Head shots from the Canadian parliamentary press gallery. Photo via Twitter.
The last two weeks have been a game changer in when it comes to discussions around race, racism, freedom of speech, and racial inclusion in Canadian media. Due to mainly white men in media behaving badly, we have been forced to at least glance at the elephant in the room—the continuing unbearable whiteness and maleness of Canadian media.
Last weekend, the federal health minister, Jane Philpott, when speaking at the International Harm Reduction Conference 2017 in Montreal, acknowledged that more people have died in the past few years in the opioid epidemic than at the height of the AIDS epidemic in the late 80s and early 90s. This is a sad and shocking fact that activists on the ground have known of a while.
Think about that for a minute. The death toll of the opioid epidemic, an epidemic caused by drug prohibition, has surpassed the staggering losses due to AIDS.
Toronto writer and editor Hal Niedzviecki set off a chain reaction of Hot Takes last week when, as the editor of Write, the magazine of the Writers’ Union of Canada, he prefaced an entire issue devoted to the work by Indigenous writers with a glib editorial that seemed to neutralize the importance of providing an outlet for marginalized voices in its jokey call for a “Cultural Appropriation Prize” to be awarded to a white middle-class writer who can best write from the voice or perspective of someone from a different culture. Keep reading: Hot Take Challenge: Appropriation Prizes
A who's who of Canadian media heavyweights were in full damage control this weekend after mocking Indigenous cultural appropriation on Twitter at midnight, like a bunch of drunk racist uncles.
As we all know, Torontonians are passionate about their public transit. A transit delay will almost always bring commuters together as they exchange conspiratorially exasperated looks while recording whatever ridiculous events are transpiring on their phones to later post on Twitter. TTC-bashing is as authentic an urban bonding experience as one can experience in Toronto. […]
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