Dwight Ball is Untouchable
If Dwight Ball has learned anything amid all the turmoil and unrest of his first mandate, it’s that it can’t touch him. He just needs to ride it out.
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Ecological Ethics and Oil in Newfoundland and Labrador
Ecological ethics confronts petroculture because it does not view the world through markets, and does not privilege our own well-being ahead of others’.
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Andrew Scheer is a Lab-Grown Meat Puppet in Jason Kenney’s Plan to be Prime Minister
The reason Jason Kenney is in Ontario on the federal campaign trail is because he is here for a good time, not a long time.
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Keeping It In the Ground
Is directly targeting offshore oil production the most effective way to fight climate change in NL? Or should we focus more energy on reducing local demand?
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Remembering Judy Lynn Ford & the Power of Student Action
On October 17th, 1980, Judy Lynn Ford was struck and killed by a truck while crossing Prince Philip Parkway. It sparked a week-long student insurrection.
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Climate Strike Newfoundland & Labrador: What Next?
Government has been saying the same thing for decades: we accept climate change is happening, but we’re not going to do anything to stop oil production.
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Sex Work is Not the Same as Sexual Exploitation
As someone who has worked freely as a sex worker and someone who has experienced sexual exploitation, I can say unequivocally: the two are not the same.
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The Dirty Politics Behind Cleaning NL’s Dirty Water
Supporting a fiscally irresponsible P3 “solution” for wastewater defers true costs and make immediate budgets look more ‘responsible.’ Is that a temptation?
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A Visitor’s Guide to Alberta: Canada’s Misunderstood Province
There’s more to us than cowboys and crude oil. Did you know the Caeser was invented in Calgary? We also ran a eugenics program until 1972. Go Alberta go!
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Speaking as a Car-Owner: It’s Time for a War on Cars
Owning a private motor vehicle no more accords you rights to extra public space than owning real estate accords you more votes in a general election.
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Life After Muskrat: What Have We Learned?
Will the Inquiry really do anything? That remains to be seen. The people of the province still have to deal with the reality of the Muskrat Falls project.
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Moody’s Blues, or: Commission of Government 2.0
Yesterday’s news is not the end of the world. But it’s a small part of a larger process: our control over Newfoundland & Labrador’s future is slipping away.
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On Escaping Your Own Prison: An Introduction of Sorts
You’re probably wondering why a person would create such a tiny space for themselves, this prison cell. Well, why does anyone build walls? For protection.
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Here’s to a Harassment-free House
A safe and respectful workplace opens the doors for a diversity of players to participate in politics. The system itself becomes an accessible option.
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On the Stoppage of Crime
A modest proposal: that crime is not stopped by terrorizing a city with a guerilla marketing campaign aimed at encouraging people to snitch on the poor.
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Put Education on the Ballot
We need institutions where critical inquiry can be freely pursued by scholars and cultivated among students. The future of NL depends on it.
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#NLRising, 3 Years On
The 2019 NL provincial election is just eight days away, and yesterday marks three years since the #NLRising rally on Confederation Hill, organized by the NL Federation of Labour. I was invited to sing a couple of songs, so I took the opportunity to write a new one, directly addressing the 2016 Liberal austerity budget. Out came ‘Go Away Dwight and Cathy’, which singled out cuts to education and library closures, cuts to healthcare, and the ‘deficit reduction levy’. The 2016 Liberal budget was an attack on the people of Newfoundland and Labrador, there is no doubt about that. But people spoke out. The rally worked, to some degree. The song? The downfall of writing political songs is that they are only usually relevant to a situation for a short period of time, however, they will always remain historically significant. ‘Go Away Dwight and Cathy’ never gets much airplay these…
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Your Vote Is Your Consent
I am talking to teenagers about consent. In the courthouse alongside, Chantel John’s mother suffers through a slew of new charges against her daughter’s accused murderer. Newfoundland and Labrador is attempting to hold this man accountable. Though in the land of Mary March, it is difficult indeed to ignore the violent colonial locomotion that blasts through us regardless of our objection or intent. I hike round a river named for these exploits. It is beautiful big birch country. The water is surging fast-forward with the spring breakup in full-on yellow flop where new-wet meets rock-face. The running signage recounts a tragic tale taught to us via elementary school readers. A Beothuk woman resisting capture exposes herself to her aggressors. The courts of the day rule there was no malice in her kidnapping or her husband’s death during the abduction. Their baby died, too. We are always told she revealed her…
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Oil is On the Way Out, but NL is Going All-In
Greta Thunberg, a 16-year-old Swede, has jolted the world awake by simply telling a hard truth: adults have stolen her generation’s future because we have not confronted the climate crisis. “I don’t want you to be hopeful,” she tells us, “I want you to panic. I want you to act as you would in a crisis. I want you to act as if the house is on fire, because it is.” Her words have inspired millions of children globally to demand real action from their political leaders. This message is an essential one for Newfoundland and Labrador’s upcoming election. Greta and her generation know all too well that to have any chance of a liveable climate for most of us, global temperature increases must be kept below two degrees of warming. To do this, emissions have to drop steeply, reaching zero—no emissions at all—by 2050. It would have been a…
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May Day from Central
I drive by a gas bar named for some other Megan and wonder if all her dreams came true. Traveling thoughts can take reckless turns when you’re headed westward on Newfoundland’s Trans Canada. Highway 1. Ground zero for colonialism where signage along the roadside declares that those who ruled at the starting hour of their agreed upon clock continue to do so today. And I wonder if the merchant still got me round the neck. As I pass blue and red squares proclaiming the hopeful inheritors of our little bit of earth, I feel the merchant’s hand tightening. Not that they refer to themselves as merchants anymore. The comms department sorted that before we even knew there was a comms department. They call themselves all kinds of generous, extravagant things now to confuse us. But a collar by another name is still a collar. My field of view is foggy…
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