Executive Director's Message

Remembering...

November 2019 / Toronto - My social media accounts were buzzing with righteous and rightful (if there’s such a word) indignation about comments made on a hockey game show by the host of Coach’s Corner Don Cherry. I’ve often been surprised that he continued to get airtime on our public network.

He first came into my consciousness when about twelve years ago or maybe longer he went on an insulting diatribe against people he called ‘left-wing pinkos’ or worse during the swearing in of the then Toronto Mayor-elect Rob Ford.

#UniteAgainstRacism

Toronto / September 2019 - The rallying cry for Labour Day 2019 in Ontario was ‘Unite Against Racism’. The slogan and sentiment meant to acknowledge the troubling rise in white supremacy and xenophobia across the province and the country signaled a coming together of progressive forces to combat this scourge that has a material impact on the lives of Black, Indigenous and people of colour, including racialized (im)migrants and refugees.

Homage

Toronto / August 2019 - August 1, is emancipation day, a day when African Canadians along with others of the African diaspora throughout the Americas (including the Caribbean) and Europe,  reflect and pay homage to the ancestors who resisted and survived their enslavement as an African people, so that we can be here… so that I can be here.

This And That

June 2019/Toronto - I sit down to write this blog (or as my colleagues call it- rant-) with a mixed sense of anticipation and trepidation. An emotional potpourri – in the hodgepodge/ragbag meaning, not deodorizer or freshener sense.

These past weeks have been interesting as I spent time in gorgeous Victoria, BC at the semi-annual Consultation of the Canadian Council for Refugees (CCR) with like-minded activists and good-hearted Canadians wanting to make a difference in the lives of refugees and (im)migrants.

Imagining the Resistance

Toronto / March 2019

"I am not free while any woman is unfree, even when her shackles are very different from my own”

and

“The master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house”

- Audre Lorde

Two quotes from the late prolific writer, lesbian-feminist, social justice warrior, Librarian Audre Lorde. Apt quotes I would say for the political moment in which we find ourselves especially this month as we mark International Women’s Day, a nod to working women although that herstory is often overlooked.

This Month called Us

Toronto / February 2019

"They Tried to Bury Us/They didn’t know we were seeds."
- Mexican saying
"What did you not do to bury me/But you forgot that I was a seed?"
- Greek poet, Dinos Christianopoulous

Albert Jackson had a new stamp made in his image and released in time for African/Black History month, 2019. Toronto’s, and Canada’s, first Black mail carrier, this recognition of the contributions of Black folks to early Toronto, Ontario and Canada’s history is long overdue.

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