2024 Reads: Great Stories for Difficult Times
What can we say about 2024 and the times we live in? We live through so little that can qualify as reassuring or hopeful.
Roxanne Dubois
Roxanne Dubois is a union activist, reader, and writer based in Toronto. Every Friday, she publishes an email newsletter called vendredi français which shares original writings and francophone content from all over the web.
Read and subscribe at http://www.vendredifrancais.ca or catch her on twitter at @roxannedubois.
2022: Just Keep Reading
It has become a tradition without which I cannot close the year. Before New Year's Eve, I compile the books I've read and share highlights with friends and readers. A simple tradition that allows me to look back on the places I've travelled to and the people I've met through reading.
2021: A pandemic year in books
The New Year is just around the corner, and I love to review the books I have read during the year: my favourites, the ones I would recommend, and the titles that shined during a difficult time.
Reading through the unprecedented: 2020 reads
Welcome to the end of 2020 where a pandemic made the first half of this year unprecedented, and the rest of it unbelievable, but devastatingly true. Last year, my end-of-year reading compilation was titled 'Reading Balzac in end-times'. So this year, I will avoid any attempt to sum up the dreadful, brutal year that was 2020. Here are my 2020 reads.
Defending public health work
Public health agencies have carried the weight of this pandemic for many months now. As COVID-19 cases rise across Canada and the Fall reveals clear signs of a second wave, it is important to remember the role and purpose of public health workers at all levels -- local, provincial and national.
What is a union and what is it not?
The Alberta majority government has moved a series of bills that, when looked at together, drastically undermine unions in the province. Bill 1, passed in May, makes it illegal to protest 'essential infrastructure'. Bill 32 makes multiple changes to labour law, restricts picketing activities, creates an onerous system where members must opt-in for dues used for 'political activity', and more. Finally, Bill 26 changes the Constitutional Referendum Amendment Act allowing big money to pour into Alberta politics.
Indian Horse by Richard Wagamese | Book review
In this 2012 novel, Saul Indian Horse is a young Indigenous boy who grows up in a residential school in Northern Ontario. Author Richard Wagamese (1955–2017) signed this masterful tale of resistance through sports. The story was made into a beautiful movie, but it's well worth reading the book even if you have seen it.
Critique de livre: Qui sommes nous pour être découragées? par Lorraine Guay
Lorraine Guay est une personalité bien connue dans les milieux communautaires au Québec. Dans le livre *Qui sommes nous pour être découragées?*, la journaliste Pascale Dufour réalise un entretien complet avec cette militante de longue date.
Un livre un jour, un livre toujours
Il y a quelques années, j'ai eu envie d'approcher la lecture de façon structurée. J'aime lire un peu de tout, mais j'aime aussi me fixer des objectifs pour lire des œuvres que je ne lirais pas autrement. En 2017, je suis tombée sur la collection d'Olivier Barrot *Un livre un jour, un livre toujours*, et j'ai su tout de suite que mon programme était fixé. En ordre chronologique, cette liste de 200 livres fait le tour des grands classiques de la littérature.
The right-wing are being forced to eat their own cuts
Prior to the pandemic, many unions and labour activists were in the thick of pushing back against right-wing governments. In Ontario, the PC government under Doug Ford spent its first two years in office slashing health care and education, imposing public-sector wage constraints, and implementing a radical transformation of public services in Ontario. In Alberta, Jason Kenney was still in early days of pursuing a similar program. Then comes a pandemic, and Canada's right-wing has changed their tune.