Time for good people to drown out that hate
All the news that’s fit to email this week include the need to define what “mass shooting” is, a Q&A with an extraordinary police officer, unsafe schools and Le livre Uber in the running for an award.
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 dangerous places for children and young people because of anti-trans bigots.
Du côté français j’ai un article super sympa (moi que je dis) sur les femmes fortes dans la littérature franco-ontarienne dans le dernier numéro de Participe présent.
As part of my legal writing for National Magazine there’s a piece on access to justice in French. Did you know that we don’t even have an official French version of our constitution? Yeah.
Très heureuse d’annoncer que mon dernier bouquin, Le livre Uber (un beau bonjour aux Éditions L’Interligne) est finaliste pour le Prix du livre d’Ottawa 2023, dans la catégorie non-fiction en français. J’en lis un extrait sur vidéo, ci-bas. Super pumped to announce that my most recent book is a finalist for this year’s Ottawa Book Awards in the French non-fiction category. I did a spot of reading from the book.
Ezra getting a court to force a politician to unblock him on Twitter isn’t the sexy move he thinks it is. Now wait until he realizes there’s also a mute function.
J’ai bien aimé le chef du Bloc traitant les conservateurs sous Pierre Poilievre de voyous. Il a raison. Il y a un grand nombre de conservateurs qui sont des gens biens et honorables. J’aimerais qu’ils reprennent le contrôle de leur parti.
Local news
I’m glad we’re finally trying on-demand transit. It’s been tried elsewhere and results are uneven. There are many factors that determine whether this sort of thing can work or not, and I have no idea what that’s going to mean to Blackburn Hamlet. But we should try. I only wish it didn’t threaten to take away resources from the already drastically under-resourced ParaTranspo.
Another interesting story about which wards pay more in taxes than the others and, well, let’s just say amalgamation is really advantageous for the suburbs. I want to undo that. We’d all be happier.
Have yourselves a great weekend and don’t forget to share this newsletter with anyone you think might enjoy it.