Most people keep their kinks, fetishes, and fantasies private. Understandably! It’s socially taboo to be loud and proud about one’s sexual appetite. If I fantasized about finding the perfect coconut cream pie I might visit different restaurants, write reviews or write a blog. I’d enlist the support of my peers asking if they’d ever had […]
Opinionated
Posted inNews + Opinion
White noise
This summer, I was walking along a street in the south end of Halifax with a few pals. As we walked down the tree-lined streets next to houses I couldn’t fathom of ever owning, they started hollering and causing a ruckus. It was late, they had been drinking, I was DD and I immediately felt […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
The weight
On August 7, 1993, Gregory Gerald Jodrey of Gaspereaux, Nova Scotia was murdered in Wolfville. Gregory was my best friend and I loved him dearly. Twenty-five years later, the hole remains in my heart and the anvil remains in my stomach. The bare facts are that Gregor was at the tavern in Wolfville, met a […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
Coming Out Ministries preys on LGBTQ+ youth through guilt and shame
I’m a preacher’s kid and I’m trans. I’m not a believer and I never was but I spent my childhood conscripted into ritual practices, performing a personhood that wasn’t mine, essentially because the family enterprise demanded it. I was expected to be what I was expected to be, not what I am. That I would […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
UPDATED: False outrage over this past weekend’s Marine Band protest
Update: Since this piece was published Shaw has deleted his tweets and web producer/social media manager Andrea Jerrett has apologized to Masuma Khan. Her emailed message is shared below with Khan’s permission. “While CTV Atlantic always strives to report accurate information, in this case, our reporter did issue a tweet with incorrect information,” Jerrett writes on […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
100 different ways to keep a government secret
Politicians of all stripes love to talk about transparency. They praise it, they throw around buzzwords like “open by default” or, in the direct words of Stephen McNeil, promise to make Nova Scotia “the most open and transparent government in the country.” None of these promises mean much if you don’t read the fine print […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
Educating Shawn Cleary about journalism
District 9 councillor Shawn Cleary went on one of his ill-advised Twitter rants this past week. What set him off this time was an opinion piece by Stephen Kimber published in Tim Bousquet’s Halifax Examiner. (Disclosure: I have written for the Examiner and I am enrolled in a King’s MFA program in which Kimber teaches.) […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
DNA does not define us
I’m ambiguously brown. By that I mean I have brown skin and almond-shaped eyes. I get those from my dad who is Mi’kmaq. I also have curly hair, freckles and thin lips from my mom, whose grandparents came from Scotland. “Where are you from?” is a very common question in my day-to-day as people try […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
Canada needs more space for Indigenous people in academia
Last week, Mount Saint Vincent University in Halifax came under fire for assigning a white professor a course about the residential school system that housed Indigenous children for forced assimilation. The university picked a knowledgeable and well-meaning ally. And I am not here to discredit her. But I have long been a proponent of Indigenous […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
Halifax cosplaying an accepting community
Rae O’Neil is dressed in an outfit based off a mash-up of two Final Fantasy characters. The cosplay is a bit out of the ordinary in everyday life, but at local conventions like the recent Spring Geequinox or Hal-Con it’s a perfectly normal—and fun—mode of creative expression. “I get to build stuff, which I like […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
Smudge for sale
I learned to pick my medicines from my white, Acadian stepmother. I was around 14 years old when we walked out to the salty marsh grass with a handful of tobacco. As we walked to the spot near her home where sweetgrass still grows, she explained to me the concept of respecting Mother Earth; how […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
A housing-first model will help end homelessness in Nova Scotia
In 2015, the city of Medicine Hat, Alberta took a compassionate and unprejudiced approach to ending homelessness by using a housing-first model. Homes are offered to anyone who needs them. Ten days are now the most an individual or family stays in a Medicine Hat shelter. With a roof over their head, people are able […]