A Teacher Blogs

It was a soggy Sunday, June 28th, this past summer when I met the Premier of Ontario, Kathleen Wynne. We were at the annual Toronto Pflag Pride Brunch, which takes place the morning of the Toronto Pride Parade, capping the nine-day festival. I was actually very excited to meet Ms Wynne; although I have never voted Liberal federally or provincially and harbour reservations about the Liberal Government. As well, in the last three years, relations between the federations that represent public educators, like me, and the Province have been quite strained . I was happy to meet her nonetheless. Yours truly and Premier Wynne. June 28, 2015. Having introduced myself, I began: "Premier, I'm an elementary teacher, and I know we've had our differences, but that's for another time. I want to tell you now as a teacher, a parent, and a member of the LGBT community how proud and grateful I am that you have stood firm on launching the 2015 Health and Physical Education curric...

For the last few days I've been volunteering at PrideHouseTO , which operates out of Toronto's 519 Church Street Community Centre , during the run of the 2015 Pan Am Games . The PrideHouse movement began with the 2010 Winter Olympic Games in Vancouver, when Pride organizers in Whistler thought international visitors might enjoy their local festivities. The idea took off, and every multi-sport international games since has hosted a PrideHouse, with the notable exception of the 2014 Winter Olympic Games in Sochi .  My normal shift involves either photographing or live-tweeting events at the pavilion. Today, one of the volunteer managers asked me if I'd like to take in an event called #HUDDLE2015, at Isabel Bader Theatre, which included pairs figure skater Eric Radford  and former collegiate track athlete and VP of You Can Play , Anna Aagenes . Headlining the event mixed martial arts competitor Fallon Fox was there, the first out Trans* fighter in the sp...

...was about an hour ago . I  wasn't doing anything particularly queer at the time -- unless you count deadheading marigolds while wearing a shirt with a rainbow coloured heart that reads  Kill it with Kindness  across the front. Oh, and I had on that Egale Human Rights Trust rainbow wristband. And the shirt. And, of course, I was gardening. I used to hear that word all the time -- daily in fact -- a little over forty years ago in an all-boys Catholic middle school. That word and "queer," "fairy," and "gay boy," pretty much everyday for two years. It was mostly because I stood out: soft spoken, polite to teachers, Protestant (in name only), good at drama and music, and bad at sports.  The last one was a killer: Not only was I bad at hockey and football in a school that was as passionate about sports as it was about Catholicism; I had the temerity not to particularly care.  That's right. A red-blooded Ca...

Twenty years ago, while attending a conference on equity for post-secondary educators, I happened to meet an Anishnaabe woman who had been a survivor of Canada's residential school system. Along with her siblings and friends, she had been taken from family and community and placed in a government funded school operated by the Catholic Church. (The United and Anglican Churches of Canada also operated such schools.) The purpose of the system was to Canadianize her -- to remove all vestiges of her aboriginal heritage. During our conversation, she described beatings, verbal abuse and sexual assault.  What stands out vividly in my recollection of our conversation was a rule of the school's dining hall requiring students to retrieve and eat any scraps deemed edible by the staff from a slop bucket they scraped their plates into.  We were eating dinner later when she teasingly admonished me to clean my plate. Then she had to push her own plate away. The memory of the slop bucket ...

Let's Bring Back Eiynah to Facebook. I've written before about Eiynah -- feminist, illustrator, LGBTQ ally, and author of the blog Nice Mangos , which discusses sexuality in a Pakistani context. I first discovered Eiynah -- by way of her now-celebrated children's book My Chacha is Gay  -- a little over a year ago. My Chacha is Gay has been published in many languages, and is read by children, parents, teachers and chachas (Urdu for paternal uncle) the world over. Eiynah also penned  An Open Letter To Ben Affleck , which drew worldwide attention. She maintains an active presence on Twitter as  @nicemangos  and, until recently, Facebook. The name Eiynah is a pseudonym the artist and writer uses to protect herself and her family in case anyone should attempt to make good on the many threats she has received advocating for LGBTQ equality, sex-positivity, women's rights, as well as proclaiming herself an ex-Muslim. From her May 29th, 2015 entry,...

John Tory isn't the first Chief Magistrate of Toronto to embrace the role of LGBTQI ally. That would be pre-amalgamation Toronto Mayor Barbara Hall, who marched in Pride as both a City Councillor and Mayor. (As a lawyer, Ms Hall had defended men arrested and charged as found-ins in the infamous 1981 bathhouse raids in Toronto.) Her successor Mel Lastman, was a reluctant participant at first, but soon got into the fun. David Miller marched with the Chief of Police. But Mr Tory, no stranger to Pride, seems right at home at #IDAHOTB. John Tory at IDAHOTB 2015 / Photo: Gordon Nore . More so than his predecessor. Rob Ford at IDAHOT 2013 / Photo: NOW Toronto Some interesting reading in this 2012 NatPo piece --  Newsmaker: How does Rob Ford's Pride Parade attendance compare to past mayors?

Today is The International Day Against Homphobia, Transphobia, and Biphobia. The occasion was honoured this past Friday, above Nathan Phillips Square at Toronto City Hall. If you've never heard of IDAHOTB, don't feel too bad. The observance has only been around since 2005, after 24,000 individuals and several LGBT organizations had signed an appeal to support the " IDAHO Initiative " the year before. In 2009 IDAHO became IDAHOT, and just this year, it became IDAHOTB. So, the "B" is new, and the "O" is optional, so you can imagine the confusion some of us had hash-tagging our Tweets.  Celebrated annually on May 17th, this year's IDAHOTB marks the twenty-fifth anniversary of the removal of homosexuality as a mental health disorder by the World Health Organization. According to the IDAHOTB central website, "May 17 is now celebrated in more than 130 countries, including 37 where same-sex acts are illegal, with 1600 events reported f...