INTERVIEW: HAYLEY SALES | CROSSING COMMUNITIES WITH ART | SUSAN G. COLE ON HILLARY CLINTON

WOMEN’S NEWS & FEMINIST VIEWS Spring 2008 $6.95 Vol. 21 No. 4 Made in

RADICAL ROOTS WOMEN FIGHT FOR THE BOREAL FOREST MONUMENTAL WOMEN SOUTH AFRICA’S SECRET WAR WhyIJoinedtheCAW AA Young Young Worker's Worker's Story Story

Iusedto ButonceI think my got injured... job was the greatest...

Nobody was Things changed when there I joined the CAW... to help...

Now there's always someone in my corner.

Wanna join? Visit: www.caw.ca or call 1-877-495-6551 Email: [email protected] table of contents SPRING 2008 News HERSTREET PAVES WAY 6 By Jane Shulman UGANDAN MOTHERS HELPED BY CANADIAN DOC 7 by Melanie Cummings 8 CAMPAIGN UPDATES THE WAR AGAINST WOMEN IN AFGHANISTAN 16: Tzeporah Berman, ForestEthics 12 by Lauryn Oates MAKES COMEBACK 13 by Tracey Lindeman

Features RADICAL ROOTS 16 The movement to protect Canada’s boreal forest has a special place in the hearts of women. In fact, women

26: Monumental Women feature prominently among Canada’s forest experts. by Cindy Filipenko

HOMELAND. SECURITY. 20 As the writer discovers, homeland isn’t always where one finds security, just as the pursuit of identity has little to do with the confines of geographic borders. by Maya Khankhoje

MONUMENTAL WOMEN 26 Does Canada do enough to honour its foremothers? by Noreen Shanahan

CROSSING COMMUNITIES 32: Crossing Communities 32 Professional artists team up with women in jail, at-risk youth and others to inspire change. by Leah Sandals

GULP FICTION 36 Girl fiction—that is, young adult fiction for the female market—has become edgier in recent years. The author ponders the pros and con(tradiction)s of mainstreaming counterculture. by Tara-Michelle Ziniuk

CIRCLE OF VIOLENCE 53 The legacy of violence against women in South Africa is the theme of Rozena Maart’s book. 39: Hayley Sales by Irene D’Souza HERIZONS SPRING 2008 1 table of contents SPRING 2008 / VOLUME 21 NO. 4 MAGAZINE INK

MANAGING EDITOR: Penni Mitchell FULFILLMENT AND OFFICE MANAGER: Phil Koch ACCOUNTANT: Sharon Pchajek BOARD OF DIRECTORS: Ghislaine Alleyne, Phil Koch, Penni Mitchell, Kemlin Nembhard, Valerie Regehr EDITORIAL COMMITTEE: Ghislaine Alleyne, Gio Guzzi, Penni Mitchell, Kemlin Nembhand ADVERTISING SALES: Penni Mitchell (204) 774-6225 51: I Was A Teenage Feminist DESIGN: inkubator.ca WEB MISTRESS: Rachel Thompson/BlueMuse RETAIL INQUIRIES: Disticor (905) 619-6565 Arts & Ideas PROOFREADER: Phil Koch COVER: Emily Carr, Pines in May, 1929-1930, watercolour and ART PROFILE graphite on paper,76.8 x 53.0 cm, Collection of the Vancouver Art 39 Hayley Sales Gallery, Emily Carr Trust, VAG42.3.103, Photo: Trevor Mills. by Cindy Filipenko HERIZONS is published four times per year by HERIZONS Inc. in MUSIC MUST-HAVES Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. One-year subscription price: $27.50 41 Chaka Khan, Marilyn Lerner, (includes GST) in Canada. Two-year subscription is $43.92 in Joni Mitchell, PJ Harvey, Melissa Etheridge, Canada. Subscriptions to U.S.: add $6.00. International Megan McCauley, Angie Stone subscriptions: add $9.00. Cheques or money orders are payable to: HERIZONS, PO Box 128, Winnipeg, Manitoba, CANADA R3C 2G1. WINTER READING Ph (204) 774-6225. 43 The Writing Circle by Rozena Maart, SUBSCRIPTION INQUIRIES: [email protected] Emergency Contact by Tara-Michelle Ziniuk, EDITORIAL INQUIRIES: [email protected] Reconcilable Differences by Cate Cochran, ADVERTISING INQUIRIES: [email protected] WEBSITE: www.herizons.ca A Great Restlessness: The Life and Politics of Dorise Nielsen by Faith Johnson, The Secret HERIZONS is indexed in the Canadian Periodical Index. History of the War on Cancer by Devra Davis, GST #R131089187. ISSN 0711-7485. Arguing With the Storm edited by Rhea The purpose of HERIZONS is to empower women; to inspire hope Tregebov, Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic and foster a state of wellness that enriches women’s lives; to build by Alison Bechdel, Beyond Mothering Earth awareness of issues as they affect women; to promote the by Sherilyn MacGregor. strength, wisdom and creativity of women; to broaden the boundaries of to include building coalitions and support FILM among other marginalized people; to foster peace and ecological awareness; and to expand the influence of feminist principles in 51 I Was A Teenage Feminist the world. HERIZONS aims to reflect a that is Review by Jennifer O’Connor diverse, understandable and relevant to women’s 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 Columns does not accept poetry or fiction submissions.

PENNI MITCHELL HERIZONS acknowledges the financial support of the 5 No More Silent Spring Government of Canada through the Publication Assistance Program (PAP) and the Canada Magazine SUSAN G. COLE Fund our toward mailing and editorial costs.

15 Uphill Battle HERIZONS gratefully acknowledges the support of the Manitoba Arts Council. MARIKO TAMAKI I Swear. It’s true. Publications Mail Agreement No. 40008866, PAP Registration No. 31 07944. Return Undeliverable Addresses to: PO Box 128, Winnipeg, LYN COCKBURN MB, Canada R3C 2G1, Email: [email protected] 56 Veiled Threats Herizons is proudly printed on Forest Stewardship Council- certified paper that is 50% recycled, including 25% post- consumer, acid-free and chlorine-free.

2 SPRING 2008 HERIZONS letters

‘LOSS’ LOST ON READER adoption. I met with two adoptive mothers, with workers, attended “The Colour of Loss” is a various adoption information sessions. I come from a family with beautifully written piece (Herizons, biological and non-biological members. The desire to experience Winter 2008) about a would-be pregnancy and have a biological connection to another person is not lesbian mother’s inability to politically regressive, as your comments suggest. It is deeply personal conceive and a medical system and should be respected as such. Adoption is a wonderful testament that preys on infertile women by to the triumph of nurture over nature, but it’s not an easy answer to over-prescribing drugs and queer women’s infertility or pain. I recommend you educate yourself offering inadequate support. I about the realities. Invest as much time and thinking about it as I did. would expect to come across The feminist thrust of my article—an institutional critique of the such an article in Oprah or infertility machine—was lost on you, but perhaps that’s where your Chatelaine. I was surprised and anger and judgment might be better directed: Queer women suffer dismayed to find it in the pages of their miscarriages and infertility in silence, in the context of a feminist magazine whose politics heterosexism and homophobia, and shame on you for trying to make I normally admire. The author us feel worse. I wrote the piece while miscarrying, thus the anguished

Jaime Drew describes herself as “on a mission tone you describe as “wallowing” seems appropriate. Your anger, to conceive,” and desperate however, does not. when, after several attempts, that mission is not accomplished. The tone Incidentally, the beautiful baby recently conceived between my of the piece is elegiac; the author wallows in the anguish she and her partner and I is a child of adoption, because regressive laws that lag partner feel “over what life might look like if pregnancy never happens.” behind public opinion still make queers adopt their own children. “We’re just plain frightened at the prospect of never being anyone’s Now there’s a target worth attacking. mother,” she writes about herself and other women in her situation. It ELIZABETH RUTH is hard to feel their pain when our planet is groaning under the burden , ON of overpopulation and so many children are in desperate need of adoption. Has it never occurred to the author that there are other LOSS APPRECIATED ways to become somebody’s mother? Thank you, Herizons, for including a very powerful piece describing a LISE WEIL lesbian couple’s attempts to create a family. As I read Elizabeth Ruth’s , QC story, I felt at times that it could be my own. Elizabeth Ruth responds: CHERYL SLUIS During the years I tried to become pregnant, I often thought of Winnipeg, MB

contributors

KAREN X. TULCHINSKY MAYA KHANKHOJE’S TARA-MICHELLE ZINIUK JANE SHULMAN is a Vancouver writer currently A Panther in Your Dreams, an is a Montreal-born, Toronto-based is a Montreal-based journalist working as a story editor on The English/Spanish parallel-text short writer, performer and activist. She whose interests include gender, Guard, a Global TV series. Her story collection for children and is news director at CKLN sexuality, women, crime and latest book, The Five Books of language students, was recently Community Radio. Her second mental health. By day, she does Moses Lapinsky was a Toronto issued by Gyldan Edge Publishing. book of poetry, Somewhere To Run public education on breast cancer Book Award finalist. She lives in Montreal. From, will be released in Spring prevention. By night, she is a 2009. She reads below her reading queer activist, interior designer level because she wants to. and armchair media critic.

HERIZONS SPRING 2008 3 Subscribe on line Put Out . Subscribe to Herizons. for $27.50 at SEND YOUR ORDER WITH THE HANDY FORM ENCLOSED—OR SUBSCRIBE ON-LINE. www.herizons.ca first word BY PENNI MITCHELL

No More Silent Spring

Last May, 1,500 scientists issued a plea to Canada: Protect laws, practices and customs that, when first argued, were the boreal forest, the vast swath that covers nearly half the ignored. And yet, over time, both have begun to revolutionize country’s land mass. Unless we do, they said, the world could destructive and oppressive value systems. This is the very lose one of the most powerful ecological protectors on Earth. embodiment of the word radical, which means the formation For many of us, it was the first time we saw the forest—the of a root system, or that which is unalterable. big picture. Canada’s boreal forest is the largest intact forest Radical change was at the heart of Rachel Carson’s Silent and wetland ecosystem in the world. The boreal region, Spring. Forty-six years ago, the scientist warned policy- which also covers vast areas of Russia and China, is even makers that unless they halted corporate-driven pollution of better at soaking up carbon dioxide than the Amazon our air, water and land, the songbirds of spring would be rainforest. Imagine, all those skinny trees—their trunks, silenced. Today, 100 years after her birth, we are perched on branches, leaves and the oils of their decaying matter—hold the brink of a global meltdown and the quality of toilet paper the equivalent of 27 years worth of the entire planet’s and a million-barrel-of-oil-a-day economy are still more greenhouse gas emissions (in comparison, the Amazon locks highly valued in Canada than 186 billion tonnes worth of up 11 years worth). carbon sinks that lie in the boreal region. Who knew? Suddenly, Canada’s boreal forest has become It’s true. Alberta’s massive oilsands project is razing boreal an ecological superhero. The 6.4 million square mile boreal forest regions at an alarming rate, and oil companies plan to forest, 25 percent of the Earth’s remaining intact forest quadruple oilsands output. Importantly, 60 percent of regions, is more than a just receptacle to hold carbon dioxide, Canada’s forestry is in boreal forests, and world scientists say however. For hundreds of years it has been home to hundreds more than half should be preserved. For these reasons, of First Nations communities as well as home to rare species [check out www.kleercut.org] has singled out TP of wolves, bears and woodland caribou, and half of North kingpin Kimberly-Clark to draw attention to clear-cutting in American’s songbirds. It is a distinct ecological system. boreal forests. Or is it? Anishinabe teachings say that compartmentalizing Here’s the hopeful part. Sustainably managed forests are nature is flawed. Every ecosystem on the planet is actually beneficial from an environmental point of view. They interconnected, whole and indivisible, according to the are less susceptible to forest fires, for example, and young teachings; all human beings owe their lives to Mother Earth. trees take more carbon dioxide from the atmosphere than old Today, 1,500 modern scientists seem to agree. An integral trees. Ultimately, deep cuts to greenhouse gas emissions, a part of the convergence of ancient and modern wisdom is the radical shift to renewable energy, and enforced sustainable national boreal movement, led in large part by women. The development, including better forestry practices, will ensure Green Party of Canada’s Elizabeth May, no slouch herself as a the Mother Earth’s ability to sustain us. forestry expert, invokes the memory of the indefatigable So what is the pull for women? Some environmentalists Colleen McCrory in our cover story on page 17. During the interviewed in this issue say their protective instinct towards blockades of logging roads near Grassy Narrows, north of the planet parallels their instinct to protect their children. Kenora, Ontario, in 2002, women took leading roles to protect Others believe that ascribing to women a nurturing motive traditional Aboriginal lands from clear-cutting. Women also undercuts women’s political agency, an idea explored in a led the protests at Clayoquot Sound, B.C., when Tzeporah review of Beyond Mothering Earth in this issue. Both may be Berman was a young activist among those arrested. Today true, and yet, it hardly matters. For as long as women, First Berman is a leader in the movement to save the boreal forest. Nations communities and forests remain undervalued and The environmental movement has many parallels to the pillaged, colonialism, unfettered capitalism and patriarchal movement to liberate women. Both represent changes to privilege will not be uprooted. 

HERIZONS SPRING 2008 5 nelliegrams HERSTREET PAVES WAY SEVEN YEAR BY JANE SHULMAN HITCH unacceptable for women in society, is not to Gabriele Pauli, a be quelled. Couture believes these member of the behaviours stem from suffering. conservative “They have lived through enormous Bavarian Christian violence, and we want them to find their Social Union (CSU) party, has a solution to voice again,” she explains. “The way they the seven-year itch. The politician proposed express their pain can be really hard. If they that all civil marriages dissolve act paranoid or violent, sometimes they are automatically after seven years. Then, if excluded from other shelters. For us, it’s just couples choose to recommit, they would normal. Without judgment, we give them time renew their marriage licenses. to gradually tell their stories.” “I know that after this period, many Herstreet’s mandate is to reach out to marriages reach a crisis,” according to the women who have been robbed of their ability twice-divorced politician whose proposals to connect with the outside world, and to would not affect church-performed unions. help them to develop different survival skills. Nor would it apply retroactively. As long as a woman isn’t posing a threat About 38 percent of German marriages to residents or staff, her behaviour will be end in divorce. Bavaria’s Christian Social accepted. That’s not to say it’s encouraged, Union is the sister party of German Couture says, but it is essential that women Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian feel as safe as they can and know that no Democratic Union. At Montreal’s Herstreet, survival is the goal and one at Herstreet is going to hurt them or “Maybe people live better outside of successes are celebrated wherever they can be insist that they change. marriage,” noted Pauli, who cast her sights found, says founder Léonie Couture. “If a woman is screaming for no apparent on her party’s leadership. (MONTREAL) Léonie Couture has worked reason,” Couture says, “we’re not going to PARTY ON with women in distress for more than 25 stop her. When she is finished, we may years. In fact, most of the women she caters approach her and ask if she wants to talk, The first all-women’s to are, in her words, considered by other and see if there are other ways she could political party in agencies to be “too hurt to be helped.” express the pain she’s experiencing. But we formed in December with In 1994, Couture founded Herstreet, an are not going to tell her that what she is a view to boosting female organization that offers shelter, therapy and doing is wrong.” representation in resources to homeless women in Montreal. The approach was a first in Montreal. parliament from eight to 50 percent. Before that she provided support to women There are other shelters that provide Suman Krishan Kant, the widow of who had experienced sexual violence. services to women, but none that operate former Indian Vice-President Krishan Kumar “I found that the core issue for most through the feminist lens of Couture. Kant, joined with other influential women to women experiencing severe difficulties was “It’s not poverty that puts a woman in the launch the United Women’s Front to the violence they had endured in their street—it’s a consequence of being so badly address issues such as women’s illiteracy, lives,” Couture recalls. “It led to drugs, a hurt that she can’t work. Most never work,” early marriage and tokenism in parliament, loss of confidence in themselves and so she says. Survival is the goal and successes where women hold just eight percent of much suffering. are celebrated wherever they can be found, seats. To qualify for official party status, the “As a feminist, I believed we needed to small as they might seem. group had to muster at least 100 members find ways so that they could have access to Couture tells the story of a woman who for and pay about $300 in registration fees. help,” she continues. “They needed a place two years slept on the floor just outside the “Women have simply not been getting where they could go during the day if they room. Sleeping in a bedroom reminded her of the kind of governance they deserve,” says wanted to talk, eat or just be there without where the violence and trauma in her life Kant. “Take Delhi, for example. It has a any demands placed on them.” began. No one questioned her about sleeping female chief minister, yet it is one of the Herstreet’s mission is to accept women in the hallway. Her behaviour was accepted most dangerous places for women…. A few as they are and offer them help if they want and, over time, understood. One night, she women here and there cannot make much it, but not to force them to take it. Herstreet slept in a bedroom on the floor next to the of a difference.” now has 50 employees and two houses that bed, fully clothed. She just needed to feel she Prem Ahluwalia of the Institute for South offer short- and long-term lodging for could flee in the middle of the night if she was Asian Women, which fosters ties among women, including a variety of therapeutic threatened, Couture explains. women in India, Nepal, Bangladesh, approaches. It operates on a $1.5-million Burnout seems a likely outcome of such Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Afghanistan and the annual budget, with funding from the emotionally demanding work, but Couture Maldives, is the new party’s national federal and provincial governments and says training staff helps ensure they don’t general secretary. private donors. lose sight of the value of their work. “It is the first time in the history of India Herstreet has grown, but its mission is the Sometimes it’s about remembering that that a national political party has been same. Workers and volunteers are trained to everyone is hurt in some way. formed by women,” she says. “We need to understand that behaviour such as loud or For Couture, it’s about changing the world, ensure that the issues of priority concern violent outbursts, while deemed one step at a time. 

6 SPRING 2008 HERIZONS SAVE THE MOTHERS nelliegrams BY MELANIE CUMMINGS to half of its population remain in the forefront of the pressing issues on India’s preventable. Fifteen national agenda.” percent of deliveries have India’s national constitution guaranteed complications, yet more women’s legal equality in 1950 and voters than half of all African elected Indira Ghandi in 1966. She became women giving birth have the world’s second female prime minister, no skilled attendant after Sri Lanka’s Sirimavo Bandarnaike, present. Hospitals and who was elected in 1960. clinics frequently run out of In July 2007, Pratibha Patil was elected vital supplies, blood, the country’s first female president, a oxygen, electricity and ceremonial position that, nonetheless, medications. One in four leaves India with a female head of state. women who die during Women hold top cabinets posts and at least childbirth bleed to death. three states have female chief ministers. The drug oxytocin, which Village councils reserve 33 percent of their Veteran Uganda politician Sylvia Ssinabulya (right) and Canadian costs 33 cents a vial, can physician Jean Chamberlain Froese pound the pavement to reduce seats for women. Uganda’s maternal mortality rate. prevent this. However, And yet millions of women live in public health spending in poverty, are illiterate and are (OTTAWA) In Canada, 10 women died from Uganda is five dollars per capita per year. malnourished. In November, the World pregnancy-related complications in 2006. In Another contributing factor in maternal Economic Forum’s latest gender gap index Uganda, 6,000 expectant mothers died from deaths is that women and girls have little listed India among the world’s 10 most problems that occurred during delivery. decision-making power in Uganda and are gender-biased economies. These statistics reflect the stark disparity often forced wait for their husband’s approval In response to the party’s launch, India’s that exists between developed and to go to a hospital or clinic. Poor travel routes main opposition Bharatiya Janata Party has developing countries. Jean Chamberlain and unreliable transit are other factors. pledged to reserve a third of its party posts Froese has seen the dying faces of Ugandan A new program at Uganda Christian for women members. women. In response, the Canadian physician University in Kampala was designed to —Aditi Bhaduri, Women’s E-News founded Save the Mothers International, an change these statistics. The masters in organization dedicated to greater safety for public health leadership program co-created EASY RIDER women giving birth. by Chamberlain Froese, graduated its first 15 Fed up with on public “Save the Mothers was created out of students in October, and those leaders are transit, women in Mexico City convinced frustration in being too late to help,” explains ready to take up the multifaceted challenge the city to create “ladies only” buses, Chamberlain Froese. of diminishing maternal mortality. complete with pink signs in the windshields The obstetrician-gynecologist lives in Policy-makers are also part of the solution. to wave off male riders. Kampala, Uganda, eight months of the year Veteran Ugandan politician Sylvia Ssinabulya Groping and verbal harassment by male and for the remaining four months teaches has recruited three other female MPs to join passengers are commonplace in the city at McMaster University in Hamilton, runs her by enrolling in the two-year leadership where 22 million passengers cram onto the university’s International Women’s program. She has also rallied 38 of 100 subways and buses each day. Health Network and works at the city’s St. female members of Uganda’s parliament to Joseph’s Hospital. push this issue to the forefront. DRIVING TOWARD EQUALITY Last summer, Chamberlain Froese “Our mission is to build a network of A royal decree in Saudi Arabia gave travelled across Canada with Ugandan MP women ministers in parliament whose sole women the right to check in to hotels Sylvia Ssinabulya in a bid to generate greater purpose is to get policies changed and without a male guardian, Al Watan support for Save the Mothers. The trip introduce legislation,” says Ssinabulya. reported in January. Saudi women cannot included meetings with Canadian MPs, She is buoyed by her government’s recently move about in public unless they are senators and the Society of Obstreticians stated commitment to put a greater emphasis covered head-to-toe in Islamic dress and and Gynecologists of Canada. on maternal health. Among its many priorities, are accompanied by a male guardian. The “My country is one of eight with the easing of hotel rules will benefit highest maternal mortality in the world,” says the group of MPs has vowed to revitalize family planning, which is critical in a country businesswomen who travel. Ssinabulya. Another decree allowing women to drive Worldwide each year, 525,000 expectant where abortion is illegal and the average family has seven children. Only 23 per cent of vehicles is expected by the end of the year, mothers in developing countries die as a the Daily Telegraph reports. Saudi women’s result of preventable complications of women in Uganda have access to contraception. rights activists have mounted growing pregnancy, mainly in sub-Saharan Africa and protests over the driving ban and sent the “We need the same determination and southeast Asian countries. That’s about 1,425 king multiple petitions to allow them to drive advocacy that went into getting the vote for women each day, a number equivalent to the without male chauffeurs. Fouzia al-Ayouni, women,” says Chamberlain Froese. “Aren’t passengers on three jumbo jets. Additionally, Wajiha Huwaidar, Ibtihal Mubarak and the lives of millions of women worth it?” for every woman or girl who dies during Haifa Usra have led the effort, forming an delivery, 20 to 30 are injured or disabled. For more information about Save the Mothers, association for the protection and defence Yet most of these deaths and injuries are log on to www.savethemothers.org. 

HERIZONS SPRING 2008 7 nelliegrams campaign updates of women’s rights. “We have broken the barrier of fear,” al- Ayouni said. “We want the authorities to air we breathe and the civil liberties and know that we’re here, that we want to drive 20-YEAR human rights we enjoy. and that many people feel the way we do.” PROTEST The SPP is an executive-level pact —Women’s E-News Women in Black marked the 20th between the governments and corporate UNORTHODOX ORTHODOX anniversary of its sectors of Canada, the United States and Mexico. It has never been debated publicly or The Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem public mourning voted on. There are over 300 initiatives in the will ordain women as Orthodox rabbis for the of Israel’s military occupation of the West Bank. SPP aimed at harmonizing North American first time in 2009, the Jerusalem Post Amidst the latest peace talks, their message is policies on food, drugs, security, immigration, reported in January. The three other Jewish timely, even if their numbers have dwindled. refugees, manufacturing, the environment denominations already ordain women. The Woman in Black Gila Svirsky has been and public health. Reform denomination first allowed women in pushed by passersby, called a traitor and a Already, an SPP priority to harmonize rules 1972, Reconstruction denomination in 1977 whore, and been targeted by flyers listing her on pesticide residues has resulted in Ottawa and Conservative denomination in 1983. The contact information by opponents encouraging allowing higher levels of pesticides on food. new female Orthodox rabbis will be trained harm to the “black widows.” And, according to Council of Canadians for teaching positions in the United States. During the last two decades, she has Chairperson Maude Barlow, the SPP’s support received phone calls threatening her children for a fivefold increase in Alberta tar sands BAN THE and heard gunshots warn of a caller’s alleged production would render it impossible for BOTTLE, plans. But the 61-year-old says she is no Canada to reduce greenhouse gas SAYS NDP longer afraid of “empty threats” and emissions—putting everyone at increased NDP health critic continues to stand every Friday in a risk from climate change. Judy Wasylycia- Jerusalem square—dressed in black to In response, the Council of Canadians has Leis has called for a mourn both Israeli and Palestinian victims— launched a website to monitor the SPP, which federal ban on a holding up signs that call for an end to Israel’s the mainstream media isn’t covering. Citizens plastic additive 40-year military occupation. can use the website to keep tabs on the North discovered to leach Women in Black demonstrations began in American Competitiveness Council, the all- from baby bottles. Jerusalem weeks after the first Palestinian corporate advisory board that has been Bisphenol A, used in Nalgene and other uprising erupted and soon spread to dozens of directing the work of the SPP. water bottles, garnered attention in locations throughout the country. December The next SPP meeting takes place in New December when the outdoor outfit marked two decades of weekly protest vigils Orleans in April. This is fitting, some have Mountain Equipment Co-op stopped selling by a movement that has turned global, with argued, as the city is a perfect example of the Nalgene over health concerns. women congregating to fight violence and catastrophic impact of private-sector Ottawa is reviewing bisphenol A, a type injustice all over the world, Svirsky says. solutions to public disasters. It was of phthalate that is also used in the The Israeli dissidents—most of them Jews, documented in detail by Naomi Klein in her manufacture of plastic baby bottles. but also some Arabs—marked the 20-year latest book, The Shock Doctrine. Research shows high levels of bisphenol A anniversary with a mass vigil in Jerusalem. “New Orleans is a perfect location for leach from baby bottles when the bottles The “damn occupation continues and we still government executives, top bureaucrats and are heated. Bisphenol A, a hormone- have to go out there every Friday because we big business leaders to gather to discuss a disrupting chemical, is used in the are trying to remind people that it’s not over,” new corporate vision for North America packaging of baby formula. Svirsky says. “A lot of people think . . . we own through the SPP,” wrote Stewart Truew in a “The hazards of this product have been the West Bank and we are going to keep it commentary on the Integrate This! social known for some time, yet, despite its forever. For us, it’s really important to remind commentary website. promises to boost Canada’s health people that it’s not ours; it’s Palestinian. We are Visit www.canadians.org/integratethis to protection system, the government keeps not going to get peace until we give it back.” find out what you can do to promote dragging its feet,” Wasylycia-Leis said. The organization’s anniversary coincides awareness of this campaign. Exposure to certain phthalates has been with a new round of peace talks between linked to reproductive defects, premature Israelis and Palestinians, an effort to end birth and the early onset of puberty, and is GOT TO BE A MORNING AFTER nearly 60 years of conflict. The last talks Chile’s Constitutional Court is reviewing a case reportedly a contributing factor in the stalled in 2000 after the eruption of a second that threatens the availability of emergency development of breast cancer. An August Palestinian uprising. contraception. article in the journal Reproductive —Brenda Gazzar, Women’s E-News, Thirty-six socially conservative legislators Toxicology by biologist Frederick vom Saal www.womensenews.org brought the case in March 2007. Echoing of the University of Missouri cautioned that Catholic authorities—who say that fetuses and newborns exposed early on to SPP IS NOT FOR ME emergency contraception is tantamount to bisphenol A show signs of learning According to the Council of Canadians, a little- abortion—the legislators argue that impairment. Bisphenol A is “a poster known pact called The Security and Prosperity emergency contraception violates the right to chemical for attention deficit hyperactivity Partnership of North America threatens to life ensured by the Chilean constitution. disorder,” vom Saal said. Dozens of studies have a grave impact on the food we eat, the Chilean law bars abortion in all

8 SPRING 2008 HERIZONS campaign updates nelliegrams say bisphenol A packs an extra punch on the developing brains and reproductive systems of animals exposed to low doses circumstances, even in cases of rape or when and Unilever—are sourcing their palm oil during pregnancy and early life. It is thought a woman’s life is in danger. from suppliers who aren’t picky about where newborns are at high risk because they do Lawyers representing both sides have given they site their plantations. In Sumatra, this not have high enough amounts of a liver their arguments, but officials say it is unclear includes tearing up areas of pristine forest, enzyme that can break it down. when the judges will rule. then draining and burning the peatlands. You can sign a petition to ban bisphenol While the verdict looms, the government, Indonesia’s peat lands act as huge carbon A at www.toxicnation.ca/go-toxic- led by President Michelle Bachelet, is battling stores, so replacing them with plantations not free/petition. three private pharmacy chains that refuse to only threatens biodiversity, including the stock emergency contraception, also known habitat for the rare Sumatran tiger, it also DOMESTIC POLICY as the morning-after pill. Pharmacies sell the releases huge volumes of greenhouse gases A proposed California bill would make pill for about $20 and are obligated by law to into the atmosphere. Every year, 1.8 billion California the first U.S. state to create a offer it. Prescription sales were first approved tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions are registry for domestic violence offenders. in 2001, but the drug was not available until released by the degradation and burning of The database would disclose the identities November 2005, when the Constitutional Court Indonesia’s peatlands, which represent four of convicted abusers and allow the public legalized usage in a separate case. percent of global greenhouse gas emissions to check names. Since assuming office in March 2006, from an area that represents less than 0.1 Meanwhile, in Britain, the Association of President Bachelet and Health Minister Maria percent of the land on earth. Chief Police Officers proposed a national Soledad Barria have instructed public health This report details how growing demand registry for domestic violence offenders. authorities to work aggressively to ensure the for palm oil is driving the wholesale Advocates say it could prevent murders pill’s availability, not just at public clinics— destruction of peatlands and rainforests. by allowing different agencies to share where it is distributed for free to women 14 and Unilever, Nestlé and Procter & Gamble information about offenders. over—but at all major pharmacies, enabling its account for a significant volume of global availability to women from all social strata. palm oil use, mainly from sources in KUWAITI WOMEN GAIN —Matt Malinowski, Women’s e-News, Indonesia and Malaysia. Kuwaiti women’s participation in the www.womensenews.org The three companies are members of the workforce increased from 37 percent in Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO), a 2003 to 42 percent in 2006, putting Kuwait CHINA BANS THE BAG group of retailers, manufacturers and ahead of other nations in the Arab region, China is banning lightweight free plastic suppliers who also include multinational according to the Kuwait Times. shopping bags and calling for a return to the suppliers Cargill and ADM. The aim of the Regionally, 28 percent of the paid cloth bag. group is to create clear standards for workforce is female, the lowest in the The measure is designed to eliminate the producing sustainable palm oil, but present world, according to the United Nations. flimsiest bags, which kill animals, toxify the standards are far too weak and stronger ones Kuwaiti working women are concentrated ground, pollute waterways, clog sewers are needed to ensure that forests and in the public sector, but only six percent of causing floods and damage marine life. China peatlands are not destroyed to meet growing its top jobs are held by women. will force stores to charge for other bags in a demand for palm oil. bid to cut waste and conserve resources. PLASTIC “If we can reduce waste and save BRAZIL BISHOP BOOED ADDITIVES resources, then it’s good both for us and the Defying an anti-choice trend in Latin BANNED whole world,” said one shopper buying fruit. America’s leftist countries, Brazil’s health California’s Under the new rules, businesses will be minister has proposed a national vote on landmark legislation to ban dangerous prohibited from manufacturing, selling, or abortion, and one city even handed out plastics from children’s products, authored using bags less than .025 millimeters thick, emergency contraception during carnival. by Assemblywoman Fiona Ma was signed according to the order issued by the State A government effort to dispense into state law last fall. It makes California Council, China’s cabinet. emergency contraception in the city of the first North American jurisdiction to ban The ban is slated to take effect June 1, two Recife, where carnival festivities started in six types of phthalates for products intended months before Beijing hosts the Summer February, stirred the censure of Catholic for use in children three and under. Olympic Games. authorities. Recife Archbishop Jose Cardoso Ma said that the bill “sends a clear Sobrinho warned the faithful that those who message to the Consumer Product Safety NOT A NICE LIGHT SNACK use emergency contraception face Commission that if the Bush Administration If, as you read this, you’re tucking into a excommunication. won’t act, states will.” KitKat, you might be interested to know that The pills, which prevent pregnancy when The bill prohibits the manufacture, sale most junk food contains palm oil, a product taken within 72 hours of unprotected and distribution of toys and child-care linked to the destruction of forests and peat intercourse, were distributed at public clinics products that contain certain phthalates. lands in Indonesia. As the Greenpeace report in Recife throughout the four days of frenzied Phthalates interfere with the hormone “How the Palm Oil Industry is Cooking the partying. They were a part of the system and have been linked to reproductive Climate” shows, it’s a recipe for disaster. government’s program that included giving defects, premature birth and the early onset The report charges that manufacturers of out 19.5 million condoms during carnival, of puberty, which is associated with these products—Nestlé, Procter & Gamble which ushers in the abstemious season of

HERIZONS SPRING 2008 9 New from SUMACH PRESS

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NEW RELEASES FROM SPRING 2008 INANNA PUBLICATIONS SILENT GIRL BUTTERFLY TEARS STORIES BY TRICIA DOWER STORIES BY ZOË S. ROY 978-0-9808822-0-9 / APRIL 2008 / $22.95 978-9782233-7-3 / JUNE 2008 / $22.95 Takes us into the remarkable and A compelling collection of short fiction poignant lives of fictional daughters, sis- that depict the experiences of Chinese ters, friends, lovers, wives, and mothers immigrant women facing the challenges through a story collection inspired by of life in a new country. The stories are Shakespeare’s plays. Set in twentieth and set in different parts of China, Canada, twenty-first century Canada, Kyrgyzstan, and the United States and examine Thailand, and the United States, these Chinese women’s cross-cultural experi- insightful stories—moderns riffs on ences in North America as well as Shakespearean women—portray girls women’s issues and political discrimina- and women dealing with a range of tion in China. The stories give the reader contemporary issues such as racism, social isolation, sexual slavery, kid- fascinating glimpses into events such as the cultural revolution in China napping, violence, family dynamics, and the fluid boundaries of gender. and Mao’s death; the immigrant experience in Canada and the U.S.; and Tricia Dower’s short fiction has been published in Room of One’s Own, The the impact of feminism on changing male/female relationships in both New Quarterly, Hemispheres, Cicada, NEO, Insolent Rudder and Big Muddy. the East and the West. Born in China, Zoë S. Roy was an eyewitness to the “Tricia Dower’s characters are heartbreakingly valiant, like red terror under Mao’s regime. Her short fiction has appeared in Canadian resistance fighters on occupied ground; through knowledge, wit, Stories and Thought Magazine. defiance and even silence, they gesture toward new, if imperfect, definitions of autonomy. A bold, candid and moving collection.” SUSAN BRALEY , former professor of English Literature and INANNA POETRY AND FICTION SERIES Women’s Studies at the University of Western Ontario and Fanshawe College www.yorku.ca/inanna

10 SPRING 2008 HERIZONS campaign updates nelliegrams increased risk of breast cancer. Four of the six phthalates banned in the bill are listed on California’s Prop 65 list as Lent on the Christian calendar. GE RICE NOT NICE reproductive toxins. Fourteen countries and The government has been distributing According to a Greenpeace report, genetically the European Union have already banned or condoms during carnival for the past few modified rice has contaminated supplies of the are phasing out the chemicals. The years as part of a national anti-AIDS food staple in the United States. chemical lobby fought hard to oppose the education campaign whose slogan, Risky Business, a 32-page report written by bill, but ultimately failed. The bill is slated to translated, means “good in bed means Dr. E. Neal Blue, examines a variety of go into effect January 1, 2009. wearing a condom.” experimental GE rice, LL601, whose modified The condom campaign and the public gene sequence is under patent by Bayer CLIMB TO distribution of emergency contraception in CropScience. The rice was genetically altered EQUALITY Recife represent the latest attempts by the so that it must be used with Bayer’s herbicide, Female trekkers Brazilian government to remove issues of Liberty. It was discovered to have are gaining reproductive health from the inner folds of contaminated conventional long grain rice ground in the Catholic doctrine, setting itself apart from supplies five years after the field trials for this mountains of many other nations in the region. experimental variety ended. Nepal, where the legacy of Sir Edmund The biggest sign of this came a year ago, Thousands of American farmers, wholesalers Hillary, the first climber to summit Mount when President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, who and retailers suffered the effects of this Everest in 1953, looms large. took office in 2002, appointed Jose Temporao contamination and export losses totalled $254 Female trekking guides have been health minister. Within days of taking office, million US, the organization says. gaining ground among the more moderate Temporao called for abortion to be discussed The contaminated rice has been found in 30 tourist treks, thanks in part to three sisters: as a matter of public health and women’s countries; about 63 per cent of exports of Nicky, Dicky and Lucky Chetri. Natives of reproductive right. American rice were affected and, as a result, Darjeeling, India, the sisters opened a “Unfortunately, women haven’t been heard trade restrictions were imposed in six of the top restaurant 15 years ago in Pokhara, Nepal, on this discussion,” Temporao said. “There 10 U.S. export markets. Hundreds of lawsuits in the foothills of the Annapurna mountain are 700 hospitalizations per day due to are pending against Bayer for damages. range, where they catered to trekkers problems relating to abortion. I wonder: if The Bayer case is not the first of its kind in returning from long hikes. men got pregnant, would this issue be the United States. In 2000 and 2001, a “Women would come into the restaurant resolved by now?” genetically engineered type of corn, StarLink, and tell us terrible stories from the In November, the government began from the French multinational Aventis, mountain, about harassment from their distributing emergency contraception pills in contaminated the food chain, leading to an male trekking guides,” says Dicky Chetri, 40, Sao Paolo metro stations. The move followed a estimated one billion dollars in losses and the middle of the three sisters. government price cut of 90 percent for birth cleanup costs, according to Greenpeace. Before long, she recognized an unmet control at pharmacies in May 2007 and it’s more business demand and was later joined by than doubling the number of free contraceptives In spite of contamination of American rice imports being discovered in 30 countries around her sisters. “We knew what we needed to it distributes through state clinics. do,” she says. the world, Canadian reports detected nothing. —Tereza Perazza, Women’s e-News, But with no mountaineering experience, This is due neither to a miracle of luck nor to the www.womensenews.org the sisters were starting from the ground efficiency of Canada’s food security system. It up. Chetri says the sisters—whose may be because Canadian authorities set a MEAT AIN’T unmarried status has been a matter of local threshold for detection (0.5 percent) of GE food NEAT media attention—closed their restaurant that is 50 times higher than the limit set by Gidon Eshel, a and gathered all the women they could for countries such as India, or even that geophysicist at a crash course in mountaineering. recommended by Bayer CropScience. the Bard The most difficult challenges were not the Ottawa still has not implemented the 58 Center, and rugged mountains. Rather, the challenges recommendations of the Royal Society of Pamela A. ranged from a taboo on women wearing Canada’s report on biotechnology, has no Martin, an assistant professor of geophysics trousers and deeply entrenched resistance labelling of foods containing genetically at the University of , calculated that if toward wives earning money to doubts about engineered ingredients and refuses to North Americans reduced their meat women’s strength and a cultural belief that implement strict liability for companies consumption by 20 percent, it would be the women are bad luck on the mountain. Few responsible for cases of contamination by equivalent greenhouse gas savings of women in Nepal have jobs outside of switching from a standard sedan to the super- genetically engineered organisms. agriculture, harvesting rice and wheat, and efficient Prius. Meanwhile, Anheuser-Busch reports that earning about $3 a day, says Chetri. Meanwhile, a study last year by the genetically engineered rice has been detected Today, the Three Sisters Adventure National Institute of Livestock and Grassland in Budweiser beer, independent laboratory Trekking Agency trains about 50 women a Science in Japan estimated that every pound testing has revealed. Tests show rice used in year and leads hundreds of foreign trekkers of beef is responsible for the equivalent output Anheuser-Busch’s East Coast U.S. breweries over the Annapurna mountain range. of carbon dioxide emitted by the average is contaminated with genetically engineered Among these clients are a growing number European car every 70 miles. rice varieties outlawed in most of the world, of women-only groups. The sisters also run — including Canada.

HERIZONS SPRING 2008 11 nelliegrams AFGHANISTAN WAR ZONE a lodge and have reopened their restaurant BY LAURYN OATES in Pokhara. Guides earn up to $10 a day, an impressive normal,” she says. “We heard of every kind of wage in a country with a per-capita gross abuse from the women we talked to, from domestic product of $260. It takes humility, brutal forms of torture to psychological says Chetri, but many husbands come to violence, like women being told what to wear, accept that their wives now earn more than being denied food or being banned from they do. Trekking accounts for eight percent leaving their homes by husbands.” of Nepal’s gross domestic product and is the Faizi also points to significant variations third-largest revenue generator, after by province and tribe, suggesting that agriculture and industry. different levels of intervention are needed in Almost half of all married Nepali women different regions of the country. For instance, are wed before the age of 19. The country in the province of Nuristan, 98 percent of has one of the widest gender gaps in Afghanistan girls and women experience one of the women described experiences of primary education in the world, with boys highest documented rates of violence in the world. psychological violence, while in the western in secondary school outnumbering girls province of Ghor, psychological abuse was two to one. (AFGHANISTAN) Case binders lining the reported at a rate of 21 percent. —Anna S. Sussman, Women’s E-News, shelves of women’s shelters and incident Services for survivors of abuse are nearly www.womensnews.org reports at the Afghan Independent Human non-existent in Afghanistan. There are fewer Rights Commission have documented it for than 10 women’s centres in the country, and ART FOR EQUALITY years. But a historic study on domestic most are in urban areas. Compounding the Toronto art gallery owner Carol Mark set assault in Afghanistan has made it official: situation is that nurses and doctors are often out seven years ago to help women and The country has one of the highest recorded insensitive to victims of abuse and are poorly children in Afghanistan. levels of violence against women and girls in trained in recognizing signs of violence. Global Within a few years, her support helped the world. In many parts of the country, a Rights reports there are no standardized launch a medical clinic and helped airlift majority of women report being assaulted by procedures in place to respond to victims who 750 tonnes of supplies to an orphanage. Her their husbands. come for medical attention or to report latest project is a literacy project, Kidsread Global Rights, a Washington, D.C.-based abusers. Police commonly fail to respond to Afghanistan, and the project’s first library in human rights organization, surveyed 5,700 abuse and often further victimize abused Farah is set to open this year. The city, 400 households in 16 of the country’s 32 women by imprisoning them, turning them kilometres west of Kandahar, is in one of provinces. Fully 87.2 percent of respondents back to their abusive families or accusing the country’s poorest regions. The library reported they had experienced at least one them of lying, infidelity or indecency. will be housed in a newly decorated four- form of abuse, which included psychological, In addition, there are no forensic room brick-and-earth structure equipped physical and sexual acts of violence as well investigation facilities and evidence is not with a well and garden and supplied with as forced marriages. Fifty-two percent of collected to document abuse. Few cases of solar panels. respondents reported physical violence; many abuse have ever come to court and few “To create change, you have to get out of described being regularly punched, kicked, hit divorces are granted on the basis of abuse. your own comfort zone and be the one to with sticks, cut with sharp objects, or having Women’s organizations struggle to respond take that first step,” says Mark. their hair pulled and clothes torn. by providing shelter, counselling services, legal aid and other forms of help. However, CAST A WARM NET One child bride, for example, reported that she had been woken up one day by her in- they remain poorly resourced and face an A Vancouver group called Sheltering Stitch laws pouring a kettle of scalding hot water uphill battle addressing a problem that has (www.shelteringstitch.com) is knitting up a over her body. Hospital workers in been shrouded in silence by everyone from storm to lend a hand to Vancouver’s Afghanistan confirm countless cases of the government to community leaders. homeless population. Nancy Lee picked up battered, bruised and injured women and No country in the world is free of violence her needles after reading Nick Flynn’s countless suspicious deaths. against women. But Afghan women enter memoir, Another Bullshit Night in Suck City, Even more shocking is Global Rights’ marriage knowing they will be extraordinarily in which the author describes trying to stay finding that more than 30 percent of lucky if they do not face violence from their warm while living on the street. incidents reported were perpetrated by husbands or in-laws. And while their country Working with local yarn stores that donate remains a war zone, it is in their homes that female household members, often a mother- yarn to the project and community workers Afghan women face the greatest danger. in-law. This finding challenges common who distribute the finished product have To address this situation, well-enforced perceptions of violence as being carried out been key to the effort’s success, says Lee. policies must start protecting women and by men against women and shows that any Sheltering Stitch collected 150 knitted girls. And, Fazi notes, no women or girls are prevention initiatives need to include both items, mostly scarves and hats, from two immune from the violence. male and female abusers. dozen knitters in town. Blankets and “Violence is happening in all kinds of Eshaq Faizi, a lawyer and human rights sweaters are also in demand. A similar households: poor, rich, urban, rural. It is activist involved in collecting the data, group has started in Toronto simply everywhere,” she observes (www.streetknit.ca). articulates the scale of the problem. Lauryn Oates works with women-led NGOs —source: THIS magazine “We have clear evidence now that domestic violence is very common—almost in Afghanistan and North America. 

12 SPRING 2008 HERIZONS LEADER OF THE PACK BY TRACEY LINDEMAN

Roller derby, with a DIY ethic and an emphasis on retro-trash dress, is gaining momentum in Canada, with 11 leagues in operation. (Photo: Susan Moss)

(MONTREAL) Roller derby is in the throes of a one’s making any money in today’s derby— Derby, a race that simulated the distance renaissance and women are leading the pack. and they couldn’t be happier. between and . Where roller derby of the 1960s and ’70s was a “It’s pretty empowering for women because Soon, races were happening all over the money-making endeavour in the business of it’s run by the skaters, for the skaters. It’s DIY United States, and it didn’t take founder Leo entertaining audiences, the modern and it’s very successful and popular,” says Seltzer long to realize that audiences loved it incarnation teems with a fervent DIY ethic Alyssa Kwasny, or Georgia W. Tush, the 23- when racers crashed into each other while seldom seen in popular sports. year-old founder and president of Montreal vying for the lead. It quickly took the shape it Today, the number of North American Roller Derby. While most leagues observe the currently resembles—10 players on an oval women-only leagues is close to 200, with a rules set by the Women’s Flat-Track Derby track, five from each team, with four blockers handful of teams across the pond. Almost all Association (WFTDA), only about 50 of them and one jammer each. The jammers lap the of them are women-run. There are 11 leagues are members of the organization. Other than pack of blockers, and for each opponent they in Canada, a number that is rising. And despite the WFTDA, there is no central organization pass, they get a point. However, jammers and its growing popularity with skaters and that oversees or controls roller derby leagues. blockers are equally insistent—the former on audiences alike, it’s almost as if there is an Individual leagues organize tournaments and breaking through the pack, and the latter on unspoken rule to preserve derby’s DIY ethic bouts amongst themselves for the most part, making sure the jammers can’t pass. and keep women in charge—though there are using the network—or, as it’s commonly During the ’40s and again throughout the many male referees and coaches. Most referred to, a sisterhood—to schedule games, ’70s, roller derby gained popularity across the leagues are not-for-profit organizations. Roller plan conferences like the annual RollerCon U.S. where thousands of spectators attended girls pay monthly dues to their leagues, and extravaganza and even start new leagues. televised games and millions were made. the profits from bouts go back into leagues to Roller derby first gained popularity in 1935 Eventually, roller derby acquired a pay for things like travel expenses. In short, no under the banner of Transcontinental Roller theatrically vicious reputation—more

HERIZONS SPRING 2008 13 entertainment than competition—and a very marketable sport. They want to almost up super-sexy and shows off,” says Brown, morphed into a co-ed spectator sport fuelled exploit it, but a lot of people involved have done “but at the same time, I really enjoy it!” by gratuitous violence with stars like a good job of protecting it,” Kwasny says. Brown, who now owns a pair of gold lamé “Skinny” Minnie Miller and “Banana-Nose” “People want to come around and own it and booty shorts, believes that “sexy” has been Ann Calvello. Dubbed the meanest mama on control it, but it’s mostly stayed in the control of redefined in the realm of roller derby to skates, Calvello began competing in roller the skaters.” represent owning one’s own body and being derbies in 1948 and is the only professional And those skaters come from very diverse tough, fierce and beautiful—on one’s own athlete whose working career spanned seven backgrounds. Some are students, some are terms. Players wear elbow and knee pads, decades. She stopped competing in 2000 and professionals and some are stay-at-home helmets and mouth guards. Says Brown, it bore witness to the latest roller derby revival parents. All have aliases and some lead “makes you feel hot and makes you want to before her death in 2006. double lives on the track. Roofers, lawyers, kick some ass.” In 2001, the league that later became the artists, administrators and social workers— Modern roller girls are notoriously rowdy Texas Lonestar Rollergirls set a precedent roller derby is truly a mixed bag, and that’s and the sport can be dangerous. Concussions, when it started four women-only roller derby something Montreal’s Zoe Brown, or Die cuts and bruises are badges of honour for teams. These teams were featured on A&E’s Nasty, is proud of. derby players, albeit painful ones. Frequent short-lived Rollergirls television show in 2006. A social worker and mother of two who runs tumbles on wood or concrete surfaces while The show didn’t last, but by then the roller the Montreal Underground Film Festival, Brown wearing short-shorts and fishnets can derby revival was in full swing. By the end of wasn’t sure what to expect when she enlisted in produce some very peculiar-looking breeds of 2006, there were over 100 leagues in cities roller derby. But she breathed a sigh of relief rink rash, a sort of skin burn from hitting the across Canada and the U.S. when she found women just like her—jack(ie)s floor at high speeds. But while they skate Despite roller derby’s proven self-reliance, it’s of all trades in all different shapes and sizes. hard, they party harder, an element that has, not uncommon for leagues to be approached by Whether they wear stiff shirts or miniskirts no doubt, helped popularize the sport. businesses promising sponsorship deals at the between the hours of nine and five, the women To those who have criticized the game as expense of organizational autonomy. The shed their day-to-day lives on the track, donning phoney baloney entertainment, Brown replies: Montreal league has had several offers, but has short skirts, fishnets and cut-up tees. “People get freaked out when they see girls refuted every one. “[Businessmen] see how it’s “It irritates me because everyone dresses having fun.” 

naturally—they bring their kids along to work. Genevieve, two-and-a-half—are or have been in 1993, Shaw created the natural menstrual regulars at Lunapads as toddlers. LUNA product company Luna Pads—a cottage Sounds convenient, but doesn’t this give enterprise that makes stylish, eco-friendly new meaning to the term motherlode?’ BABIES alternatives to disposable pads and tampons. “You schedule meetings or detailed work In 2000, she met Siemens and together they during nap time,” offers Siemens. “Once they expanded the company to become a thriving get mobile, it’s harder to divide attention to the LAND AT wholesale and online business via their children and attention to work.” website www.lunapads.com. Once the kids reached one-and-a-half or “As business owners, we aren’t eligible for so, their parents made daycare arrangements WORK maternity-leave benefits,” explains Siemens, for part of time. “There’s only so much that we BY PENNI MITCHELL an accountant by trade contributed to EI prior can offer at the office,” Siemens points out. to becoming a business owner. “So, our only And yet, the drawbacks are greatly option was to bring our babies with us.” outweighed by the benefits, she adds, (VANCOUVER) So, what’s a new mother to do Lunapads officially has a staff of four, but at including having your baby close when they when she owns her own business and doesn’t times the number of warm bodies increased need you most. Besides, she adds: “Babies qualify for paid maternity leave? as each owner returned to work after giving and children bring a magical energy to the If the mothers are Suzanne Siemens and birth. Both Siemens’ sons—Garret, one and office that everyone here enjoys and Madeleine Shaw, they do what comes Aiden, five—and Shaw’s daughter— contributes to.” 

HERIZONS Environmental Statement Herizons is printed on Forest Stewardship Council-certified paper. The certification means that raw materials originate in forests run according to principles that respect the environment, at all stages of production. By printing on a paper that contains 25 percent post-consumer fibre, Herizons is saving 10 trees, or two-and-a-half tonnes of wood, four tonnes of water and 1,678 pounds of greenhouse gas emissions per year. This paper is also elemental chlorine-free and acid-free. Sure, it costs more, but we think the planet is worth it. And we know you agree.

14 SPRING 2008 HERIZONS cole’s notes BY SUSAN G. COLE

An Uphill Battle

She has all of the qualifications—experience in the U.S. Americans are warming to the idea of messing with Senate, a great impact one-on-one, a refurbished centrist privatized health care. image—but Hillary Clinton, despite her winning the New In the meantime, the left and the youth votes are flocking to Hampshire and just, at this writing, having seized the New Barack Obama, the senator from Illinois, a much less qualified York and California primaries, is in no way a sure bet to win candidate than Clinton. Recently, while Obama spoke to a the democratic nomination. $1,000-a-plate luncheon audience, a demonstration outside Such is the power of in American politics. included one activist with a sign reading “Anybody but Google “Hillary Clinton bitch” and your screen lights up in Hillary—Even You.” scary ways. I know that the Internet isn’t the most reliable Obama’s victory in the Iowa caucuses, and his more than place to get the pulse of the nation—many wackos love to decent showings in New Hampshire and on so-called Super blow off steam online—but I also know that I don’t get the Tuesday, suggest that Obama has the potential to beat same action when I google “George Bush prick.” Clinton. This seems unthinkable to me. Does anybody really Clinton has, in fact, turned herself into a true centrist, believe that disaffected Republicans are more likely to vote normally a good thing for someone trying to unseat a for Obama than for Clinton? conservative incumbent. In a speech to pro-Israel partisans, I’m mystified by the left’s interest in Obama—it’s Clinton she argued that a dialogue with countries hostile to Israel, who has the more universal health care plan. Obama supports including Iran and Syria, is needed to promote peace in the the HMOs, as long as they charge low-income users less. Middle East. Not exactly hawk-like. She did vote for the war Clinton’s the one attacking those multi-million-dollar in Iraq, then changed her views when America’s belligerency payouts to CEO’s whose companies are failing. And on the proved so devastating. You can call that a flip-flop, but I call peace front, John Edwards was the only credible candidate to it centrism pure and simple. consistently oppose the war in Iraq. And, in another brilliant ploy, Clinton articulated her Understand, I’d be gratified to see a black American position on abortion with a statement promoting better birth president. On the other hand, I’m not one of those feminists control and better sex education as a means of reducing the who thinks that Margaret Thatcher was good for women’s number of unwanted pregnancies. equality. My point here is that, given America’s political “There is no reason,” she said, “why government cannot do landscape, Clinton should be blowing away her competition. more to educate, and inform, and provide assistance, so that Not that Canadians are in such a terrific position to point the choice guaranteed under our constitution either does not fingers. It was in Canada that Flora MacDonald was ever have to be exercised, or only in very rare circumstances.” humiliated by the Conservative Party in 1976 after having In saying so, she’s managed to seize back the moral ground been promised strong support that mysteriously disappeared usually occupied by anti-abortion factions by arguing that when ballots were counted at the party’s leadership abortion is, indeed, a sad thing, so let’s do something about it— convention. (She lost to Joe Clark.) Kim Campbell, Canada’s short of taking away women’s constitutional right to choose. first and only female prime minister, lasted only six months Aside from the fact of her gender, Clinton can’t really be in office. Though dismissed for her supposed inexperience, called the feminist candidate. American feminists—Gloria Campbell served in four cabinet portfolios before running for Steinem’s support notwithstanding—are actually furious about the party leadership and had more experience than 11 of the what they call backpedalling on the abortion issue. Not many 18 men who preceded her as prime minister. And overall, were impressed with Clinton’s “stand-by-her-man” position Canada’s female representation in Parliament continues to be through Clinton’s infidelities—they considered it doormat- absolutely pathetic at 21 percent. like. And so feminism isn’t the candidate’s chief liability. But this situation is specific. Were a man to have done Right wingers may say it is. They also make her health care everything Clinton has done to make himself electable, he’d plans look like she’s the red menace incarnate. But right be leading the pack by a mile and just a few months away wingers are not in the driver’s seat in 2008, and, in fact, from the Oval Office.  HERIZONS SPRING 2008 15 Radical Roots THE FIGHT TO SAVE THE BOREAL FOREST

BY CINDY FILIPENKO

Cover: Emily Carr, Pines in May, 1929-1930, watercolour and graphite on paper,76.8 x 53.0 cm, Collection of the Vancouver Art Gallery, Emily Carr Trust, VAG42.3.103, Photo: Trevor wareness of global warming appears to have reached intuition. If it doesn’t feel right, if it doesn’t look right, it’s a tipping point. While most of us have figured out not right.” A where to put the composter as we search for more The Green leader quickly mentions her friend, the late ways to incorporate pre-cycling into our lives, a number of Colleen McCrory, who started fighting for West Coast Canadian women are demonstrating their deep-rooted rainforest preservation in the early ’70s. commitment to preservation by protecting the boreal forest “I think a lot of us were drawn to protecting forests on in an effort to save the planet. other wilderness battles such as South Moresby, where I first Trees are the best carbon reservoirs we have. The boreal met Colleen. First, it was the fight to stop the logging in the forest, the largest carbon-neutralizing area we have in Queen Charlottes; then to Vancouver Island old-growth Canada, is being destroyed at the rate of just under 1.5 acres rainforest; and then realizing, What about the forgotten every two seconds. Much of this wood is being turned into forest? What’s going on there? Colleen was the one who had for paper products that could easily be made from a nose for this sort of thing. She’d check it out, pack a van and sustainably managed forests. start travelling across the country to create a network of Logging the boreal forest, with its undemanding activists concerned about saving the boreal region forest.” landscape and skinny Jack pines and Sitka spruce, is easy. McCrory, who died of a brain tumour in 2006, founded the The softwood trees are thin and the terrain Valhalla Wilderness Society in is easy for machinery to negotiate. Ease 1975. Despite regular death translates to speed, speed to volume, and threats and boycotts of her volume to increased profit. Last calculated in store (which eventually led to 2005, the logging of the boreal forest was worth $41.9 billion on an annual basis, according to Greenpeace. Running along the top of the country from The Yukon to Newfoundland and Labrador, the boreal forest accounts for 90 percent of Canada’s intact forests. With a land mass of slightly more than half the country, the boreal region is Canada’s most important ecosystem. Astoundingly, it holds approximately seven times the total annual output of the world’s fossil fuel emissions— more than 47 billion tonnes of carbon. Federal Green Party leader Elizabeth May has been active in forest preservation since the , when she campaigned against aerial spraying against the spruce budworm in Cape Breton. May has some ideas about why this branch of environmentalism attracts so many women. “The intuitive answer? We’re more prepared to follow through on an intuitive sense that all life on Earth is connected and connects us to our kids’ future, and therefore we ought to take action to protect our own future. The sense of interconnectedness with the natural world may, for whatever reason, be stronger than it is within many men.” May goes further out on a limb. “There’s a strong willingness to follow Tzeporah Berman (above left ) of ForestEthics, Greenpeace’s Kim Fry (above right) and Elizabeth May,

Photo: Rob Fry, Courtesy Greenpeace Photo: Rob Fry, through on what used to be called women’s leader of the Green Party of Canada (CP Photo)

HERIZONS SPRING 2008 17 “This oil lies under boreal forest, so we’re logging some of the most important forests we have left.”—Tzeporah Berman

In Canadian Forests, and How To Be An Activist and Save the World in Your Spare Time. This spring will see the release of a book co-authored with Zoe Caron, called Global Warming For Dummies. In May’s world, being a dummy is simply not an acceptable excuse for a lack of action. “To get global emissions falling by 2015, we need every nation to stop playing stupid games like Mr. Harper’s been playing, saying they’re doing something about the climate when they’re not. We need hard caps and fast. If we do that, we’ll be all right. If we fail to do that, the future that lies ahead is essentially too dangerous and frightening to contemplate.” Not surprisingly, May would like to see a change of government. “We have to get more people to say, ‘I’m going to be more politically active,’ in whatever party they choose, to ensure that politicians who don’t think climate crisis is real—and I think Mr. Harper fits in that category—aren’t in office long.” Putting pressure on governments, as well as corporations, is something of a specialty for Tzeporah Berman, who first garnered notice as part of the Clayoquot Sound protests in the early ’90s. Since then, her career has paralleled the evolution of the environmental movement itself, moving from blockades to boardrooms. As a founding member of the international organization ForestEthics, Berman has been instrumental in getting out the message that traditional Canadian logging practices, such as clear-cutting, are hastening the death of the entire planet’s lungs. Wolves (above) and bald eagles live in boreal regions. (Photos: Rob Fry) “It’s absolutely critical today that we all carry this environmental awareness, as a responsibility to act on these its demise) McCrory managed to establish both the 49,600- issues, into everything we do. That means buying—and, if hectare Valhalla Provincial Park and the South Moresby you can’t find it, demanding—ecological products like National Park Reserve in the Queen Charlotte Islands. recycled paper and toilet paper, organic foods and local foods. In 1990, McCrory created the umbrella group Future “I call it using a carbon and biodiversity lens on everything Forest Alliance, which claims the support of one million we do,” continues Berman. “How much energy did this item Canadians concerned about the boreal forest. Coining the take to produce? Do I need it? Did its production have a term “Brazil of the North,” McCrory began fighting to detrimental effect on some of our last remaining wild places?” protect of the boreal forest, forming the internationally Berman, along with ForestEthics, was instrumental in supported Taiga Rescue Network to protect the world’s getting the lingerie giant ’s Secret to stop printing its boreal formation, a coordinated international effort to protect catalogues on virgin pulp. And last year she gained more the boreal forests of the world. exposure for her message when she was featured in Leonardo May shares an activist pedigree that’s equally impressive. DiCaprio’s documentary The 11th Hour, which explores the For 17 years, she was executive director of the Sierra Club human role in global warming. (now EcoJustice). She is also the author of the Like May, Berman believes the most important thing we groundbreaking 1998 offering At The Cutting Edge: The Crisis can do is lobby government to do the right thing. And the

18 SPRING 2008 HERIZONS “We need every nation to stop playing stupid games like Mr. Harper’s been playing, saying they’re doing something about the climate when they’re not.”—Elizabeth May, leader of the Green Party right thing appears to be everything from insisting on policy that a mind-shift can happen. changes to ensuring that carbon offset programs are “I don’t like to use the word sacrifice, but as a society, in regulated—even if they are a stop-gap measure. North America, we have to scale back the lifestyle we’ve “The most important thing for us to be doing at a local, grown accustomed to. We need to not take some of those provincial and national level is to ensure a cap-and-trade luxuries as a given because we can offset. We are truly facing program and strong legislation to reduce emissions. We will a crisis like humanity has never faced before. We need a large- not achieve the solution at the level we need to without that. scale societal transformation in order to get through that. Carbon offsets are, in my opinion, a transition to that system.” “What is necessary is probably what more people want. If As the movement to save Canada’s forests has grown, you ask people to map out the vision of their ideal Berman’s brand of activism has shifted, too. community and neighbourhood, it involves bikes, green “When you realize that even breast milk is loaded with spaces, water and trees, play spaces. Those are the kinds of toxic substance,” she asks, “who can’t help feeling drawn to things we actually need to build to move towards a more these issues?” carbon-neutral culture,” says Fry. Kim Fry, a forestry campaigner with Greenpeace in Change is going to happen. But, Fry asks, “Is it going to Toronto, points out that the fight to save Clayoquot Sound in happen in a way you can actually plug in, and participate, and the ’90s was predominantly a women’s protest. help mould it into something beautiful and democratic? Or “I studied eco-feminism in university, and I don’t like to are you going to wait until it’s imposed on you?” think it’s just because women are more caring or naturally While May, Berman and Fry are confident that the fight to giving. I think it’s partly because women are socialized to be save the boreal forest can be won, they stress it will only happen more concerned about what’s going on in the world.” if we connect emerging eco-horrors, like the Alberta tar sands, “There’s a bit of this attitude right now with this current to the destruction of the boreal region, and of the planet. environmental renaissance,” Fry observes. “You can continue Berman says the expanding Alberta tars sands is Canada’s to live your lifestyle, as is, and then just buy some offsets, a most dramatic environmental blight. Prius and organic food, but continuing to live exactly as you “It’s really important for Canadians to realize that this oil are. There’s a real danger to that.” lies under boreal forest, so we’re logging some of the most Fry is quick to point out that she is not suggesting everyone important forests we have left. And mining for oil and the take up an agrarian lifestyle. “But I do think people need to production of oil in the tar sands uses twice as much energy scale back their consumption. People need to be thinking per barrel as any other energy project in the world. through the choices that they make a lot more carefully.” “There are now 51 square kilometers of toxic lakes (referred She believes people must become more committed to to as ponds) that exist in the centre of Alberta just because of living their lives with a smaller ecological footprint, taking the massive water usage to produce oil from the tar sands. My into consideration not only how they live, work and play, but husband was just there and he said there are people employed where they do. Aware that the call for this type of wholesale just to rake the dead birds off these toxic lakes.” change is likely to raise cries of deprivation, Fry is adamant Clearly, the time to act is now. 

Five Ways to Protect the Boreal Forest Inform yourself by visiting the Taiga If your local supermarket carry does not sustainably managed pulp. Read more 1 Rescue Network website 3 current sell recycled (and unbleached) about Greenpeace’s Kleercut campaign (www.taigarescue.org) or other paper products, including toilet paper and at www.kleercut.net. organizations working to protect tissue, demand that they do so. Shop For a broader picture of global Canada's boreal region . elsewhere if they refuse. Try your local 5 warming, host a viewing of Write your provincial and federal natural health food or organic store. Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth. (It costs 2 resources ministers to demand they do Boycott Kimberley-Clark products until under $20 from Amazon). more to protect the boreal forest. 4 the company commits to buy only

HERIZONS SPRING 2008 19 Jaime Drew Homeland. Security. Virginia Woolf said: “As a woman, I have no country. As a woman, my country is the world.” As Maya Khankhoje explains in her essay, homeland is not simply a geographic or an ethnic construct, but a place where communion and community are celebrated.

BY MAYA KHANKHOJE

PART I falters; or where I will be when the time comes to end the hen I return from a trip, and open the door of my journey. At such moments, home feels very far away. fifth-floor apartment, and look out the window Today, I say that Canada is my home forever, but how long W and catch a glimpse of the wooded ridge that does forever last? After all, once upon a time, I felt safe in Montrealers grandly call Mount Royal, I first feel a sense of Mexico City, the city where I was born, the “most transparent relief, for my whole being knows that I am finally and region in the world,” as Mexican writer Carlos Fuentes once unequivocally home—that one place where my body relaxes described it. It’s a city with astounding architecture and my mind is at rest. surrounded by snow-capped volcanoes and lit at night by the And I certainly feel Canada is my homeland, except when stars. I used to think it was the most beautiful place on Earth, I ask myself what brought me to this frozen landscape so and could not imagine not living there. But now, when I visit distant from my sun-drenched birthplace; or why my loved my birthplace, I no longer think of it as home, my homeland, ones are so far away; or what will happen when my body burdened as I am with harrowing tales of political and street HERIZONS SPRING 2008 21 violence, not to mention the assault of millions of bodies and then the Atlantic, through the Mediterranean, past the hurrying about in millions of hydrocarbon-fuelled cars, or Suez Canal, across the Arabian Sea, all the way to Bombay. just trying to cross from one side of the street to the other We had swum against the current, reversing migration trends; without getting hit. for who would be crazy enough to leave a relatively well-off At the age of seven, I discovered that Mexico wasn’t the Third World country, where we had a roof over our head and centre of the universe when the newly independent my father had a job, for a poorer country still suffering from government of India invited my father to work there. My the wounds of partition. Indian father had been exiled from his own homeland for 47 Back in Nagpur, life was no longer the exciting affair it had years for having had the temerity of trying to free it from been when my father was a government guest. foreign rule. But in 1949 India was free and the family could Unemployment for an elderly patriot, a challenging life for an return. So we made the long trip to India, and Nagpur, in the outspoken and unconventional European woman and the centre of the country, became my new home. And, if home strictures of a patriarchal society for the two young women is where the heart is, my heart was certainly very much in my sister and I had become were tough, but the support our this country where life offered very few amenities and very family got from the community carried us through. many adventures. Home was the backyard where I was Once again, we were home. I hit the books again and chased by a black-faced monkey larger than myself when turned a deaf ear to what people said about us. What they another child hurled a stone at it. It was the lotus pond in said was that girls shouldn’t run around freely on bicycles and Telenkheri garden on whose banks I would lie, trying to that my mother should keep her opinions to herself. Finally, break the silvery beads of water that bounced off lotus pads. I found a niche in college. It was the back steps of the One day, the phone rang. It house where I learned was my mother who had gone Hindi—my third language, to New Delhi to meet my after Spanish and English. Months of nationwide student sister’s future mother-in-law. Home was an independent strikes led to increased political “Pack up and come,” she said. India full of promise and violence, culminating in the “There is a job waiting for you adventure. in the Venezuelan Embassy.” Our idyll in Nagpur lapsed Tlatelolco massacre. So the following day I took with the end of my father’s a train and reached New contract. We reluctantly Delhi on my 20th birthday returned to Mexico City but the city had changed; or rather, and became a secretary. Three years and three more Latin I had. Yes, it was still beautiful, but our life paled in American embassies later, I was offered a scholarship in comparison to the excitement that India provided. India Mexico City. I finally returned to my homeland at the age of taught me many lessons, and one of them was the importance 23. The air was beginning to lose its transparency and traffic of learning. The nine-year-old who returned to Mexico was clogging formerly quiet streets, but Mexico City did feel stopped being a shy, wide-eyed, dreamy child and had like home. A master’s degree in oriental studies in Mexico become a self-confident student. School filled the hollow left seemed made-to-measure for me, but destiny decided in my guts when India was yanked away from me. School was otherwise. I quickly fell in love with an American student, now a place where I felt at home. married, became pregnant, dropped out of school and started As they say, the only constant is change itself. My mother, my career as a simultaneous interpreter. who was born in Brussels and had the courage to marry a At that time, the May 1968 movement, which first hit the black revolutionary 30 years her senior, suddenly realized that cobblestones of Paris (and caused the eventual collapse of her daughters were growing up and they deserved a better the de Gaulle government in France) spread like wildfire in future. For her, that future meant her daughters should marry the universities of Mexico City and then invaded the streets. Indian men, an idea inspired no doubt more by her fierce love Months of nationwide student strikes led to increased for my father than by any maternal logic. So my parents sold political violence, culminating in the Tlatelolco massacre of our little house, packed up the family library, and we took a protesters in the Plaza of the Three Cultures on October 2, slow boat to India to live once again. 1968, which took place close to where we lived. Hundreds of But by then I was 14 and no longer wanted to leave Mexico. protestors were killed by government military forces that I cried me a river, and the river overflowed into the Caribbean, day. We abandoned our modest condo to rent an apartment

22 SPRING 2008 HERIZONS at the other end of the city. Violence seemed to follow us. to achieve peace. They did not bear children to convert them More than once, I had to run for cover with my two little into the killers of other women’s children. Women have also girls while bullets whizzed past us. Mexico was no longer spearheaded peace movements such as Women in Black to safe. We sold our belongings and decided to spend my promote a peaceful solution to the Israeli/Palestinian husband’s sabbatical abroad. conflict. And it was the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo in One day, we drove off in our VW Beetle at the crack of Argentina whose relentless efforts brought some answers to dawn. As the sun started to rise, I remember telling my the riddle of their disappeared children. husband that our car would be our home: Our family was What does this have to do with the question of together and that was all that mattered. We kept heading homeland? The excuse for most wars is to try to save the north until we reached New Haven, Connecticut, where my homeland from some horrible fate, and most wars are husband planned to write a book. The nine months we spent declared and waged by men. there are a blank in my mind. We had no friends and felt Homeland. Security. Returning to the personal, I feel very completely isolated. Mexican when I go to Mexico and a flood of childhood And then the phone rang again. It was a job offer for me at memories takes over. But I stop feeling Mexican when I hear a UN agency, and so we drove to Montreal. One day my the first few words of the national anthem, which say: husband decided to leave; however, I stayed. Montreal is the “Mexicanos al grito de guerra….!” (Mexicans answering the call city that has provided me with the greatest stability, but my of war.) And I stop feeling Mexican when passport authorities heart is not all in one piece. It is scattered in Mexico, in inform me that my family name, Khankhoje, is not Mexican, Chicago, where one of my daughters lives, in Wichita, where or when I wear Indian clothes and my Mexican friends make the other daughter and my a snide comment. granddaughter live, in Delhi, in On the other hand, Indians Nagpur, and in other countries I accept me as Indian, even though have visited. Identity is also political I was not born in that country, do construct used to not carry an Indian passport and PART II do not speak Hindi, the official My friends always ask me manipulate citizens. language, correctly. This is whether I feel Mexican, Indian, perhaps due to the fact that the or Canadian. I classify that motto of Indian identity is “unity question in the same category of unanswerable questions as in diversity.” Even though my parents did not give us a the one some silly grown-ups would ask me as a child: “Who religious education, I strongly identify with the philosophy of do you love more, your mother or your father?” I also several religious traditions that flourished in India. Now, remember the comment made by a Spanish friend of mine nobody would consider me Belgian at all, because I am sure who informed me that my problem was that I did not know Belgians see me as coloured (although Indians see me as who I was. white and Mexicans as just right). And yet I certainly feel My reply? “I did not know I had a problem,” I said, “And, very Belgian when I see somebody with my mother’s oddly actually, your problem is that you are the one who does not coloured eyes—green with brick-red specks—or when I know who I am.” toast to her memory with a stein of beer in one hand and a It is difficult for me to understand people brought up in a chocolate in the other. jingoistic society. For them, life is either/or, black/white, I realize that I have become Canadian, because I enjoy the us/them. For me, identity is a very important part of how we fact that it is a country where people just let you be. True, the define ourselves, but at the same time it is also a political and multicultural mosaic sometimes cracks along its fault lines, social construct used to manipulate citizens. but it is still very much multicoloured. Wars would not exist if people didn’t see “them” and “us.” And what about the United States? Crossing the border How can we think of appropriating a piece of land, or into the United States fills me with some trepidation, destroying buildings, or taking human lives, unless, in our especially after September 11, 2001. Before that, I had a minds, we do not consider them “other”—the enemy. This is Mexican passport and border officials would always give me a problem I perceive to be highly gendered. It is no a bit of trouble, perhaps because having a Muslim-sounding coincidence that it has been women in Ireland from both name on a Mexican passport was a bit unusual. Now that I sides of the Protestant/Catholic divide who seriously sought have a Canadian passport, I feel a tad safer, but not much

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24 SPRING 2008 HERIZONS more. We may tend to think our homeland is that place were are two words that inspire dread in many citizens, both inside our interests will be protected, but this is not necessarily so. and outside the United States. They are almost as bad the Homelands are an illusory concept because the elites that rule German Vaterland. The world homeland was used in many countries seldom take decisions that favour their weakest African colonies to reduce the habitat of the original citizens. There is a suprahomeland for the rich and powerful, inhabitants, so that the colonizers could appropriate the lion’s built on a network of jumbo jets, world-class hotels, share of the land. And homeland is often synonymous with corporate boardrooms and the best playgrounds countries reservation, where native peoples are hemmed in, just as have to offer, where all their citizens are given VIP treatment. animals that were born free have been penned in towards a slow There is an infrahomeland for the marginalized, the homeless, extinction. The notion of a homeland for a specific religious or the disenfranchised, whose shaky foundations are built on the linguistic group has caused untold suffering throughout the sludge of Brazilian favelas, the landslide-prone world by excluding one group at the expense of another. mountainsides of Mexico’s vecindarios, the townships of I clearly remember a doll I had as a little girl. When I had South Africa, the landfills of urban sprawl, the sidewalks of accidentally decapitated it, I discovered that a tiny Mexican Mumbai. And then there are the autochthonous people, the flag had been used to hold some of the doll’s innards natives, the Aboriginals, the First Nations, the Adivasis— together. The idea that a flag should be used in such a call them what you will, but the land they hold under their disrespectful manner shocked me, because at school I was stewardship is shrinking at an exponential rate. indoctrinated to believe that nothing was more sacred than a A lot has been said about globalization, both good and bad. national flag. Actually, what is bad about the globalizing trends of today is I no longer feel this way. Symbols should never replace the that corporations have become powers unto themselves, over sentiments they are supposed to foster. Nationalism was and above the national laws meant to protect citizens. certainly a very useful unifying factor in the anti-colonial However, the globalization of struggles that followed World people can be a good thing. It is War II. It was also an a fallacy to believe that this is the improvement over the old feudal first time in human history that I have come to realize that notions of the ruling class, who there have been mass migrations. the only homeland we have, considered peasants living on their People crossed the frozen bridge land to be personal chattel and of the Bering Strait on foot just in a strict territorial sense, is cannon fodder. Nationalism is a as they walked on red-hot sand the planet Earth. good thing when it includes; it is a to somehow cross the Red Sea, very bad thing when it excludes. drifted from the Pacific to South “The commons” is a lovely America on a raft (or was it the other way around?), sailed English phrase. The land that belongs to the collectivity is from China to Mexico and around the Cape of Good Hope. our true homeland for all of us to share. Passports, identity And they will keep doing so, because this vast planet of ours cards, green cards, laissez-passers and, soon, electronic chips is their and our homeland. are simply documents invented by people to keep track of Today, things haven’t changed that much. The locus of what their affairs—nothing more and nothing less. They do not we call homeland has been extended, that is all. Double and legitimize or invalidate the human being who is at the centre multiple nationalities are quite common. Hyphenated of it all. citizenship is a fact of life. And, oftentimes, homeland is a I have come to realize that the only homeland we have, in concept which is not geographical at all, but simply a very fluid a strict territorial sense, is the planet Earth. We all have a concept. This is especially true for transhumant or pastoral legitimate right to live off the land and a concomitant duty to communities. In Spain recently, herders brought thousands of protect it. sheep to the cities to prove the point that they have the right Perhaps the best sense of homeland is that space which we to move about across borders in search of a livelihood. have pledged to cherish and protect, where our kith and kin Although people who live outside the countries in which they and friends live, our kindred humanity that includes the were born are still a minority, the trend is rapidly growing. animals and plants with whom we share space. Our The word: homeland. I have come to abhor that word homeland is a social and natural contract in which all the because it has been hijacked by politicians to manipulate parties are committed to working for each other in the people, just as the swastika, a symbol of wholeness in the Hindu interests of the commonwealth.  tradition, was hijacked to instil terror. Homeland and security Maya Khankhoje’s is a Montreal writer.

HERIZONS SPRING 2008 25 Monumental Women A JOURNEY IN SEARCH OF OUR FOREMOTHERS

BY NOREEN SHANAHAN am an obituary writer for The Globe and Mail and I love this work. I believe it is an important form of I storytelling, as obituaries are often the first recorded notes of a person’s history. One of my not-so-hidden agendas is to tell more about the accomplishments of Canadian women and to scatter the words “feminist,” “lesbian” and “activist” into the copy as often as possible. I’ve had some success in doing this writing obits for Jannit Rabonovitch, Chris Bearchell and Margaret Avison. I’ve also written obituaries about architects, doctors, lawyers and engineers— many of whom lived their lives as members of the Canadian old boys’ club. Regardless of a subject’s gender, a good obituary throbs with emotion, but never, never with sentimentality. I do my best to keep them free from that soppy material, focusing instead on good, solid research and quotations—all told within a tight chronology. Nevertheless, I sometimes experience poignant moments in scripting these stories for an audience, as I make important connections with the living while writing about the newly dead. One morning, in order to ease myself into this article (it’s always a little tough at the beginning), I bought a copy of The Walrus and opened it to an article by broadcast journalist Marsha Barber about her husband’s illness and their struggle to, quite literally, mend his broken heart. “The line between life and death was thinning,” she wrote about watching him be prepped for surgery. Sentences like this jump out at me, sentences where the living part stands out so strongly, almost illuminated on the page. That’s one of the reasons I love writing obituaries. It truly is a thin line, and, as a writer, I feel privileged, again and again, to madly dash across it in the course of a day’s work. Her story had done its job on me. I returned to the writing of my own. It began last spring. I headed south on a road trip where my destination was Alfred, a small university town in upstate New York, famous for degrees in ceramic art and for having only one traffic light. Along with writers from Israel, Spain, Britain, the Netherlands, Puerto Rico and many American cities, I travelled there to attend the 9th Great Obituary Writer’s International Conference. Seminar topics included the use of archival photographs to describe a life; heated controversies about paid versus unpaid obituaries; and how to avoid the ubiquitous ghoulish puns that can be an unfortunate part of this work. Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Jim Sheeler was on hand to autograph his recently published book Obit, which features interviews with the families of American soldiers killed in Iraq. And New York writer Marilyn Johnson read from The Dead Beat: Lost Souls, Lucky Stiffs, and the Perverse Pleasures of Obituaries. There were lots of inspiring moments and many chances to raise our glasses—le chaim!—while sipping Finger Lakes wine.

Statue commemorating the Famous Five in Calgary. Depicted here, Nellie McClung holds a newspaper reading "Women Are Persons" dated 1929, the year women won senate eligibility. (Photo: Adrian Wyld/CP)

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28 SPRING 2008 HERIZONS After the conference, my partner Heather Guylar (who came along for the trip) and I left Alfred and arrived at the town of Seneca Falls. One of this town’s two claims to fame is that it was the inspiration behind the 1945 film It’s a Wonderful Life. As the story goes, Frank Capra once stopped here for a quick shave, took a walk across the steel truss bridge and imagined a perfect setting for an attempted suicide by a tall, thin man who is rescued by a short, squat angel. The town’s second claim to fame is that it happens to be the birthplace of the North American women’s rights movement. In 1980, Seneca Falls dedicated a significant portion of its space to become Women’s Rights National Historical Park. Rangers met us at the visitor’s centre, led us through the displays and handed us tour schedules to the Elizabeth Cady Stanton house, designated as a national historical landmark and located just a few streets away. Governor General Michaëlle Jean rings a replica of the Buxton Liberty Bell to mark The text of the Declaration of Sentiments that was signed the opening of the Harriet Tubman Institute for Research on the Global Migrations of African Peoples in Toronto in March 2007. (CP PHOTO/Aaron Harris) by delegates to the 1848 first women’s rights convention is engraved on a stone wall and fountain outside the centre and Park, I suggest that these women are unfamiliar to most reproduced, in part, on souvenir trinkets on sale in nearby Canadian women. It’s even possible that the names of shops, along with pink triangles, rainbow flags and American suffragettes or the Grimke Sisters are more likely suffragette cut-out dolls. Although there was something to roll off the tongue. This led me deeper into my research. familiar in the souvenir-kitsch lining Main Street, there was A press release about the Famous Five put out by the at the same time an unfamiliar feminist twist. National Council of Women of Canada notes that little Outside the visitor centre, all that remains of the historic women’s history is taught in schools. The Famous Five, says Wesleyan Chapel—where the convention was held and the Council, were only famous to law students until Maclean’s where Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and others magazine placed the Person’s Case among the 25 events that gathered—is the exterior stone structure and courtyard. On shaped our country in the past century. “Until 1999, the this particular mid-June afternoon, 159 years later, the only bronze plaque in the lobby of the Senate in Ottawa was the people about were a few local boys skateboarding at a fast clip along the gentle slope. After taking a few pictures and only major public recognition of the Famous Five,” the press sipping our coffee, we went inside the visitor’s centre to release stated. In a sense, the name itself is oxymoronic. watch a 10-minute film, Dreams of Equality, which Around day seven of my research, I came across Kathryn dramatizes the birth of the women’s rights movement. There Carter’s name. She is a very-much-alive academic specializing were only two other women in the audience. “Word will in Canadian women’s history, and she speculated as to why spread,” promised Heather. Canadian women heroes remain relatively invisible in our Seneca Falls also houses the National Women’s Hall of culture, especially in comparison to our American sisters. Fame, where portraits of 217 inductees—some still living— “When I think about memorials in Canada,” she said, “I grin down from the walls. Hillary Clinton is up there. So are think of Susanna Moodie’s grave. Although it has received a Amelia Earhart, Ella Fitzgerald, Lucille Ball and Mother certain kind of cult status, it does not have an official Jones. Their faces led me to contemplate how Canadian historical marker.” women are engraved on our landscape. In Canada, we don’t Carter thinks it is possible that Margaret Laurence drew have entire towns honouring women, although we do have people toward knowledge of Moodie’s life simply because she sites, plaques, graves, museums, houses, books and all manner was inspired by the stone angel that marks her grave, and that of artifacts.The next day we drove back to Toronto, and the day Moodie became, in effect, a touchstone for many Canadian after that, with a few taps on my keyboard, I began my research. women writers. Meanwhile, said Carter, the gravesite was In Canada, there is no national park devoted to women or falling apart until Belleville, Ontario, decided, after much to the emergence of feminism. There is the Person’s Case and prodding from outside sources, to restore it. “[But] I don’t two significant markers—one in Calgary and the other on think Belleville understood the significance of it.” Parliament Hill—to the Famous Five: Emily Murphy, Carter often finds that the artifacts she’s looking for—the Henrietta Muir Edwards, Louise McKinney, Irene Parlby ones that tell the stories of a woman’s life—have become lost and Nellie McClung. Other than McClung, who is or have crumbled beyond repair. “One woman lived in memorialized with a bronze bust in Winnipeg’s Assiniboine Alberta and her letters were published in 1928 in the States.

HERIZONS SPRING 2008 29 It was reassuring to learn from Carter that poet and performer Pauline Johnson’s birthplace, Chiefswood, has been restored and opened for public tours by the Six Nations Reserve near Brantford, Ontario, and that, before her death in 1913, Johnson requested she be buried in Vancouver’s Stanley Park. Johnson is the only person who has ever been buried there. A stone cairn marking her gravesite, engraved with Mohawk designs, was erected by a group called the Women’s Canadian Club of B.C. Midway through researching memorials to Canadian women, a book arrived in the mail: Remembering Women Murdered by Men: Memorials across Canada, published by Sumach Press. A few days later, my teenage son picked it up and expressed keen displeasure with the title. In response, I expressed keen displeasure with his displeasure. The book’s The Emily Carr Museum iin Victoria, British Columbia honours the artist. (CP Photo/Don Denton) introduction begins: “Across Canada, the landscape is dotted with memorials to women murdered.” And When I tried to track her down, [her letters] were in the attic yet, it is argued, these monuments are not seen. “City councils of a barn that was falling apart.” She has also gathered tuck them into marginal locations, funding bodies shunt them fragments of stories that were found in the walls of houses to the bottom of their agendas, plaque-writers dedicate them in undergoing renovations. Carter once found a woman’s diaries codes that wedge words between silences,” according to the shoved inside a sugar sack, tucked into the rafters of a book’s editors.* Saskatchewan house. A few days later, I brought the book along to read at my local It took me a while to find substantial information about café. But before I had the chance to open it, a young woman memorials of Canadian women other than Lucy Maude and man at the next table approached me. Their friend’s Montgomery. But a Parks Canada website “Sites, Persons, and mother had been murdered by her husband a few years ago and Events in Women’s History” provides much information, from they wanted to know where they could buy the book. I thought the Acadia Ladies Academy in Wolfville, N.S., to Women’s about these two diverse responses to the title alone and College Hospital in Toronto, with a smattering of convents observed that monuments commemorating the Montreal along the way. Nothing overtly feminist here, although the fact Massacre are an important testament to a community as it that there are such places devoted to women is not insignificant. continues to grapple with violence against women. Included in the list is the birthplace of Emily Carr, in Victoria, As our road trip to the conference came to an end and we and Manitoba’s Walker Theatre, the site of the famous mock crossed back into Canada, we tuned in to CBC on the radio parliament held in 1914 to embarrass Premier Rodmund and heard about a memorial being dedicated in Toronto. A Roblin into supporting female suffrage. series of sculptures down by the waterfront had been dedicated Then, one day, I received a welcome response to my to generations of Ireland’s daughters and sons who landed at inquiries: a nice, tight breakdown of names, sites, plaques, that spot. Included were two sculptures of women: Pregnant and reasons for designation. According to this list, there are Woman and Woman on Ground. Both emphasize the effects of approximately 150 historical markers to the achievements of the Irish Famine, starvation and the desperation 19th-century Canadian women. Listed items include the Montreal Irish women must have felt upon their arrival in Canada. It is dressmakers strike of 1937, noted as a “National Historic a shocking, disturbing historical representation. And when I Event that proved to be a crucial moment in the evolution of saw it, I felt I had arrived home just in time to discover some the working relationships between management and labour of my own history. But must I conclude this essay with a in the clothing industry.” There is a plaque for Marie-Anne landscape dotted with murdered or starving women? Gaboury, Louis Riel’s grandmother in St. Boniface, I cannot pretend it’s always a wonderful life, not when Manitoba. Molly Brant (Tekonwatonti) makes the list as a the truth stares boldly from marble eyes in city parks, Loyalist Six Nations leader, and other women of note include but I do believe that Canadian women—and their black newspaperwoman Mary Ann Shadd, slavery achievements—are a turn of the page towards a more abolitionist Harriet Tubman and Laura Ingersoll Secord. hopeful tomorrow. 

* Remembering Women Murdered by Men was authored by The Cultural Memory Group, which includes Christine Bold, Sly Castaldi, Ric Knowles, Jodie McConnell and Lisa Schinariol.

30 SPRING 2008 HERIZONS body politic BY MARIKO TAMAKI

I Swear, It’s True

The other day, I did a mini social experiment, marking down In these situations, I do a lot of pausing. This practice on a piece of paper every time I used some form of bad makes me appear, I think, either really slow or really language—that is, every time I used the Lord’s name in vain, thoughtful, as I check every word before it leaves the gate of used a sexually derived word (to describe something not my lips to make sure it’s PG (as in PG-13). sexually derived) or any other expletive referring to bodily The other area where I’ve found myself doing a lot of this functions or matter. pausing is in the presence of my new goddaughter, who, while It was a pretty typical day spent at home (12), at the mall clearly not able to recognize the meaning of the words I’m (15), on my cell (23) and on the subway, where I listened and using, is, in my eyes, a tiny human sponge. And I do not want mouthed the words to a little Mos Def (24). By the end of to be responsible for feeding the sponge derivates of the s- the day, I had a whopping 86, adding two more after saw the word. I am well aware that Frances’s moms will kill me if one total and let loose a “Holy ****.” I showed the number to my of the first gurgles out of her lips requires censor stars when wife and she agreed. recorded into her Baby’s First Book (even if that word is “You swear a lot,” she said. intensely appropriate, given it takes up at least a quarter of “S*** ya,” I replied. her daily activities). If I’m honest, I think I swear because I think it sounds cool Inasmuch as I’m aware of the role my language use has on and kind of rebellious—the remnants of a private school people’s impressions of me, there’s a part of me that doesn’t education where smoking and swearing were the main forms want to buy in to the connection between language and of insurgence. What I learned in high school, what still rings character. I’m talking about the social theories floating true today, is that swearing sounds way cooler than not around out there that say that how you talk says a lot about swearing and the language that goes with not swearing: the who you are. As such, guys who talk like girls are gay and “drats,” “daggonits” and other Ned Flanders-isms of restraint. people who use good grammar are smart (or at least smarter Not cool. than those that don’t). The problem is, of course, that these I was reminded of this last Friday when I was on the are stereotypes, and no one likes, or likes to support, a subway and a guy dropped his lunch, letting out a string of stereotype, certainly not me. “gashnabbits” and “darn-it-alls.” A crowd of teenagers at the In the end, I’ve decided that I’m not going to try to stop back rolled their judgmental eyes and snapped their gum. swearing altogether, if only because I’m not sure that, in “Loser,” one of them hissed, as a yogurt cup rolled down the order to be professional, or a good godmother, or a good rubber tarp. Clearly it’s way less dorky to drop your lunch and person, for that matter, I need to become the kind of let out a nice “f***!” or, my personal favourite, “super-f***!” person who doesn’t swear. In the equal interest of not being My current problem is that, more and more, I’m in a slave to an adolescent construction of coolness, I’m trying environments where the goal is not to be cool, but rather, to find some new alternative for some of my old-favourite cool’s older sister: professional. For three years, I’ve been expletives, although I’m told that this often makes me teaching, a domain that pretty much vetoes any possibility of sound like I’m yelling out a random grocery list. I guess swearing, or at least one that vehemently frowns upon the that’s okay. practice of saying “s***” instead of “shoot!” “Ah crabcakes!” 

HERIZONS SPRING 2008 31 Crossing BY LEAH SANDALS Communities UNIQUE ART PROGRAM BRIDGES COMMUNITY DIVIDE

In Women and Girls in the Sex Trade—Trying to Exit, seven women with experience in the sex trade talked about and directed stories of their lives. (Photo: Courtesy Crossing Communities)

32 SPRING 2008 HERIZONS n 1974, Marina Abramovic created one of the most rather than self-expression.” intense performance pieces in contemporary art history. After some unsuccessful attempts at working on art with I The Yugoslavian artist laid out 72 items—including youth behind bars—“I was amazed at how controlling staff knives, razor blades, scissors and a loaded gun—in a Naples were of the kids’ imaginations,” Regier recalls, “and I realized gallery and permitted spectators to use them on her passive, we couldn’t do a show with them without more freedom”— naked body. By the time the six hours of the performance had that art of listening led Regier to a three-year partnership ended, every one of these potentially harmful objects had with the Elizabeth Fry Society of Manitoba, leading an art touched (or, in the case of the gun, been pointed at) Abramovic. project with women in prison. Abramovic’s actions received critical acclaim. In a white- From 1996 to 1999, women in prison and established cube universe of contained canvases and mute sculptures, she local artists created images and mailed them back and forth put her life and body on the line to illustrate intensely human to each other, adding to the works as they travelled. This conditions of female pain, vulnerability and crisis, and to led to the group’s first official exhibition as well as its first force them into stodgy, masculinist art histories. public talk-out, a panel where artists, native elders and But what if Abramovic had put life and body at risk of others discussed issues raised in the artwork with a general knives, razor blades, guns and drugs every day of the week? audience. And performed on streets instead of theatres? Would she still Regier underlines the fact that art created at Crossing fall under the societal labels of artist, icon and role model, or Communities is more than just objects like paintings and rather under those of addict, sicko and whore? Would people films, however impressive. It’s also the discussions, often even see the pain she brings to the surface, let alone respect it? videotaped and screened in their own right, that happen in These are just some of the issues and identities broached conjunction with screenings and exhibitions. every day by a unique art program called Crossing “This is art—not art therapy and not social work,” she Communities. Operating for over 10 years from a small base insists. “And art has an ability to build relations and interact in Winnipeg’s downtown, Crossing Communities provides in community social life. The talk-outs are a big part of that; art workshops, studio space and support to criminalized at- that’s why we treat them like part of the artwork.” risk women and youth. Pat Aylesworth is a former program participant who is now These artists struggle with a range of challenges in their Crossing Communities’ video intern and a fine arts student. everyday lives, from the discrimination that comes with She speaks from experience when she notes that this kind of being Aboriginal or transgendered to the physical dangers of exchange is rare in other institutional contexts. Aylesworth sex work, drug addiction and cutting. At the same time, recently taught a youth centre poster workshop that was Crossing Communities artists produce powerful first-person discussed with centre staff afterwards. videos shown in film festivals and museums and they “There’s been art workshops there before,” Aylesworth participate in panels that educate everyone from prison explains, “but no dialogue between the kids and the guards. guards to park workers. And that’s really important.” Though the program has grown to touch many lives, it Similarly, relationships and dialogue within the Crossing started small with artistic director Edith Regier’s desire to Communities program are also highly valued. “We develop redefine her own art practice. long-term relationships with the women,” Aylesworth explains. “I was interested in how you could document somebody, “Usually, people have a lot going on and want to talk, so we but also give them the opportunity to speak for themselves. listen. We have a Christmas dinner, snacks and bus tickets, Usually, it’s just the documenter speaking,” recalls Regier. “I computers for people to do school projects. There are couches was living in Texas at the time and had a lot of friends from to sit on and chat. So we develop connections of support.” Latin America. I took photos of them, but asked them do an The support takes many forms. “We have quite a range of audio component where they could articulate their own people,” she says. “Some people are doing very well, going to thoughts and feelings. I started looking at art as listening, school, not doing drugs, and others are on the streets and are

HERIZONS SPRING 2008 33 34 SPRING 2008 HERIZONS In I Am Here/Here I Am, youth from the Manitoba Youth Centre and Ndinawe Youth Resource Centre created digital collages about their life goals and roles. (Photo: Courtesy Crossing Communities) addicts. Sometimes you’re worried about temptations for Pictures of Self-Harm, a groundbreaking first-person people who are trying to quit; but, by and large, they’re just exploration of, as Regier puts it, “art as language and self-harm like me and you and everybody else. They just have issues as language, with self-harm being the whole range from that are hard, and especially hard because there are cutting, to being in the sex trade, to drugs, to abusive restrictions to getting help. Someone with mental illness and relationships.” addiction might be told she can’t enter rehab until her mental The organization had the good fortune to work with an illness is dealt with. So we try to be available.” impressive list of professional artists, including Susan Chafe, One of the next steps for Crossing Communities, Regier Sarah Crawley, Shawna Dempsey, Aganetha Dyck, Rosalie explains, is to emphasize to the public that participants aren’t Favell, Lita Fontaine, Debby Keeper, Grace Nickel, Shelley merely worth accepting, but have valuable knowledge to share. Niro, Jessica MacCormack, Erika MacPherson, Lorri “People who are addicts and self-harmers, but who are not Millan, Dominique Rey, Reva Stone and Diana in marginalized positions, can guard themselves,” she Thorneycroft. says.“Whereas people whose lives are out on the street all the Crossing Communities currently provides weekly art time have to be more open about their problems. The people programs at the Winnipeg Remand Centre and the who come to these projects have a real gift to offer in opening Manitoba Youth Centre. Plans include a website, Looking up a space where people feel okay to talk about things like In, Speaking Out, which will screen videos from the self- addiction, teen suicide and abuse.” harm project as well as offer extended discussions on message Those conversations and connections are now set to grow boards. It will also be continuing its Gross National regionally, nationally and internationally, as the organization’s Happiness Campaign that frames participants as delegates resources grow, too. Last April, Regier was awarded one of six from the margins with valuable information to share on national awards of excellence from the Kaiser Foundation for increasing general social well-being. assisting people dealing with substance abuse. The result was Wherever Crossing Communities goes next, its goals are $10,000 for the program and the organization received a the same: to reverse the conditions of representation affecting funding boost from Status of Women Canada. marginalized women, to transform participants from In January 2008, the Winnipeg Art Gallery launched the documented to documenter, and from powerless to powerful. results of Crossing Communities’ five-year video project Whether the art critics notice or not. 

HERIZONS SPRING 2008 35

Gulp Fiction Young Adult fiction for girls has come a long way since the days when its authors were wise adults who hoped that their earnest messages would be gobbled up, sponge-like, by impressionable teens. Or has it?

BY TARA-MICHELLE ZINIUK

hings were different when I became a teenager in the of such provocative releases as Weather Fairies #2: Abigail the days of 90210 and “Kurt Cobain Lives” graffiti. There Breeze Fairy and My Secret Unicorn:The Magic Spell—started its T were no events too exclusive for me to be invited to on own edgy imprint, PUSH, to adhere to the needs of teens who Facebook. There was no Facebook. And there were definitely weren’t buying their usual pastel offerings. no book covers in the Young Adult (YA) section of my local PUSH’s reprint of Patricia McCormick’s Cut, which deals library that displayed girls drawn in combat boots or in wigs at with self-harm, sold over 60,000 copies after being on the the side of the highway. But now, there are. shelves for less than six months. I hope presses are realizing I’m not going to write an “I wish these books were around that unpopular kids need books, too, and that they are even when I was a kid” sermon, first because, into my 20s, I still more likely to be reading than the mall-cliqued trend- consider myself a kid and second because when I was younger followers. But I can’t help but wonder whether the I didn’t have to compete for outsider status. Sure, it was cooler popularization of outsider culture has simply created an to be punk than goth in Grade 9—there was a food-chain audience large enough to make it worthwhile for publishers hierarchy of social status dependent on proximity to the black- to decide they are worth taking on. I mean, clearly, Blink 182 clad Corner of Coolness in the caf—but this is all relative. If albums and AC/DC iron-ons are selling. outsider YA fiction had been around 10 years ago, I like to And yet, even in an era of Gap-punk and commodified think it would have been unpopular; not because the books alt-porn, there must still be outsiders on the, well, aren’t good, but because being an outsider was a different thing outside—wallflowers without successful bands who are then—not something to be flaunted, like it is now. Toronto’s stuck in suburbs and small towns or sheltered within urban Queen Street is a mecca of studded belts, and I don’t know social traffic. how it happened. There are even easy-listening versions of Conflicted, I asked bad girl book vixen Kristyn Dunnion, punk bands playing to the needs of wannabe outcasts. whose gender-bent, tough chick novels Mosh Pit and Big Big Now that subculture is hip in couture and music, it’s perhaps Sky (Red Deer Press) are nothing if not other. not surprising that YA fiction is taking on its aesthetic. Canada’s “What’s today’s real outsider wearing?” Dunnion mused.

Illustration: Fly big-time book publisher for little people, Scholastic—publisher “Probably not a mini-kilt and fancy boots. Probably some

HERIZONS SPRING 2008 37 kind of uniform. Maybe a burqa.” parties to go to in her particular American shit-town. Angie Michelle Embree’s Manstealing for Fat Girls (Soft Skull), and her friend have got subculture and social torment (as in, Michelle Tea’s Rose of No Man’s Land (McAdam/Cage) and being tormented) down. Angie is an outcast fat girl, and Amy Bryant’s Polly (Harper Perennial) are three more examples amazing fat girls are most certainly underrepresented in of revolutionary teen girl fiction. And it’s not the first time the literature. But pull the self-esteem and throw in an eating teen angst so present in punk, rock and metal has met its disorder and you’ve got a pretty mainstream representation of literary counterpart. Canadian authors Dunnion and Mary- girl fat. I’m not after preaching, but some discussion around Lou Zeitoun have both published work in this emerging genre. the body issues and eating-disorder themes that came up The difference between the good and the not-so-good YA throughout (though we are graced with a Revenge of the fiction comes down to authenticity. “I happen to be interested Nerds-esque freaks-bite-back climax toward the end) would in writing characters who inhabit the same social scenes that I have been nice. do,” Dunnion says. “That other prom book, that other story Angie’s best friend is an out lesbian, and her second-best with the cheerleaders, it’s already been written.” friend has a single huge boob. Critically acclaimed as “an It’s not entirely mysterious how the music came first, as uncensored YA novel,” Manstealing for Fat Girls is loaded with screaming youth bands can emerge from basements just realistic talk of sex and sexuality, drugs and rule-breaking. In about anywhere. However, until Zoe Trope’s Please Don’t Kill fact, it saddens me to think of this book not making it to cast- the Freshman was released in 2003, it was pretty much off teens via schools or libraries, especially those outside of big unheard of to have books written by and for youth. (Trope, cities. However, its explicitness makes me think that this was to for those who missed it, was 15 when she published this be expected. A book for those who escaped? I think the 20- memoir). Most adult authors weren’t adequately representing somethings who got out alive and “know how it goes” will love youth subculture. Embree’s offering. Now, however, authors like And then there is Bryant’s Dunnion, Bryant, Embree and Polly, a suburban American Tea use real-life subcultual Toronto’s Queen Street is a teenager in the ’80s. Polly references. Whether those begins in junior high and is references include The Rolling mecca of studded belts, and I told in eight chapters named Stones, Minor Threat or don’t know how it happened. after eight boys in Polly’s life. Portishead, petty theft or It’s a good concept. There is a couches dragged into forests lot of band name-dropping for pot smoking and school-skipping, there’s a sense that and ’80s signifiers thrown in (feathered bangs, ripped these authors have been there. fishnets), but there’s no lingo to embarrass or to make you Tea’s newest novel is comparable to her 2002 memoir, The feel as though you are there. Nonetheless, Polly is compelling. Chelsea Whistle (Seal). Smart, analytical, true-to-life—I was It’s been said that for a writer to prove a character to be eager for and devoured it. And it’s not hard to imagine that, unlike the others it is necessary to depict the contrasting given the readership Tea earned with Valencia in 2000, characters in the story well. In the cases of Bryant, Tea and tattooed dykes and girls with glasses spanning generations Embree, the authors do a fine job juxtaposing their characters and geography might be inclined to pick up her new title as against their families and immediate surroundings, whether well. Rose of No Man’s Land is the story of Trisha Driscoll— that’s a hardcore show or a highway of neon strip malls. a girl who can wittily psychoanalyze her entire family and Interestingly, all three novels feature secondary characters most others she encounters, but is lacking in her own self- who are more easily characterized as freaks than the awareness—and comes with a you-know-how-it-is-for- protagonists—that is, they are often louder and more visible. girls-like-us nonchalance. My concern is that if the reader Rose, the title character of Tea’s book, is a pathological liar, were in fact 14 and this un-evolved, chances are she wouldn’t thief and adventurer. Embree’s Inez is a drug dealer and “know how it is.” sociopath who yells absurdities into payphones to elicit Tea’s character (not the art-smart reluctant sex kitten/angry reactions from passersby. And almost anyone Polly girl hero that usually features in her work) may be the least encounters, aside from her family and the enemy, Normals, is assimilated of the bunch I’ve recently read. I hate to point to more intriguing than she is. fashion as indicative of social ability, but Trisha wears sweats. Perhaps these are the true outcasts, the ones without alt- Trisha is the least socially mocked, but also the least socially porn personas or Internet fan bases expected to pre-purchase adjusted. She doesn’t dread the school halls or phone’s ring, but books. Perhaps the Roses and Inezes of the world are still because no one’s noticed her enough even to point and laugh. waiting for their mass market to come. In Manstealing for Fat Girls, Embree ups the leading age to Or hoping it doesn’t.  17, using an underdeveloped but more competent model of This article was adapted from an article published in Tea’s protagonist, one with at least a few friends, interests and Broken Pencil. 38 SPRING 2008 HERIZONS arts literature

Sales Record VANCOUVER SINGER-SONGWRITER VOCAL ON WORLD CHANGE

BY CINDY FILIPENKO

ayley Sales has been sharing her passion since she was a kid. At the age of eight, she interviewed the H Dalai Lama for her school paper. Five years later, she was one of 40,000 protestors in in 1999 saying no to a view of the world encapsulated by a meeting of the World Trade Organization (WTO). “Politics have always been something important to me. Lots of things are going on in the States that I don’t agree with.They were starting to happen when I was living there, that’s why I ended up protesting the WTO in Seattle,” she explains. What she fails to mention is that her travelling companion was former Nirvana bassist Krist Novoselic, a family friend. The daughter of “wonderfully radical hippies,” Sales developed a rebellious spirit and a social conscience at an early age. “I learned to forge my mom’s signature when I was about nine,” she recalls. “I wrote a cheque to the Heifer Project. It equips people in the Third World with livestock so they can be sustainable.” Her mother was surprised to learn later that she had purchased $100 worth of chickens for a family in India. In fact, the Vancouver Island-based Sales pretty much had Haley Sales: Forgery for a good cause.

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I was 12. I lied.” Born in Washington, D.C., but raised on the West Coast, Sales left Portland for Los Angeles shortly after graduating from high school. While an acting career didn’t pan out, the experience had a major impact on Sales. After three months, she lost her voice, considerable body weight and her belief in a career in acting. She returned to the new family home, an organic blueberry farm on Vancouver Island, to recover from her bout of anorexia. Five month later, her voice returned. Today, she looks at the experience as a learning experience. “I want to shake society out of this concept of beauty. It’s really important for girls to feel that they’re beautiful they way that they are.” Her months in L.A. left Sales feeling anything but beautiful. “I’d go to agencies and they’d tell me that I needed to lose 10 pounds. I’m not a big person to begin with, but I felt I wasn’t thin enough,” says Sales, who casts a willowy figure at five-foot-seven inches tall and 120 pounds. The return home to her family became both physically and creatively invigorating. She attributes much of the latter to her father, a musician/producer and the founder of Glass Wing Studios, a company that has always occupied space in the family’s home. “When I moved to Vancouver Island, I was pretty much alone on a farm in the middle of an island. I dove into the studio determined to master it … which, of course, I haven’t yet.” She may not have mastered the studio, but she learned Sales wants to shake society’s concept of beauty. enough to produce and co-mix, record and engineer Sunseed. “I’d get up, have some blueberries and yogurt for breakfast, her bags packed for India when the call from Universal came and then walk 10 feet into the studio. I’ve been very blessed in 2006. The 20-year-old was preparing to volunteer at an to be able to work the way I do. I have a label that hasn’t tried orphanage when the music label came courting. The resulting to mould or create me.” album, Sunseed, is a sophisticated debut that has elicited Having a parent who knows the industry has also shaped favourable comparisons to Norah Jones. When I heard the Sales’ ability to cope with the day-to-day grind. Her father, CDs first single, “What You Want,” I thought she sounded Richard Sales, is not only a de facto career counsellor, but plays like a female Jack Johnson. guitar on the album. “He has wisdom,” she says of the man she “I’m fine with it,” says Sales of the comparison. “He’s a describes as a cross between Jerry Garcia and Santa Claus. wonderful musician, he’s developed his own niche and he’s “The business side of music can be very draining,” Sales making great songs that actually mean something.” adds. “You have to be able to ground yourself—to be fully Like Jones, Sales writes ear-pleasing melodies; like Jackson, present for when you need to create.” her lyrics are often just surprising enough. And there are places As she traverses the peaks and valleys of what is one of the where vocally she is on a par with Jones. most volatile creative industries, she keeps her feet firmly Despite early evidence of singer-songwriter talent, planted on the ground—preferably organic ground. To however, Sales seriously considered an acting career. She balance music and touring, she has taken courses in attended a fine arts-focused school and has performed in environmental studies, further exploring the links between more than 80 plays. environmental devastation and globalization. “My favourite? I was an underaged Juliet in a university “If one day I’m ridiculously rich,” she dreams, “I want to production of Romeo and Juliet. I said I was two years older— start buying up land in Canada to preserve the forests.” 

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SHINE unmistakable pipes. The funk equivalent of that I am fine, I know that I am love.” JONI MITCHELL Gladys Knight, Khan has been an underrated Considering the wrenching pain of her self- Hearmusic vocalist for most of her career. Sure, she has titled first album, a lyric like this shows a eight Grammy awards, but what good are tiny miraculous evolution. REVIEW BY CINDY FILIPENKO golden gramophones when your music isn’t Another interesting aspect of The Joni Mitchell is one of those artists who can getting out to the masses? Awakening is the sense of humour that’s inspire and frustrate in equal measure. Part How good is she? Well, she’s probably the apparent on some of the songs, most notably of the problem is that around 1975, with the only woman capable of taking a Prince song “Threesome,” a raunchy country rocker that release of Court and Spark, she started and making it her own. She proved this with has Etheridge crooning: “I don’t want to have seeing herself as a jazz player, not a pop the 1989 single “I Feel for You.” She proves a threesome … ever again.” This, of course, is songwriter. And as a serious jazz player, she her jaw-dropping interpretation was no fluke followed by a vaguely maniacal laugh. was going to do what she wanted, critics on her new CD, Funk This, where she takes on While some may find the diversity of styles and audience be damned. The Purple One’s “Sign O’ The Times.” here jarring, at a hefty 16 tracks The As the first collection of new songs since Coming in at just over an hour, Funk This is a Awakening can easily be broken down to a 1998’s Taming the Tiger, Shine is an uneven solid collection of R&B ballads and sexy dance custom playlist featuring the Etheridge you comeback for Mitchell. Opening with the tunes. You’d have to be dead not to want to get like best. instrumental “One Week Last Summer” and up and dance to this 13-song collection. closing with a musical take on Kipling’s “If,” Shine is hardly a hitfest—in fact, at times it Featuring guest performances by Mary J. MEGAN MCCAULEY verges on the inaccessible. And then there are Blige, Tony Maiden and Michael McDonald BETTER THAN BLOOD songs like the brooding “If I Had a Heart,” (who performs a duet with Khan on a Wind-Up surprisingly soulful remake of Carly Simon’s “Bad Dreams” and the Latin-themed “Night of REVIEW BY ANNA LAZOWSKI the Iguana”—all inventively original songs “You Belong to Me”), Funk This shows that Khan can still tear it up! One look at Better Than Blood’s album cover that find the 64-year-old Mitchell in fine voice, and you’re likely to think Megan McCauley is as does the remake of her 1970 iconic hit “Big MELISSA ETHERIDGE just another cookie-cutter punked-up teenager Yellow Taxi.” making an angry record. Emerging partially as a result of Mitchell THE AWAKENING You’d be partly right, but her debut album being convinced to take on a project that Island also showcases a strong voice reminiscent of would see her artwork and music interpreted REVIEW BY CINDY FILIPENKO Pink and Amy Lee of Evanescence. Pierced by the Alberta Ballet, Shine gets better with After surviving breast cancer, Melissa navel and pink hair aside, songs like “Wrong every listening. Forget the girl who wrote Etheridge has come back with her most Way Out” illustrate McCauley’s vocal range, “Both Sides Now.” Let your “little light shine” upbeat album ever, The Awakening. With its incorporating her bluesy side into the mix. And and celebrate the woman who fears what kind mix of pop songs, rockers and protest songs, “Reverie” pairs her vocals with a piano to of world her grandchildren, to whom she it’s also a fearless album, a point Etheridge offer a glimpse into her softer side. dedicates the album, will inherit. confirms in the liner notes. Of her 10-week But songs like “Migraine” and “Tap That” course of chemotherapy, she wrote: “I no are likely the ones that will be pushed to pop FUNK THIS longer fear death, nor so many of the aspects I radio. There’s some over-the-top production CHAKA KHAN used to fear about life.” on “Tap That” that’s reminiscent of ’80s-era Burgundy Records The album’s first single, “Message to Salt-n-Peppa. REVIEW BY CINDY FILIPENKO Myself,” is about the power of positive And yet, while it could be said that there is Ever since her early days fronting the band thinking and is set to an infectious Beatles- not a lot here to distinguish McCauley from Rufus, when she implored us to “Tell Me eque melody. “I’m sending out a message to other aspiring female rockers, McCauley has Something Good,” Chaka Khan has had myself, So when I hear it on the radio, I know potential to outshine a lot of them. She can

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write, she can sing. And after a little more record is sparse, allowing Harvey’s new positive and negative aspects of love. experimentation, she should be able to find the experimentations to take centre stage. Mellow music for intimate evenings. voice that will set her apart. There’s an interesting duality to PJ Harvey’s Fortunately, McCauley is not afraid to speak music, because while it sounds beautiful on ROMANIAN FANTASY her mind, use her sexuality or let her opinions the surface, the closer you listen the more you MARILYN LERNER be known. hear raw loneliness and isolation bleeding The artist has been attracting interest from through every track. Independent Hollywood, as a couple of her songs have There’s a very good chance that the more REVIEW BY CINDY FILIPENKO made their way onto film soundtracks to you listen to White Chalk the less likely you’ll The fact that renowned Canadian musician movies like Fantastic Four and Elektra. be able to get its haunting sound out of your Marilyn Lerner recorded her most recent CD So if you’re in the market for music to head. And if that description doesn’t scare you at CBC’s Glenn Gould studio seems fitting. This accompany a superhero-style comic book off, you should add this record to your Winnipeg-bred, Toronto-based musician is the experience, Megan McCauley may be your collection immediately. most likely heir to the mantel occupied by the Superwoman. famous scarf-wearing eccentric who brought THE ART OF LOVE & WAR Bach to modern audiences via the splendid Goldberg Variations. PJ HARVEY ANGIE STONE An undisputedly gifted composer, Lerner has WHITE CHALK Stax also earned a reputation as a fine improviser, Universal REVIEW BY CINDY FILIPENKO winning accolades from both critics and her REVIEW BY ANNA LAZOWSKI Unless you have been lucky enough to tune in peers in jazz circles. PJ Harvey is one of those artists who seems East Coast R&B radio stations, chances are Romanian Fantasy, while relying heavily on refreshingly unaffected by what’s going on in you have missed out on Angie Stone. A fixture her skills as an improvisational player and the music world around her. Conscious that she on the R&B and soul scenes since the early arranger, showcases Lerner’s deft touch with was comfortable writing on guitar, she set it ’80s, Stone has scored two No. 1 R&B singles, the ivories. Her playing has never sounded so against the wall when it came time to pen songs but has never managed to crack the North assured as it does in this collection of for White Chalk and learned to play the piano. American Top 40. contemporary takes on traditional Eastern Composing on a new instrument has changed It will come as a surprise to many that The European and Jewish melodies. her sound, but not the dark, beautiful songs Art of Love & War is the fifth solo CD for The raw emotion that permeates we’ve come to expect from Polly Jean Harvey. Lenny Kravitz’s former backup singer. That Romanian Fantasy transcends Lerner’s It’s rare to see a PJ Harvey video or hear a said, a couple of listens will probably send previous CD, Birds are Leaving, which was song on the radio, yet she’s one of a handful of many in search of her previous discs. Stone brimming with life. It could be that the source artists who doesn’t need that kind of comes across as a real music lovers’ Sade. materials offer a more diverse emotional commercial success to sustain her career. Unlike the Smooth Operator, Stone has a landscape, since the plight of the music’s Instead, Harvey seems to be propelled by vocal sincerity and soul authenticity. In short, original composers is one historically marked critical acclaim and nods from other she is the real thing. with struggle and resistance. musicians. In 2001, she became the first On songs like the a cappella “Go Back to Lerner’s classical treatments of Romanian female artist to receive Britain’s prestigious Your Life,” Stone’s training in the African- Fantasy ’s 11-song cycle offer undeniable Mercury Music Prize for the album, Stories American gospel tradition shines. Here, as on proof that Eastern European and Jewish From the City, Stories From the Sea. the majority of the tracks on The Art of Love & tunes do not necessarily mean klezmer. Nary On White Chalk, the use of the piano has War, she shows a keen understanding of the an accordion riff is to be found on these forced her vocal range up a few notches, as is power of her voice, applying restraint when stirring arrangements. illustrated on tracks like “Grow Grow Grow” necessary. Annoying vocal diva theatrics are Romanian Fantasy is available online at and “White Chalk.” The production on this entirely absent on this exploration of the CDBaby.com. 

42 SPRING 2008 HERIZONS arts culture SPRING READING

THE WRITING CIRCLE ROZENA MAART TSAR Publications REVIEW BY IRENE D’SOUZA Rozena Maart’s newest novel opens with a rape that occurs in front of a home in Cape Town, one where five women gather every Friday night in the safety of a gated neighbourhood to discuss writing. As in her previous novel, Rosa’s District 6, Maart perfectly evokes the daily lives of South Africans. However, this time her novel centers on the horrendous and at times banal violence that besieges Cape Town women. The scene takes place in a car outfitted with myriad electronic gadgets that could ostensibly protect its occupants. The car also appetite or connection. whereabouts of a device called the contains a copy of the daily newspaper Tales of psychiatric wards, body fluids, pills, Timekeeper. And, as we learn from one of the featuring a story of the South African deputy abuse, lovers, grocery store aisles and the villains, “Whoever controls the Timekeeper, president’s rape charges. These details Internet are tempered by Ziniuk’s unflinching controls Time.” The task falls to Silver and her contextualize the violence faced by many voice that, at times, makes the terrifying friend, Gabriel, to prevent the Timekeeper from South African girls and women, regardless of commonplace. (“I always get stomach-aches falling into the wrong hands. their class, race or social position. when I’m trying to die.”) In Tanglewreck, time is as valuable a The five characters in the book are all Part intimate journal, part passionate resource as clean air and water: “It is professionals. The writing circle provides a manifesto, part late-night rap session, these strange, but the machine age and the cathartic outlet for the sorrows they poems speak to all those who find strength in computer age both promised to give mere experience living in modern-day South Africa, facing their weaknesses and who seek mortals more time in their lives, but less time where the promises of a post-apartheid world connection through sharing survival stories. is what it seems we have. We are using up have yet to be realized. (“Behind bedroom doors everywhere/ girls like Time too fast, just as we are using up all the Maart convincingly inhabits her disparate us are writing open letters to our fathers/ other resources of the Earth.” female protagonists. Through their narratives, stamping our goodbyes.”) Can time be controlled? Can time be sold? we follow their views of one another as they Ziniuk’s unapologetic truths (“I realize the Abel Darkwater of the Tempus Fugit society and describe their individual life stories. In the urge I have to fuck girls is sometimes actually Regalia Mason of the Quanta organization aftermath of this event, the women unite to the urge to push them down.”) inspire cackles believe it can, and they vie for this power. protect their friend. However, the aftermath and awe from those who dare not pull their Tanglewreck is a 400-page adventure through triggers the unravelling of each woman’s fragile most garish thoughts from their secret gallows. time and space. There is much to stimulate veneer. Each is aware of the casual chaos and To read Ziniuk’s words is to hold her curious young minds. Winterson muses on the violence that lurks everywhere, but it is in the murmured heart in your hand and think it your ideas of time travel and teleportation, black telling of their own tragedies and secrets that own, as they both pulse in unison, “Here are holes and wormholes and, in one humorous Maart’s sad outrage is keenly observed. our stories screamed into/ the receiver/ out of instance, Schrödinger’s Cat. Winterson has also The women’s plight is conveyed with car windows/ to anyone who will hear us.” created an endearing heroine in Silver River. For moving immediacy, and the precise account of all her resourcefulness and resolve, there is a being female in a misogynist world sparks This review was first published in the May wistfulness about Silver that is touching. outrage. In an ideal world, this form of 2007 issue of This magazine. In a 2006 Times (U.K.) article, Winterson storytelling could mobilize political forces to spoke about how Tanglewreck was inspired take a moral and courageous stand against TANGLEWRECK by her goddaughters, Eleanor and Cara. When the insidious violence that besieges women JEANETTE WINTERSON asked for her opinion of the resulting novel, throughout the world. Bloomsbury 10-year-old Eleanor replied, “I read the first In the meantime, Maart challenges our REVIEW BY SYLVIA SANTIAGO chapter of one of Jeanette’s adult books; she deepest preconceptions about everything South African—and manages to convey a Well-known British author Jeanette Winterson has just gone so much further with this one.” remarkable resilience. (Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, Sexing the High praise, indeed! Cherry, and Written on the Body) has written Tanglewreck is recommended for children her first novel for children. And it’s about time. ages nine to 11. EMERGENCY CONTACT Literally. Modern-day London is beset by Time TARA-MICHELLE ZINIUK Tornadoes. The past intrudes upon the RECONCILABLE DIFFERENCES: McGilligan Books present, and people, animals and objects are MARRIAGE END. FAMILIES DON’T REVIEW BY KAREN DARRICADES thrown into the future. Time speeds up, slows Emergency Contact, a collection of 50 poems down or, in the case of Time Traps, comes to a CATE COCHRAN by writer, performer and activist Tara-Michelle complete stop. At the centre of these Second Story Press Ziniuk, uses sharp humour, radical honestly mysterious disturbances is Silver River, an 11- REVIEW BY KRIS ROTHSTEIN and an anxious heart to reveal an unrelenting year-old orphan who is believed to know the When Cate Cochran’s marriage ended, she

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44 SPRING 2008 HERIZONS arts culture SPRING READING

this abound in the book. It’s as if she believes she is a lone crusader achieving feats nobody else has ever thought of. The truly outrageous part of this family’s diary is that when they really want something they bribe a family member to get it for them, despite its Chinese origin. Bongiorni’s husband, who she calls “the weakest link,” is the true hero of the book. He chooses to support his wife’s challenge, with hilarious consequences; he ends up wearing two different flip-flops to the beach. In another chapter, he wears a little girl’s sunglasses. His stance is valiant because he doesn’t choose to avoid Chinese products, he finds creative ways to do without any product replacement at all. Like a favourite blog that you check daily to see what’s going on, this book satiates the fly- on-the-wall curiosity many of us have about and her husband knew they wanted what was partners. Reconcilable Differences proves that what others do behind closed doors. I had a best both for them and for their kids. They many kinds of relationship are possible and hard time with the topic of this book because were good co-parents and wondered if there offers valuable encouragement to any family it’s about shopping as a hobby. Yet, I couldn’t was something better than shared custody that might otherwise have been afraid to put it down. It’s well-written, well-researched, and a routine of passing the kids back and imagine something different. often deadpan funny and, of course, you want forth, however amicably. Even though their to know if they get to their finish line. friends and family thought they were crazy, A YEAR WITHOUT MADE IN CHINA Susana Molinolo is a Toronto writer. they decided to buy a new house together SARA BONGIORNI WILEY with separate apartments for each adult and a John Wiley & Sons shared space for the kids. A GREAT RESTLESSNESS: THE LIFE At first glance, Reconcilable Differences is REVIEW BY SUSANA MOLINOLO AND POLITICS OF DORISE NIELSEN Poor China. Lucky Sara Bongiorni. Her book, A just another book about parenting after FAITH JOHNSON Year Without Made in China, chronicles her divorce, but it is soon apparent that this is an University of Manitoba Press inspiring book about families who buck family’s attempt to forgo Chinese goods for a conventional wisdom and structure their post- year. This highly entertaining, reality TV-ish REVIEW BY RUTH LATTA divorce lives in unusual ways. The 10 former journal is a blatant reminder that we in the West Dorise Nielsen, member of parliament from 1940 couples in the book have managed to live out are so damned privileged. Instead of doing to 1944, underwent several sea changes during their more inclusive and nurturing without, permanently, many can chose to do the course of her life. These transformations are philosophies. without for a while, knowing that eventually we presented in Faith Johnston’s well-written In the most remarkable story, parents can have whatever it is we want. biography, A Great Restlessness: The Life and Megan and Mike continue to live and co- In her introduction, Bongiorni explains that Politics of Dorise Nielsen. parent together, even after Megan meets and her family’s boycott was to “see for ourselves Growing up in London, England during the eventually marries Mike’s brother. In the what it would take in will and ingenuity to live First World War affected Nielsen deeply. As a opening chapter, Kathleen and Phil’s without the world’s fastest growing economy.” young teacher, she came to northern relationship dissolves and they choose to The problem with her experiment is that it’s Saskatchewan, unprepared for the climate and operate two households on the same street not fuelled by passion for lost American jobs, pioneer conditions. Raising three children on an where all family members are welcome. or nasty reports of human rights abuses, or isolated wheat farm during the Great The new situations created some obstacles, even by a stance against consumerism; it’s Depression politicized her. She ran in the North but each were up to the challenges. The merely for the challenge of eliminating China Battleford riding for the United Progressives (a stories underline how tolerant most children from the contents of her shopping bags. coalition of Co-operative Commonwealth are of non-traditional arrangements, usually On average, Chinese factory workers earn $4 Federation supporters, social crediters and unaware that their home lives are considered US per day, if they’re lucky. Here, on the other communists). Campaigning in her winter boots, unusual until outsiders offer opinions. They side of the globe, $4 is nothing. Many spend because her shoes had worn out, she won, just also illustrate how personal decisions are double that on a coffee every single day of the as the bank foreclosed on the family farm. linked to questions of politics and culture, and work week. Bongiorni’s family quest to avoid Later, as a single parent in Ottawa, how they are instrumental to the creation of a buying made, assembled, produced in China Nielsen faced ongoing child-care problems. more just and compassionate society. takes them to a different level of shopping In a Parliament focused on financing World Most of these tales are refreshingly where they spend $68 on a pair of children’s War II, she called for family allowance different from each other in the details, but at shoes, noting that $68 is about what a family in cheques to be issued in the mother’s name the core they are quite similar—the couples Afghanistan brings home in a month. and a national daycare program. Attractive, divide their houses or find a way to create In “Red Tide,” a chapter about creating a confident and a curiosity as the only woman linked but separate spaces in order to bring homemade mousetrap, Bongiorni writes: in the House of Commons, Nielsen was in their children up together while still leaving “Nobody we know has ever attempted what I demand as a public speaker. room for emotional development and new achieve in this trap.” Inflated statements like Then she came out as a communist and lost

HERIZONS SPRING 2008 45 arts culture SPRING READING the 1944 election. She was relegated to low- justice and equality into practice. In doing thought-provoking book about a courageous level employment within the Labour so, she made sacrifices, and Johnson woman hitherto neglected by our historians. Progressive (Communist) Party by male includes details of Neilsen’s children’s leaders, who dismissed her as a mere prairie problems, both growing up and as adults. If WAR BRIDES populist. In 1957, she and her partner moved to Nielsen had been a man, however, her MELYNDA JARRATT Mao’s China, where she taught English and struggles as a working single parent would Tempus Publishing lived until her death in 1980 at the age of 78. be likely to stir sympathy, not criticism. Nielsen spent her life seeking Despite the author’s reservations about REVIEW BY ALLISON BREWER opportunities to put her principles of social Nielsen as a parent, she has written a During the Second World War, half a million

Book of the Month the link between particular occupations and cancer, proof that science by definition can certain cancers was recognized by the never deliver. medical profession; and by the 1930s, Again and again, Davis documents this tobacco, radiation, benzene, hormones and process, with industry after industry, product other products were known to cause cancer. after product—a ghastly rogues’ gallery of Research establishing such causes was deceit and death. For decades, cancer- actively suppressed after World War II, when causing industries have waged wholesale U.S. industry adapted wartime production to campaigns to promote doubt about any domestic markets. At that point, the rapid research implicating their products—a growth of radio, television and movies tactic familiar today in PR on global expanded the reach of advertising to new, warming, evolution and other issues unprecedented realms, placing an entire affecting economic growth. Even more nation in thrall to snake oil salesmen. insidiously, both industry and the medical Here’s how it worked, and continues to profession shamelessly created a perpetual work today: profit machine fiendishly disguised as a A product or process (for example, benign war on cancer. Companies that make tobacco or X-rays) is released on the market carcinogenic products also manufacture with little or no testing of its safety. cancer treatments that themselves cause The product is then promoted relentlessly more cancers. until the entire population believes they can’t “We are spending more money than ever THE SECRET HISTORY OF THE do without it (for example, DDT, aspartame, to find and treat cancer—some $100 billion cellphones). in direct treatment costs in one year,” Davis WAR ON CANCER Eventually, its effects become apparent and says. “But when it comes to ferreting out the DEVRA DAVIS studies suggest that it causes cancer or birth root causes of the disease, we have limped Basic Books defects; but by this time the profits are too along ineffectively. Why? Could the fact that REVIEW BY CAROL VAN STRUM huge and the public too addicted to accept many of the leading figures in the war on Some books make you proud to be human. reality. Not only is the industry that makes the cancer profited both from producing cancer- This is not one of them. Nor is it a book to read product threatened by any hint of harm, but so causing chemicals and from producing anti- all at once, especially not at bedtime, lest too are all the media and the public relations cancer drugs have anything to do with the suicide begin to appear downright comforting. and advertising industries that promote it. fact that both the incidence of cancer and its One by one, with surgical precision, Devra The next thing you know, a vast, powerful treatment options keep steadily increasing? Davis dissects and shreds every illusion ever corporate campaign arises to discredit, “Those of us who indict past failures cherished about the altruism of medicine or suppress, cover up and belittle the evidence have a duty to develop new solutions,” the integrity of science. of harm and prevent any government Davis concludes, offering tentative ideas With that caveat, The Secret History of regulation of the product. This is easy for for a truth and reconciliation commission the War on Cancer is a brilliant, long- corporations to do, particularly when they (funded by excess-profit fees on industries overdue exposé of one of the longest- control funding of the scientific institutions that profit from cancer-causing behaviour), running confidence tricks in history. The 40- doing the research. Talk about sick jokes. medical surveillance programs for year-old war on cancer is as much a scam The gullible, easily controlled public goes potentially exposed people and far better as the current war on terrorism, and just as right on buying, buying, buying—willing to recognition in the courts of the limits of profitable. And the trouble with profitable believe the lies about something they’re science. Hopefully, Secret History will wars is that those who profit from them have convinced is essential. inspire many more solutions and the guts to a strong vested interest in perpetuating By the time evidence of harm becomes implement some of them. them. Davis tracks how the accumulation overwhelming, its hapless victims discover Carol van Strum works for the organization and protection of profit have controlled the that industry has manipulated the law in Department of Planet Earth in Oregon. This war on cancer from the start. order to require impossibly absolute proof of review first appeared on the website Well before the dawn of the 20th century, a particular product causing a particular www.deptplanetearth.com.

46 SPRING 2008 HERIZONS Canadian soldiers were stationed throughout England and Europe. While it’s unknown how many went to war with marriage in mind, over a period of six years 48,000 weddings took place overseas, setting the scene for “one of the most unusual immigrant waves to hit Canadian shores: all women, mostly British and all from the same age group.” These were the Canadian war brides, and their stories have been captured by Fredericton historian Melynda Jarratt and published in War Brides, subtitled: The stories of the women who left everything behind to follow the men they love. Through a collection of vignettes, we get a glimpse into the lives of these women who, some 60 years ago, arrived as immigrants. Many of the war brides were sophisticated Rhineland and spread amongst Jews in young women from urban England and some FUN HOME: A FAMILY TRAGICOMIC Central and Eastern Europe. The written discovered that life in Canada in the 1940s was BY ALISON BECHDEL language uses Hebrew characters, though it is more than they could handle. Others Houghton Mifflin Company a mixture of German, Polish, Russian, Hebrew, discovered that the man they came to live with and several other languages. Once a thriving REVIEW BY KAREN X. TULCHINSKY wasn’t the same man they’d married. Not spoken language, Yiddish began dying off with Alison Bechdel is known for her popular comic surprisingly, some marriages lasted, while Jewish emigration to North America. strip “Dykes to Watch Out For,” which is others did not. And yet today it is estimated In an effort to preserve the language, it is syndicated in numerous newspapers—mostly that one in 30 Canadians has a war bride in being taught to a new generation. Arguing within the queer press—since it first their family tree. With the Storm, edited by Rhea Tregebov, a appeared in 1983. Among the most interesting success stories professor of poetry and translation at the Fun Home is a biography of her father, who, is that of Jean Keegan. She arrived by canoe at University of British Columbia, contains 14 four months after Bechdel came out to him as Tobique First Nations Reserve in northwestern stories by nine authors, all originally written in a lesbian, died—either by suicide or by New Brunswick to reunite with her husband, Yiddish and translated into English. The editor accident. The story is told in the form Bechdel Charles Paul. This middle-class British woman offers the anthology as one more contribution knows best—as a comic book. The book is an adapted well to life on the reserve, where they in the renaissance of Yiddish literature, a homage to a man she never really knew as an had no electricity or indoor plumbing. She movement which began in 1980. Perhaps a adult and, in a way, is the author’s attempt to became fluent in Maliseet and raised six reflection of living through hard times, each of understand her own life. children with her husband. the stories is filled with life. After Bechdel came out, her mother revealed In the 1970s, war bride organizations sprung Here are a few highlights: that her father had had affairs with men. To this up or were revived all over Canada. Today Bryna Bercovitch was born in 1894 in a she replies: “I’d been upstaged, demoted from these associations “provide a tangible slum in the Ukraine. She went to university in protagonist in my own drama to comic relief in connection to a sisterhood, which despite Moscow in 1915, was a political activist, then my parents’ tragedy.” When her father’s death their differences, share so many similarities.” immigrated to Montreal. Her story, “Becoming fell so close on the heels of her coming out, she That sisterhood was officially acknowledged Revolutionary,” takes a peak back into a time could not help but assume a cause and effect when 2006 was recognized as the Year of the when people haggled over scraps of meat in relationship between the two. War Bride in most Canadian provinces. the market, baked their own bread and lived Bechdel’s father was a high school English War Brides is great read about a group of life through simple pleasures. teacher and also ran the family business—a women who have become an intricate part of “A Natural Death,” by Paula Frankel- funeral home. Growing up in a funeral home, Canada. Zaltzman, set in the Russian Dvinsk ghetto Bechdel explains, one has an interesting during the Nazi occupation, tells the story of relationship with the meaning of life and ARGUING WITH THE STORM a devoted daughter who keeps her father death. One becomes immune to the sight of STORIES BY YIDDISH WOMEN comfortable until he does the unheard of for death, so that when her own father died she WRITERS a Jew during the Holocaust—he dies a could not find her emotion. She reveals that, natural death. for a while, she blamed herself for her father’s EDITED BY RHEA TREGEBOV “Rumiya and the Shofar,” by Rikuda Potash, death, thinking that by coming out to him, she Sumach Press challenges the inherent sexism in the religion, tipped him over an edge. But perhaps this was REVIEW BY KAREN X. TULCHINSKY which disallows women from taking part in a way of clutching for a connection with a Yiddish is a dying language. But it wasn’t rituals such as blowing the Shofar (ram’s horn) man she never really knew. always so. In the early part of the 20th century, at Rosh Hashanah (Jewish new year). Bechdel’s attention to detail is stellar, as during its heyday, Yiddish theatre and An important document of Yiddish literature, always. The visuals include close-ups of the literature thrived in North America and the stories in Arguing With the Storm bring us books people are reading, their quirky Eastern Europe. It originated within the back to another time and place, with passion, individual idiosyncrasies and her father’s Ashkenazi culture in the 10th century in the eloquence and grace. interior design elements.

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The literary value is stunning. For example, what she couldn’t have: freedom from the mothering. She notes, for example, that some her father’s favourite flower was the lilac, “a restraints that were anchored by Victorian eco-feminists have attributed their concern for tragic botanical specimen invariably beginning manners—rigid definitions of what a servant the environment to their maternal attributes as to fade even before reaching its peak,” and had to be and how a mistress had to manage women. This can become a treacherous clearly a metaphor for her father. them—and yet, still having someone willing to concept if it is used to define women by their Fun Home is a fun book. And it is also follow her around with a dust rag. biology, absolving men and, for that matter, the poignant, sad, heartwarming and disarmingly She didn’t want her servants calling her public sphere as a whole from taking honest. “madam” or dressing in uniform; she also responsibility for caring for the planet and didn’t want them underfoot and judging her. humanity. MRS. WOOLF AND THE SERVANTS: She wanted to pick up a spoon to stir her MacGregor believes that environmentalists THE HIDDEN HEART OF DOMESTIC soup, but she didn’t want to put down her pen must loudly protest the loud neo-liberal choir in order to do so. She wrote to Vita Sackville SERVICE which seeks to assign responsibility for caring West: “free forever of cooks. I cooked veal for the planet to individuals and their lifestyles: ALLISON LIGHT cutlets and cake today. I assure you it is better i.e., women and their homes. Penguin/Fig Tree than writing these idiotic books.” She writes: “It is questionable whether REVIEW BY NOREEN SHANAHAN A friend of mine joked that all a woman ‘lived experiences’ will provide sufficient It’s confirmed: Virginia Woolf was a bitch of a really needs, in order to write, is a servant of insight into macro-political problems or global boss. Her letters and diaries were peppered one’s own. This book reveals the truth behind ecological developments like climate change.” with anti-servant comments. She was this suggestion and thanks Nellie Boxall and Questionable indeed. This habit of particularly nasty about Nellie Boxall (whose the other women for doing most of VW’s individualization and of privatizing caretaking cooking. name she perpetually misspelled as “Nelly”), a of the environment not only cloaks the causes cook she described as a “domestic tyrant” of environmental degradation—corporate and who worked in Woolf’s kitchen for 18 BEYOND MOTHERING EARTH greed and a lack of environmental laws, to years. But Alison Light’s well-researched tome ECOLOGICAL CITIZENSHIP AND state two—but also cloaks the power is a gift in the hands of Woolf lovers, if only THE POLITICS OF CARE imbalance between North and South, the because she often gives us the writer’s super-powerful and the powerless. language as if it were fine food on a platter. SHERILYN MACGREGOR UBC Press As a means of propelling ecological change There is poetry in her phrasing, even if the forward, MacGregor proposes a Project of words express snotty disdain for those who, it REVIEW BY REGGIE MODLICH Feminist Ecological Citizenship to politicize seems, tolerate her whims and fancies and The North, we are told, has a greater environmentalism and move it more forcefully moments of madness. responsibility for causing and, therefore, for onto the public stage. She argues for an “Have I ever felt such wild misery as when potentially mitigating looming climate “ecological citizenship, with an emphasis on talking to servants?” Woolf wrote. “Partly changes. It is fitting, then, that in Beyond universal rights, responsibilities and risks” that caused by rage at our general ineptitude—we Mothering Earth, a white, middle-class is “more in line with a feminist desire for a the governors—having laden ourselves with feminist from the North provides a feminist politicized and generalized ethics of care than such a burden, at having let grow on our analysis of eco-feminist and environmentalist eco-communitarian or individualistic shoulders such a cancer, such a growth, such theories while offering a positive direction for approaches to green virtue.” a disease as the poor are.” the future. Highly recommend. We might hate what she says, but we love Sharilyn MacGregor touches many deeply how she says it. If one were to read this book felt experiences and quandaries that affect A longer version of this review was published as a psychological study of a woman in her women like me who are environmentalists. in issue 74/5 of Women & Environments time, one might conclude that Woolf wanted Her focus is caring, from domestic chores to International magazine. 

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50 SPRING 2008 HERIZONS arts culture FILM

Graphic designer Therese Shechter (right) meets Gloria Steinem on her journey to becoming a feminist once again.

I WAS A TEENAGE FEMINIST feminism is irrelevant—that made me DIRECTED BY THERESE SHECHTER want to take them to the nearest women’s bookstore to pick up a copy of REVIEW BY JENNIFER O’CONNOR bell hooks’ Feminism is for Everybody. “,” sang Helen Reddy in her The intimacy of the Shecter’s story— 1972 anthem. I am strong, I am her experience trying to shake up her invincible, and all of that. family’s Passover dinner stands out—is It’s the song that filmmaker and graphic complemented by the style of designer Therese Shechter uses to open filmmaking. She appears to have shot her documentary, I Was A Teenage most interviews—she chats with her Feminist. Ms. Reddy and Ms. magazine mom as she makes matzo ball soup and were as much a part of Shechter’s the Radical Cheerleaders as they make adolescence as first bras and Bonne Bell pompoms—with a hand-held recorder. Lip Smackers. Decades later, however, Home videos also create a DIY feel and Shechter realized that she had long Shecter: Shaking up Passover. are complimented by animation and stopped thinking about feminism. The film She also speaks with writer and director of archival footage. centres around her desire to reconnect with a Women in Media & News Jennifer Pozner, So, what happens to our pursuant heroine? movement that had so influenced her. “Did I author Jennifer Baumgardner and BUST The final scenes in the film show Shecter at lose it,” she asks early on. “Or did it lose me? magazine’s art director and editor, Laurie the 2004 March for Women’s Lives in And what could I do to find it again?” Henzel and Debbie Stoller, respectively. Washington D.C. After three years of working This personal journey also serves as a Not-so-famous women are also here, such on this project, Shechter has made up her primer on Western feminism. Shechter as her friend’s sister Elaine, who believes in mind that feminism is about choice, being free interviews well-known feminists such as Letty feminist ideals even though she declines to to decide how we live, look and feel. Cottin Polegrin (who responds to Shechter’s label herself as a feminist. Interviews with  feelings of disappointment by oh-so-politely other young women in which Shechter asks Hear me roar, indeed. telling her that she was never promised an why they don’t identify as feminist reveal the Jennifer O’Connor works at Ecojustice egalitarian rose garden) and Gloria Steinem. predictable responses—feminists hate men, (formerly Sierra Legal Defence) in Toronto. HERIZONS SPRING 2008 51 Herizons Marketplace

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52 SPRING 2008 HERIZONS Circle of Violence VIOLENT LEGACY LEAVES WOMEN IN ITS WAKE

BY IRENE D’SOUZA

Rozena Maart, author of The Writing Circle, offers a compelling new novel that explores the spiritual and cultural ramifications of violence against women in South Africa. Here, she goes into further depth about the issue.

Herizons: When did banal violence against South African The anti-capitalist position was that the exploitation of women become normal? black men emasculated them, belittled them and thus Rozena Maart: My awareness of violence against women precipitated their violence against women. There was no stems from my teenage years during the 1970s, when the understanding, or even the recognition of male domination, African National Congress (ANC) had already been banned. patriarchy or male privilege within all societies and how it I attended anti-apartheid meetings and gatherings, where functioned to put men in positions where their violence women would often speak in hushed tones about the against women remained unquestioned. violence they experienced in their homes, on the street and So, the banal violence against women became normal within anti-apartheid and anti-capitalist organizations. under the conditions of violence within the general climate The term anti-capitalist organizations referred to trade of violence then, and is further normalized today. There was unions and labour movements, mainly. Those organizations no consideration of the fact that women were equally focused on how the development of capitalism in South Africa oppressed and exploited; there was no account by these led to the exploitation of the masses under capitalist movements of why it was men who were violent against exploitation, as key to the process of apartheid. So, on an women, even though we were all oppressed and exploited ideological front, one argued that the oppression of the masses under the apartheid regime. This is one of the reasons why by the apartheid regime gave rise to the violence by men Women Against Repression was formed in 1986 as the first toward women, and that although men were the perpetrators, black feminist organization with a critique of male violence it was because they were the target of the regime. and patriarchy.

HERIZONS SPRING 2008 53 Although the five women in your novel protected themselves with systems, for those who can afford it; looking left and right, near-military precision, it was not enough. Why? up and down, each time we walk, our eyes covering every Rozena Maart: Violence against women is everywhere—in possible area wherever we can. the home, in the street, in the workplace, in public toilets, in parking lots, on the school playground. In The Writing Circle, Do you think females will develop a protective gene in response to I was absolutely aware of the precision with which friends violence within their families, and then with strangers? talk about how they look over their shoulders all the time, Rozena Maart: How to combat social behaviour is a complex why they never go to public toilets alone, not even in question. With evolution, given the ways in which South someone’s home if there is a big party, what we look out for African women are combating violence in every possible way, in every public space, and what we remind ourselves of in and teaching their children to do so, I am not sure what domestic spaces. would be built into our DNA, other than perhaps hatred, The five characters in The Writing Circle show their alienation and fear—and still it would not be enough! awareness of the violence they have become accustomed to All I know is that when I speak to my young nieces, they with the minutest of detail—in the way that they bolt and are well aware of the violence and will tell you what they lock their homes in the townships, and in middle-class carry with them for protection to school. Many would find it neighbourhoods, too, with the extra iron gate; bolt and lock shocking in Canada. For example, there was released an anti- their cars; the way that they speak to their children; the way rape devise last year which a woman can insert into her that they drive with windows closed; elaborate alarm vagina. This device would trap the man’s penis, of course,

In Maart’s novel, the five female characters represent the embodiment of violence and where it migrates within the terrain of women’s psyches. (Photo: Eliza Solis-Maart)

54 SPRING 2008 HERIZONS after the woman has already been forced to succumb to the exploited, were sorely disappointed. There will always be violence. The government has skirted around the issue, and I those in the West who want to be applauded for their anti- use the word with intent to point to the fact that they seem apartheid efforts, and those who feel that when confronted to believe that it is women’s skirts which are the problem. To with the masses they want to have their political positions say that they are dicking around is more accurate. justified—I was not that sort of person then, and still am not now. How do South African women cope with this? Can you contrast I openly told those in attendance at meetings and today with apartheid days? gatherings in Canada that more women died at the hands of Rozena Maart: Sadly, the violence has intensified. And even male violence than died at the hands of the apartheid regime more sad is the fact that during the apartheid years many and they were furious, annoyed, irritated. How dare someone women saw the possibility of having a free and democratic like me disrupt their notion of politics. They wanted to give South Africa with the African National Congress in power me their old clothes, treat me as though they are doing me a as the best possible solution for them to live with dignity. favour. I mean, I was too well-spoken and articulate to be a For, it would mean having a mass-based national liberation sample of the black South African masses they had seen on movement endorsed as your chosen government who would television, beaten and battered. And where was my gratitude be running the country according to the Freedom for living in Canada? Charter—which would protect your rights as women. I was We need to have national and international campaigns shunned by some of the women in the anti-apartheid movement for speaking out nationally and internationally against the violence of women in all countries, not just about violence against women perpetrated by men in South Africa, and we as women should push for sanctions. leadership positions within the movement. There is no point of having freedom if we cannot tell the For sure, South African women truth. North Americans want to are outraged. Women I know who hear wonderful stories about South are family members, friends, peers, There is no point of Africa. I mean, a nation that did not women who work in factories, retaliate against their oppressors, a women who are university- having freedom if we nation that did not take to the educated—all of the women I know cannot tell the truth. streets to kill the oppressors who in various capacities are clearly dispossessed them of their land, outraged. And yes, they cope killed and murdered their people, because there is no other choice. Then, to add insult to extracts their diamonds, mines their gold, and keeps them injury, the ANC Women’s League recently claimed former chained for 342 years! Deputy President Jacob Zuma, who was charged with rape, Why should the ANC do anything if the Western world as their chosen candidate for the presidency. seems to applaud every move that they have made to keep their white oppressors on the land, to allow them to Are South African men challenging the violators? reconcile, without remorse ... and allow guilt-ridden white Rozena Maart: There is not enough outrage by South African activists, who seem to be content with living on native land men. Those who are outraged are not mounting national in Canada, to go to South Africa and learn more and better awareness campaigns or organizing national protests. ways, in the words and sentiments of UBANTU, to then What will need to shift before South African politicians take a return to Canada, better equipped with more rhetoric of moral and courageous stand against violence—particularly denial, to further the aims of anti-racism, as long as their sexual violence? male privilege remains unquestioned? Rozena Maart: I think the same global awareness that was There will continue to be violence against women in South forged about apartheid during the 1980s and the 1990s Africa, to the horrendous degrees we have seen. And lesbian needs to happen now. In those days, there were anti- and queer women have also been targetted; this is all apartheid movements around the world, which later, in the unreported in North America. We have to stand up for what form of sanctions, forced the government to consider the we believe in and forge our pavement politics around the future of the country and the release of Nelson Mandela. world to end violence against women ... in every aspect of When I first came to Canada in 1989 and talked about what we do: on the streets, within the university, in our violence against women, those who came to talks hoping writing, and in our everyday activities. to hear about anti-apartheid initiatives, particularly how, And we have to push for sanctions as women, who make as a black South African woman I was oppressed and up more than half of the population of the world! 

HERIZONS SPRING 2008 55 on the edge BY LYN COCKBURN

Veiled Threats

Last spring, in Laval, , Asmahan (Azzy) Mansour, 11, and only went back to her home to collect some of her things. was thrown out of a soccer tournament for wearing one. In That is when a man claiming to be her father said in a 911 November, Safaa Menhem, 14, was ejected from a soccer call: “I killed my daughter.” Muhammad Parvez has been game in Calgary for wearing one. Also in November, Hagar charged in connection with her killing, while Parvez’s brother Outbih, 11, was chucked out of a national judo tournament faces related charges. in Winnipeg for wearing one. Early on the morning of This take-it-off, no-put-it-on tug-of-war is one in which December 10, 2007, the refusal of Aqsa Parvez, 16, to wear no young girl should ever have to participate. It is ironic, one, may have been a contributing factor to her killing. because those on both extremes of the issue want the same It is all about the hijab, of course, the headscarf many thing: to force girls and women into dressing in accordance Muslim girls and women wear. To some, it has become an with their perceptions. objectionable symbol of an oppressive religion, one which has The Girl With the Hijab has become a symbol of religious scared the hell out of many people since 9/11. It is, some say, oppression to some Westerners. Yet Muslim organizations a symbol of the subjugation of women. insist the hijab is a cultural symbol, not a religious one. On So take it off. one extreme, its absence may be regarded as an excuse for Others insist it is a symbol of modesty, a sign that females murder. On the other extreme, its presence may be an excuse are good Muslims. The extremist few are certain that women for a self-righteous form of racism. who dress in a Western manner deserve censure at the very What is common on both extremes is that those on the least—rape and death if the hijabless women are recalcitrant. extremes are picking on women, and particularly young girls. For example, the now infamous Australian imam, Sheik It should be none of our business if a Muslim girl or woman Taj Din al-Hilali, got himself into big trouble last year by chooses to wear a hijab while running circles on the soccer comparing females without hijabs to uncovered meat. pitch or competing in judo. “Put it on and keep it on,” say the extremists. “Or else.” And the mantra sports officials repeat over and over again Australians were so incensed at this medieval insensitivity is disingenuous. “It’s not a religious issue, it’s a safety issue,” that they forced the now disgraced sheik to apologize. they intone as they chuck girls out of games. Sadly, it is too late for anyone to apologize to Aqsa My backside. This is a thinly veiled attempt to keep out the Parvez. It is alleged that the “or else” happened to Parvez other, the ones who are different and who don’t have the in Mississauga last December. She had evidently been sense to hide their otherness. And if we can’t get to the arguing with her family for weeks over her desire to be like adults, let’s pick on the kids. the other girls. She loved dancing and fashion. She’d don But it is everyone’s business if an extremist parent is so her hijab at home and take it off before she got to school, adamant that his daughter wear an article of clothing that he sometimes changing her entire mode of dress. Sometimes, is willing to do her harm, to take her life, if she disobeys. she’d wear makeup. Of course, many members of the Canadian Muslim “She was scared of her father; he was always controlling community have roundly condemned this horrible tragedy. her,” said Dominiquia Holmes-Thompson, a classmate. That condemnation is summed up by the statement from Another classmate recounted how when Aqsa, sans hijab, Syed Soharwardy, head imam at the Calgary Islamic Centre, spotted one of her brothers on the street, she panicked. who said: “Resolving conflicts through violence is the worst “She wasn’t allowed to go out or do anything; that’s why crime a Muslim may commit.” she left,” said Holmes-Thompson. In theory, symbols are fine. But this one—the hijab—rests In the weeks before her death, Parvez was living elsewhere too heavily on the heads of young girls. 

56 SPRING 2008 HERIZONS Expand Your Herizons Collection! Buy any 3 for just $10

Summer 2004 Fall 2004 Winter 2005 Elizabeth May: How to Change the The Indigo Girls’ One Perfect A Passion for Revolushun: The World in Your Spare Time; Jane World; Nobel Peace Prize-Winner inspiration of a new generation of Doe asks, What is a Rape Victim Sherin Ebadi; The Raging dub poets; Linda McQuaig on Supposed to Look Like?; Ann Grannies. Crude Dudes; Ember Swift on Hansen in profile. politics and music.

Spring 2005 Summer 2005 Fall 2005 Drama Queers: The Canadian Miriam Toews: A Complicated Why Women Love their Tattoos; connection to the edgy drama The Kind of Author; Riot Prrrls: Cast The Search Begins for Canada’s L-word; Feminist artists talk back Off Your Stereotypes; Aboriginal Disappeared Women; Treasured to feminine icons; The rise and Women Inspire Hope; Third Wave Chest: Kyle Scanlon’s Surgical fall of Mothers are are Women. Mothers Rise Up. Journey.

Winter 2006 Spring 2006 Summer 2006 Tanks R US: Artist Sarah Beck Pump Up the Volume: Mary Walsh: Defender of the on the Fine Art of Defence; Doris Throat-Singer Tanya Tagaq; Disenfranchised; Star Feminist Anderson 35 Years Later: Still Big Pharma: Too Hard to Swallow; Michele Landsberg; the fight for Ain't Satisfied; — Jane Rule Pays Tribute to Literary Security for Afghan Women. Shifting Political Ground. Mothers.

Fall 2006 Winter 2007 Spring 2007 Hip Hop Mohawk Musician Catherine MacKinnon; Ani Difranco on Hope for the Kinnie Starr; A Short History of Sex Trafficking; How to Stop FGM; American Left; Betsy Warland’s Cross-Dressing Women; Afghan Women (Sold out. pdf Meditation on Recovery, Bonnie Maude Barlow on the dangers only. [email protected] Klein’s ‘Not a Disability Story;’ Lynn of U.S.-Canada integration. for details) Crosbie: The Truth about Lying.

Summer 2007 Fall 2007 Winter 2008 Are Your Cosmetics Toxic? When it Cliks: Androgyny Rock Naomi Klein’s Shock Doctrine; Fundamental Concern for Women Steps on Stage; Belittling Belinda, The Colour of Loss: A Lesbian in Tajikistan; Time to Close the The Gardasil Controversy. Story of the Infertility Industry; Chapter on Chick Lit; Up Close Bisexual Politics. and Personal with Shani Mootoo.

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Summer 2004 Fall 2004 Winter 2005 Name: Spring 2005 Summer 2005 Fall 2005 Address: City/ Town: Winter 2006 Spring 2006 Summer 2006 Province: Postal Code: Fall 2006 Winter 2007 Spring 2007 Add 1 year subscription to my order ($27.50, includes GST) Summer 2007 Fall 2007 Winter 2008 Questions: [email protected] or order on line at Mail your order in the envelope enclosed along with payment to : Herizons, PO Box 128, Winnipeg, MB, Canada R3C 2G1 www.herizons.ca Strong Communities CUPE: Positively Public

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