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.”

 

I've already left Facebook (and Twitter/X before that) and am currently in the process of packing up my Instagram account. Many of my favourite photographs from 2007 to the present have moved to Flickr. My final day on Instagram will be January 19th. 

 

Here are some other places you can continue to find me:

✮ Bluesky: caramartin
✮ Spoutible: CaraCKMartin
✮ Mastodon: mstdn.ca/@ckkellymartin
✮ Tumblr: ckkellymartin
✮ Flickr: ckkellymartin
✮ Goodreads: C. K. Kelly Martin

 

 

Once Bluesky's photo-sharing app Flashes is available I'll post photos there too. And of course there are always my websites:

www.ckkellymartin.com
www.caramartin.ca
www.justlikeyousaiditwouldbe.com

You can find up to date links to the social media networks I appear on at each website. 

 

 

I’ve never doubted that Justin Trudeau loves this country and am gravely disappointed that he’s leaving under such fraught circumstances. We’ll never know what his fate might've been if Canada still had a free mainstream media (not owned by a foreign extreme right constantly in attack mode) and a hardcore social media disinformation campaign hadn’t been waged against Trudeau, in particular, and progressive movements in general. As one BlueSky user aptly described the mainstream media and social media onslaught: "2 years of character assassination." 

A politician’s political life doesn’t last forever, but it shouldn’t have ended this way. Trudeau had a bright, optimistic and inclusive vision of Canada and at this point the party ahead in the polls stands for the polar opposite.

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.)

 

Geneviève Bergeron, Hélène Colgan, Nathalie Croteau, Barbara Daigneault, Anne-Marie Edward, Maud Haviernick, Maryse Laganière, Maryse Leclair, Anne-Marie Lemay, Sonia Pelletier, Michèle Richard, Annie St-Arneault, Annie Turcotte and Barbara Klucznik-Widajewicz.

 

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.

You can read more about each of the young women killed in École Polytechnique 35 years ago on the CBC feature, Remember the 14.