By Karen Nickel Dialog Reporter “One, two, three, four, no one should be working poor!” chanted 30 members of OPSEU local 540 who protested in front of city hall on Friday, March 15, calling on city council to step in and force their employer to come to the table. “Five, six, seven, eight, come on…
By Karen Nickel Dialog Reporter Discrimination of all kinds has occurred in the restroom. It has seen racial segregation, homophobic policing, non-accessibility, pay toilets against the poor and time limits for substance users. It’s a place of ongoing bullying, harassment and assault due to rigid enforcement of gendered washrooms. Accessible and safe public bathrooms are…
By Karen Nickel Dialog Reporter Story updated Feb. 26, 2013 Politics is a stage. Politicians are actors and we, the voters, are not the audience; instead they are performing for each other – this includes student politicians. The Student Association’s (SA) board of directors meeting on Feb. 13 began with an acknowledgement of Mississauga of…
By Karen Nickel Dialog Reporter Indigenous resistance occurs when First Nations, Métis, or Inuit Peoples act to: resist assimilation, retain their cultures, define their identity and defend territory in the face of state, corporate and settler incursions. It takes many forms and is often met by state violence, criminalization and lawsuits. In 1995, at Ts’…
By Karen Nickel Dialog Reporter Mental illness is caused by a personal weakness. False. Negative stereotypes, such as this, or the more violent media representations of the dangerous mentally ill patient, can lead people to believe that this is what mental illness looks like. These beliefs contribute to the stigma experienced by persons living with…
By Karen Nickel Dialog Reporter The name, Idle No More, unfortunately suggests that people have been idle until now; this is far from the truth. There has been continuous pressure by First Nations, Métis and Inuit communities insisting on exercising their rights to use their land, fish and hunt, but Canada has been negligently slow…
By Karen Nickel Dialog Reporter It was sometime on Nov. 5 in Gatineau, Quebec, that a USB stick was lost. It wasn’t until the next day that the information on it, including the personal information of 583,000 students who took out loans, was noticed to be missing. It was a further eight days until it was…
When you went to bed on Dec. 5, 2012 you probably never dreamed that when you woke up on Dec. 6 over 30,000 lakes and over 2 million rivers in Canada would no longer be protected. You were probably distracted, stressing about exams and looking forward to the holiday break. I wonder if the timing…
By Karen Nickel Dialog Reporter This is a tale of two rapes. One has been widely reported, protested and has sparked a global outcry and condemnation. It inspired actions of solidarity against rape culture and decried the lack of women’s rights. The other rape has barely been noticed locally, let alone nationally or globally. A…
Wally Oppal, the commissioner of the B.C. Missing Women Inquiry, called its final report “Forsaken”. In it, he claimed that the women who were murdered were doubly forsaken, once by society, then by the police. Family, advocacy groups and community members say this report will make the third time. The Missing Women Commission of Inquiry…
By Karen Nickel Dialog Reporer The Canadian University Press (CUP) has released the short list of nominees for their 2012 John H. MacDonald Journalism Awards and The Dialog has reason to celebrate! The awards, nicknamed ‘The Johnnies’, began in 2003 as a way to recognize excellence in journalism across the campus press in Canada. There…
By Karen Nickel Dialog Reporter The Women’s Executive Network (WXN) awarded Anne Sado, president of George Brown College, with its, “Canada’s Most Powerful Women: Top 100 Award” in the ‘Public Sector Leader’, category. This is the second time in three years in which she has been named, for her strong leadership skills and vision, by…
