charged with intimidation for their courageous blockade, but
only Frank fought the charges in court. The other two women
agreed to complete an alternative measures programand the
charges against themwere dropped.
While Tailfeathers went on to publicize the issue with her
film, Frank refused to back down and made repeated court
appearances. Frank defended her right and that of other
members of the Blood Tribe to challenge the decision to
allow fracking on their territory. In June 2012, the criminal
charges against Lois Frank were finally stayed, and, at
the end of October, Frank received the Activist of the Year
Award from the Council of Canadians for her courageous
work in protesting fracking.
Murphy Oil and Bowood Energy continue their fracking
activities on the Kainai/Blood reserve. And many of the Blood
people continue to find ways to resist this threat to their land.
HELEN REZANOWICH
Victoria, B.C.
WALK A MILE
I was delighted to read the wonderful story of Viola
Desmond written by Evelyn White and applaud Herizons
for bringing Desmonds story to light. Readers will be
happy to know that Desmond is one of the human rights
champions who will be featured in the Canadian Museum
for Human Rights, opening in Winnipeg in 2014.
Although I lived in Halifax for several years, at no time
was Desmonds name ever mentioned, nor did we study
her in school. It was only when I became involved in
spearheading the creation of the Canadian Museum for
Human Rights that I learned of this extraordinary woman
who, many years before Rosa Parks, stood up against ra-
cial discrimination.
The Canadian Museum for Human Rights will bring
our many human rights heroes and heroines to life and
underscore the point that ordinary people like Desmond
can achieve extraordinary things if they choose to speak
out and stand up for human rights. Its a lesson we need to
learn more than ever, and the goal of the museum will be
to provide a transformational experience that will inspire
all visitors to take personal responsibility for the preserva-
tion and advancement of human rights, here in Canada and
around the world.
GAIL ASPER
Winnipeg, Manitoba
letters
KAREN JUSTL
Karen Justl is an
illustrator fascinated
by the neuroscience
of facial expression
& emotion. Her illus-
trations have been
published across
Canada in magazines,
on-line and in indie
feature films. See
more of her work at
karenjustl.com.
SANDHYA SINGH
Sandhya Singh is a
freelance writer and
communications con-
sultant whose interest
areas are gender,
disability, race and
workers rights. She
lives and homes-
chools in Ottawa.
BARBARA D.
JANUSZ
Barbara D. Janusz
holds degress in arts
and laws. She has
published essays,
poetry and short stor-
ies in various literary
journals, magazines,
newspapers and an-
thologies. Her recent
novel, Mirrored in the
Caves, is published by
Inanna Publications
and Education.

LILLIAN
ZIMMERMAN
Lillian Zimmerman is
a research associate
with the Gerontology
Research Centre at
Simon Fraser University.
She is a gerontolo-
gist and author with
a primary focus on
womens issues.
Her book Baglady
or Powerhouse: A
Roadmap for Midlife
(Boomer) Women was
published in 2009.

NIRANJANA IYER
Niranjana Iyer is
a freelance writer
whose work appears
at rabble.ca, and
in This Magazine,
Bookslut and
Eclectica, and she
blogs at niranjana.
wordpress.com. She
also curates Women
Doing Literary Things,
a website featuring
essays on the topic of
gender and literature.
contributors
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When a woman steps forward to publicly disclose that corpor-
ate interests are being placed before health and environmental
protection, we call it whistle-blowing. When a woman steps
forward to publicly disclose that male privilege is being placed
before the protection of girls and women, we call it feminism.
The two are very much the same. In both cases, the personal
risks for speaking out can be greatcareers, personal safety
and even lives are put on the line. And, in both cases, the fair
enforcement of rules is all that is being asked.
A notable difference is that whistle-blowers tend to act solo,
while feminist action usually involves a wider community. To
the surprise of many, girls are increasingly taking personal risks
that bring about political change. In a Kenyan village, a girl who
had been raped, and bore a child as a result, stepped forward
to ask villagers attending a community meeting if someone
could explain to her why the man who raped her was free to
go about his business as he pleased, while she was burdened
with a child and no legal recourse. As Fiona Sampson of the
Equality Effect tells it, police officials in Kenya refused to
investigate the victims complaint, even though laws against
rape are on the books. In addition to girls and women being at
greater risk of acquiring HIV/AIDS and unwanted pregnancies,
their right to the protection of the law is often ignored if they
are raped. In fact, it is a common occurrence for rape victims
to be raped by police officers when they go to file a complaint.
The Kenyan girl, it turned out, was not alone, and soon 160
young rape victims were brought together with the help of the
Equality Effect, a group of human rights experts from Kenya,
Malawi, Ghana and Canada, to press for greater protection of
the rights of girls and women in Kenya. The 160 Girls Project
is working with a shelter where rape victims receive treatment
and counselling and, as a result, now share a determination
to fight for change. Today, the 160 Girls Project has initiated
a legal challenge to force Kenya to enforce criminal laws to
protect girls and women from sexual violence.
With no international bevy of feminist legal experts behind
her, whistle-blower Malala Yousafzai took on the Taliban in
her fight for Pakistani girls right to attend secular school. Shot
in the head by Taliban members just 48 hours before the first
International Day of the Girl was to be proclaimed by the
United Nations on October 11, Yousafzai not only survived,
but tens of thousands of outraged people around the world
signed a petition calling for her nomination for the Nobel Peace
Prize. The Nobel campaign started in Canada, where leaders
of the Green, Liberal and Conservative parties, as well as the
NDP and Bloc Qubcois, supported Yousafzais nomination.
In her home country as well, Yousafzais cause has been taken
up by thousands. Pakistans National Students Federation
held vigils in support of her vision, a school has been named
in Yousafzais honour and a million people in Pakistan have
petitioned their government for free education. On November
10, the United Nations declared International Malala Day,
which was celebrated in Pakistan and around the world.
It all starts with a single voice that wont back down. Just like
American university student Sandra Fluke, who stood up to
misogynistic talk radio host Rush Limbaugh after standing her
ground to argue that birth control should be part of her health
plan. In response, Limbaugh attacked Fluke, calling her a slut
and a prostitute who wanted the state to pay her to have sex.
Fluke should have to tape herself having sex, Limbaugh said
on air, so he could watch. In the end, a widespread campaign
by feminists convinced advertisers to pull millions of dollars
from Limbaughs program. Thanks to others who moved
Flukes message forward, the American rights war against
womens reproductive rights lost some ground.
Yousafzais dream is not only to gain ground by defending
girls education rights but to undermine the Talibanno small
feat for a 15-year-old. On Malala Day, Pakistani President
Asif Ali Zardari announced a government initiative to provide
free education to children, particularly girls, of poor families.
Malala is a symbol of all that is good about us, Zardari said,
adding that Yousafzai has transcended from an individual
into an idea. Perhaps thats why, in November, American
magazine Foreign Policy placed Yousafzai at the sixth spot in
its Top 100 Global Thinkers list.
The sound of one whistle blowingby a victim of rape, a
proponent of better health protection or a survivor of a Taliban-
directed assassination attemptis where the call for change
starts. When a single voice becomes an unstoppable chorus
of change, we call it justice.
BLOW THE WHISTLE
First Word
BY PENNI MITCHELL
facility to perform abortions in
Northern Ireland. Though the
Belfast clinic is only allowed to
induce abortions under limited
circumstances with a pill until
nine weeks, choice activists
expect the clinic to offer medical
abortions in the future.
The clinic, operated by the
British family planning charity,
follows a 2010 European Court
of Human Rights ruling that
Northern Ireland was in violation
of womens rights for not provid-
ing abortions when a womans life
is in danger. An estimated 4,000
women from the Irish Republic
and 1,000 from Northern Ireland
travel to Britain to obtain abortions
each year.
Our clinic will provide a safe,
caring, sensitive environment
for integrated family planning
in Northern Ireland for the first
time, said Dawn Purvis, director
of the clinic.
Northern Ireland law permits
abortions only when a womans
life or long-term health is jeop-
ardized. Only one of Northern
Irelands 108 legislators, Anna Lo,
expressed support for the clinic,
although opinion polls indicate
citizens are split roughly 50-50 on
the issue.
NEW YORK STRIKES DOWN
BAN ON GAY MARRIAGE
A New York federal appeals court
ruled that the Defense of Marriage
Act (DOMA) is unconstitutional,
upholding a lower courts decision.
It is the second federal appeals
court to rule the law unconsti-
tutional on the grounds that it
violates the U.S. fifth amendment,
which supports equal protection
under the law.
DOMA maintains that marriage
should be restricted to hetero-
sexual couples and it denies
federal recognition of same-sex
marriages. It also denies same
sex-couples any benefits attached
to marriage, including Social
Security survivors benefits, family
and medical leave, and immigra-
tion rights.
The lawsuit was filed on behalf
of 83-year-old Edith Windsor by
nelliegrams
PETITION
ENCOURAGES
PEACE PRIZE
FOR MALALA
YOUSAFZAI
An online peti-
tion in Canada calling for Malala
Yousafzai, the Pakistani girls
rights activist shot by members
of the Taliban in October, to be
nominated for the Nobel Peace
Prize has drawn thousands of
supporters. Interim federal Liberal
Leader Bob Rae, who is eligible as
a parliamentarian to make a nom-
ination, has nominated Yousafzai
for the prize.
Yousafzai, known for her
outspoken criticism of Taliban
atrocities and her defence of
girls education, was shot in the
head after two men approached
her on her way home from school.
Rallies have been held in sup-
port of Yousafzai by the National
Students Federation in Pakistan. In
response to the attempted assas-
sination, candlelight vigils were
held in Pakistan and a school in
Peshawar was renamed Malala
Yousafzai Government Girls
Secondary School.
Yousafzai remains in a U.K. hos-
pital and is expected to recover.
In early 2009, under a pen name,
Yousafzai published a diary for the
BBC that highlighted the Talibans
ban on girls education in the
northwest Swat district of Pakistan.
Yousafzai was awarded a prize for
her peace work by the Pakistani
government in 2011. In that same
year, she was nominated for an
International Childrens Peace Price.
The petition in support of
Yousafzais Nobel Peace Prize
nomination is at change.org.
IRELANDS FIRST
ABORTION CLINIC OPENS
In October, the Marie Stopes
Clinic became the first medical
nelliegrams
After 39 years, the Toronto Womens
Bookstore closed its doors in November, just
a few short months after Ottawas Mother
Tongue shut down after 18 years in business.
The stores could no longer make a living.
Mother Tongue Books former co-owner
Evelyn Huer said the challenges of being an
independent bookseller in a climate that fa-
vours big-box stores and electronic forms of
reading, coupled with the desire to pursue
other goals, led to the decision to close.
Its been increasingly difcult to be
sustainable and also to keep the spark
there for us, Huer said. Almost every
bookseller I know is now or has faced the
pressures of trying to sell books in this
climate. When we opened this bookstore in
1994, there was no Chapters. There was no
Internet presence.
The popularity of online giant Amazon
and chains like Chapters has consumers
expecting to buy books at prices that cant
affordably be matched by independents,
which dont receive the same deep dis-
counts from book publishers.
You can get almost anything on Amazon
if you want, but its up to the person where
they want to spend their money, said
Toronto Womens Bookstore former owner
Victoria Moreno.
The bookstore no longer received the
level of community support it needed to sur-
vive. The loss came as a blow to many who
remembered the store as a vibrant site of
feminist community and organizinga role
it had played ever since it opened in 1973.
The Toronto Womens Bookstore began
as a few titles housed in the womens com-
munity centre of Toronto. Back then, most
of the collection was thin pamphlets held
together by staples, but they nonetheless
ew off the shelves.
Patti Kirk, one of the rst women to run
Toronto Womens Bookstore, remembers
having a stapled-together copy of the wom-
ens health classic Our Bodies, Ourselves
that sold for 50 cents.
Politically, everything was changing.
There was an explosion of information, Ms.
Magazine started publishing, and people
were just ... electried, she recalls.
In 1973, TWB and the Vancouver Womens
Bookstore were the rst to open during the
second wave womens movements burst of
energy. The demand for feminist information
grew as universities started offering wom-
ens studies courses, libraries beefed up
their womens literature sections, womens
newspapers and magazines began and 1975
was declared International Womens Year.
It was just a really exciting time, recalled
Kirk.
Womens bookstores were not only
places to share the literature of the feminist
movement but also physical spaces where
women could feel safe, meet, learn and
organize. They were often the hub of the
feminist community.
Today, Thunder Bay, Ontarios Northern
Womens Bookstore is the sole surviving
feminist bookstore in Canada. Margaret
Phillips, who co-founded Northern Womens
Bookstore in 1984, recalls the excitement of
local women, following a conference in 1973,
as feminists formed organizations and set
out to provide services women needed.
What we were lacking was the literature,
recalled Phillips. One of us would go to
Ottawa or Toronto and come back with an
armful of books, and theyd get spread around.
We kept saying we needed a bookstore.
The Toronto Womens Bookstore closed in November.
STORY ENDS FOR
FEMINIST BOOKSTORES
BY ANDI SCHWARTZ
With the support of the feminist commu-
nity, Phillips and Anna McColl opened the
Northern Womens Bookstore. The most
important thing for this bookstore is to pro-
vide a safe space for women, said Phillips.
Feminist presses then lled the shelves of
womens bookstores. The Womens Press in
Toronto and Press Gang in Vancouver were
among the rst feminist presses in Canada
in the early 70s. Publishers and bookstores
were joined by feminist publications like
Branching Out, Broadside, Herizons and
Kinesis that were dedicated to telling the
stories about women that werent getting
space and airtime from mainstream media.
Margie Wolfe worked at The Womens
Press when it started and went on to form
her own feminist press, Second Story Press,
in 1988. The feminist press pioneers saw no
books that spoke to the issues, history or
experiences of women and they sought to
create companies that would prioritize those
concerns, according to Wolfe. Most of us
had no experience whatsoever. We just had
a commitment to a certain kind of content
and had to gure out how to do it, she said.
Enthusiasm for womens literature
grew, and in its second year the Toronto
Womens Bookstore moved to a building
where Kirk and co-manager Marie Prins
rubbed elbows with a womens printing
press and a womens self-defence collec-
tive. The store continued to expand and
later moved to Harbord Street, where it
stood until an arsonist attempted to burn
down the Morgentaler Clinic located above
the store. The re destroyed nearly all the
bookstores inventory.
The store stayed open due to fundraising
efforts and restructured management. Kirk
ended her tenure as manager two years
after the blaze, saying goodbye to the book-
store after 11 years. It was hard to leave,
but it was time.
About a dozen womens bookstores
opened in Canada during the 80s, includ-
ing the Northern Womens Bookstore, the
Ottawa Womens Bookstore, A Womans
Place in Calgary and Bold Print in Winnipeg.
In the 1990s, Women in Print in Vancouver
and Mother Tongue in Ottawa opened.
When Carole Dale and Louise Hager
opened Women in Print in Vancouver in
1993, bookstores were still lively centres of
womens socializing, education and organiz-
ing. Their store hosted book clubs, launches
and readings, and Dale says she still hears
from people who miss the store.
The loss of [womens bookstores] is very
much a loss of a good community space for
women. I dont know what could replace it,
said Dale.
Anjula Gogia was co-manager of the
Toronto Womens Bookstore from 1998 until
2006. It was a time when the store was
extremely active in the academic, feminist
and lesbian communities and held book
launches featuring big names like bell hooks
and Alice Walker.
[It was a] place where you could have
your politics right there, front and centre,
and didnt have to hide who you were, ac-
cording to Gogia.
Moreno, who worked part-time at the
store in the 1990s, loved the feminist envi-
ronment from the moment she walked in.
Just coming into the womens bookstore
was really empowering and gave me a
sense of freedom.
The Toronto Womens Bookstore faced
nancial trouble again in 2009, and the
then-owners were looking for someone to
take over. Moreno decided to try her hand at
keeping the institution alive. Her goal was to
stay true to what the bookstore had always
represented, but to make it more of a thriv-
ing community space again by adding free
Wi-Fi, a caf and a garden patio, and host-
ing frequent events.
Victoria [Moreno] worked her head off
to breathe life into that store, according to
Kirk. But it wasnt enough.
While the decision to close was difcult
for Moreno, she insists her experience was
a positive one. Its a sad thing to have the
bookstore go, absolutely. I think everybody
regrets that. But in terms of having taken
this challenge on, I dont regret it.
While feminist bookstores may not sur-
vive, many feminist publishers have a good
chance, as long as they can adapt.
The market was quite specic before.
Its not so much changing, just enlarging
and diversifying, says Wolfe, whose com-
pany has published books in 40 languages
and 51 countries.
Wolfe insists feminist publishers are still
necessary because their mandate is to pub-
lish womens words, whereas mainstream
publishers will only do so if its protable.
Womens Press marketing manager
Jessica Hale agrees feminist presses are
still necessary because publishing contin-
ues to be a male-dominated industry.
If were not creating these spaces for
womens writing, they inevitably get over-
shadowed, she said.
One thing even the most versatile pub-
lisher cant make up for, however, is the
community space bookstores provided to
women through the decades. But even
those seem to be retreating online.
(Continued on page 8)
the American Civil Liberties Union.
Windsor and Thea Clara Spyer
were married in 2007 in Toronto.
Spyer died in 2009 after a long
battle with multiple sclerosis,
leaving her property to Windsor.
Because of DOMA, their marriage
was not recognized under federal
law, and Windsor was asked to
pay over $363,000 in federal es-
tate taxes.
SLUTS FLUSH
RUSH
Following talk
show host Rush
Limbaughs
attack on law
student Sandra Fluke, whom he
called a slut for wanting medical
coverage for birth control, a na-
tional feminist campaign driven by
social media has urged the shows
sponsors to Flush Rush.
And they did. AOL, Walgreens
and the Wal-Mart-owned Sams
Club were among companies
that stopped advertising on af-
filiates of the company that airs
The Rush Limbaugh Show. This
resulted in an estimated loss of
a few million dollars to one affili-
ate, Cumulus Media. Dial Global
Radio Networks, meanwhile, said
revenue fell 11 percent in the
second quarter as a result of the
anti-Limbaugh campaign.
Ms. magazine

EGYPTIAN WOMEN
DEMAND PROTECTION
FROM HARASSMENT
Hundreds of women representing
a coalition of 33 womens rights
organizations marched in Cairo,
Egypt, in October to present
President Mohamed Morsi with
a list of rightsincluding a law
criminalizing sexual harassment
that they want enshrined in the
countrys constitution.
Proposed articles for the new
nelliegrams
constitution are being prepared
by a 100-member assembly. There
are reportedly disagreements
between Islamists, who dominate
the constitutional panel, and secu-
larists over the role of religion in
the charter. Article 36, according
to leaks, would lower the age of
marriage from 18, legalize female
genital mutilation and use Islamic
jurisprudence in a way that could
limit womens rights to work and
access education.
This constitution, especially
article 36, ... is dangerous for
womens rights, said political
activist Inas Mekkawi, one of the
organizers of the demonstration.
Women are seeking guarantees of
equality and quotas in the elected
government.

WOMEN WORTHY
AS DISCIPLES
A Harvard University professor
of early divinity claims a fourth-
century fragment of papyrus
written in Coptic quotes Jesus as
referring both to having a wife and
to women disciples.
Karen King said the text con-
tains a dialogue in which Jesus
refers to his wife, identified as
Mary. King believes the fragment,
which came from Egypt, is a copy
of a gospel written in the second
century.
King unveiled the fragment at
a conference of Coptic experts in
Rome in September. Four words
in the 3.8-by-7.6-centimetre frag-
ment provide the first evidence,
she stated, that early Christians
believed Jesus had been mar-
ried. Those words, written in a
language of ancient Egyptian
Christians, translate as, Jesus
said to them, my wife, King said
in a statement.
Even more interesting is Kings
claim that in the dialogue the
disciples discuss whether Mary is
nelliegrams
(Continued from page 7)
(FRANCE) When French couple Tatiana Marot
and Claire Simon decided they wanted to
have a child, they didnt go to the nearest
fertility clinic, even though France has more
such clinics than any other country. Instead,
they packed up their car and headed over the
border to Belgium14 separate times. There,
at an expense of approximately $12,000 Cdn,
the couple got nine rounds of artificial in-
semination and two rounds of in vitro
fertilization before Simon finally got pregnant.
Their baby is due in the spring.
Why didnt Marot and Simon simply stay
in France, where more than 20,000 babies
have been conceived thanks to a network of
publicly funded fertility clinics?
The answer is simple: Lesbian couples
and single women are banned from access-
ing them.
Were obviously not satisfied with this,
says Marot, co-chair of the Parisian wing
of the Association des Parents Gays et
Lesbiens. We wont be satisfied until we
have the same rights as other French
women. Currently, the only people in
France who can access assisted repro-
ductive technologies are married couples
and heterosexual common-law couples
who have been together for at least
two years. Currently, gays and lesbians
arent allowed to marry in France, but a
bill on same-sex marriage will be debated
in January.
In the last French presidential election,
Socialist candidate Franois Hollande prom-
ised to expand LGBT rights in his country,
including the right to marry, adopt and ac-
cess fertility clinics. But, after he was
elected, he only announced plans to legalize
same-sex marriage and adoption. A parlia-
mentary vote is expected this spring.
Frances new justice minister, Christiane
Taubira, told the countrys main LGBT maga-
zine, Ttu, her rights bill represents a huge
advance in equality. She said, the ques-
tion of parental ties is more complicated.
Taubira said the government needs more
time to study the issue of who should ac-
cess fertility treatments.
For lesbian mother Claire Blandin, who cur-
rently has no legal right to her son Eloi, born a
year and half ago to her partner Blandine
STERILE CLIMATE FACES
FRENCH LESBIANS
BY KAJ HASSELRIIS
The only spaces we have left are virtual
ones, according to Gogia, and thats not
my vision of a community.
American author and Feministing blog-
ger Courtney Martin sees things a bit
differently. A waning interest on the part
of smart, book-loving women in issues that
affect their lives is not a factor in shutting
down womens bookstores, she believes.
Rather, she says, the current generation
of feminists is and will continue to be ac-
tive in feminist dialogue and organizing in
myriad forms and spacesboth virtual
and physical.
DOMESTICS ASKED FOR
DNA TESTS FOR CHILDREN
BY SANDHYA SINGH
Filipino-Canadian activists are alarmed over
recent reports that Citizenship and
Immigration Canada (CIC) officials have
asked foreign domestic workers to provide
DNA evidence to verify that the children
they wish to sponsor once they get their
permanent residence status are biologically
related to them.
Under Canadas Live-in Caregiver
Program (LCP), domestic workers are re-
quired to complete 24 months of full-time
caregiving work, after which are eligible to
apply for permanent resident status. They
may then become eligible to sponsor their
spouse and dependent children. The entire
immigration process for domestic workers
can take up to seven years.
We are concerned that DNA testing is
being used as another administrative barrier,
which not only prolongs the reunification of
families but may result in failed sponsorship
applications, said Danielle Bisnar, a com-
munity organizer with the Magkaisa Centre
in Toronto and a human rights lawyer.
CICs policy states that DNA testing is
intended as a last resort, an option when
birth or family documents are insufficient or
when there is suspicion of fraud.
Bisnar says there may be legitimate rea-
sons for discrepancies in documentation
provided by Filipinos applying under the LCP.
There may be a lack of understanding on an
applicants part about what documentation
is required, or the applicant may have re-
ceived inaccurate information by recruiters.
Or, the child in question may be the product
of adoption, and the applicant may not de-
clare the child as adopted on her original
application. This may lead to discrepancies
in documentation later on, she said, which
CIC may interpret as fraudbut that is sim-
ply not the case.
In Bisnars view, the CIC definition of a
family member is narrow and Eurocentric.
She sees DNA tests as heavy-handed. To
limit the concept of family to only biological
relationships denies the many ways in
which people form family bonds, she said.
CIC has allowed for the use of DNA evi-
dence since 1991. However, Bisnar notes
that the request for DNA testing is a re-
cent development for live-in caregivers
and is a requirement that is increasing in
frequency. Tests must be conducted by
labs approved by CIC, and the applicants
must cover the cost, between $400 and
$800. In order to collect a DNA sample, a
child must also travel to an immigration
office in their home country.
Bisnar wants to know whether live-in
caregivers are being singled out more often
than other immigrant classes for DNA test-
ing. A CIC representative said the
(Continued on page 10)
department does not keep statistics on DNA
testing because such tests are not part of
required medical examinations. According
to CIC, it is the prerogative of a visa officer
to suggest DNA testing in some circum-
stances, but the decision to have DNA
testing is made by the applicant.
The Canadian Council for Refugees ex-
pressed concern about the impact of DNA
testing for immigration purposes in a 2011
report. According to CIC data from 2009
obtained through the Access to Information
Act by a Vancouver-based immigration law
firm (as well as information from source
countries and companies that provide DNA
tests) over 2,000 positive tests were con-
ducted, representing about 1,200 families.
The firm estimated that about 3,500 indi-
viduals were tested to prove their family
relationship. The report also noted that
DNA tests for the purpose of family reunifi-
cation were predominantly requested for
children in Asia, African and the Caribbean.
Refugee families were disproportionately
affected.
Bisnars key concern about DNA testing
for children of live-in caregiver applicants is
that it may result in the reduction of suc-
cessful sponsorship applications. This would
mean they would have to return to their
home country after they have completed the
mandatory years of work in Canada.
The use of DNA testing is in line with the
massive shift in Canadian immigration policy
towards employer-driven temporary work.
If this continues, the LCP will effectively be
turned into another temporary foreign work-
er program, Bisnar says, and will lead to
the continued erosion of workers security.
Under temporary worker programs, tens
of thousands of foreign workers are brought
to Canada for a specific employer for a lim-
ited time. Most have no opportunity to
become permanent residents. The LCP does
permit live-in caregivers eventually to apply
for permanent residency.
Danielle Bisnar, a Toronto human rights lawyer, says
asking domestic workers to provide DNA tests of their
children can be a barrier to successful immigration.
(Continued from page 9)
With the advent of the smartphone, apps to
help women track their menstrual and fertil-
ity cycles have become widely available.
They range from the simplest in function and
designwidgets like Bunnys Period Tracker
that count down the days to your next pe-
riodto more complicated programs, like
FertilityFriend, that track cyclical signs such
as body temperature in order to determine
when ovulation will occur.
However, one spinoff of the period-
tracking app trend is definitely not
woman-friendly. Its period-tracking
appsfor men. While one now-defunct
application had the purpose of helping the
user participate more fully in his partners
fertility cycle, the majority of the apps exist
for the purpose of letting a user know when
his girlfriend might have PMS or is men-
struating so he can steer clear. Some apps
even offer tracking for multiple women so
that dates can be arranged (or, more to the
point, avoided) accordingly.
The apps creators defend them as
fun, light-hearted humour. Code Reds Lisi
Harrison playfully calls Code Red a giant
step towards world peace. Yet, with names
like FloJuggler and IAmAMan, its fairly safe
to say that, whatever the stated purpose, the
period-tracker for men perpetuates a view of
the female cycle as a curse.
While users of the period-tracker apps for
men enjoy the conspicuousness of lightning
bolts and horned Venus symbols, Period
Tracker Deluxes website describes its icons
of pink flowers and butterflies as simple and
cute. Whatever the design of their interfaces,
however, the apps aimed at women do have
useful applications. Theyre descendants of
websites that allowusers to input and make
predictions based on cycle-related informa-
tion and, even further back, of stand-alone
thermo-sensitive devices like Pearly or
LadyComp that measure and record a wom-
ans basal body temperature on a daily basis to
determine her fertile and infertile days.
Since around 2008, fertility awareness has
become a lot more convenient and acces-
sible, with some of the more popular apps
reaching between one and five million users
who pay between nothing and $2.99 for the
privilege of having data on their cycles avail-
able wherever they go.
Though packaged as fertility-awareness
tools, one secondary purpose of cycle-
tracking applications is to scrutinize a users
PMS symptoms. Some ask users to identify
daily physical or psychological symptoms
fromanger to weight gainthat may not
even be abnormal or bothersome. Some
applications include positive symptoms,
like calmor confidence. This seems in the
spirit of the Menstrual Joy Questionnaire
presented by writers Janice Delaney, Mary
Jane Lupton and Emily Toth, in their book The
Curse: A Cultural History of Menstruation, to
counter the presumptions in Rudolf H. Moos
Menstrual Distress Questionnaire, a tool used
for research purposes since the late 60s.
Then again, the inclusion of more positive
states of being by some apps could simply be
intended to establish a baseline fromthe pre-
ovulatory phase against which to measure the
presumably negative symptoms of the pre-
menstrual and menstrual phases.
To be certain, increased fertility aware-
ness can provide new insights for women.
However, when it comes to tracking PMS
and menstruation, many apps carry underly-
ing messages that women need to police
their bodies and their emotions and that men
should be encouraged to monitor them.
worthy, and Jesus said, she can
be my disciple.
The new gospel reflects ancient
debates about sexuality and mar-
riage, but they are relevant today
as the Vatican continues to keep
women from being priests or min-
istering independently as nuns.
SOUTH AFRICA MAKES
HIV PROGRESS
Kenyan Minister of Gender,
Children and Social Development
Naomi Shaban, praised South
Africa for its success in bringing
down its mother-to-child infection
rate for HIV.
A report by the U.K. Medical
Research Council recently re-
ported that South Africas HIV
programs helped to raise the
countrys life expectancy from 56.5
years in 2009 to 60 years in 2011.
Shaban, who led a teamof
African delegates visiting South
Africa to assess its gender-equality
interventions, praised South Africa
for raising the CD4 count that
women must reach before they can
access anti-retroviral drugs.
Said Shaban, I must say, the
South African government has
done a lot, yet the challenges
are huge and need to still be
addressed.
Lois Chingandu, executive
director of the South African
aid group Safaid and the teams
civil society representative, said
South Africa still needs to address
gender-based violence such as
hate crimes against lesbians,
the harassment of sex workers
by police and community members,
and the high number of unplanned
pregnancies.
NNN-SANEWS
FRANCE EQUALIZES
WOMENS TITLES
The French government of Prime
Minister Franois Fillion says ma-
demoiselle will no longer be used
on government and civic forms
and administrative communica-
tions. The title mademoiselle, used
to denote an unmarried woman,
will be replaced with madame,
considered the equivalent of mon-
sieur. According to a memo issued
nelliegrams
APPS BRING
ON PERIODIC
DISCOMFORT
BY SARAH-JEAN KRAHN
by the prime ministers office, all
official terms used to identify
women in relation to their marital
status will be abolished.
The move comes after two
feminist organizations took on the
issue, Ozez le feminiisme, or Dare
to be feminist and Les Chiennes
de Garde, or watchdogs.
Bitch magazine
WOMEN PREFER
NORMAL SIZES
According to Canadian researcher
and modelling agency owner Ben
Barry, women are twice as likely
to buy a product when models
appear to have realistic weights,
compared to models who appear
underweight. Barry sponsored a
survey of 2,500 women who were
shown mock ads and asked to de-
termine the likelihood they would
buy products. Writing for Elle
Canada online, Barry predicted
the survey results could lead to
an increase in the use of models
more aligned with potential buyers
body sizes.
DAYCARE PAYS
A Sherbrooke University study has
determined that Quebecs daycare
programis beneficial to the prov-
inces economy. Under the Quebec
scheme, parents pay $7 per day,
while the other $40 cost is subsid-
ized. The 2012 study concluded,
The state obtained a fiscal return of
147 percent, which means that the
programhas contributed to both the
social development and the eco-
nomic prosperity of the province.
The study concluded that
Quebec womens increased
participation in the labour force
increased the provinces gross
domestic product by $5.1 billion,
which, it says, brought in $1.7 bil-
lion in taxes to Quebec and $700
million to Ottawa. In 2011, half of
Quebec preschoolers were en-
rolled in the professional daycare
system. This represents a 43 per-
cent increase over the previous
decade. It compares to 20 percent
across Canada. In Quebec, the
incomes of families headed by
women rose 81 percent.
The Globe and Mail
nelliegrams
Peeters, the time for the government to tighten
parental ties is now. She notes that equal ac-
cess to fertility clinics is just one of the rights
missing fromTaubiras plan.
Even if gay marriage becomes law in
France, the government has given no indi-
cation that it will give lesbian mothers the
same parental presumption heterosexual
parents enjoy. If Blandin and her partner
have another baby, they want the right to
list both parents names on the childs birth
certificate, not just the birth mothers.
Currently, the second parent must petition
for adoption rights.
Its not exactly cool, says Blandin. In our
everyday lives, were recognized by every-
one else we know as two mothers: our
family, our friends, our doctor, our nanny.
Unlike Canada and the United States,
France has sweeping laws that heavily
regulate assisted reproductive technolo-
gies. As well as lesbian couples, women
over 42 are barred from using the services
of the public fertility clinics. The main pro-
ponent of these restrictions is the Catholic
Church, which still influences French pol-
itics. The church opposes in vitro
fertilization because it can involve the de-
struction of embryos, and its against
artificial insemination because it believes
procreation should take place only when a
married man and woman have sex.
But its not only the Catholic Church that
dominates bioethical discussions. French
political power remains disproportionately in
the hands of white men from rural France,
and, generally speaking, they are socially
conservative. Among many French
politicians, the idea of equal adoption rights
for same-sex couples is actually more con-
troversial than same-sex marriage rights.
Still, the Socialist government seems confi-
dent it has enough support to get its equal
rights bill through the National Assembly.
The countrys LGBT community finds itself
in a quandary over the newgovernments
actionspraising it for making some progress
while at the same time demanding it go further.
Imsurprised that Hollande isnt doing more
now, says Blandin. He promised to eliminate
the double standard in assisted reproductive
technologies as soon as possible.
In Ttu, one of Frances leading gay rights
activists, Nicolas Gougain of the group Inter-
LGBT, went further. We hope the president
corrects this omission immediately because,
at least for the moment, we have the impres-
sion that Christiane Taubira is happy to do
the bare minimum.
Gilles Wullus, editor of Ttu, said Taubira
was chilly when he asked her about fertil-
ity rights. Were forced to conclude that the
minister has deliberately decided to remain
evasive with gays and lesbians, he wrote.
Leaders of the Association des Parents
Gays et Lesbiens are optimistic that Frances
independent bioethics review board, set up
when conservative reproduction laws were
put into place in 1994, will recommend more
liberal policies when it meets again in 2013,
especially if marriage and adoption laws are
passed before then.
In the meantime, Blandin anxiously awaits
the passage of those laws so she can have
equal rights as a parent. If my partner and I
separated, I would have no legal right to
Eloi, she says. I cant even imagine what
that would be like.
Marot and her partner Simon hope they
will have equal rights by the time their child is
born. But, even if that happens, Marot says
she wont be satisfied. Whats being
proposed isnt enough. Our children wont be
fully protected until the presumption of
parenthood is included in our marriages.
Marot also hopes that if she and her partner
decide to have another baby they wont have
to make a costly run for the border to do it.
Claire Blandin, shown with her partner Blandine Peters and their son Eloi, believes Frances fertility clinics should be
accessible to lesbian couples.
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Herstory 2013:
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From the past and the present
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Herstory celebrates the stories of inspiring Canadian
women combined with the essential elements of a day
planner. Use it through the year to chart and organize the
daily herstory of another inspiring woman: you!
Brand-new full-colour design for 2013
Many of us here in Toronto are in shock over the closing
of the Toronto Womens Bookstore in November. After
39 years and many different operating paradigmscollec-
tives, partnerships, single owners, non-profit and for-profit
arrangementsthe store, one of the most influential of its
kind in North America, could not compete with big box
operations like Indigo and e-tailers such as Amazon.
The stores bread and butteruniversity course books
began drying up as the industry landscape changed.
Students can now buy used books online, the University
of Toronto Bookstore now offers textbook rentals and
some U.S. websites post complete books free of charge.
The theory was, however, that regardless of online and
big box competitors, a womans bookstore would survive,
if only because it was a community hub. The TWB was
always expert at programming events that attracted large
audiences, but although book sales were good, especially
at launches, they werent enough to keep the store afloat.
At their peak, there were over 150 womens bookstores
in North America. There are now fewer than a dozen,
and exactly one is still functioning in Canada, the
Northern Womens Bookstore in Thunder Bay, Ontario.
On one hand, this news is profoundly distressing.
Womens bookstores were once beacons that shone a
light on feminist ideas. Alongside rape crisis centres and
womens shelters, they were emblematic of feminist in-
genuity, strength and creativity, and of the movements
ability to organize. Unfortunately, violence and sexual
assault are still very much alive, meaning that womens
services are not yet obsolete.
But feminist ideas are alive and well, tooits just the
bookstore thats lost its place. By that I mean that while
Im nostalgic for the days when feminists would coalesce
around their book emporiums, I dont believe their de-
mise signifies the end of feminism.
Its the venues that have changed, not the power of
feminism. Witness last year, when right-wing U.S.
commentator Rush Limbaugh called college student
Sandra Fluke a slut for wanting her insurance company
to cover her birth control. For it, he was made to look
like a fool. I was gobsmacked when the rights goon had
to backtrack because of the overwhelmingly negative
response to his comments. Yet Limbaughs been saying
outrageous things for decades. What about this particular
comment was different from any of his other inflamma-
tory anti-feminist rhetoric?
The answer lies in exactly what sunk the womens
bookstores across the content: online action. In the
Limbaugh case, it generated a quick and passionate
response. Id argue that Internet dialogue is doing for
feminism today what bookstores did for women in the
80s. It provides a forum and a sense of intellectual
community.
Its worth noting that three days after the behemoth
American breast cancer foundation Komen for the Cure
announced that it would de-fund Planned Parenthood
in Americaan amount representing about $600,000
in grants for cancer screening for low-income women
the organization was forced to reverse its decision when
the online backlash became too big to handle.
Meanwhile, here in Toronto, a series of sexual assaults
prompted a rally that attracted over 300 men and
women and re-energized the movement to end violence
against women.
We may have lost our bookstores, but the countrys
prime minister wont dare to introduce legislation in
Parliament that would deny womens right to control
their reproduction.
As we acknowledge the bookstores that played such
an important role in advancing feminism, I say this:
Honour those stores and the women who ran them.
Consider them a part of our valued history. Mourn them,
if youd like.
But do not bury feminism. Its not dead yet.
Coles Notes
BY SUSAN G. COLE
CAN FEMINISM THRIVE WITHOUT BOOKSTORES?
E
ver since The Graduate (1963) and Harold and Maude
(1971), the older woman-younger man paradigm
has been a topic of cinematic curiosity. However, it
wasnt until the term cougar emerged 25 years ago that
the relationship gained a more public profile.
The term was reportedly first coined in the 1980s by
members of the Vancouver Canucks hockey team to refer
to older female fans who sought to date hockey players.
Despite the negative connotations of the word, the cougar-
cub pairing has come a long way from the notion of a cougar
as a heavily made up woman decked out in leopard print
clothing (some Canucks must have been confused about
the markings of wildcat species) poised at the end of a bar,
sucking lustily on martini olives and ready to prey on the
detritus of younger women. It didnt hurt that strong, in-
dependent women like Susan Sarandon and Demi Moore
were in long-term relationships with younger men.
If the media craze is any indication, it seems that were
beginning to embrace the idea that older woman-younger
man unions can be commonplace. After all, Time magazine
published a photo essay celebrating 17 famous historical
cougars, and the New York Times ran a story in 2009 that
claimed younger men are more active pursuers of older
women, rather than the other way around. In 2008,
playwright Donna Moore produced the Broadway hit
Cougar: The Musical, a light-hearted look at the phenomenon
from a womans point of view. Then, Viacom International,
the company that created The Bachelor, launched the reality
show The Cougar in 2009. It features young men who vie
for an older womans affection. Are these signs that the
cougar stereotype is beginning to shatter?
Today, the Canadian cougar website cougarlife.com boasts
1,500 new members per month. Its CEO, Claudia
Opdenkelder, is a self-identified cougar who has publicly
accused Google of sexism for deeming her companys ads
not family friendly. Regardless of Googles view, the first
International Cougar Week was held in 2011, a year after
the Miss Cougar Canada competition sent its 48-year-old
winner on a cruise for the presumed purpose of meeting a
desirable cub.
There are some signs that the term cougar is losing some
of its stigma. However, a closer examination reveals that
the taboo of older woman-younger man relationships is
still widely present. Despite the increasing visibility of such
relationships, older woman-younger man relationships
havent made a dent in Canadian relationship statistics. In
fact, they are so unrepresentative of the relationship prefer-
ences of Canadians that very little census data has been
COUGARS
RESPECT
DESERVE
WHY
I
llu
s
t
r
a
t
io
n
K
a
r
e
n
J
u
s
t
l
HOW OLDER WOMEN PAIRED WITH YOUNGER
MEN ARE TRAPPED BY SEXIST BELIEFS
BY JEANIE KEOGH
collected on the issue. More data has been collected on
same-sex and interracial relationships.
Rhiannon Bury, an associate professor of womens and
gender studies at Athabasca University, confirms there is
little empirical research on the subject. Grasping the extent
of older woman-younger man relationships is made difficult
because most articles on the topic are conducted by journal-
ists who find a few couples to interview. At most, the stories
are anecdotal.
As for measuring effects and changing social attitudes,
you would need government agency statistics or published
findings from a large university study, and those wont be
easy to come by, says Bury.
According to Statistics Canada, the last study on age-
discrepant relationships where women were the older party
was conducted in 2003 by Monica Boyd and Anne Li. They
found that women who were older than their male partners
by four or more years made up six per cent of relationships.
Women who were older than
male partners by 10 years made
up just one per cent of relation-
ships. In contrast, relationships
where men were older than their
female partners by four or more
years made up 36 percent of
relationships. Men who were
older than female partners by
10 years or more made up seven
per cent of relationships.
Zoe Lawton, a New Zealand-based researcher who au-
thored a 2010 study, Older Women-Younger Men Relationships:
the Social Phenomenon of Cougars, believes the prevalence of
older woman-younger man relationships has been exagger-
ated by recent media attention. However, she believes this
exaggeration has led to more widespread acceptance of the
cougar phenomenon. Lawton predicts that, with time, the
derogatory nature of the term cougar could disappear alto-
gether. She attributes this change to women having more
relationships over their life cycles and to a historical shift in
the types of people available as partners. At the same time,
less traditional societal norms with regard to mate selection
and the acceptance of womens sexual interest beyond their
child-bearing years play important roles in dating patterns.
British love and sex relationship counsellor Susan
Quilliam believes this type of relationship has become more
prevalent since she first began speaking about the subject
30 years ago. She believes a major shift happened when
women gained greater control over their reproductive abili-
ties. The minute women have the control over thisand
you can see this in all culturesthey then have control over
being able to carry on an education, and therefore they have
the control over being able to have a career, and therefore
they have more control over their own earning power, she
said. They dont need to go out with a man who is going
to support them, and therefore they can go out with a
younger man who is not as financially stable.
Trends aside, there are also cougars who are not making
themselves known, preferring to avoid the negative implica-
tions the word cougar invokes. This was my experience when
I became involved with a man 10 years my junior at the age
of 30. More than a few people of my generation made jokes
about my love of young fresh meat and they frequently
asked questions such as, How is the teenager? Or, if I
complained about an aspect of my relationship, I would hear
comments like, Ah! The joys of puberty! Some people have
suggested my ability to rob the cradle is a product of my
still-young looks and physique, which they subsequently
warned I would one day lose. Hes just a baby or What
could he possibly offer you? were other comments I heard
regularly. I tried to extol the virtues of his personality. I told
people that he makes incredible
tiramisu, reads non-fiction
books on relationships, calls his
grandmother twice a week,
drinks responsibly, doesnt do
drugs and listens to the same
music I enjoy.
Harder still to listen to were
sexist comments about needing
to find a man who would take
care of me. Telling these people
that my current boyfriend was taking better emotional care
of me than any same-age boyfriend with a bulging wallet
became a moot point. Well-argued reasons for my decision
to partner with someone younger, rather than someone my
own age, became exhausting and demoralizing because I
was being asked to commodify my relationship. So I simply
stopped telling people my boyfriends age.
What I came to realize was that older women with
younger partners are not taken seriously because they do
not share the same playing field as men in relationships
with significantly younger women.
Nobody calls an older man going out with a younger
woman a tiger, or a lion, or a panther, Quilliam observes.
Unless its a big age difference, nobody suggests that hes
being perverted or predatory. But the age differences some-
times criticized as cougar are sometimes just a couple of
years, so there is a tendency to criticize older women in age-
gap relationships where they wouldnt criticize older men.
While cougars and their male counterparts may be on a
level economic playing field, they are not necessarily re-
garded as equal players. An older man with a younger female
partner tends to be viewed as someone who could have
someone his age, but chooses not to so because he is able
attract a younger, more desirable woman with his money.
Conversely, an older woman with a younger male partner
tends to be viewed as someone who has chosen a younger
man because the men her age are either married or spoken
for. Her money is seen as proof that she doesnt need to be
taken care of, giving her younger boyfriend the financial
freedom to date her without having to be a provider.
Indeed, a woman with a significantly younger boyfriend
poses a threat to the old adage that a woman is supposed
to want a man with money. As such, it is a relationship that
can also be seen as a desire for a more equal relationship.
Quilliam believes that one reason the cougar relationship
is seen as deviant or transitory is because of the idea that
normal women are supposed to bear children from hetero-
sexual partnerships. Such heteronormative expectations do
a disservice to many couples.
We still think that a valid relationship leads to children
and if its not going to lead to children, its not quite real,
Quilliam says.
Media representations tend
to encourage this view by de-
picting older woman-younger
man pairings as either a sexual
fetish or, at best, a relationship
not expected not to last. Part
of this has to do with slut-
shaming. Sex and The Citys
character Samantha was an
essential precursor to the
widespread awareness of sexually liberated older women
who dated younger men. Where the show and many of its
successors fell short was in their depiction of only short-
lived cougar-style relationships in which the possibility of
something long-lasting was not addressed.
Interestingly, the term cougar is more common among
heterosexuals than in the gay, lesbian or trans populations,
suggesting that the phenomenon can be boiled down to a
power dynamic that is more prevalent in heterosexual re-
lationships. One lesbian from B.C.s Lower Mainland, who
preferred to remain anonymous, told me the label cougar
isnt applied to her relationship with a woman 15 years her
junior, perhaps because age-discrepant relationships are
common in her community. Because the gay community
is a smaller group of people, dating someone younger may
be less about being a cougar and more about who is avail-
ablea crime of opportunity, she jokes.
People in their 20s are more accessible because they have
less responsibility, she adds. Its hard to find someone
youre own age because they are busy doing their 40-some-
thing thing and living up to their 40-something
responsibilities. Also, as stigmas go, being a lesbian still
trumps being a cougar.
In this light, its difficult to determine if the lingering
criticism of the cougar relationship is more ageist or sexist.
Shearman thinks another thing working against cougar
relationships is the ageist concept that men mature more
slowly than women and remain boys longer. This, she says,
forces women to consider only men who, by virtue of their
age, are seen to be ready for a relationship.
Curriculum and education teaches this idea that men
and boys stay immature for longer and women mature
faster, according to Shearman. The reverse of this
goes against all the things that women are supposed to
want. Women are supposed to be looking for a secure,
mature man, something a 20- or 25-year-old is not sup-
posed to be.
Were selling men the idea that they are not ready for
serious relationships at an age when, two generations
previous, their grandfathers had already been working
for years and were married by their mid-20s. Of course,
times have changed and
modern-day relationships
require different things from
men and women. As more
women continue working
after having children, men
are required to take a more
active part in raising children,
to be emotionally mature, to
be better organized, to accept
their partners career de-
mands and do their share of the household chores. Could
it be that younger men are turning to older women for
this education?
If my experience is anything to go by, the answer is yes.
My boyfriends mother left her partner because he wasnt
doing his fair share around the house, leaving her with 100
per cent of the work and a full-time job. As a result, she
raised her son to do his part. Lucky for me, he cooks dinner
and drops it off for me at work on his days off, cleans the
oven and comes home with wonderfully scented soaps and
massage oils. He is a good communicator and a person who
accepts responsibility if he makes a mistake. People can call
him what they likewhipped, well-trained, my bitch, a
sucker, a mamas boy, or in the closet. They can think what
they want about me and my motivations, and they can cast
their votes as to how it will end.
In the meantime, I will continue to enjoy all the benefits
and struggle through the pitfalls of my relationship with
the hope that, in time, people will come to accept my
partnership the way they would any other loving partnership
between two consenting equals.
Until this happens, sexist and ageist biases will be a deter-
minant in the way we view heterosexual relationships.
Telling these people that my
current boyfriend was taking
better emotional care of me
than any same-age boyfriend
with a bulging wallet
became a moot point.
We still think that a valid
relationship leads to children
and if its not going to lead to
children, its not quite real.
relationship counsellor
Susan Quilliam
BY BARBARA D. JANUSZ
When Women
Blow the
Whistle
A
s the societal costs of corporate wrongdoing become
known, employees are speaking out against employers
with increasing frequencyeven when doing so may
jeopardize their careers. In many cases, these whistle-blowers
are women who, some studies report, are more inclined to value
egalitarian, ethical workplaces over constructs like solidarity
and toeing the line.
Researchers and regulators have taken an interest in whistle-
blowers, too, and have asked: What is it that makes a person
more likely to blow the whistleis it a sense of injustice, or
is it the possibility of being rewarded for doing the right thing?
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission is betting on
the latter. It recently implemented provisions of the Dodd-Frank
Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act and author-
ized large bounty payments to whistle-blowers for securities
laws violations. However, a collaborative 2009 study conducted
by law professors Yuval Feldman, of Bar-Ilan Universitys faculty
of law, and Orly Lobel, of the University of San Diego school
of law, suggests they neednt have bothered.
According to an article on the study published in the May
2010 edition of the Texas Law Review, The Incentives Matrix:
The Comparative Effectiveness of Rewards, Liabilities, Duties
and Protections for Reporting Illegality, men and women are
likely to blow the whistle for different reasons. The study was
based on a series of experimental surveys of a representative
panel of over 2,000 employees. Researchers compared the
effects of different regulatory mechanisms such as monetary
rewards, protective rights, positive obligations and liabilities
on individual motivation and behaviour. Interestingly, Feldman
and Lobel concluded, often, offering monetary rewards to
whistle-blowers will lead to less, rather than more, reporting
of illegality.
The reasons? First, the researchers found that, while men
in the survey said they would be more motivated to report
wrongdoing by receiving a monetary reward, women were
more inclined to be motivated by intrinsic factors such as duty,
and by anti-retaliation protection. Perhaps the most interesting
finding was that women were far more likely than men to
blow the whistle.
Corporate culture may provide some clues about these dif-
ferences. For women, its often a steep and perilous climb to
the top of the corporate (or public sector) ladder. It is also,
typically, a lonesome ascent. Unlike their male counterparts,
many of whom receive the endorsement and support of higher-
ups in the old boys network, women who aspire to be promoted
rely almost exclusively upon hard work and perseverance.
Accordingly, when a woman risks it all to blow the whistle on
wrongdoing in the workplace, we are often surprised that she
appears to have been willing to give up her access to power.
Under Canadian law there are some regulatory schemes
provincial occupational health and safety legislation and
environmental protection laws, for exampleto protect whistle-
blowers. Federally, the Criminal Code affords whistle-blowers
Jessica Ernst has been in a battle with Albertas Energy
Resources Conservation Board over issues of polluted
water and the drilling of coal bed methane by Encana
for nearly a decade. (Photo: Canadian Press)
the broadest safeguards from reprisals. Section 425.1 of the
Criminal Code prohibits employers from retaliating or threat-
ening to take action against employees who report illegalities
to a federal or provincial law enforcement official. The max-
imum sentence that can be imposed on employers is five years
imprisonment. The effect of the offence is to override the duty
of loyalty owed by the employee to the employer under the
common law known as master and servant. When discharging
duties associated with their employment, an employee has a
duty to act solely for the employers benefit. However, when
the employer is engaged in illegal activity, the employee would
not be considered to be acting disloyally and in breach of the
employment contract by reporting such misconduct to the
relevant authority.
In information bulletins, national law firms have expressed
the view that section 425.1 and other Criminal Code amend-
ments enacted in 2004 to address securities violations were
simply a knee-jerk reaction on the part of the federal govern-
ment to restore confidence in the equities markets. Despite
the fact that prosecutions of employers for retaliating against
whistle-blowers are a rarity, law-
yers nonetheless recommend that
their corporate clients frame their
own whistle-blowing policies as a
safeguard against such prosecu-
tions. Recommended provisions
under such policies include ensur-
ing whistle-blower anonymity,
encouraging the reporting of un-
lawful and inappropriate conduct,
while providing for effective and independent investigation
of complaints, and affording protection against retaliation
and ill treatment of the whistle-blower. Corporate clients are
also advised to laboriously document complaints to protect
themselves against false accusations by employees dismissed
for cause who claim to be whistle-blowers and seek damages
for wrongful dismissal.
When Dr. Michele Brill-Edwards blew the whistle over
pressure placed on her for expeditious approval of pharma-
ceutical drugs by Health Canada in 1991, she was sidelined,
and later driven to resign in 1996. At the time, Brill-Edwards
was a senior physician responsible for drug approvals at the
Health Canada agency that approves pharmaceutical drugs.
She eventually won a federal court case against Health Canada
and continued to speak out about the close ties between the
pharmaceutical industry and Canadian drug advisers that could
jeopardize drug safety.
Brill-Edwards was not the last Health Canada scientist to
be fired for speaking out. In 2004, in response to the firing of
three Health Canada scientistsMargaret Hayden, Shiv
Chopra and Gerard LambertDr. Nancy Olivieri and profes-
sor Arthur Schafer, director of the Centre for Professional and
Applied Ethics at the University of Manitoba, wrote an op-ed
piece, The Perils of Whistle-blowing, in the Toronto Star. In
it, they describe Hayden, Chopra and Lamberts firing after
the trio went public with allegations that pressure tactics had
been used against them by the Bureau of Veterinary Drugs in
an attempt to compel them to approve the use of certain
antibiotics and hormones.
Olivieri, a physician and former haematologist at the Toronto
Hospital for Sick Children, is a whistle-blower in her own
right. In 1998, Olivieri, whose research was funded by the
Apotex pharmaceutical company, wrote an article published
in the New England Journal of Medicine that was critical of a
drug administered in the treatment of thalassemia, a blood
disorder. Apotex threatened legal action against Olivieri and
abruptly terminated the drug trials. In 2004, Olivieri settled
with the drug company, but Apotex didnt fulfill the agreement.
When Apotex was ordered by the Ontario Supreme Court in
2008 to do so, the firm accused Olivieri of disparaging the
drug company in contravention of the settlement. The
Canadian Association of University Teachers (CAUT), which
supported Olivieri and championed her fight for academic
freedom, reported that in response
to the court order Apotex launched
a SLAPP (strategic lawsuit against
public protection) action against
Olivieri. SLAPP lawsuits are at-
tempts by corporations to duck
accountability by countersuing
their critics, claiming the critics
are harming their reputation.
According to the CAUT, the
companys allegations of disparagement appear to be based
solely on Olivieris participation and attendance at conferences
on the relationship between universities and the pharmaceutical
industry at large, academic freedom, scientific research and
conflict of interest.
As Brill-Edwards said in an interview broadcast as part of
a video produced by HealthMindBodyPlanet.org, There is a
cozy relationship between industry and government regulators
that operates in secrecy.
Similar criticism has been levelled against the oil and gas
industry and its Alberta regulatorsthe Energy Resources
Conservation Board (ERCB) and Alberta Environment
against whom scientist Jessica Ernst has been waging a battle
for nearly a decade. Ironically, Ernst, who had been contracted
by Encana as a biologist to conduct environmental impact
assessments, has now experienced first-hand the devastating
ecological impacts of oil and gas development.
In 2004, Encana began intensifying its drilling for coal bed
methane (CBM) locked up in coal seams in the Horseshoe
Canyon formation that encompasses the county of Wheatland,
Alberta, where Ernst had relocated from Calgary to an acreage
near the hamlet of Rosebud. CBM operations require signifi-
cant compression equipment, the laying of hundreds of
There is a cozy relationship
between industry and
government regulators that
operates in secrecy.
Dr. Michelle Bill-Edwards
Incidental Music
a novel by Lyola Perovl
978-1-926708-81-2 / NOV 2012 / 268 pgs. / $22.95
Incidental Music is a novel about three very different women: Petra, Martha and Romola
are like the three operatic voicessoprano, mezzo and altothat sometimes pair up
their melodic lines but never sing in complete accord. Incidental Music visits the troubled
period of the Hungarian Revolution, explores Torontos heritage and urban development,
takes a sober outsider view of Canadian society and politics, and revels in the beauty of
the operaall through the tumultuous love affairs of its main characters.
Engaging on both intellectual and emotional levels, Incidental Music is a heady mix of
polltlcs, opera ano tempestuous love. Perovl lnterweaves tbe llves ot ber tbree maln
characters seamlessly, and presents us with a Toronto that feels so unabashedly vibrant
that it almost becomes a character in itself. This is a powerful debut novelurban, smart
and sexy. EVA TIHANYI, author of Flying Under Water: Poems New and Selected
www.inanna.ca
inanna.publications@inanna.ca.
Smart books for people who want to read and
think about real womens lives.
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The Feminist History Society is pleased to
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la Qubcoise. Inspired to write an accessible
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we ponder the implications of both the Montreal massacre and the huge success
of the Womens March Against Poverty The book is really captivating and so
much fun to read: I want ve...
Nathalie Des Rosiers, General Counsel/Avocate gnrale, Canadian Civil
Liberties Association/Association canadienne des liberts civiles
Order your copy online at www.feministhistories.ca or by completing this form.
Please mail this form
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kilometres of pipe and the hydraulic fracturing of bedrock
layers to force open channels of methane gas. Ernsts property
soon became surrounded by a half dozen compressor stations
that shattered the peaceful serenity of her rural community.
But that was just the beginning. Ernst subsequently claimed
that not only her water well, but also the communitys aquifer
had been contaminated with chemicals injected during the
pressurized hydraulic fracturing process, which forces the gas
to the surface.
Ernsts complaints to the ERCB and Alberta Environment
were sidelined by both regulators. They said they passed on
her concerns to Encana, with whom she no longer had ties as
a consultant. Encana denied that its oper-
ations had compromised the communitys
water supply, and further complaints to the
ERCB culminated in Ernst being pro-
hibited from communicating with the
regulators staff. On February 7, 2009,
CTVs W5 aired an episode on CBM oper-
ations, replete with home videos showing
Ernst and other landowners in Alberta set-
ting their tap water aflame. Since 2004,
CTV reported, 90,000 new wells had been
approved for drilling.
Ernst is suing the government of Alberta,
its regulators and Encana for negligence,
nuisance and violation of her freedom of
expression under the Charter of Rights and
Freedoms. Vowing to make Encana, the
Alberta government and its regulator ac-
countable, she refuses to being silenced
through a settlements concomitant gag
order. Rather, she encourages citizens to
become informed and engaged, to counter the spin that in-
dustry disseminates about its operations.
Information has power, Ernst says. The more it is shared
the less ugly it will be.
Ernst observes that it is often the women in rural commun-
ities who more readily speak out against hydraulic fracturing.
She believes it may be in part because men need the status in
their community while women are more protective of others.
Drawing upon her own experience as a medical professional
at Health Canada, Brill-Edwards says she never felt like she
was part of the old boys network.
It was understood that a woman would be excluded, she
says. My sense is that if youve been socialized in the profes-
sions as a male, you realize that you have to fit in. You appreciate
more that the higher-ups in the system are looking out for
themselves. [Whereas] in general, women are more inclined
to have faith in the system and that superiors have the best
interests of society in mind.
Brill-Edwards believes that made it easier for her to speak
out against the pharmaceutical industrys influence upon Health
Canadas drug approval process. You cant be a whistle-blower
if you are integrated into that collegial, male-dominated pro-
fessional network, she says. When informed of the research
that found more women than men likely to report wrongdoing,
Brill-Edwards says as women become more accepted in the
professions, the proportion of women and men [likely to blow
the whistle] will approach 50/50.
Whistleblowing does appear to be a growing phenomenon.
A 2010 docudrama, The Whistleblower, starring Rachel Wiesz,
tells the story of UN peacekeeper Kathryn Bolkovac, who risked
not only her career but also her life to uncover a human traf-
ficking operation in post-conflict Bosnia. An advance screening
in Ottawa of The Whistleblower, directed and
co-written by Larysa Kondracki, was organ-
ized for whistle-blowers by Federal
Accountability Initiative for Reform (FAIR).
Founded in 1998 by lawyer and former for-
eign affairs public servant Joanna Gualtieri,
FAIRs mission is to support legislation and
management practices that will provide ef-
fective protection for whistle-blowers.
Gualtieri says she endured years of harass-
ment after speaking out against lavish
expenditures for foreign affairs staff accom-
modations. Her 18-year ordeal, along with
those of dozens of other Canadian horn-
blowers, is profiled on FAIRs website,
fairwhistleblower.ca.
One person can make a difference,
Gualtieri believes. But until we collectively
decide not to tolerate these types of things,
nothing will change. Her motivation in
founding FAIR was to educate people
about the price whistle-blowers pay for reporting wrongdoing.
If people are told more clearly what whistle-blowers go through,
the public would say no, this has to end.
Like Ernst, Brill-Edwards, Olivieri and others, Gualtieri
has spoken critically and openly about government corruption
in the hope that the public will demand and come to expect
greater accountability from government and corporate officials.
She believes the ordeals of the whistle-blower magnify the
most pressing questions of the 21st century: What is it that
we value? Why is power being abused? Why are so many people
so compliant?
Women, in ever greater numbers, are becoming integrated
in all professions and are assuming greater positions of power
as premiers, CEOs, judges and senior public administrators.
Perhaps the greatest challenge still lies ahead of us, as the new
generation of female leaders is confronted with a quandary:
Should women exercise power for the greater good or simply
for their own self-interest and the narrow interests of the in-
stitutions that employ them? If they opt for the greater good,
will they survive in their privileged positions?
Nancy Olivieri was a researcher at Torontos
Hospital for Sick Children who blew the whis-
tle on the effects of a drug she was studying.
(Photo: Canadian Press)
Herizons is a great educational tool and womens studies
resource for your classroom.
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I
n times of violence and tragedy, the most extraordinary
gains can be achieved. In the three years since an earthquake
devastated the Caribbean nation of Haiti, a coalition of
international and Haitian organizations has come together to en-
sure the needs of girls in Haiti would not be overlooked. Chaired
by the International Planned Parenthood Federation/Western
Hemisphere Region (IPPF/WHR), the Haiti Adolescent Girls
Network (HAGN) protects and empowers vulnerable young
women so they may safely navigate the volatile post-earthquake
environment and break the cycle of poverty.
The magnitude 7.0 earthquake that struck Haiti in January
2010 killed 300,000 people and left millions more displaced.
Today, around 600,000 Haitians remain homeless or live in
tent cities where insufficient or nonexistent lighting, bathrooms
without locks and inadequate police protection contribute to
increasing rates of sexual violence and exploitation of women
and girls. The destruction also left 750,000 women of repro-
ductive age in the Port-au-Prince metropolitan area and 15,000
in the city of Jacmel with limited access to birth control or to
sexual and reproductive health services.
The Association por la Promotion de la Famille Haitienne
(PROFAMIL) has become not only a source of support for
health care but also a source of assistance for women and girls
who have been victims of gender-based violence. Through the
use of mobile health units and field clinics, PROFAMIL cre-
ated safe spaces for young women who live in tent cities to
find social and emotional support. These facilities also provide
access to critical sexual and reproductive health services, in-
cluding emergency contraception, rape kits and medications
for sexually transmitted infections.
However, the girls of Haiti needed more; they needed a
youth empowerment program that put their safety and self-
determination at its centre. As a result, local and international
organizations came together to establish HAGN, and
PROFAMIL was among its founding members.
While the stories we hear most about Haiti are over-
whelmingly of complaint and lack of progress, there are
amazing stories of unity, both from the immediate aftermath
of the earthquake and that continue today, says Lucella
Campbell, senior program advisor for the Caribbean at IPPF/
WHR. Many Haitians opened their doors to perfect strang-
ers, and the global community has dug down deep inside
themselves to redefine what sharing, caring and humanity
truly means.
BY MANDY VAN DEVEN
PHOTOS BY NADIA TODRES
Empowering
Girls in Haiti
CLOCKWISE (FROM TOP): HAGN uses theatre to help girls verbalize their experiences
in the aftermath of Haitis devastating earthquake.
Girls in the program ask if they can bring more girls with them. Parents call every day
and ask if their daughters can come to the program, according to Anne Marie
Dieudonne of PROFAMIL.
Approximately 600,000 Haitians remain homeless or live in tent cities where insufficient
lighting, bathrooms without locks and inadequate police protection contribute to the vul-
nerability of women and girls.
CLOCKWISE (FROM TOP): I have learned that girls have the right to go to school, to
sleep comfortably, and eat well, says Yveline, 15-year-old Haiti Adolescent Girls Net-
work (HAGN) participant.
Some girls join HAGN feeling very depressed and withdrawn. Even in a short time,
we are able to see positive changes, explains Julie Allcock of the Internal Rescue
Committee.
I would like to invite other girls into the program so they can learn what I am learning,
said Ester, a 15-year-old participant.
HAGN provides girls with a safe space in which they can
spend time with their peers, learn about their rights and obtain
the support of trusted adults. A 10-year-old girl named Ruth
describes the difference HAGN has made in her life. This is
the only place I ever feel safe. I can relax and make friends
here, and not feel alone. I learn things here that I could never
learn anywhere else.
Fifteen-year-old Ester found out about HAGN at
PROFAMIL. She likes to sing and dance, but her dream is
to become a doctor. Unlike many girls her age, Ester is fortu-
nate to still be attending school. A self-described intelligent
girl, Ester joined HAGN to learn how to protect herself.
During the program, I developed a strong commitment to
youth rights and womens rights, she explains. Because we
are young, people think we are little kids. We are human beings,
just like everyone else. We have a right to go to school. We
are entitled to health care. We have the right to speak and
express our feelings.
HAGN is appreciated not just by the young girls participat-
ing but also by their parents and the larger community. The
poorest country in the western hemisphere, 80 percent of
Haitis population lives below the poverty line. Fewer than half
of all births are attended by a skilled health professional, and
infant and maternal mortality rates are the highest in the region.
To make matters worse, the rate of HIV infections in Haiti is
the second-highest in the world. In addressing these immense
challenges, HAGNs work to ensure the healthy development
of young women is critical to the countrys future.
The girls who come here were not taken care of, according
to Melissa Coupaud, the executive director of YWCA Haiti.
To feel like you belong somewhere is a big value in this
country. The program is doing a great job, but if we dont
support the girls with concrete materials, the work will only
go halfway.
HAGN is currently working to strengthen its internal struc-
ture and increase sources of revenue to fund the networks
activities. It recently hired a coordinator to facilitate this growth.
The network has created the opportunity to learn what each
of our organizations provides, and to better collaborate to offer
girls comprehensive services, explains Marissa Billowitz, IPPF/
WHRs senior program officer for youth initiatives.
Parents are always asking me if I can accept their daughter
into the program, and it is really difficult to say no, accord-
ing to Save the Childrens Chantale Auguste. We could
take more girls if we had more physical space, but as it is
now we barely have the room for the girls were already
working with.
Girls in the program are encouraged to share what they learn
at HAGN with the other girls in their communities. When
asked what she brings to other young women in Haiti, Ester
replies, I tell them that we should not be mistreated and that
we deserve equal rights. Girls are human beings, too. We
represent the future of Haiti.
That impassioned sentiment is precisely what HAGN aims
to achieve.
Mandy Van Deven (www.mandyvandeven.com) is a writer,
speaker and change-maker. Her work exploring contemporary
feminisms, global activism and sexuality has been published in
Salon, AlterNet and Marie Claire. She is the online administrator
for International Planned Parenthood Federation/Western
Hemisphere Region.
Nadia Todres (www.nadiatodres.com) is a photojournalist who
specializes in documenting humanitarian issues, relief efforts and
development work. She is working to empower Haitis most
vulnerable girls.
This is the only place I ever feel safe. I can relax and make
friends here, and not feel alone. 10-year-old Ruth
BY LILLIAN ZIMMERMAN
CAREGIVING
CRUNCH
the
There are an estimated two million informal caregivers in Canada, and the magority are women. (Photo: istockphoto)
I
n Canada, more than two million informal caregivers,
the majority of whom are women, provide care to elders.
Most of these caregivers are mid-life baby boomers
who are still in the paid workforce and inching toward
their pre-retirement years. Many of them find themselves
curtailing their paid work in various ways, such as working
fewer hours or leaving paid work earlier than planned in
order to attend to unpaid caregiving responsibilities. As
a result, however, such caregivers will have less financial
security in their retirement than they may have expected.
The financial vulnerability of these caregivers will be
exacerbated by the recent increase in the age of the Old
Age Security (OAS) and the Guaranteed Income
Supplement (GIS) benefits from age 65 to 67. Womens
pensionable earnings are already stretched due to their
caregiving roles in their younger years, and now they will
have to work two years longer before qualifying for OAS
and GIS. The trends do not look good for women, accord-
ing to Dr. Janet Fast, a professor in the department of
human ecology at the University of Alberta. The demand
for care is likely going to rise, she says. Its the oldest-old
segment thats growing fastest and they are people who
are likely to require care.
She further predicts that since families are smaller, they
face more multiple demands and may be geographically
distant, [which] means the probability of any one family
member or close friend becoming a caregiver is going to
be higher.
Canadian women live to 83 years on average, while men
live to 78 years. Women in Japan already reach 86 years
on average, and Canadian women are expected to do so
by 2031. Longevity can cut both ways, allowing women
to live longer while raising the necessity of caring for aging
parents who are also living longer. These factors increase
the threat to womens late-life financial security.
Retirement and other feminist issues tend to coincide with
life stages. Younger women tend to be concerned with wage
equity, affordable daycare and reproductive rights. Mid-life
women face ageism, getting suitable jobs and breaking glass
ceilings. With boomers reaching retirement, it is now time
for the issues facing older women to get greater attention
from feminists. The first boomers reached 65 in 2011, and,
since women live longer and provide most unpaid care, unpaid
caregiving is certainly a womens issue. Canada has one of
the highest numbers of baby boomers in the world, after the
U.S.some nine million people born between 1946 and
1964, who are almost equally divided by gender.
The four million female baby boomers represent a genera-
tion that faces a growing need for caregiving. Dr. Janice
Keefe of Mount St. Vincent University reported in a 2011
study, Supporting Caregivers and Caregiving in an Aging
Canada, that the number of elderly Canadians needing
assistance will double in the next 30 years. Informal caregiv-
ers, Keefe explains, are family members, friends or
neighbours, most frequently women, who provide unpaid
care to a person who needs support sometimes for an
extended period. Of the more than 2.3 million employed
family or friend caregivers in Canada, three quarters under-
take caregiving simultaneously with being in the paid
workforce. Over one third of employed women and one
quarter of employed men aged 45 and older provide care to
a family member or friend.
Gerontologist Dr. Neena Chappell, of the University of
Victoria, observed in a 2011 article, Population Aging
and the Evolving Care Needs of Older Canadians, the
baby boomer generation is at present providing most of
the necessary care. What is insufficiently emphasized in
caregiving studies is the socio-economic connection be-
tween their caring and late-life poverty. Employed women
caregivers were much more likely to incur employment
penalties because of their responsibilities than their male
counterparts. Thirty percent missed full days of work, 6.4
percent retired early, quit or lost their paid job, and 4.7
percent say they turned down a job offer or promotion as
a result of their caregiving responsibilities. In the same
article, Chappell notes that the value to the Canadian
economy of this unpaid work is estimated to be in the
range of $25 billion to $31 billion annually. In the U.S., a
MetLife study in 2011, Caregiving Costs to Working
Caregivers, found that women caregivers over 50 who
were also in the workforce had forgone an average of
$324,044 in lost salary and social security income over
their lifetimes (which included previous child-rearing
caregiving duties). Male caregivers over 50 and still in the
workforce were calculated to have lost $238,716 in salary
and social security income over their lifetimes.
Myrna is typical. At 62, she has looked after both parents.
When her mother was widowed, Myrna, who had a nursing
degree, continued caregiving. She describes herself as a
serial caregiver. When asked her how she managed both
to work and to provide care, Myrna replies, My corporate
career came to a smashing end. She switched to lower-
paid jobs because she couldnt meet the shift work demands
of nursing. I can now never retire, because all my resources
For girls growing up in Canada,
its tougher than youd think.
The Canadian Womens
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have dwindled, adds Myrna, who was recently laid off
from her clerical position.
Canadian women have long been familiar with the in-
equities in the paid workforce. While the wage gap is
closing, women now receive approximately 73 cents on
the dollar of what working men receive. About a third of
women still work part-time, and many women continue
to work in the low-paying service sector. In addition to
low pay, these jobs afford few benefits, such as pensions.
In other words, most women can ill afford to give up their
economic security to look after aging parents or other
needy family members. The trend towards smaller families
is also a factor. It means a shrinking pool of caregivers.
The fact is that caregiving comes at a high cost to many
women, who feel they must curtail their paid work. Karen,
who is 59, looked after her 87-year-old mother, who fell
and broke her hip years ago. After the incident, Karens
mother moved in with Karen and her husband. Karen, an
actor, says her caregiving re-
sponsibilities require her to
confine herself to occasional TV
roles, as she is unable to take on
stage roles that would require
scheduled attendance. I cant
chase after roles, and it is hard
to go to auditions.
At the same time, her social
life is constrained, as she and her husband rarely enjoy a
dinner or a movie out of the house. I have learned to live
frugally, Karen explains. We had to use our RRSPs, so wont
have enough pension later on.
Women are, by and large, not financially equipped to look
after their elders, especially given the inequities faced by
senior women. The cold hard fact is that 17 percent of single
Canadian women 65 years and older and living alone are at
or below the poverty line. In Canada, approximately 1.8
million low-income seniors get the GIS, and just over half
(54 percent) of GIS recipients are women. And the older
they get, the more they will rely on the means-tested GIS.
For example, 62 percent of women aged 70 to74 are recipi-
ents. A look at the Canada Pension Plan (CPP) reveals the
gender difference in the receipt of plan benefits. In 2011,
Canadian mens average monthly retirement benefit from
the CPP was $603.51. For women it was a paltry $420.06.
The gap has remained constant for many years. These ben-
efits clearly represent a culmination of the inequities women
suffer, both in the paid and unpaid work they do.
What is to be done? Often mentioned is more respite care,
drop-out arrangements, tax credits or extended leaves. Its
been a decade since Roy Romanows 2002 Royal Commission
on the Future of Health Care in Canada recommended a
national home care policy to replace the patchwork quilt of
caregiving services, federally and provincially. Numerous
experts concur with the need for such a policy, appropriate
to current requirements. In 2009, the Senate called for a
national caregiving strategy.
One solution is to make pensionable benefits available to
caregivers for their unpaid work. A study paper in April 2010
on family caregiving, published by the Canadian Centre for
Elder Law, found that the pension regime currently provides
little or no recognition to the unpaid family caregiving of
adults. It suggested the creation of a caregiver-specific pen-
sion. There are already programs addressing such pensionable
benefits in Australia and Norway. For Canadian women, this
is now even more urgent, given that future unpaid caregivers
will be without the OAS and
GIS for two years longer.
It is not only the invisibility
of unpaid work that demands
recognition. On a larger eco-
nomic scale, the many
productive contributions of
older Canadians are ignored due
to the ageist belief that older
people take from the economy, rather than give to it.
And yet, the reality is that seniors are among the largest
groups of Canadian volunteers. They give generously to
charities. They pay taxes on their income, including most
of their pension income. Seniors also help to provide for
their financially strapped adult children, especially in times
of unemployment and recessions. Many grandparents also
provide child care for their grandchildren, and many fi-
nancially support their grandchildrens educational and
sports fees.
Demographic changes affecting aging women make it
imperative that social policy-makers recognize that ageism
and sexism are a destructive combination. The four million
Canadian female baby boomers have enough collective
political clout to make policy-makers listen. A vibrant
womens revolution, led by boomer activism, is what it will
take to force policy developers to address the current and
future needs of women as they age. As Dr. Carroll Estes, a
professor at the University of California, says, it is time for
the missing feminist revolutionthat of older women.
The fact is that caregiving
comes at a high cost to many
women, who feel they must
curtail their paid work.
The mother in Staten Island, New York, whose sons were swept
from her arms when a surge of floodwater hit. The elderly
woman who died in her daughters embrace while trapped in
their flooding home. The wake of hurricane Sandy was filled
with heartbreaking stories, and the death toll is estimated at
100 in the U.S., 67 in the Caribbean and two in Canada.
Thousands more suffered for the weeks and months fol-
lowing the disaster, in ways that were less gut-wrenching but
that nonetheless exposed how social inequality causes women,
and particularly women of colour, to suffer disproportionately
from natural disasters.
This was true even in the highly developed city of New York.
My friend, a Canadian writer, was staying with her 90-year-old
grandmother in public housing in Manhattans Chinatown
when hurricane Sandy hit. Without heat or electricity for a
week, she became dehydrated, sick and exhausted trying to
keep her grandmother healthy in their frigid apartment.
Female acquaintances of all ages in New York told me they
were completely unprepared for a natural disaster. Working
in underpaid jobs or self-employed, none of them had basic
health coverage, let alone disaster or unemployment insurance.
The gendered division of labour, in which women are over-
represented in jobs with little security and no benefits such
as health care or union representation, tends to make women
more vulnerable than men in a natural disaster.
In developing countries, women are even more vulnerable
to natural disasters because they tend to have fewer resources,
lack skills such as literacy and often lack decision-making
power in their households and societies. And while women are
expected to be primary caretakers of children, the elderly and
the disabled, they usually have little say in their communities
disaster relief protocols. As a result, women and girls are mar-
ginalized when emergency resources are distributed according
to patriarchal structures. These are realities that social scientists
have proven, but which governments and mainstream media
have largely ignored.
In 2006, the London School of Economics and the University
of Essex released the first study that compared the effects on
women and men in the aftermath of 4,605 natural disasters
in 141 countries.
The feminists got it right, concluded researcher Eric
Neumayer. Natural disasters are a tragedy in their own right,
but in countries with existing gender discrimination women
are the worst hit. With existing patterns of gender dis-
crimination, boys are likely to receive preferential treatment
in rescue efforts and both women and girls suffer more from
the shortages of food and economic resources in the aftermath
of disasters.
In response to the prevalence of sexual assault in Nicaragua
following hurricane Mitch in 1998, an NGO organized a
campaign spreading the message, Violence against women is
one disaster that men can prevent. According to the World
Health Organization, an increase in domestic and sexual vio-
lence against women follows natural disasters, and women make
up the majority of shelter residents after disasters.
After hurricane Sandy, more mainstream media started to
awaken to the devastating effects of climate change. Bloomberg
Business Week ran a cover stating, Its Global Warming, Stupid,
and scores of climate experts were interviewed. Climate change
also became an important last-minute campaign issue of the
United States presidential election, with President Barack
Obama talking about the dangers of a warming planet in his
acceptance speech. Yet, the ways gender influences womens and
girls experiences of natural disasters continued to be ignored
by media and politicians.
In addition to fighting global warming and human-induced
climate change, the best way to mitigate the effects of natural
disasters is to be prepared for them. The creation of bet-
ter disaster prevention and response plans must involve the
contributions of women, as well as people from all ethnic and
socio-economic backgrounds.
Women have already shown an abundance of leadership in
the aftermath of natural disasters, organizing community relief
efforts, including food drives, digging wells and building houses,
even in places where they have to act against mens wishes.
But governments, think-tanks and policy-makers need to
get behind these womens efforts and support research and
emergency programs that take gender into account. Otherwise,
women and girls will continue to suffer disproportionately
from natural disasters.
Body Politic
BY JOANNA CHIU
THE GENDERED FACE OF HURRICANE SANDY
Part testimonial and part resource, Tamara takes us on
her journey through a disease of unenviable odds, multiple
therapies, and ultimately physical and personal transformation.
Dugald Seely, MSc.,Naturopathic Doctor (ND), Executive
Director, Ottawa Integrative Cancer Centre
Cancer is a country no one
wants to visit, with a language
we never want to learn.
Afer being diagnosed
with breast cancer, Tamara
Levine had no choice but
to make her way through
the labyrinth of cancer care.
She documents her search
to integrate traditional and
complementary treatment,
bringing readers both her
personal insight and the
expert voices of her health
care team: her oncologists,
surgeon, naturopathic
doctor, and life coach.
Find out more at www.secondstorypress.ca
ISBN: 978-1-926920-89-4
Religion, Sex and Politics:
Christian Churches and
Same-Sex Marriage in Canada
Pamela Dickey Young 9781552665237 $17.95
Resisting the State: Canadian History
Through the Stories of Activists
Scott Neigh 9781552665206 $24.95
Ne w f r o m FERNWOOD PUBLI SHI NG
Gender and Sexuality:
Canadian History Through
the Stories of Activists
Scott Neigh 9781552665213 $24.95
Making the City:
Women Who
Made a Dierence
Working Women
Community Centre
9781552665008 $19.95
FERNWOOD PUBL I S HI NG
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THE JULIET STORIES
CARRIE SNYDER
House of Anansi Press
REVIEW BY KERRY RYAN
Id call Carrie Snyders The Juliet Stories a
firecracker of a novel because its brilliant,
risky and thrilling. But the comparison sug-
gests its also fleeting and frivolous, and this is
a book by which to warmyourself.
The novel opens in 1980s Nicaragua, where
the hippie Friesen family has relocated from
Indiana to lead a group of foreign peace
activists. With her flame of red hair, 10-year-
old Juliet is strong and fearless and makes
an ideal tour guide for readers. Shes brave
enough to introduce us to her newworld,
innocent enough to showus her family un-
filtered, and oblivious enough that the violence
and racial tension lapping at their lives dont
frighten her.
Juliet is acutely observant but doesnt
interpret what she sees. She shows us her
exhausted mother, and we diagnose depres-
sion. She describes the young female peace
activists, the strapping sympathetic neighbour,
and we sniff out infidelity.
Juliets Nicaragua pulses with Latin rhythm,
with adventure, with exotic poverty. It also
lights a fuse of risk-taking in her that burns
into adulthood. But we see what a 10-year-old
doesnt: despair, deterioration, deathall
electrified by the danger of political and mari-
tal unrest.
Cut to Canada, where Juliets family tries to
cope with the illness, then loss, of her brother
and the eventual collapse of her parents mar-
riage. As the family is consumed by trauma
and grief, Juliet again finds newworlds to
explore: She sneaks around neighbouring
apartments while the tenants are out. We
translate her escapisminto longing for family,
stability and home.
As she gets older, Juliets role shifts from
being the conduit of the familys story to be-
ing the story itself. The last quarter of the
book takes on a comparatively frenetic pace
as Juliet travels through early adulthood
making one drunken, cringe-worthy and
life-altering decision after another.
Here, the story explodes, scattering like
sparks that fizzle or ignite. Snyders por-
trayal of a troubled adult Juliet is equally as
strong as that of her younger, surer, uncon-
scious self, but I found the flare of drama
in the last section less satisfying than the
smouldering tension in the first half of the
novel. But no matter, The Juliet Stories
burns long and bright.
(YOU) SET ME ON FIRE
MARIKO TAMAKI
RazorBill
REVIEW BY NIRANJANA IYER
Mariko Tamaki established herself as an
acute chronicler of the lives of teen girls
with her 2008 novel Skim, and she surpasses
herself with (you) set me on fire. Theres an
enviable alignment of authenticity and skill in
Tamakis newbook; this is the stuff of classics.
Allison Lee opts to attend St. Josephs
College (five states and two bodies of
water away from home) because no one
from her high school will be there. Allison
was picked on in school, had a messy love
affair with fellow student Anne, accident-
ally set herself on fire twice and now bears
burn scars running from her hairline to her
shoulder; reinventing herself in college is a
seductive idea. And St. Josephs mascot just
happens to be a phoenix.
At first, Allison integrates wellshe
procures a fake ID, drinks too much at a frat
party and throws up, and meets a beautiful
girl who singles her out for attention. Shar
is self-confident and enigmatic, dresses in
black and is too cool for class, and Allison
is happily hooked. But as Shars quirkiness
escalates into something more, their rela-
tionship gradually becomes darker.
Allisons voice is remarkableknow-
ing and wise, and piercingly funny. After
her accident, she remarks that parts of
her body look like something youd find
spinning behind the counter at a gyro res-
taurant. About her lesbianism: Why, given
my MANY experiences with the claws and
fangs of girls, would I decide to put myself
on the path of pursuing them for the rest of
my life? [] Boys, it seems are just so cool
and everyone wants one. Why not me?
For a person with a finely calibrated bullshit
detector for societys strictures, Allison is
spectacularly misguided in her relationship
choices. Youll want to leap into this book
howling, What the fuck are you doing!
while looking to give her a good shake.
The contrast between her intelligence
and her wilful blindness regarding Shar
is particularly heartbreaking because of
Allisons extraordinary vulnerabilityher
scars, sexual orientation and intelligence
isolate her terribly. But Allison is locked
into her own world, and the adults in her
life are misinformed and obtuse; she must
self-hatch any rescue. Tamaki nails the
miserable, angsty insecurity that most teens
wear like a skinand the glorious potential-
ities waiting them when they moult.
WESTERN TAXIDERMY
BARB HOWARD
NeWest Press
REVIEW BY MEGAN BUTCHER
Walking down the street the other day, I saw
a woman wearing big stompy boots. Id just
read My Brothers Shit Kickers again and
couldnt help but remember the pale, de-
fenceless feet that undermine the mystique
of Tom, the narrators older brother.
Which is to say, Western Taxidermy,
though a fast read, has a lasting impact.
Barb Howard manages to breathe life
into a disparate array of characters, from
teenage girls to middle-aged men. Their
observations are sharp, sometimes amus-
ing, though more often harsh: the things we
say to ourselves before we soften them for
others ears.
Animals, whether alive, sick or dead,
often play a big role in these tales, of which
Basic Obedience and Hydrocyst are two
standouts. Though the general premise is
the same in both storiesa parents worry
arts culture
WINTER READING
HOLLY McNARLAND
RUN BODY RUN
Independent
REVIEW BY CINDY FILIPENKO
Holly McNarland, one of Vancouvers
favourite indie darlings, is back with a new
album that is sure to win her a few new
fans. In the late 90s, McNarland travelled
musically in a pack of young, talented fe-
male singer-songwriters who were poised
to be the next Sarah McLachlan. Shes wis-
er than she was when she teetered on the
edge of rock stardom, and it shows in the
content of Run Body Run.
Her voice, a flexible alto as comfortable
with as a whisper as it is a riot grrl growl, is
in the best shape it has ever been.
Like most us who remember her from the
days when she won a Juno for best new
artist (1998), McNarland has mellowed. This
more mature perspective is reflected in the
gentle rockers and folk ballads that make
up most of the album. Her lyrics and clever
musical hooks are still in play, but the angst
and noisy guitars are gone.
Despite this change in direction, Run Body
Run still manages to pay homage to her ear-
lier sound. Some serious rock bridges pop up
here and there, as in the introspective Dig
a Little and Alones Just Fine. First-time
fans will definitely appreciate Only Money.
This superlative rocker combines solid lefty
politics with some driving guitar and clipped,
sharp vocals. This swipe at a rampant, insipid
capitalist culture includes the lovely lines,
Its only money/ Suck it up honey.
Run Body Run is a mature work from
an accomplished singer-songwriter who
takes on the challenges of being a grownup
in her lyrics. Honest and sincere without
being earnest, Run Body Run is a pleasure
worth investigating.
LESLEY PIKE
TUG OF WAR
Independent
Tug of War marks Toronto singer-songwriter
Lesley Pikes second time out of the gate.
Her 2008 offering, Blink, garnered critical
praise but seemed to get lost in the flood of
folk-rock albums released by indie artists
every year. Hopefully, Tug of War will find
her the audience she deserves.
Whats most striking about Pike is her
incredibly haunting vocals. Distinctive,
rich and almost eerie at times, her sound is
seductive. Her voice lends itself well to the
ballads that dominate Tug of War, such as
the painful paeans to lost love I Go Wild
and The Longest Goodbye, as well as a
compelling remake of the Tears for Fears
80s hit Head
Over Heels.
The album is produced by Tim Glasgow,
a multi-instrumentalist and the producer
behind Metric and Sonic Youth. Glasgows
skill with dramatic arrangement is in full
force here. His ability to bring forward
musical drama and tension without being
cloying is most evident. The instrumen-
tation, arrangements and cross-genre
flourishes add dimensions absent from
many indie albums.
But Tug of War is not just one big ad-
venture in intensity; there are a few lighter
tracks, such as Little Spark and White
Lies, that hint that Pike would be great
to see in concert. Theres a constrained
energy, from Pike and her supporting musi-
cians, that threatens to spill over but always
simmers under the boiling point, which is
pretty sweet.
Tug of War is an auspicious sophomore
album thats well worth searching out.
THE LIVING RECORD
CHRISTA COUTURE
Independent
Vancouvers Christa Couture, the talent
behind The Living Record, falls into what
is often seen as an overstuffed genre,
the folky singer-songwriter. At worst,
this means generic themes married to
simple music performed acoustically;
at best you end up with someone like
Kathleen Edwards.
Indeed, Couture sounds a bit like
Edwards, with a pleasant, accessible voice
thats deceptively difficult to achieve. Its a
voice that is inviting, warm and unadorned.
Her duet with bluesman Jim Byrnes on
Paper Anniversary clearly demonstrates
how timeless her vocals can be, whether
shes singing a beautiful love ballad writ-
ten for her husband or swinging out to a
whimsical jazzy ode about living in London
(Pussycat Pussycat).
While her pop compositions hold up just
fine, its her more countrified songs that
have the most life. The classically con-
structed toe-tappers You Were Here in
Michigan and Good Bayou will strike a
chord with anyone familiar with 1950s fe-
male country vocalists.
Audiences familiar with Couture will
know that themes of loss have been
prevalent in her work. Those themes
were overwhelming on her last two
albums (Love and Lost), which wasnt
surprising, as they followed the death of
her infant son.
As the The Living Record demonstrates
Couture is an artist who has continued to
grow throughout her career and has hit
creative excellence with The Living Record.
This disc is definitely recommended.
arts culture
MUSIC
MAD HOPE
HEATHER BIRRELL
Coach House Books
REVIEW BY SYLVIA SANTIAGO
Mad Hope, Heather Birrells second collection
of short fiction, is a lovely book. The thick, tex-
tured paper makes it a delight to page through,
and the quirky frog graphics on the cover are
eye-catching. Fromthe look of the book, one
might think the stories within would be playful,
even lighthearted. One would be wrong.
The opening story, BriannaSusannaAlana,
takes place in the wake of a murder in the
sisters neighbourhood. Only 10-year-old
Susanna seems affected by the incident:
Howdid you dig up the clues that led deep
into peoples brains? The Motive, thats
what Susanna was looking for. As Susanna
follows in the footsteps of Nancy Drew,
12-year-old Alana ramps up fromflirting with
boys to engaging in sexual activity. The scene
where she hooks up with a high school stu-
dent is disturbing in both its casualness and
its believability. This Journey Prize-winning
story gives readers a glimpse into the not-so-
simple world of girls.
The 11 stories in Birrells collection are
characterized by some kind of loss: loss of
innocence, loss of a baby, a spouse, a par-
ent. In Wanted Children, Beth and Paul
are trying and failing to recover from Beths
miscarriage. When Beth sees strollers, she
wants to puncture their tires, spray-paint
their protective sides, slash their UV-
blocking visors. Paul suggests a trip to the
Amazon in hopes that a change of scenery
will help. Grief, however, manages to find
them, even in the rain forest.
There are touches of humour, albeit dark.
An overcast day is the sort of day bad men
chose to bury body parts. A disapproving
mothers mouth is a tiny, pink O, tight like
a dogs bum. A student calls writing the
ultimate act of a mooch.
Mad Hope is a collection of well-crafted
stories that will easily engage readers.
Birrell writes with clarity and conviction.
Because she understands her characters
and their situations so well, readers will, too.
MOST OF ME
Surviving My Medical Breakdown
ROBYN MICHELE LEVY
Greystone Books
REVIEW BY KRIS ROTHSTEIN
This memoir chronicles the year in which
43-year-old Robyn Michele Levy was diag-
nosed with Parkinsons disease and then
for their offspring is channelled through con-
cern for an animalthe tenor and voice are
different enough that the second is as fresh
as the first.
Marking Territory maps out the com-
plicated relationships between a father, a
daughter, a dog and a mountain lion. Paul,
the father, moves into a house where a pet
mountain lion has left territory-marking
piles of scat in the basement. Louie, the
dachshund, is only slightly more terrified
of the territory piles than he is of daughter
Cassandras tampon when he finds it in the
garbage. Howard skillfully shifts our sympa-
thies from character to character throughout.
I found the title story both the strongest
and weakest of the bunch, strangely enough.
The tight use of language, the pitch-perfect
voice, the attention to detail all astounded
me when I went back to it a second time;
the ending, unfortunately, rather smacks you
over the head with the point and dispels the
grace built into the narrative itself.
Thats griping, though, finding nits in an
otherwise well-written and enjoyable collec-
tion of stories. Not only would I recommend
reading it, I would recommend re-reading it
not long after.

SLEEPING FUNNY
MIRANDA HILL
Doubleday
REVIEW BY NIRANJANA IYER
The nine stories in Miranda Hills debut col-
lection, Sleeping Funny, ask us to ponder
how people react when confronted with the
unexpected, but this prcis does little justice
to the wondrous variety of events and char-
acters in this book.
A smug middle-class neighbourhood
of professional women is shaken when a
beautiful, bohemian artist moves in. A teen
girl attends sex-ed class only to find herself
witnessing the conception scenes of her
classmates. A young widow plants a garden
to deal with the death of her pilot husband
in World War II. A woman maintains a
hospital vigil for a man who jumped off a
high-rise rooftop.
Hills worlds are rich with compassion
for their inhabitants and their aliens. In
their inchoate attempts to deal with change,
the characters find themselves and move
forward with their altered lives. Hill is a gen-
erous writer, giving the reader many points
of entry for each storythrough character,
through humour, through story titles with
multiple interpretations and, most import-
antly, through the truths lurking on each
page. A character recalls the first time her
husband hits her. I couldnt even remember
Cys fist on me. It was as if something had
pushed its way out from the inside like a
latent cancer. This is how I look as a beat-
en woman, I said. I tried it on like a uniform,
and felt it settle on me like something I was
always meant to wear.
The writing is masterly, and Hill has an
uncanny gift for finding the telling detail
that will infuse a scene with depth and tex-
ture. A woman at neighbours house serves
plastic glasses of wine as if they were her
mother-in-laws good crystal. A child is so
neglected that his nails developed a rim of
grime until, despairing of ever being told to
clean them, he did it himself.
At the end of each story, you wonder how
Hill sneaked into the characters house, how
she overheard that conversation, how she
looked through cages of flesh and bone to
the bloody beating hearts inside. One of
the stories in the collection won the 2011
Journey Prize. That may be the first of the
many honours ahead for this book.
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arts culture
WINTER READING
the David Suzuki Foundation, for-
estry companies are not the enemy
and tree planting is not glorified. Gill
gives us tree planting as she knows
it: gorgeous and ugly, crushing and
thrillinga job and a joy.
PRACTICING FEMINIST
MOTHERING
FIONA JOY GREEN
Arbeiter Ring Publishing
REVIEW BY CONNIE JESKE CRANE
Does motherhood matter? Theres a
lingering perception (and Ive heard
this several times recently while
interviewing younger feminists) that
breast cancer. As the book opens,
Levy is just depressed, anxious
and moody. But her health starts
to spiral downhill, and she feels
like shes dying. The medical com-
munity provides answers. However,
they are much worse than she
expected. Together with her family,
Levy figures out howto deal with
the crisis of her deteriorating health
and rebuild her life.
So, howdoes she deal with
this string of bad luck? In a word,
humour. Levy is always cracking
jokes, reeling off one-liners and
generally performing a stand-up
mainstream feminism still sidelines discus-
sions on mothering.
If this is true, then Fiona Joy Greens recent
work is especially welcome. Greens contri-
bution to a growing body of feminist maternal
scholarship is not a how-to guide but an effort
towards consciousness-raising and an ex-
ploration of the many ways in which feminist
mothers may choose to parent. Via in-depth
interviews with 16 Canadian feminist mothers
and their adult children over 12 years of age,
Green creates the necessary time and space
to do this properly.
Her findings are particularly resonant, given
Greens initial chapters on historical context.
While today were pretty hip to feminist par-
enting flashpoints (those willowy Lego friends,
say, or death culture marketed to boys) Green
reminds us that as recently as the 70s and
80s feminists felt pressure to downplay their
maternal ruminating: Part of the struggle for
feminists who were mothers during this time
was that their voices were often unheard,
unwelcomed, or misunderstood within femin-
ist circles. [F]eminismgenerally viewed
motherhood as intrinsically connected with
the reproduction of patriarchy....
While feminismno longer sees mother-
hood as a problemthat needs solving, Green
shows us were still contending with contem-
porary pressures and patronizing ideals. She
inspires feminists to re/define mothering and
their motherwork as a conscious and politic-
ally engaged endeavour even as they resist
patriarchal motherhood and its expectations.
With credit to Andrea OReilly, an associ-
ate professor of womens studies at York
University and founder of the Motherhood
Initiative for Research and Community
Involvement (MIRCI), Green dissects the
prevailing stereotype of the good mother.
Among other things, this includes calling
comedy routine. Humour is an important
factor in conquering disease and keeping
perspective, and it is also a great literary
tool in an illness-related memoir, but Levys
jokes can be a bit much. They are definitely
too much for most of her doctors, who re-
spond to her wisecracking with disinterest or
confusion. There are many genuinely funny
moments, including report cards for her ma-
lignant lumps and the purchase and naming
of her prosthetic breast.
Before her medical breakdown, Levy
was blessed with a rich, interesting life that
included a devoted husband, a good daugh-
ter, amazing friends, a nice dog and a close
bond with her father. Perhaps thats why her
physical collapse comes as such a shock.
Yet it is hard not to wonder how many other
women, lacking the strong support system
and privileged background, would have
pulled through the same events. Levy also
gets amazing medical care with quick diag-
noses, home care, housekeepers, therapy
and massages. Certainly, Levy should not
apologize for being well taken care of, but
there is little reflection on her overall good
fortune within a bad situation.
Within the burgeoning genre of sick lit,
Levys may not be the most intriguing or
insightful story, but the book is well-written
and well-structured, and Levy is a memor-
able character.
EATING DIRT
Deep Forests, Big Timber and Life
with the Tree-Planting Tribe
CHARLOTTE GILL
Greystone Books
REVIEW BY KERRY RYAN
For many Canadians, tree planting is a rite of
passage. For the rest, its a romantic notion
quickly dispelled by the harsh reality of our
landscape and the gruelling repetitiveness
of the work. Theres the fresh air (brutal
heat, drenching rain), the pristine natural
surroundings (black flies, bears), an honest
days work (blisters, scrapes, aching backs),
the sense of self-determination (isolation,
whatever the opposite is of cabin fever) and
the chance to undo environmental damage
(futility, insignificance).
Ive learned all about the triumphs and
frustrations of slinging seedlingsfromthe
cushiness of my chesterfield. Sure, my face
wasnt whipped by branches, my clothes
werent stiff with sweat and grime, but
Charlotte Gills memoir of the tree planting life,
Eating Dirt, made me feel the grinding exhaus-
tion, see the stunning views and experience
the strained camaraderie as if it was my own.
Its no wonder Gills writing is so effect-
ive. Shes both an accomplished storyteller
(her award-winning short story collection
Ladykiller was published in 2005) and vet-
eran tree planter (her career has spanned
20 yearsand her seasons extended well
beyond the summer months).
Eating Dirt has something for outdoorsy
and indoorsy readers alike. Gills vivid de-
scriptions of the West Coast old growth
forests are magical (until the clear-cuts come
into view, that is) and she balances her ex-
tensive personal experience with lessons in
biology, history and the evolution of forestry.
The characters that make up her ragtag
crew and the conditions they endure could
be the makings of a sociology experiment
theyre fascinating. If only Gill could control
their comings and goings as in fictionits
so disappointing when a promising charac-
ter packs it in after only a day or two of the
back-breaking work.
Whats most remarkable about Eating Dirt
is its balanced approach. Despite the fact
that the book is published in partnership with
women to surrender to experts, ever subju-
gating their own needs and seeing mothering
as private, with no political import.
If theres one drawback to the book, its
that Greens definitions around feminist moth-
ering occasionally come across as overly
rigid. For example, one womans aimis to
parent her son based on respecting his hu-
man rightshardly exclusive to feminists.
Overall, though, Greens work encourages a
powerful revisioning of motherhood, from
restrictive institution to a site of autonomy
and empowerment that is worthy of our con-
tinued study and discussion.
GENTRIFICATION OF THE MIND
SARAH SCHULMAN
University of California Press
REVIEW BY SARAH MANGLE
The hard-working and prolific Sarah Schulman
begins The Gentrification of the Mind by nam-
ing the fundamental disconnect between two
generations of activist and/or leftist queer
peoplethose who were involved in early
AIDS crisis activismand those who were
children, or not born yet, while the early AIDS
crisis was happening in North America.
Hundreds of thousands of important risk-
taking queer writers, artists and activists
are dead as a result of the early AIDS crisis.
Because of this, and due to the mainstream-
ing and erasure of radical queer collectivist
culture, younger generations of queer
people cannot fully comprehend the experi-
ence of the early AIDS crisis anywhere
beyond a theoretical history.
Perhaps the most important argument made
by Schulman in this book is calling attention
to the major loss of lives fromthe early AIDS
crisis80,000 in NewYork City alonethat
led to mass vacancies in affordable downtown
apartments and ultimately resulted in mass
of Arctic explorers. History has volumes on
the men who raced for the poles, but what
about the wives they left behind, often for
years at a time?
In Polar Wives, by Kari Herbert, we finally
get to meet some of these amazing women.
Herbert diligently plowed through a moun-
tain of personal letters scattered in private
collections around the world. Through her
exhaustive research, she brings to life world
traveller Lady Jane Franklin, wife of Arctic ex-
plorer Sir John Franklin; Norwegian singer and
cross-country ski pioneer Eva Nansen, wife of
Arctic explorer Fridtjof Nansen; the adventur-
ous Jo Peary, wife of Robert Peary, who, in a
controversial race with Frederick Cooke, was
credited with reaching the North Pole first;
the tenacious Lady Emily Shackleton, wife
of Antarctic explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton;
sculptor Kathleen Scott, wife of Antarctic ex-
plorer Robert Scott; and Herberts own mother,
the free-spirited Marie Herbert, wife of Arctic
explorer Wally Herbert.
At times, the hero husbands of these
women were treated like rock stars, courted
by royalty and sought after by the worlds
elite. Yet, as Herbert shows, the women
were equally important to the explorers suc-
cesses. While at times managing households
and raising children, the women schmoozed,
promoted, defended their husbands and
raised exorbitant amounts of money to
bankroll their epic expeditions. They also
lived with the torment of not knowing if they
would see their husbands alive again.
The strength of Herberts writing definitely
comes from her Arctic life and her strong
admiration for Jo Peary. Herbert grew up
with her explorer parents and lived only a
few miles from the spot where Peary gave
birth to her own daughter, Marie, in 1893.
Some of Herberts childhood friends were
the descendants of Marie Pearys playmates.
This first-hand account makes Polar Wives
a fascinating read. Herbert honours these
women and rightfully gives them a much-
deserved place in history.
LIFE STAGES AND NATIVE WOMEN
Memory, Teachings and Story Medicine
KIM ANDERSON
University of Manitoba Press
REVIEW BY DEANNA RADFORD
Fulfilling the desire to know ones family
roots and the blood lines that connect
them not only helps to explain our personal
histories but can also help us to under-
stand our present lives. Sometimes, this
our ancestors; about howour foremothers
and grandmothers defined and then lived their
identities, roles and authorities, and about
howmuch of this was lost. The content pre-
sented by Anderson and Maria Campbell in
the introduction underlines the trauma experi-
enced in having lost these elements. It also
underlines the warmth, community and em-
powerment that can be reclaimed in piecing
those elements together again.
Anderson interviewed 14 female and sev-
eral male elders who are Mtis, Cree, Ojibway
and Saulteaux. Telling stories fromconversa-
tions with these individuals, Anderson leads a
guided tour of the life cycles and day-to-day
experiences fromconception, early childhood
and teen years, to adulthood, the grandparent
years and the time of the elder.
Life Stages is an accessible text and can
serve as a practical empowerment manual
for the hearts, minds and lives of Mtis, Cree,
Ojibway and Saulteaux women and commun-
ities. It is filled with important insights on the
leadership of these women at all ages and on
the inner workings of their communities prior
to and during colonization in the mid-20th
century. There are lessons to be learned from
these stories, fromtheir anecdotes and from
their teachings that relate to feminist, inter-
generational and inter-gender respect in all
anti-patriarchal efforts and movements. This
is highly recommended reading.
TRUE CONFESSIONS
Feminist Professors Tell
Stories Out of School
EDITED BY SUSAN GUBAR
Norton
REVIEW BY WENDY ROBBINS
These 27 personal essays by path-breaking
second-wave feminist professors in the U.S.,
a cohort now nearing retirement, focus on
the private experiences [that] prompted the
professional activism and breakthrough
insights into sexual politics, especially in
the humanities.
Life writing offers an antidote to abstract
theory, the last major critical trend, which
left editor Susan Gubar a tad bored and
countless others awash in scholarly jargon.
Personal stories constitute real-world
testimony yet are unverifiable and may
or may not be representative. A few by
heavily therapized writers border on nar-
cissism. Still, they are evidence in a kind
of social record. This anthology offers
interesting historical perspectives and helps
re-evaluate the current status of experience
in epistemology and womens studies.
The connection between autobiog-
raphy and critical insight is clear in the
life and career of Leila Ahmed, the first
professor of womens studies in religion at
Harvard. She grew up in a family where the
womens understanding of Islam, passed
on orally, differed from the mens official,
textual Islam.
Other essays show how professional
power dynamics, in turn, influence personal
lives. One poignant example is the protract-
ed tenure battle of Annette Kolodny at the
University of New Hampshire, which mired
[her] in debt and emotional anguish while
her reproductive clock ran out.
Succeeding as a feminist in a male-
dominated institution entails costs and
benefitsinfluential careers and landmark
publications but also, particularly for women
of colour, exhaustion, depression, loneli-
ness and a higher incidence of cancer and
other killing diseasessuggests Ann
duCille in Feminism, Black and Blue.
Certain themes recur: the influence of
foremothers (iconoclastic or conserva-
tive) and fathers (supportive or violent);
sexual harassment and even at-
tempted rape by male professors;
discrimination in hiring; work-life
conflicts; the relentless feeling of
being an interloper; and the joy
of breaking barriers, contributing
new knowledge and forging life-
long feminist friendships.
Collectively, there is satisfac-
tion at having managed, as Gubar
writes, to bring about one of the
most momentous transformations
in Western culture: the successful
integration of women into higher
education and therefore also
into virtually all the professions.
knowledge can equate to the sur-
vival of a people.
In Life Stages and Native Women,
KimAnderson discusses her in-
tention to help indigenous people
in the healing process as part of
decolonization. Quoting participant
historian MosmDanny, Anderson
writes, you have to knowwhere
you are coming fromto knowwhere
you are going. Furthermore, she
writes, When it comes to address-
ing issues related to Native women,
this process involves understanding
howgendered and intergenerational
relations worked in the societies of
However, depressed job markets, deterior-
ating material conditions on campus,
a widening gap between rich and poor,
and backlash leave the thirst for justice
still unsatisfied.
JONI
The Creative Odyssey of Joni Mitchell
KATHERINE MONK
Greystone Books
REVIEW BY EVELYN C. WHITE
Born Roberta Joan Anderson, the musi-
cian celebrated as Joni Mitchell didnt
grant interviews to the author of her new
biography. She will not talk to you, writes
Katherine Monk, noting the thumbs-down
she received from a Mitchell official.
Undaunted, Monk proceeded to tease
out the tangle of the complex woman who
once dismissed Ella Fitzgerald as just a
singer and damned Bob Dylan as a fake.
She accomplishes her mission through
reprints of numerous Mitchell interviews,
which she sets against a backdrop of litera-
ture, psychology and philosophy that have
been, Monk asserts, central to Mitchells life.
Just how much Nietzsche influenced
[Mitchells] oeuvre was probably the biggest
surprise of all, the author writes. I was
sucked into a Nietzschean wormhole
where the macram plant hangers, gingham
dresses and patchouli that once framed my
impression of Joni Mitchell vaporized in a
thundercloud of creative power.
As for the challenges faced by the cre-
ator of Woodstock and Both Sides Now
(among other legendary works), Monk
provides an overview of Mitchells bout
with polio, her unplanned pregnancy (in
1965, at age 21) and her brief marriage to
American folksinger Chuck Mitchell. Monk
notes that the fraught union enabled Joni to
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WINTER READING
gentrification of those areas. Because the
gay men who died of AIDS had no legal infra-
structure to pass on their apartments to lovers
and friends (some of whomhad been living
in these apartments with their loved ones for
decades), rents immediately increased, lead-
ing to rapid, mass gentrification.
The Gentrification of the Mind names a
particular, internalized, cultural gentrifica-
tion that takes place alongside literal urban
gentrification. It grieves the loss of actual
community organizing (versus the non-profit
industrial complex type of organizing that is
currently so pervasive).
The Gentrification of the Mind discusses
the impact of this situation on cultural
production and on what we imagine to be
possible. It describes how gentrification cre-
ates additional limitations on the production
of dynamic art making and writing.
Schulman shows most MFA writing and/or
theatre programs as being requirements for
individual artistic successes. But in reality
this results in dull writing and boring theatre.
The latter is also due to what venue owners
consider viable work and possible monetary
successes. Rent is now significantly more
expensive, and venue owners cannot afford
to take the same kinds of risks on experi-
mental and radical work.
The Gentrification of the Mind is rich
with urgent and beautiful criticisms.
Highly recommended.
POLAR WIVES
KARI HERBERT
Greystone Books
REVIEW BY LISA SHAW
The recent discovery of artifacts from the
1845 Franklin Expedition, the ill-fated voyage
to find the Northwest Passage, has sparked
interest in the Victorian and Edwardian eras
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poetrysnapshot
MONKEY RANCH
JULIE BRUCK
Brick Books
BETWEEN DUSK
AND NIGHT
EMILY MCGIFFIN
Brick Books
REVIEWS BY MARIIANNE MAYS
Its not so much precision that
makes Julie Brucks poetry
vital, wise and so damned good,
as an almost-uncanny ability
to illustrate the short distance
between the ordinary and the
unfamiliar. The confusion
between dog and wolf is what she
names it in the poem Entre Chien
et Loup, part of her new collection
Monkey Ranch. One of the poems pro-
tagonists, the father, stands grey with
impatience inside the front door await-
ing the mother (with his hot breath, she
calls it, that airport look) while she
dresses in the bedroom with her door
shut/ because she cant stand the feel of
him waiting. This kind of narrative force
drives many of the poems, tracking the
vanishing point rather than any direct
line to a thing.
Bruck gets at things through a wry,
sidelong pressure, giving bloom to bor-
ders of confusion and denial that run
through us and to the minute transforma-
tions that evade detection until they are
bearing down on us. Whether due to
our own obliviousness or that temporary
trick of childhood or grace to sidestep
even the smallest emergencies, while
sparks of domestic scenes catch fire
and quiet suicides proliferateas Bruck
shows ustoo often we are waiting for
precisely the wrong thing. Much like the
irritated father, who blows the house
down with a God/ dammit! stomping
back in for his wife.
It is no wonder she has been short-
listed for (and now won) a 2012 Governor
Generals Literary Award, because no
one else writes poetry quite like Julie
Bruck. But its not so easy to say exactly
how she does it. Her language is unpre-
tentious, and theres no over-reliance on
form. Though the discreet, self-assured
craft has echoes in the work of a poet
like Elizabeth Bishop (eulogized in the
poem Elizabeth Bishops Room), Bruck
displays a judiciousness or wit that is
entirely singular. Tensions mount in one
poem during the wince-inducing dead air
of a local call-in show; time decelerates
in the title poem while monkeys die off.
Monkey Ranch is an aching, slow-
motion astonishment of a poem, in which
the persona recalls how [w]e starved our
monkeys when Father tired of monkey/
farming. The monkeys, striped/ green
and yellow, except/ for the red and white
ones, flicker through the death obscuring
their memoryor is it vice versa, with cir-
cus dress-up masking the death glinting
beneath? Either way, mysterious, missing
links and sudden melancholy flare up as
images flit by, eroding, tainted, replaced:
Day by day, they slowed,/ and when I pic-
ture them now,/ or dream of how it was,/
they stagger in the black/ and
white of old newsreels.
Another book that stakes
its interest in territory in-
betweento entirely different
effectis Emily McGiffens mov-
ing debut, Between Dusk and
Night. Where Bruck captures do-
mestic instants in which details
derail, destinations overwhelm,
in McGiffens poetry the reader is
thrown with the poet into the role
of existential seeker. Her traveller
in the half-dark,/ in this wolfish
light is awake with everything
thoughtless,/ everything without cause,/
without reason. [] crouch[ing] there/
crepuscular,// animal,/ alive.
The earths strangeness is inevitably
coloured by leave-taking and by whats
been left behind, willingly or otherwise, as
in Setting Out, the opening poem of this
strong collection. The day she leaves the
Whittaker Farm, she will butcher/ the last
six chickens and drown the cat, the poet
writes. Such escapes, partings and ab-
sences, departures and disappearances
pervade the book.
The poet faces an unexpected, solitary
path, like a beetle/ [that] emerges from
under a leaf;/ it has found the sun and
remembers/ its own limbs, its stiff grace./
What it must do, she writes in After a
Journey. The ordinary is exchanged for the
gift of reckoning with life itself; it becomes
a nightlong weaving of words during which
colloquy blossomed into cacophony and
the near mountains glistened.
McGiffen writes from a limbo where her
chest is a cold scrap yard/ of broken, rust-
ing things. It seems impossible// that they
were ever useful. Yet she persists, with
the same stiff grace of a heart healing
around an emptiness/ into some tougher,
brighter thing.
work legally in the United States. Moreover,
Monk ventures, Mitchell hoped that her hus-
band would help her to raise the daughter
(conceived with another man) that she relin-
quished to authorities in Toronto.
The young couple even went to the fos-
ter home to visit [the child], Monk writes.
But Chuck wasnt the one with the latent
parenting plans. He says he left the decision
up to her. She says he didnt want to bring
up another mans baby. The inspiration
for Mitchells song Little Green, the child
was ultimately adopted. Monk writes that
Mitchell enjoyed a happy reunion with her
daughter in 1997, but the status of their rela-
tionship now is unclear.
Monk leaves no doubt that Mitchell has
exacted mastery over every aspect of her
storied (and stormy) career. About the un-
repentant chain smoker, Monk writes:
[Mitchell] took possession of her musi-
cianship, and through her many
instruments learned to express her
many truths.
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The scene will forever be etched in my memory. Im standing
in front of a chicken egg incubator at the Pacific National
Exhibition (PNE) in Vancouver. The 2012 summer fair is in
full swing and Im surrounded by a gaggle of children.
Maam, maam, its coming out, a tow-headed boy exclaims
to a PNE staffer as a wobbly, big-eyed chick begins to peck
its way out of a light brown shell. Enthralled by the miracle
of birth unfolding before them, a wave of children and their
parents press forward as other chicks, warmed by the incubator,
enter the world.
In the midst of the shrieks of glee and excitement, I find
myself meditating on another group of children that once
found themselves in the barnyard ambience of the PNE. Im
talking about the multitudes of Japanese-Canadian youngsters
who, damned along with their parents as enemy aliens, were
banished from their homes in the aftermath of the December
1941 bombing of Pearl Harbor during the Second World War.
By early 1942, the Canadian government had authorized
the forced removal of more than 20,000 persons of Japanese
racial origin from the Pacific coast. Officials used livestock
pens at the PNE as clearing sites for the Japanese-Canadian
citizens before shipping them off to inland internment camps.
Many families were confined for months in the rank spaces
where pigs, goats, cows and other farm animals were held
during the annual PNE summer fair.
Father and mother were taken to a six-by-eight-foot
horse stall with twin beds, recalled Tom Tagani in the 1991
book Justice in Our Time: The Japanese Canadian Redress
Settlement. The stench from years of horse urine soaked in
the floors was enough to make a healthy person sick.
Summarily stripped of their rights solely because of their
ethnicity (75 percent of those interned were naturalized or
Canadian-born citizens), Japanese-Canadian students then
enrolled at the University of British Columbia were immedi-
ately expelled from the institution.
University life was very, very nice for me, recalled Mary
Nagata, now 90, in UBC Reports, a campus publication. I liked
to study. And sharing ideas with other students was my joy.
Instead of continuing her work toward a bachelor of arts
degree with a major in English, Nagata, no longer welcome
at UBC, moved with her family to Edmonton. She said her
father, whod been taken from their home, was held prisoner
at a nearby camp.
Seventy years after the injustice that belies the national
narrative of Canada as a multicultural paradise, I was privileged
to be in the audience this past May when UBC granted honor-
ary degrees to the Japanese-Canadian students who would
have graduated in 1942.
Of the 76 students who were expelled, 22 were still alive,
and only ten were able to attend the event, officials later said.
Children or grandchildren (resplendent in caps and gowns)
accepted the degrees on behalf of Japanese-Canadian family
members who were denied their rightful place in the pomp
and circumstance of a graduation ceremony.
Nagata eventually received her B.A. from the University of
Toronto. Featured in the short documentary A Degree of Justice
(2012), she didnt attend the Vancouver event. Still, she said
she was grateful for the long-overdue recognition by UBC.
Like Nagata, Roy Oshiro is 90. He was studying to become
a teacher when UBC derailed his career plan. After his intern-
ment, he left Canada and spent most of his life working as a
missionary in Okinawa, Japan.
Striking a Sylvester Stallone pose ( la Rocky), Oshiro raised
his hands over his head and beamed at the cheering crowd
after receiving his degree. Hed travelled from Japan to
Vancouver for the gathering.
Interestingly, a woman who never attended UBC stands as
the force behind the deeply moving event. In 2008, retired
Vancouver teacher Mary Kitagawa was surfing the Web. By
chance, she read an article about universities in the United
States that had granted honorary degrees to expelled World
War II-era Japanese American students.
Inspired, Kitagawa contacted UBC administrators. After a
prolonged negotiation, campus officials agreed to a similar
ceremony. In belated homage to Nagata, Oshiro and their
classmates, the university also created a minor in Asian-
Canadian studies.
Among those interned in 1942, Kitagawa and her family
spent time in a malodorous PNE livestock stall. About the
gathering at which she was rightly praised, she said, I felt an
enormous sense of joy and relief. It was a hallelujah moment
for me.
Soundings
EVELYN C. WHITE
JAPANESE INTERNMENT REVISITED
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Herizons challenges us to evolve our
feminist values and put them into
action. The magazine tracks, with
seismographic sensitivity, our joy
over progress and our outrage over backsliding.
Wendy Robbins, recipient of the
Governor General Persons Award
L
eah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha identifies herself
as a queer femme, a disabled woman of colour, a writer,
a poet, a teacher, a cultural activist and a spoken-word
artist. When these many strokes blend together, they paint a
colourful human portrait of Piepzna-Samarasinha.
About her first anthology, Consensual Genocide, Herizons
reviewer Kerry Ryan observed, Consensual Genocide is a de-
manding read, and so it should be. Theres no skimming, no
sampling, no loitering allowed here; the reader must invest
energy and empathy in these poems and close the covers only
after her fingers have been singed.
Similarly, Love Cake, which won Piepzna-Samarasinha the
Lambda Literary Award in 2012, is intimatealmost too close
for comfort at times. But a desensitized world like ours requires
such streaks of unapologetic candidness to jolt our nerves into
feeling again.
In 2010, Piepzna-Samarasinha was named one of the
Feminist Presss 40 Feminists Under 40 Who Are Shaping the
Future. A champion of the collective voice, her work has ap-
peared in many anthologies, including Yes Means Yes, Colonize
This!, Bitchfest, Without a Net and Brazen Femme. Her credits
also include the 2011 release of The Revolution Starts at Home:
Confronting Intimate Violence in Activist Communities, a book
she co-edited.
Born to a Sri Lankan father and a Ukrainian-Irish mother,
Piepzna-Samarasinha was brought up in Worcester,
Massachusetts, and now calls Toronto home. She has fibro-
myalgia, a painful syndrome categorized by widespread body
pain and fatigue. Throughout her work, Piepzna-Samarasinha
reveals her physical body as one that not only lives with a dis-
ability but also boldly celebrates sex and gender. Through art,
her intricate relationships with the world are revealed.
Her fierce and determined writing style often takes readers
on a nostalgic, emotional journey. Her poem The day I lost
my body affirms hope:
We lost some things forever
and some things
just
changed
Resistance &
Remembering
P
h
o
t
o
b
y
N
a
t
y
T
r
e
m
b
la
y
Love cake is actually a dense cake that Piepzna-Samarasinhas
grandmother used to send her every New England winter. The
granddaughter now makes her own versionthick n built
to lastjust like life. Invoking an assortment of potent emo-
tions, Love Cake is a display of the resilience and the permeating
calm at which Piepzna-Samarasinha has arrived by embracing
her identity, which is beautifully conveyed with deft simplicity
in the poem my hips are wings:
I never leave my body any more
I
am
right
here
In her poem Serendib she references a trip to Sri Lanka
in search of her roots. We feel her relief of all the daunting
questions melting away under the warmth of acceptance when
she writes:
and miss what are you
is answered by
my father is Tamil
my mother is Irish
is not a surprise
this home
is not a surprise
I
am not a surprise
unexpected
With an MFA in creative writing from Mills College,
California, Piepzna-Samarasinha is an artist in residence and
a teacher at June Jordans Poetry for the People program at the
University of California in Berkeley. Piepzna-Samarasinha is
also the lead artist at the performance project Sins Invalid,
which brings together disabled, queer, gender-variant artists
of colour. She also helped to establish the national queer and
trans people of colour performance organization Mangoes
With Chili and co-founded Torontos Asian Arts Freedom
School.
HERIZONS: Love cake is about refusing to forget. Could you share
with us the importance of memory in your ethnocultural journey?
LEAH LAKSHMI PIEPZNA-SAMARASINHA: Oh my
god, so much! To me, memory is sometimes the only thing we
who are colonized and have our land taken from us [have].
Our memories are sacred. And they are battlegrounds and sites
of resistance. To be able to say, no, what I remember is real,
what I remember happened, its legitimate and truein the
face of an abusive family, boarding school, grade school history
class or corporate news media that tells us that our memories
of violence and survival, of indigenous and people of colour
and working-class and queer and trans and sex worker and
disabled resistance and cultural traditions, are not realis an
incredible act of resistance. And strength.
So with megrowing up in a family where there was both a
lot of silence, as the best survival tool my family knew, and a lot
of actual breaking of silence in odd momentssomething thats
been important to do in my adulthood is to actively remember.
To remember the stories my mother and father toldabout
my grandmother and great aunties being the wild Alvis girls
in Malaysia, Singapore and Sri Lanka in the 1930s and 40s,
how they were pro-union and pro-independence women who
were struggling to be sexual and independent and political on
their own terms. To not just simply celebrate thosewhich
its super tempting to do, to create simplistic, heroic people of
colour ancestor storiesbut to really sit with the complexities.
And to work to learn what was deliberately erasedand to
dream, and imagine the stories that didnt make it across the
water. Theres so much that is valuable, but its not the same
as getting it from the source.
Things get lost. But our de-colonial imaginations are part of
the tool kit we have to dream our way out. If we can imagine
something that is not the bullshit of current reality, we can
gure out how to get it.
Memory is a tool of resistance. And in saying that, I worry
that it sounds like radical pants clich 101, but it really is. One
of the references I always go back to is from the South African
freedom struggle, the notion that our struggle is also a struggle
of memory against forgetting. Theres the idea that memory
lives in our bodies, that our bodies hold so many ancestral
and present memories. When we trust ourselves enough to
listen to and feel them and tell them, we are saying that our
queer, trans, black, brown, indigenous, broke, disabled bodies
countthat we are our own sources of strength.
In a world where so many of our lived experiences as oppressed
people are wallpapered over, remembering and writing the small
and big details of, say, waiting in the free clinic with a chronically
Things get lost. But our de-colonial imaginations are
part of the tool kit we have to dream our way out.
Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha
arts culture arts culture
AN INTERVIEW WITH
LEAH LAKSHMI PIEPZNA-SAMARASINHA
BY ANJANA BALAKRISHNAN
ill body, or the murder of two young queer women by gunshots
to the head in Texas, or a love affair with another chronically ill
person whos also divided by race and class, are concrete acts that
preserve stories that can make it so [that] someone else doesnt
kill themselves, actively or slowly. Its survival.
In Mahmoud, you say, the work of a poet: to document, to sing/to
remember, insist/to incite, to call: peace, peace. Is that the purpose
poetry serves for you? Who do you write for?
LEAH LAKSHMI PIEPZNA-SAMARASINHA: I believe
in using poetry to record small and big moments in my personal
life and in the worlds life. My second, giant tattoo says, In my
blood, a million stories, which is both a line from Jean Graes
song Black Girl Pain and the [ancient Tamil text] Tirukkural.
I write for all the people who are my many communitiesthe
mixed brown kids, Lankans of all kinds, diasporic desis [people,
cultures and products of the Indian subcontinent or South
Asia], queer and trans black and brown and indigenous folks,
sick and disabled folks, queer femmes and the broke-ass. I
write in the hopes that my reections of my life and stories/
our lives and stories get picked up and read and that the people
who are reading them get to see something of their own lives
reected that they might not have ever seen reected. And I
also write for the entire world.
The city of my desire is my body, you say. Are you at home in the place
you live with a door I open and close? Are you still in search of a home?
LEAH LAKSHMI PIEPZNA-SAMARASINHA: At the
2010 U.S. Social Forum in Detroit, I met someone whos now
a dear friend. I will never forget the moment I asked her
where home wasshe stopped in the middle of all the scream-
ing masses of people, got perfectly calm and centred, smiled
and said, Home? Its right here, touching her breastbone.
A year and a half later, I got the word home tattooed on that
spot. It hurt like hell and got me incredibly high as soon as
the needle hit my skin.
Where home is, is the ultimate diasporic desi question. Im
more and more comfortable with home being everywhere
I bring myself. Toronto is home in a big and ultimate way,
though as a city with the worlds biggest Sri Lankan diasporic
population and a huge South Asian population, where there
are tons of mixed desis and queer and trans desis, and weirdo
desis, its a place where my body makes sense. Home is the
corner of Bloor and Lansdowne. And its also this body, whose
walls I am learning to inhabit more and more fully. I dont
think we can nd that sweet, perfect place of de-colonial rest
till we make the revolution. But we can work to make every
place we are that sweet, safe, place where my crip body on the
couch isnt a problem, where curry leaf perfumes the kitchen.
Many of the poems in Love Cake, like the best daughter and
the day I lost my body, speak of abuse and trauma. How do you
manage to stay optimistic, and what is the force that drives you?
LEAH LAKSHMI PIEPZNA-SAMARASINHA: The fact
that everything really does and can change. Sexual abuse and
violence are huge realities that are everywhere but whats
also true is that survivors are incredibly erce peoplewe make
amazing lives. We grow up to make social justice movements and
communities and beautiful safe homes that are luscious, that are
our wildest dreams come true.
What I had to survive sucked, and drastically changed my
life from what it wouldve been like if I hadnt been abused. But
its a collective struggle, and because of the collective labour
of survivors to transform survivorhood and the world, I have
a wonderful grown-up life with lots of friends and amazing,
amazing sex, joy and poetry. There are so many of us! To move
away from the way abuse is seenas an individual tragedy thats
shameful and ruins you and breaks youto something that
affects [the majority of people in] the worldthe knowledge
that we get from that could just transform everything.
As a cultural activist what does your ideal world look like?
LEAH LAKSHMI PIEPZNA-SAMARASINHA: One where
the white, capitalist, colonialist, ableist patriarchy no longer exists
and weve created something that is its polar opposite. No borders,
giant paradigm shifts in how we view disability, brownness, vio-
lence and guaranteed income for sick and crip folks, artists and
the rest of us. A world where cultural work is seen as important
work, and where artists get to have safe, good housing, income
and space to make work (along with everyone else).
Im a very lucky hustler and have been able to craft a fabu-
lous life where I make a living as a full-time artist with many
income streams but Id still love to know that Ill have an
income and a place to live when I get oldone where there
is so much time and space to craft story, ritual, performance.
Oh yeah, and free sex toys.
Sexual abuse and violence are huge realities that are everywhere
but whats also true is that survivors are incredibly fierce people
we make amazing lives.Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha
arts culture arts culture
FILM
TWILIGHT PORTRAIT
Directed by Angelina Nikonova
4 Months, 3 weeks, 2 days is to Romania
what Twilight Portrait is to Russia. Both films
use allegory as a way to bring us inside their
brutal, broken worlds. In Twilight Portrait the
plot is straightforward: A middle-class young
woman is raped by a group of marauding cops.
This isnt a one-off. The woman is married
to an upwardly mobile young man. She has
friends. She is polished. She has a good job.
An apartment. But she is unhappy. The movie
makes it plain in a highly dramatic scene. The
woman goes in search of the cops who at-
tacked her, as if to avenge her rape. She finds
one cop. She breaks a bottle and follows him
into the elevator. The turn is surprising and
strange, not at all what one would expect from
the revenge-filmgenre. The men in this film
are violent monsters. But they are trepidatious
ones, monsters who cry. The women are un-
certain howto mother. But mother they must.
Director Angelinas Nikonovas film is
about a society that is unsure of itself, a
society climbing out of trauma and finding its
footing. We could simplify it and say this is
just Russian society. But it is a society that
speaks to all its viewers. It wants to teach
us a new way. This is a beautiful, elegant,
allegorical film about pain and rage, one that
heals rather than exacts revenge.
HEMEL
Directed by Sacha Polak
Hemel, without a doubt, contains one of
the most luminous performances by an
actress in recent years. With a flick of the
eyes, Hemel (Dutch for heaven), played by
Hannah Hoekstra, conveys almost instan-
taneously hope, fear, youthful bravado and
crushing devastation.
This is a story of a young woman who navi-
gates her crossing into adulthood through a
series of quick sexual encounters. Hemel is
cavalier, kicking one man out of her apartment
when he seeks intimacy following sex, telling
himthat lions fall asleep after sex, accusing
himof not acting manly. Her one-night stands
range frommasochistic to dominant. Hemel
appears to be comfortable with the separation
between sex and love. Sex is fun, but love is
another matter entirely, reserved only for her
father, a celebrated ladies man, played with a
soulfulness and depth by Hans Dagelet. The
constancy of their relationship is something
Hemel can count on.
In the meantime, she prowls the bars like
a cat. She is trying to satisfy something, but
turns each man out immediately after orgasm.
Hemel tries to find something that works,
while she can only experience feelings of
longing and meaningfulness through her rela-
tionship with her father. The inciting incident
comes late in the film. Hemel has trouble
adjusting to news of a loss, and finds solace
in the most extraordinary of places. As with
Angelina Nikonovas Twilight Portrait, director
Sacha Polak renders an honest, intimate story
told without sentimentality and develops a
theme the very least place we expect it.
FRANCINE
Directed by Brian M. Cassidy and
Melanie Shatzky
What can one say about this almost perfect
little gem of a film by Brian M. Cassidy and
Melanie Shatzky? Melissa Leo does a great
job conveying the agony of trying to func-
tion in society for those who find the world
to be an experience similar to landing in an
alien spaceship. Francine is released from
an institution we presume was prison, but it
could just as easily have been a psychiatric
hospital. She barely talks, just nods and
mumbles. Her most intense exchanges seem
to be with other species.
The inciting incident is the stealing of a
dog. One dog inexplicably becomes several
dogs and then a madhouse full of animals
some alive, some dead. But her care of
these pets, initially maternal, soon becomes
angry and resentful. One gets a sense of a
helpless child who, suddenly finding herself
pregnant and overwhelmed, wonders how
she got there. This is a film with a lot of
false starts, as Francine meets nice person
after nice person, each of whom reaches
out to her. Through Francines journey, we
understand exactly how some people cant
negotiate the language of our strange world.
After the filmwas over, many audience
members complained that nothing had
happened. Francine felt pristine in the true
examination of its subject. Anything else
wouldve been an embroidered lie. There
are great cameos throughout this film, which
uses vrit-style cinematography. Melissa
Leos performance is unadorned and brave,
and it felt true, as did the performances of
all the actors. They dont seemto be acting
at all, but rather appear to be regular people
followed around by a camera with the kind of
realismfound in Steven Soderberghs Bubble,
a filmin which non-actors play fictional parts,
creating an authentic tribute to real America.
Still, most people would rather watch The
Real Housewives of Vancouver, purportedly
real people pretending to be real in experi-
ences that really arent one bit real, than
watch actors pretending to be real people in
experiences that seem absolutely and pain-
fully and gloriously real.
TOP PICKS FROM THE 2012 VANCOUVER INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL
REVIEWS BY MAUREEN MEDVED
Academy Award-winner Melissa Leo gives a fierce and
restrained performance as Francine, a woman struggling
to find her place after leaving prison.
Hannah Hoekstra conveys hope, fear and crushing dev-
astation in the film Hemel.
Olga Dihovichnaya plays Marina in Angelina Nikonovas
Twilight Portrait.
48 WINTER 2013 HERIZONS
It is what some people in the Vatican are calling Mller
Time. Thats because Pope Benedict recently appointed fellow
German Gerhard Ludwig Mller, 64, head of the Roman
Catholic Churchs doctrinal watchdog, the Congregation for
the Doctrine of the Faith.
Because Mller has ties to liberation theologythat quaint
idea that the Catholic Church should pull its arthritic being
into the 19th century and in another 200 years or so, the
20thsome of the faithful thought he might lift some of
the bans on womens participation in church operations, par-
ticularly the one on women becoming deacons. After all, say
advocates, this position does not involve saying mass, and, in
the book of Timothy, Paul makes a reference to deaconesses.
Opponents hufly point out that the Greek word for deaconess
also translates as servant.
Our Gerry put an immediate stop to any such nonsense. In
an interview published by Catholic Online, he said all three
clerical ofcesbishop, priest and deaconare reserved for
men. If the deacon, with the bishop and presbyter, starting
from the radical unity of the three degrees of the orders, acts
from Christ, head and Spouse of the Church, in favour of the
Church, it is obvious that only a man can represent this rela-
tion of Christ with the Church.
This is proof that the Catholic Church is an equal-opportunity
unemployer. It does not say, for example, that no black women
need apply to become a deacon, or that no lesbian need peti-
tion to become bishop, and it does not preclude childless white
women from aspiring to the priesthood. For once, the Church
does not care about homosexuality, abortion or birth control.
The point here is that no women need apply. None. No
racial bigotry. No homophobia. No ridiculous social strictures.
Gerry doesnt give a damn whether or not you wear underwear
under your miniskirt, nor does he care if you lust after a man
on Monday and a woman on Wednesday. He cares only that
you not become a deacon, priest or bishop.
Mller can quote scripture and church law all he likes, but
the truth is that this is a simple issue. The whole thing comes
down to one word: housework.
Men, especially those in religious hierarchies, instinctively
know that if women do less housework they have more time to
aspire to be doctors, lawyers, truck drivers, dentists, plumbers
and, worse yet, deacons. After that will come the priesthood,
and then Catholic women, like their sisters in the Anglican
Church, will insist on becoming bishops.
Thus, the rst dictum of the Catholic Churchand many
other churches, temples, synagogues and mosquesis that
housework shall be the sole domain of women. From that
premise ows the belief that women should ow as little as
possible. They should be pregnant as often as possible, and,
of course, for that to happen, they must not use birth control,
and preferably not even have access to it.
It also explains the homophobia of the Catholic Church.
A lesbian couple, for example, is obviously going to keep the
house clean together, thereby depriving two men, one of whom
might be a priest, of their services in the house. And a gay male
couple? Much worse. Two men doing housework? Now that
is disgustinga dreadful example to both women and men.
And by housework, I refer not only to cooking and clean-
ing. No, I mean everything that keeps a house, a business, an
institution or a church going. Ofce work, organizing bazaars,
the reminders, the shopping, visiting the sick, and on and on.
If Catholic women loudly or quietly stopped doing all that
shit, Rome would sooner than later come to a halt, a halt that
would inevitably lead to changes.
I have proof that this kind of strike works. In my rst year
of teaching, the principal handed me some new books and
told me to wrap them for awards day. To my credit, I did not
deliver a feminist rant. Instead, I told the truth. Im not very
good at wrapping, I said.
The principal, a former military man, replied rather sternly,
The librarian always does the gift-wrapping.
So I wrapped. Badly. Okay, so maybe even badlier than usual.
The principal never again asked me to wrap presents and soon
after that women started to get positions as vice-principals
and principals. Okay, so that process took a while, but you
get the picture.
BOYCOTT CHURCH HOUSEWORK
On the Edge
BY LYN COCKBURN
Subscribe now to award-winning Bitch
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Use coupon code HERIZONS1 at bitchmedia.org to order now!
Consistently inventive and always evolving...Its the
next-best thing to double majoring in Womens Studies
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