COVID-blues getting you down? No matter how difficult life was to begin with, the current pandemic has, for most of us, made it even harder. Families are financially strapped, kids are missing their school friends, and parents everywhere are united in their chorus of, “If I have to cook one more meal…” What follows is…
I’m back on my soapbox, and I’m angry. And I’m sorry (not sorry), but the focus of my anger has barely shifted from the gun violence I ranted about last time. Over the weekend, we saw the young people of America – indeed, the world – come together in a spectacular way to protest gun…
It’s always a little awkward, writing a blog post after a long period of silence. I decided that instead of trying to explain my absence, I would come back with a regular Soap Box feature. About once a week, I would find something that made me feel outraged, and I would vent about it. With…
So. Donald Trump is now the President of the United States. Very few people thought this would actually happen, including, I would venture to say, Mr. Trump himself. I think most of the world held onto an unrealistic hope, right up until the ninety ninth hour, that something would happen to prevent or delay him…
Dear friends who voted for Donald Trump, I’m going to start this letter with a disclaimer: I am not an American. I am a Canadian citizen who voted for Justin Trudeau in the last federal election. That should give you an idea of which way I lean politically. If you were to look up the…
Last year, I wrote web content for a facility called Addiction Rehab Toronto. I was working nights at the time, staying up long after the family had gone to bed, doing research, learning heartbreaking things about addiction and reading gut-wrenching real-life accounts written by addicts and their loved ones. Addiction is one of those subjects…
If you’ve spent any amount of time on Facebook over the last few months, you might have seen something called the Black Dot Campaign. The concept is simple: if you see a woman with a black dot in the palm of her hand, she is a victim of ongoing domestic violence and needs to be…
When Bruce Jenner became Caitlin Jenner earlier this year, Facebook erupted with judgmental posts. No surprise there – after all, Facebook has been the venue of many battles, including the Vaccine Wars, the Gay Marriage Wars, the Breastfeeding In Public Wars, and many more. People say all kinds of things from the safety of their…
A few days ago, an eighteen-year-old woman named Sanet – the sister of one of my friends – was brutally assaulted in Cape Town. She got into a taxi to get home after a night out with friends, and the taxi driver and another man pinned her down, kicked her and beat her. She was…
Last week, Wal-Mart announced that by 2016, all of their employees in the United States will be earning a minimum of $10 per hour – up from their current minimum wage of $9 per hour. While this is more than the federally mandated minimum wage, it’s really not enough for someone to live on. In…