This Friday, October 22 at 7pm, my partner Penny and I are hosting a virtual screening of The Rankin File: Legacy of a Radical, a documentary film about my hero and mentor, Harry Rankin. You can register to join us and see this wonderful film here, which will be followed by a political panel and…
Category: law
September 30: A day for listening, learning and truth-telling
This coming Thursday, Sept. 30th, is Orange Shirt Day and the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation. Although it is a statutory holiday for all federally regulated employees, it is unfortunately not a statutory holiday for provincially regulated employees. As the overwhelming majority of workers are employed in sectors that are provincially regulated, relatively very…
On ethnic cleansing and East Jerusalem
The world breathed a collective sigh of relief on May 21, 2021, when the Middle East’s only nation with nuclear weapons capability, the apartheid state of Israel, reached a ceasefire with Gaza’s Hamas government. This 11-day conflict left unacceptable civilian casualties on both sides: 13 Israelis, 2 of them children, and 256 Palestinians mostly in…
The legacy of residential schools is not history
Content warning: This story has disturbing details about Indian residential schools. Survivors and their families can call the toll-free National Indian Residential School Crisis Hotline at 1-866-925-4419. On Thursday, May 27, Chief Rosanne Casimir of the Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc Nation announced that they had located the unmarked burial sites of 215 children on the site…
Just the other day
I do not normally talk about my disability but today I’m going to make an exception. When asked “What is your disability?” I always tell the truth – on September 10th 1984 I was called to the bar. I am a lawyer! What prompted my full disclosure now? I recently had a telephone conversation with…
NPA Board: Let’s make a deal!
On April 21, three of the four NPA city councillors, Lisa Dominato, Colleen Hardwick, and Sarah Kirby-Yung, left the NPA. If you were an NPA member you might have thought that things could not get any worse. Now they have! On April 23, every single one of the three NPA school trustees, Carmen Cho, Oliver…
Lessons in humanity — and inhumanity
The other night my partner, Penny, and I watched “The Mauritanian” — a new film that’s getting a lot of buzz, and for good reason. I don’t normally blog about movies, but this exceptional movie is worth making an exception for. Most of us have at least heard about the Guantánamo Bay detention camp in…