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Scandals within scandals!

This has been a crazy week for news in Canada! Scandals within scandals!

Between the scandal about the prime minister’s office covering up Conservative Senator Mike Duffy’s expense scandal, the sanitized Senate audit scandal, and the scandalous video of the Mayor of Toronto smoking crack, I’ve been riveted to my Twitter feed.

Key players [...]

When words turn bad

The other day I was on a conference call and we were discussing which tags and keywords should be included in a collaborative online database.

The terms “substance use” and “harm reduction” were both on the list. I suggested we add “addiction.”

Some other people on the call said that we don’t use that term anymore, [...]

Two new birds!

Well, they’re not NEW, exactly. The original lovebirds – Oboe’s parents, Billie and Lester – have moved from GC’s house to mine.

It’s really nice to have them here, and they’re adapting very well. At first they squawked like crazy, and their arrival happened to coincide with the arrival of new next door neighbours, so [...]

Junk TV in a Hotel Room

I was in Toronto last week for a conference on HIV, pregnancy and mothering. It was an excellent conference, very interesting, with a good mix of researchers, HIV+ mothers, and frontline workers. There were even a few babies, and a toddler who took his mom’s cell phone, placed it on the floor, made sure she [...]

Seamy Underbelly, Part II

Visiting the Downtown Eastside (DTES) has churned up some contradictions for me, and resolving those contradictions requires re-thinking some questions I thought I already knew the answers to:

1) To what extent do people choose to live in the DTES, and to what extent are they stuck there?

2) Does the DTES community strengthen its residents or [...]

Larry O'Brien's Book Lunch

This was a present from GC. He took advantage of the special offer on Larry’s publisher’s website:

SHIPPING FEE WAVED (sic) FOR THOSE WISHING TO PICK UP AT THE OTTAWA LUNCH (sic).

Wedding, penis, knitting and fine arts

I wrote down all my thoughts about my visit to Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, and it was a big fat mess of contradictions, so I will continue to think on it before posting the second instalment.

In other news, our favourite local quilt shop has offered to host our wedding in their shop. We were thinking of [...]

Something to sing about

I’m still mulling over my visit to Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside – I’ll write Part II of that post once I figure out what I think.

In the meantime…here’s something fun for you to do on May 1st if you happen to be in Ottawa.

Gil’s Hootenanny, an evening of “Songs of Protest, Songs of Hope”: Wednesday May [...]

My visit to the seamy underbelly

At the harbour, outside my hotel

So…I went to Vancouver for a whirlwind business trip. I arrived Wednesday afternoon and left Friday morning. I was working most of the time, but I did have two more-or-less free evenings, so I did what I could to cram Vancouver in.

I hadn’t been there in 30-odd years, and [...]

Duncan meets his match

We have a bird perch in the shower – Simon showers with me, Kazoo showers with GC, and Oboe is versatile. Anyway, yesterday, after Simon and I finished our shower, we saw that Duncan was crouched in the doorway looking profoundly disturbed.

A few weeks ago, a hinge for one of the mirrored panels on the [...]