First Nations Still in Limbo by Nasreen Pejvack
I arrived in Canada as a new immigrant in the 1980s, and soon began my life by learning about the education system and planning my options. Whenever I had free time, I would look for people who might be the Native peoples of this land that I had learned about in my...
Ghost of the Tōhoku Tsunami Visits Chernobyl’s Bestiary by Ilona Martonfi
Ilona Martonfi, author of The Sow Kimono and Salt Bride, introduces yūgen, Yosa Buson’s haiga, calligraphy, round nibs, brush and ink. She will offer a tanka sequence “Elegy”, a free verse “Ghost of the Tsunami”, the haiku sequence “Chernobyl Pianos”, and a witness...
(Not So) Safe in Hell: The Working Class Heroines of Pre-Code Hollywood
By Heather Babcock
Like many women, I was inspired and empowered by the Me Too movement but it also brought back a lot of painful memories. Most of us have probably encountered a “Harvey Weinstein” at some point in our professional lives. I know I have. This type of sexual...
By Heather Babcock
Brundibár: Children’s Opera Performs With a Moth by Ilona Martonfi
In this Inanna author blog we follow poet Ilona Martonfi, who was born in Budapest, and now resides in Montreal, who, decades after she lived in a war refugee camp in Austria went back to construct her memorials. A sgraffito excavation, scraping through layers of...
Women Environmental Warriors by Gail Benick
The election of Annamie Paul as leader of the Green Party of Canada comes as no surprise. She is the third woman to lead the Greens since the party was founded in 1983. It is worth remembering that the new Green leader stands on the shoulders of countless women who...
COVID-19 and Patriarchy in the International Year of the Nurse and Midwife by Salimah Valiani
In an effort to shed light on the vital but undervalued labour of predominantly female health professionals, the World Health Organisation named 2020 the International Year of the Nurse and Midwife. It is an irony and sickening reality that 2020 turned out to be the...
FINDING MEANING / The Void by Mary Rykov
I wake from a lucid dream in which I’mwatching another COVID-19 television newscast. I, a daughter of the Holocaust, shudder at the thought of mass graves on Hart Island. Or anywhere. The sound and visual images are so vivid that I wake relieved to know I’m dreaming....
Jean Harlow: My Kind of Dame by Heather Babcock
Every Wednesday evening as a child, my mother would force me into an itchy, ugly brown polyester dress and thick woolen stockings and take me – kicking and screaming – to the local community center for my weekly Brownies meeting (for those not in the know, Brownies...