Politics
It’s difficult to be festive these days, what with so much nonsense happening everywhere and a dramatic rise in hate crimes right in this town. In my Ottawa Citizen column this week I express hope that with more talking to one another and better listening to each other that
Gender
In my Ottawa Citizen column this week I discuss the role we’re asking public libraries to play when we cut services elsewhere and generally privatize everything. This was prompted by a news item about the OPL requesting a $3M security upgrade in light of an uptick in incidents where
Gender
There are few areas of law where victims get revictimized so routinely as those that involve sexual abuse or intimate partner violence. Or both. Where else do we make victims relive, repeatedly and in painful detail, all aspects of what happened to them and question them until they get some
Gender
** Content warning ** This article discusses sexual violence and its long-term impacts. ** Avertissement ** Cet article discute de la violence sexuelle et de ses effets à long terme. This is a topic that is very close to my heart. It is also deeply personal. What is below are my stories (in the
Travel
I had not seen a truck with the full Confederate flag treatment in this town before, I thought as I jogged past the jacked-up white Dodge wearing the gayest rainbow-pride Apple Watch and nothing but virtue-signalling Lululemon high-performance running attire. I was naive enough to hope that the displeasure of
Urbanism
In my Ottawa Citizen column this week I allow myself a little bit of mild woot-wootingon housing. No, we’re nowhere near getting close to attempting to solve the crisis. But it’s important to acknowledge small crumbs of good news. In my legal writing for National Magazine I have
Urbanism
In my Ottawa Citizen column this week I blow a gasket at the extreme speeding and general lack of driving skills found on too many streets in Ottawa. In my legal writing for National Magazine I have a review of Ben Perrin’s most excellent book, Indictment: The Criminal Justice
Gender
This morning my almost-17-year-old came downstairs, iPhone in hand and glee in heart, to show me that she’d added pronouns to my contact info. It turns out that after a long time of people requesting support for pronouns, Apple finally introduced it with iOS 17: iOS 17 introduces a
Culture
In my Ottawa Citizen column this week I natter on the concept of circular economy and the right to repair, which earns me some points in the dorkiest scribe category. But seriously, in an economic climate where everything is getting more expensive quicker than incomes can keep up with, there
Urbanism
My column in the Ottawa Citizen this week took the mayor to task for acting surprised at OC Transpo’s financial situation. Transit is a public service, not a business. It’s not meant to turn a profit. Oh, and there are other, more important things the mayor clearly doesn’
Gender
I had a couple of columns in the Ottawa Citizen this week. The first one was about the definition of mass shooting and whether we should have one. There was a Q&A with the extraordinary Sgt Maria Keen, and another column on the fact that schools have become
Gender
My very good friend called this morning in relation to my recent Pride column and asked how I would solve the problem of a young kid who says they feel they’re a boy even though they were assigned female at birth. “This is not a problem,” I said. “I