Artisan’s work is his salvation
Carlos Mariani doesn’t need the income for his work as an artisan, but he depends on it for survival. As a recovered alcoholic, 65-year-old Carlos needs meaningful work to occupy his hands and mind, and fill his days. So, when his wife goes to work, Carlos heads down two floors from his apartment near São Paulo to his atelier. There he uses rolled and braided newsprint to make objects such as trivets and picture frames and to decorate furniture including tables, bedframes and chests.
Progressive Argentinian co-ops both give and gain with HomeNet
A tragic fire in a textile sweatshop fueled an Argentinian workers’ movement to form co-operatives and obtain legal rights. Epifania “Fanny” Espinola Garcia well remembers that electrical fire in March 2006 that killed five children and a pregnant woman who worked and lived under appalling conditions.
Santiago activist helped found HomeNet and its gender committee
Activism is Tatiana Venus Rojas Orellana’s birthright. Her grandfather was a union activist in mining, her mother, a skillful vendor, spoke out for human rights and raised Tatiana to be an activist. “She wouldn’t teach me how to cook or anything,” said Tatiana, with a engaging grin.
Words to the wise from an HNI warrior
When asked how many times she’s been arrested as an activist Patricia Coñoman Carrillo shrugs her shoulders. She’s never counted. It’s part of her work as a Chilean union activist and leader defending labour rights, particularly in the textile sector, for nearly 50 years.
Upstream Battle: Lessons on environmental stewardship
Travels up the Creek: A Biologist’s Search for a Paddle (Rocky Mountain Books, 2024) by Lorne Fitch
The discourse about climate change, with some 3,000 books published in 2023 alone, is plainly overwhelming. Those hungering for a more palatable bite might sample Lorne Fitch’s Travels up the Creek, which focuses on environmental degradation in Alberta. Like other climate change books, this one aims for an awakening among readers. For Fitch, this is a cri de cœur to protect what remains and perhaps mitigate some of the damage. “We should be scared, scared spitless in fact, of our current course,” he writes in his introduction.
HomeNet International helps Osasco workers organize and grow
In the beginning, all Edileuza Guimarães wanted was a memorable sweet-sixteen party. Now, she’s an accomplished caterer who co-founded and leads a 1200-member collective of home-based workers in Osasco, Brazil. The journey is less surprising considering her heritage. “I’m the daughter of a trade unionist and a working-class woman,” she said. “I grew up never thinking only of myself, always thinking of us … of joining forces and working collectively.”
24/7 caregiver and seamstress becomes activist
Many home-based workers are also caregivers, but for Marianet López Valenzuela caregiving is a 24/7 responsibility. She rises early every morning to get in a few hours work before her 73-year-old mother wakes at 11. Some days Rosa, who suffers with senile dementia, is able to dress and eat independently and helps prepare food, household chores and care for the plants. Other days she can scarcely get out of bed. Marianet never knows what she will face.
From Kagoshima to Tokyo Bay: A Sailor’s View of Japan
Sailing to the Heart of Japan: A cruising adventure and how-to guide (Seaworthy Publications, 2024) by Nicholas Coghlan.
In preparation for my long-anticipated visit to Japan this fall, I’ve been devouring novels, garden guides, histories and now, a book about sailing “to the heart of Japan.” Over 15 months, Nicholas Coghlan, and his partner and crew Jenny, sailed from the remote and depopulated archipelago of Goto Retto in the East China Sea, through Kanmon Kaikyo narrows and into the Inland Sea, from Kagoshima to Tokyo Bay.
Green Guides: Two books to help your garden grow
Asian Vegetables: Gardening, Cooking, Storytelling (House of Anansi Press, 2023), by Stéphanie Wang, Caroline Wang, and Patricia Ho-Yi Wang, translated by J. C. Sutcliffe
Medicinal Perennials to Know and Grow (Harbour Publishing, 2023) by Dan Jason and Rupert Adams, illustrated by Lyn Alice
Many times, I’ve pondered the Asian vegetables at the Kowloon Market, near my home, where I go to buy bok choy for my version of a stir‑fry. I had no clue how to cook much of the other produce on offer — let alone how to grow it. Asian Vegetables removes some of the uncertainty through detailed instructions for the seasoned gardener like me as well as for the novice, while presenting recipes, simple to complex, for vegetables suited to the temperate northern climate.
A Hintonburg life in poetry
Seventy years of a rich and storied life in Hintonburg unfold through the eyes of a local poet, and his mother, who lived to be 103. Becoming History: A Life Told Through Poetry, is Hintonburg author Blaine Marchand’s 10th book. It tells the life of a seemingly ordinary woman with extraordinary gifts for storytelling and connecting with people.
The allure and challenges of 15-minute neighbourhoods
In the 15-minute neighbourhood all your basic needs — shops, schools, amenities etc. — would be located with a 15-minute walk. The City of Ottawa adopted the concept to help guide development, but is it a realistic goal?
Award-winning Ottawa author, Gabriella Goliger, battles through fanaticism and belief in Eva Salomon’s War
Eva Salomon’s War is waged on several fronts: the protagonist escapes the Holocaust to Palestine. But then she flees again, this time from her rigidly orthodox father, and then battles economic mayhem and pursues a dangerous love. Barbara Sibbald talks to Gabriella Goliger about this unique tale of fanaticism and belief.
What happened to the hospital patients who had “nowhere else to go”?
The rush to clear Canadian hospital beds to make room for COVID-19 cases meant finding places to send thousands of patients who no longer need acute care but previously had nowhere else to go. What happened to them?
Ties that Bind: Washington Black
Washington Black (HarperCollins, 2018) by Esi Edugyan
George Washington Black seems doomed to a life of back- and soul-breaking labour on a sugar plantation in Barbados. Then everything is transformed. Readers will feel empathy for Wash’s predicament and joy when he finds security and love. It seems freedom goes beyond the physical, to encompass the notions of community and being known.
“Poetry will help you be human”
There was never any question of being torn between his two early loves: literature and medicine. Shane Neilson wanted them both. “I wanted it,” he says, “I really wanted it.”
Now 42. Now a family physician at the University of Guelph Student Health Services. Now widely published: nine chapbooks, four books of poetry plus nine other books — memoirs, anthologies, short fiction. A critic and doctoral candidate, with accolades galore: a silver National Magazine Award and Trillium Poetry Award shortlist, the 2017 Walrus Poetry prize.
Sculpture by Jean-Denis Bisson Biscornet
A clothes-free year
No, I won’t be leaving a wake of 911 calls when I walk down the street. Clothes free doesn’t mean au naturel, it means free from the burden of buying clothes. Burden. I choose the word carefully now, a quarter of the way into the year. It is the right word.
Continue reading part 1
Part 2: My closet is bare
Part 3: Temptations
Part 4: Lessons learned
Mid-century modern gem in Rockcliffe gets a makeover
The story begins in January 2014, when Debbie and Mark Willcox began looking for a place to renovate. They immediately agreed that the neglected mid-century house for sale in Rockcliffe needed too much work. And yet, within hours of that initial visit, they found themselves on the phone with their real estate agent, asking follow-up questions. Sometimes the heart rules the head. “Buying a place like this was certainly based on emotion,” says Mark. “We knew the type of house we were looking for — this one checked off all the boxes.” Despite the obvious challenges ahead, the house “just felt so right.”
End coming for misunderstood CMA House
It has been called bland. Even ugly. The rusting steel exterior cladding was an unsightly embarrassment for some staff. It has also been described as refined, meticulously designed and architecturally significant. One thing it has never been is dull.
A clearing for narrative practice
(Profile of Dr. Rita Charon)
We meet in a forest clearing in downtown Toronto, and she tells a story. Of a girl who habitually took 10 books out of the library at once and read them before their due date. Whose French–Canadian grandfather and father, both family doctors, spent their days listening to patients’ stories. Who grew up in Providence, Rhode Island, hearing a sad story of the death of a newborn sister, named and mourned. My storyteller was the chosen one of five surviving daughters. The one chosen by her father to be a doctor.
Brand-name drug costs expected to rise under CETA
New brand-name pharmaceuticals are projected to cost roughly 6.2% more in the long run, at an estimated cost of $850 million a year for Canadians, if the proposed Canada–European Union Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) comes into effect.
Medicine by design
Nineteenth-century hospitals had the look of Scottish castles. Early 20th-century hospitals resembled noble public institutions such as city halls and libraries. After World War II, hospital buildings morphed into office towers. And today? Hospitals look like shopping malls or, depending on your level of cynicism, Toys“R”Us. Scholars of medical history might argue that these design changes reflect advances in medical knowledge and technology. But Annmarie Adams, a scholar of medical architecture and former director of the McGill University School of Architecture, has a different take.
Drug-resistant tuberculosis plagues India
“India is unlucky to be lucky.” This non sequitur, repeated by health care providers in both Delhi and Mumbai, India, was invariably followed by a pause for effect, then the explanation. India’s 1.3 billion people have easy access to inexpensive drugs — often extraordinarily easy at neighbourhood pharmacy counters, where prescriptions are unnecessary. But this access is exacting a high price: drug resistance. Tuberculosis (TB) is a case in point.
“You have come to the right place”
Bhavishya sits opposite me; she looks like a 10-year-old, a thin 10-year-old, with wrists I could easily encircle with my thumb and forefinger; thighs the circumference of my upper arms. Dark circles underline her eyes, which are downcast under long lashes; a surgical mask covers her nose and mouth. Bhavishya looks 10, but I learn she is 17, being treated for extremely drug-resistant tuberculosis. Less than a year ago, she weighed about 62 pounds. She’s four-foot-nine.
Mindful eating
The Diet Fix: Why Diets Fail and How to Make Yours Work (Random House Canada, 2014) by Yoni Freedhoff, MD
The alarming green cover and promise-laden title are reminiscent of every other diet book I’ve read — and eventually discarded. But this is not a diet book. It is an evidence-based, common-sense guide to sustainable eating in our obesogenic culture. It won’t stay on my book shelf long because I’ll be lending it to friends.
Canada Health Act needs bite
We could wait six weeks for magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) here in Ottawa, or we could cross the river to Gatineau, Quebec, shell out $745 and get one tomorrow. But we’d be crossing more than a river. We’d be traversing one of the tenets of the Canada Health Act: accessibility. Some can afford to pay $745; others cannot. And that is the point.
Photo by Barbara Sibbald, taken in Lisbon, Portugal