C.K. Kelly Martin’s YA writing is the kind you want to give the teens in your life. It’s written for them, not adult crossover readers, and it meets teens where they live.
— Quill & Quire
Happy Read an Ebook Week! You can find most of my C. K. Kelly Martin books at half price at Smashwords this week to help you celebrate.
It's also a good time to pick up my latest sci-fi, RISE, TOMORROW GIRL, on sale. Set in 2050, in many ways RISE is a love letter to Canada. Healed of plague after years in cryogenic storage, a seventeen-year-old Canadian struggles to integrate into a world that's moved on without her and then must fight to stay alive, fleeing an American invasion.
Russian Mathematician Sofia Kovalevskaya wrote these words in 1888, and the
message holds true across miles and years. Stay true. And in this case also, elbows up, Canada. I know
Canadians will do what they can to support their neighbours and
countrymen during this difficult time. We will never again feel the same way about the United States, a once valued friend and ally, no matter what happens from here on out. We will, however, do what we must for our national sovereignty. Because Canada is not the United States. We value different things, and we will control our own destiny, no matter what that costs in dollars and cents.
Like The Tragically Hip's Gord Downie sang in Wheat Kings, "You can't be fond of living in the past, 'Cause if you are, then there's no way that you're gonna last." Together we will move forward from where we currently stand, mindful of what matters, and we will weather the storm.
This country isn't perfect, but it has never stopped striving to be better. Canada is beautiful, strong, and free. And it's ours.
With the same moderation changes that resulted in a torrent of hate speech and disinformation on X now set to roll out on Meta (Facebook, Instagram, Threads) it was time to pull up stakes and spend time places that respect facts and people instead. As for what you can expect at Meta moving forward:Users are now allowed to, for example, refer to “women as household objects or property” or “transgender or non-binary people as ‘it,’” according to a section of the policy prohibiting such speech that was crossed out. A new section of the policy notes Meta will allow “allegations of mental illness or abnormality when based on gender or sexual orientation, given political and religious discourse about transgenderism and homosexuality . . . The policy also now allows for content arguing in favor of “gender-based limitations of military, law enforcement, and teaching jobs.”
 |
| In happier days, at the Montreal Pride Parade, August 2016 |
In 2015 Trudeau ushered in Canada’s first gender-balanced cabinet, evenly split between men and women. He helped see Canadians through the early days of the COVID pandemic with the Canada Emergency Response Benefit (CERB) which was instrumental in keeping Canadian COVID fatalities markedly lower than those of the United States. In recent years Trudeau increased Old Age Security (OAS) benefits for seniors seventy-five and older by ten percent, launched a national $10-a-day child care program, and a dental care program for seniors and under 18s with an annual family income of less than $90,00.
The new social programs are unlikely to survive under a Conservative government and cuts to others, including healthcare funding, would likely be harsh. Poilievre voted to stop the dental care program, and a pharmacare program providing free diabetes and birth control, and in 2023 he voted to cut funding for surgery and emergency room wait times by $196.1 billion. Under a Conservative federal government pensions would be slashed too. Poilievre has already voted to increase eligibility for Old Age Security (OAS) and the Guaranteed Income Supplement eligibility from sixty-five to sixty-seven. In 2021 he also voted against the ten percent increase to OAS for seniors seventy-five and older. (Read more about Pierre Poilievre's record on pensions here.)
Thirty-five years ago today the fourteen young women pictured above were fatally shot at École Polytechnique in Montréal because of their gender. The pain of this day never ends. I was attending university in Toronto on the day of the massacre and will never forget it. Your boundless hopes, dreams, ambitions and adventures, some men—having internalized to greater degree than others the patriarchal values and toxic masculinity that still course through our society—don't want you to have these things and would cut you down rather than watch you thrive.
As a nation we haven't really begun to deal with the misogyny behind this massacre decades later. Femicide
should have been added to Canada's Criminal Code many years ago. I hope it
will happen now. Recently the Ottawa Police force made a move in the right direction when they used the term to describe the murder of Jennifer Zabarylo at the hands of her husband.
Misogyny and violence against women should have no place in Canadian society and yet women in Canada are still assaulted or killed daily simply because they are female. Women are more likely than men to report experiencing violent crime at some point since age fifteen. Women are five times more likely than men to experience sexual assault. Women are more likely to experience elder abuse from a family member and account for 58% of senior survivors of family violence. For girls and young women in the north, the rate of violence against them is exceptionally—four times higher than in Canada’s overall population. (See these stats and more at Canadianwomen.org)
Between the years of 2018 and 2022, the Canadian Femicide Observatory for Justice and Accountability estimates that at least 862 women and girls have been the victims of femicide in Canada, with that number increasing by 24% over that time." - Megan Walker, former head of the London Abused Women’s Centre and a longtime advocate for ending violence against women.
