On a snowy Canadian night in 1981, the athlete and coach Betty Baxter attended a mysterious meeting at a motel outside Montreal with senior administrators of the Canadian Volleyball Association. The body had made her the first woman to coach the national women’s team only a year before.

“There are rumours that you are gay, “ said one of the three men in the room sternly. “Do you deny it?” When Baxter confirmed her sexual orientation and challenged the old men convened to decide her professional fate to justify why the question was relevant, pointing out her successes as national coach, one of them, his face contorted with rage, turned and struck the wall with his fist, shouting “You never would have been given this job if I’d known that.” Baxter  became another victim of the anti-gay purges that had swept through so many dimensions of Canadian life.

Baxter left that darkly miasmic, morally squalid motel room with one chapter of her life over, and about to begin a new chapter, one that saw her become a public icon for queer communities in Canada and around the world, an eloquent spokeswoman for equality and inclusion both in sport and in civil society. She had already come a long way from her 1952 birth in small town Alberta, and was about to go even further.

Outspoken is the story of that transformation. It is also a love letter to the strenuous joys of competitive sport, and to the 2SLGBTQIA+ community that has emerged around the world in her lifetime, courageously confronting  the kind of prejudice that drove her from her first love, coaching and playing competitively,  and into the arena of public political advocacy.

Along the way, this remarkable book provides a brief and vivid account of what one of her book’s blurbs ( this one from former Olympian and U of T professor emeritus Bruce Kidd ) describes as “…the helter-skelter creation of the Canadian sports system in the frantic build up to the 1976 Olympics in Montreal…” . It also tells the story of her involvement in organizing the transformative civic events as Vancouver hosted  the third ever Gay Games in 1990.

Although Brooks, Alberta was not a hot bed of progressive politics when Baxter grew up there, she shares one memory that prefigured the leadership role she later played in the struggle for equality. Her brother John returned from time working as a tutor in Mexico to tell stories about the 1968 Olympics held in the Mexican capitol, stories that included the striking visual of two black US competitors, Tommy Smith and John Carlos standing on the medals podium with downcast heads and fists thrust into the air in what Baxter describes as “the first televised athletes’ protest against racial inequality.”

As she listened to her brother’s stories about a city lit up by Olympic enthusiasm, Baxter knew she wanted to become an Olympian. It was only later that she realized she would need to stand up for her rights and the rights of other gay athletes in exactly the way the two black athletes had stood up for theirs.

This book is an important historic document, a first person account from one of the key players in the drama of how Canada began its long and still incomplete progress toward equality and inclusion for queer people in sports and in the public square. It is also, and this will make it more impactful, beautifully written. Baxter generously names many of her first readers, friends and editors who helped her polish her text, and the collective work on the manuscript, like the collective work organizing the Gay Games and the many other equality projects that have filled her life, has been impressively successful.

Baxter writes beautifully and movingly about the joys of athletic training and achievement, in passages that reflect her life long commitment to fitness and excellence. Anyone who has ever experienced the sublime pleasure of being “in the zone” on a long run or in the midst of a hard fought game will recognize how powerfully Baxter has captured that pleasure, and the painful price the athlete pays to achieve it. She also conveys the pleasures or solidarity and shared effort on the socio-political front. All in all, this book is both beautiful to read and powerfully instructive.

In a time when authoritarian political opportunists here and abroad have mounted the ghastly apocalyptic horses of homophobia, misogyny and transphobia and are galloping the world toward a dark cliff that may take us all into the abyss, this is an important and timely book. Highly recommended.

The post The heroic life of Betty Baxter, athlete and activist appeared first on rabble.ca.

According to the Canadian Chamber of Commerce’s 2024 audited financial statements, 85 per cent of its membership revenue came from Corporate Members despite those members representing only about 0.22 per cent of the total organizations the Chamber says it represents.

In other words, a tiny fraction of the membership base appears to hold outsized financial influence.

And who are these corporate members?

An analysis of the Chamber’s online directory showed that 57 per cent were large enterprises with 250 or more employees. Only 26 per cent were small enterprises.

That bears no resemblance to the Canadian economy.

In Canada, 97.8 per cent of businesses are small businesses. Only 0.3 per cent are large enterprises.

Yet when governments consult “business,” they often hear disproportionately from organizations shaped by the priorities of large corporations.

That is not inherently wrong. Large companies absolutely deserve representation.

But it becomes a problem when corporate priorities are mistaken for the priorities of Canadian business as a whole.

The organizations shaping federal economic policy don’t represent most Canadian businesses

Every year, before the federal budget is finalized, the House of Commons Standing Committee on Finance holds pre-budget consultations. Industry associations, think tanks, advocacy groups, and business organizations are invited to testify about what Canada’s economy needs most.

The process sounds democratic and balanced. Parliament hears from “the business community,” gathers expert advice, and shapes economic policy accordingly.

But there’s a problem hiding in plain sight:

Much of what Canada calls “the business community” is still dominated by the voices of large, traditional corporate interests rather than the realities of most Canadian businesses.

And most Canadians have no idea.

The same voices keep getting the microphone

Over the last decade, the Finance Committee’s witness list has changed considerably from year to year. Some years included hundreds of witnesses; others only a few dozen.

But one organization appeared almost every time: the Canadian Chamber of Commerce.

At first glance, that makes perfect sense. The Canadian Chamber says it represents more than 200,000 organizations across Canada through its network of chambers. Its annual policy process includes proposals submitted by local chambers across the country. On paper, it appears to function as a broad voice for Canadian business.

But representation is not just about numbers. It is about whose priorities drive policy.

A closer look suggests the Canadian Chamber of Commerce is not actually representative of the majority of Canadian businesses, particularly women business owners, self-employed workers, and equity-deserving entrepreneurs.

Women business owners are still largely invisible

The gaps become even clearer when you examine whose experiences appear in policy advocacy and whose do not.

Over the past decade, Canadian Chamber of Commerce policy resolutions have rarely addressed the well-documented barriers facing women business owners.

In fact, the words “woman,” “women,” or “female” appeared in only three per cent of policies per year on average. And when they did appear, they were usually connected to workforce participation issues, especially childcare as a labour-force solution, rather than women’s business ownership, economic leadership, or structural barriers to equity.

This is not necessarily evidence of bad intentions. The Chamber is doing what chambers of commerce historically evolved to do: advocate for the interests of their most influential members.

However, the Canadian government cannot continue to treat an organization with this policy agenda as representative of the general business community.

It is not.

Canada’s economy has changed. Our advocacy systems have not.

Today’s economy looks very different from the one many business institutions were built to represent.

Canada now has growing numbers of self-employed workers, solopreneurs, gig workers, care-based businesses, independent contractors, and hybrid-income earners. Women are increasingly concentrated in business models that do not fit traditional employer-business structures.

Many self-employed women operate without paid employees. Many balance caregiving responsibilities alongside paid work. Many fall through gaps in EI eligibility, income protections, retirement systems, and business development supports.

Yet these realities remain largely absent from mainstream economic advocacy.

The result is a structural blind spot in Canadian policymaking.

If governments primarily hear from organizations shaped by large-enterprise priorities, then policy outcomes will naturally reflect those priorities.

Meanwhile, huge portions of Canada’s actual economy remain politically underrepresented.

Giving Everyone a Chance

Who gets heard matters.

Each year, hundreds of Canadians submit recommendations during the federal budget consultation process, but many of the same organizations are invited to testify before the Finance Committee year after year.

This creates a risk of an echo chamber, where decision-makers hear familiar perspectives while missing emerging issues and grassroots solutions. The people closest to a problem are often the first to identify it, but their voices rarely make it into the room.

One way to broaden participation would be to reserve some witness spots for individuals and organizations selected at random from among those who submitted written recommendations. Even a day or two of randomly selected testimony would create a more equitable process and ensure a wider range of Canadians have a chance to be heard.

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Heather McPherson wants to outlaw the targets of her private member’s bill. She refers to them politely  as “employer influenced unions.” Many workers know these repellent bodies as “yellow dog unions,” ugly creatures that pretend to be unions but put most of their energy into helping employers, often against the interests of the actual workers they purportedly represent. Think Colonel  Sanders claiming he can negotiate on behalf of the chickens or Dracula acting as a blood donor broker.

Unsurprisingly, the head of one of the unions that McPherson singled out for criticism, the Christian Labour Association of Canada, (CLAC) founded in 1952, objected to the proposed legislation. Wayne Prins, CLAC’s Executive Director, said “Nothing in this bill advances the interests of everyday working Canadians, and nothing in it provides protections that don’t already exist in every labour code in Canada……McPherson’s comments are a desperate attempt to garner favour with rival unions to CLAC, and they expose a remarkable lack of understanding of real labour relations in Canada.”

Speaking of lack of understanding of Canadian labour relations, it is worth noting that CLAC’s understanding of labour relations led them within living memory to form a lobbying alliance in BC with  the Progressive Contractors Association, the Independent Contractors and Business Associations, the BC Chamber of Commerce, the Canadian Federation of Independent Business, the Canada West Construction Union (CWCU).   With the exception of the CWCU, which appears to be closely aligned with CLAC, these are all employer side organizations. I guess the folks at CLAC haven’t got the memo yet about being judged by the company you keep. 

On June 4, McPherson’s bill had its first hour of debate, with a second hour slated for October. To those of us who see CLAC as the prime example of yellow dog unionism in Canada, seems like a glacially slow time line, but private members bills (proposed by MPs who are not cabinet members or cabinet secretaries) are often slow to move, often taking several years to be resolved, and in many cases they are where good intentions go to die in Ottawa. 

One of the speakers scheduled to speak at the June 4 press conference being held to mark the first hour of debate on the McPherson bill, is BC heavy equipment operator and human rights advocate Mike Pearson. Pearson’s advocacy for a family whose son, Sam Fitzpatrick, died because of  management recklessness in 2009 at a Peter Kiewit Sons ULC construction site at Toba Inlet in BC, where workers allegedly were represented by CLAC, gave him his own reasons to oppose the pseudo union. Pearson is outraged that CLAC wrote a letter of support for the multinational construction firm when BC’s Worksafe BC issued a then-record fine against the lethal employer, claiming that Kiewit had  a “prior demonstrated commitment to safety.” 

This is a questionable claim, given how often Kiewit  has been cited in worker deaths, injuries  and shoddy workmanship at its projects (see my Tyee story linked above.) With CLAC support, Kiewit got the reduced fine it sought,  in what many observers, including this one, saw as an insulting-to-workers slap on the wrist.

Despite this reduced fine, Worksafe noted “In these circumstances, we would describe it as ‘heedless,’ ‘wanton,’ ‘extreme,’ ‘gross,’ and ‘highly irresponsible’ for the employer to have known that there was a potential for rocks to roll through the worksite but not take adequate steps to contain this risk by way of a detailed and carefully monitored scaling program.”

“My task is to laser focus on the CLAC supporting a smaller fine for the American corporation, rather than advocating for the dues paying (now dead) worker. I’m not here for the politics, I’m doing this to further support worker safety and rights on the jobsite,” Pearson told me in a recent email. 

(Full disclosure, I spent years covering the Fitzpatrick death and Worksafe BC’s fine reduction and through that reporting came to know and respect Pearson)  I am not a neutral on this topic, or on the question of CLAC’s dubious legitimacy. 

Neither are spokespeople for organized labour in Canada and abroad. CLAC, which currently claims to represent over 60,000 Canadian workers (https://www.clac.ca/About-us) was suspended from the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) in 2011 and does not belong to Canadian labour bodies like the Canadian Labour Congress, which hailed McPherson’s bill in a January social media post that read: 

Canadian Labour Congress – Congrès du travail du Canada January 2:

“We applaud  @heathermacnow for introducing Bill C-259, the Fair Representation Act, taking on employer-dominated “company unions” and standing up for real collective bargaining 

This bill gives the Canada Industrial Relations Board stronger tools to protect workers’ right to independent, democratic unions  Canada’s Unions supports this bill because workers deserve a real voice and real power on the job.”

Other union bodies that offered early support for C-259 include the Edmonton and District Labour Council  IUOE local 955( IUOE Local 955 support) and  IBEW local 424 (IBEW Local 424 support.) 

Avi Lewis, the newly elected NDP leader, has voiced his support for this initiative, saying “Workers fought for generations to build strong, independent unions. Those gains shouldn’t be taken for granted. Protecting union independence means protecting workers’ ability to stand together and fight for better wages, safer workplaces, and more dignity on the job.”

Heather McPherson has called on every member of Parliament who claims to support labour rights and worker safety to support her bill. She  told the Tyee at the end of 2025:

“One of the things I like best about the anti-CLAC legislation is, if Pierre Poilievre really wants to show himself as being opposed to company unions, if he’s really on it for the side of workers, his folks will support that bill. Otherwise, his cards are on the table and it’ll be pretty clear that’s not who he’s here for.” 

In my view, that goes for every MP, not just the Poilievre posse. I urge every reader to let their MP know you want them to support this bill, and get your union local, labour council, faith group, book  or bowling club to tell Parliament that bill C-259 should be passed and implemented. Some people are worried, too often rightly these days, about the phenomenon of “fake news.” We should also beware of “fake unions”.

The post Curb that Yellow Dog! Private Members Bill targets employer-collusive unions appeared first on rabble.ca.

Creation stories, or myths, that account for the origin of the universe, the Earth, the continents, mountains, rivers, life, or the first humans–these can provide a common purpose and unity.

Nation states have their own creation stories. But countries are demarcated by artificial political boundaries. Their creation stories tend to reflect history as written by the victors in politics and war. They are more likely to generate conflict, separatism, and polarization than indigenous creation stories. 

The woman who falls from the sky is a great Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) creation story.  In many Indigenous creation stories, the first humans are interacting with other creatures. 

Sometimes animals dive into the depths of the ocean to bring up the material that becomes the continents, like our own Turtle Island.

Sky people versus bringing up material from the depths—both are important aspects of creation. 

The question isn’t whether stories are “true,” but whether they enrich our lives and cultures.

Western science has competing creation stories for the origins of life. Some scientists maintain that life came from the sky, perhaps from outside our planet, or from electrical processes in the atmosphere. Others say life came from rocks and gases in the depths of the oceans, before there was any land.

In the latter case, which increasing evidence supports, Earth is truly the mother of us all. Scientists have found signs of early life in the Earth’s oldest rocks, dating back nearly four billion years.  

Back then there were no “higher organisms”: species with shells or skeletons that turned into fossils. Nonetheless, some of the first microorganisms formed sedimentary deposits that later became stone. The earliest signs of life in rocks are subtle, and a subject of scientific debate.  

Creation of life was not a single point in time. Evolution has been a continuous process. For a billion years during the Proterozoic Eon, it seemed as if not much was happening. Gradually, however, the Sun’s energy, through the process of photosynthesis, was oxygenating the atmosphere. So-called “higher” life forms like fungi, plants and animals took their place alongside the microbes.

Science has given us an appreciation not only of how our world came to be, but how long it took to create the beauty we have now. 

The first organisms–our most distant ancestors–appeared many kilometres deep in the oceans where Earth’s internal forces were pulling apart tectonic plates. There, under intense heat and pressure, and without sunlight or oxygen, they developed the metabolic pathways that all life forms rely on today.

While conditions in the ocean depths sound incredibly harsh to us, life still flourishes there in the absence of sunlight. Since life’s earliest days, microbes have fed upon the hydrogen and sulphur gases emitted from hydrothermal vents, providing the basis for increasingly complex food webs. Scientists continue to discover bizarre new species of fish, crabs, clams, and tube worms at the bottom of the sea. 

Think of hydrothermal vents as the cradle of life–the warm womb of Mother Earth.  When life originated around them, the Earth’s surface was a far more hostile environment, bombarded with cosmic radiation in the absence of a well-developed atmosphere.

Life has persisted and evolved for billions of years. Having developed the ability to tap into the Sun’s energy, our relatives and ancestors—non-human life forms–found a nearly infinite number of ways to thrive on surface lands and waters, covering them in beauty.

The good news is that this can continue for several more billion years. The Sun is only a middle-aged star.  

The bad news is that we humans, mostly through excessive use of fossil fuel energy, are destroying life, reversing billions of years of evolution.

Science has given us a magnificent creation story for life itself. Wider appreciation of this story might help unify human cultures. It can serve as an overlay to the tribal and nation state creation stories that sometimes unite us, but too often pull us apart.

The post Creation stories can unify us appeared first on rabble.ca.

Labour reporter Gabriela Calugay-Casuga sits down with Émile Lacombe, a high school teacher and union organizer in Montreal with Alliance Ouvrière to discuss why the labour movement needs to stop hiding behind legal technicalities and start taking direct action to win back its power.

About our guest

Émile Lacombe is a high school teacher and union organizer in Montreal, Quebec. He has been a member of Alliance Ouvrière (Worker’s Alliance) since 2024 and he is secretary of the Montreal chapter’s public sector caucus.

If you like the show please consider subscribing on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube and now: subscribe to rabble on Patreon to hear exclusive bonus episodes of rabble radio.

The post Building a more militant labour movement with Émile Lacombe appeared first on rabble.ca.

The fight to repeal section 107 from the Canadian Labour Code has progressed after the House of Commons had the second reading of the bill aimed at abolishing it. 

Leaders from the NDP and Canada’s union movement have rallied around the bill, framing the repeal of section 107 as key to defending the right to strike. At the same time, smaller labour organizations are working to reclaim the political strike as a tool the labour movement can wield to assert workers’ rights. 

Bill C-247 was tabled in October and highlights how section 107 of the labour code has been used in the last two years to tilt the scales during collective bargaining. Section 107 gives the labour minister the power to do things that “seem likely to maintain or secure industrial peace” when they deem it expedient.  

Section 107 has been invoked eight times in the last two years and has ended legal strikes being held by rail workers, flight attendants and postal workers. 

“Every single time that a government oversteps and uses 107 or any other legislation to send workers back to work, they are undermining the work that happens at the [bargaining] table,” said Siobhan Vipond, vice president of the Canadian Labour Congress. “Let us be clear, every single time that 107 has been used by this government, it has been used in favor of the employer.” 

NDP leader, Avi Lewis, expressed support for repealing section 107 in hopes it will balance the power at the bargaining table. 

“No worker wants to give up their own wages to go on a picket line,” Lewis said, “but when you’re talking about bargaining in Canada, in a cost of living crisis, where people cannot afford groceries, cannot afford rent and mortgages, being paid a fair wage is our only hope for workers in Canada of getting out of this cost of living emergency, and it’s only the right to strike that balances the scales in labor negotiations, so that employers can’t just do what they want.”

For organizers like Emile Lacombe, who has been organizing with the Alliance Ouvrière (Worker’s Alliance) since 2024, this effort to amend the labour code is positive. But the ongoing attack on the right to strike signals a need to build more labour militancy. 

“What we’re seeing right now is that the government is taking advantage of the fact that we’re disorganized, that we’re used to taking the legal route,” Lacombe said in an interview with rabble.ca. “The thing is that they have the upper hand on that department, because they can change laws, the bosses can hire better lawyers than us.”

LISTEN: Emile Lacombe talks about the political strike on rabble radio

Lacombe joined a panel at a conference held by the International League of People’s Struggles last week where he discussed the importance of reclaiming the political strike, a strike that happens not just to secure a fair deal but also to assert broader political or social demands. 

Representing the Workers Alliance Emile spoke alongside speakers with the Immigrant Workers Centre, the International Migrants Alliance, Migrante Canada and the 1919 Workers Collective. All groups agreed that labour should build towards the political strike. 

Lacombe highlighted that the history of the political strike is strong in Canada. Workers used the strike to fight against government austerity in 2015 and to stand up for the environment in 2019. Now, in a time where the NDP and unions are fighting to protect the right to strike, Lacombe said these large mobilizations of workers may be exactly what’s needed to demonstrate that workers’ hard fought wins cannot just be taken away.  
“If we want the right to strike, we need to prove it in action and to show it by defying back to work orders,” Lacombe said. “That’s the only way that we can ensure that we have this right.”

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Consider for a moment what it would be like to be a fly on the wall at a cocktail party hosted by Marilyn Monroe and her husband, Arthur Miller, when the only guest is Norman Mailer. Now, imagine that turned into a play.

American Devotion, a fictional play by Franca Miraglia, explores the intersection of fame, politics and power in 1957 America. The play is set in Monroe and Miller’s Connecticut farmhouse just after Miller has been called to testify before the House of Un-American Activities Committee at the height of McCarthyism.

Miller was Monroe’s third husband. Monroe was Miller’s second wife. Their marriage lasted five years on paper from 1956 to 1961.

Their guest, Norman Mailer, a Pulitzer Prize writer, journalist, and filmmaker, was obsessed with Monroe’s life and death despite never having met her. 

For added context, it’s helpful to note that Mailer had a total of six wives, one of which he famously stabbed with a penknife during a party at the couples’ home in 1960.

The play in reference, American Devotion, explores a fictional universe where Mailer successfully engineers a coveted invitation for cocktails with the reclusive couple. 

Inspired by a passage from Miller’s 1987 autobiography, Timebends: A Life, in which Miller admits that he regrets not inviting Mailer to the couple’s home for dinner. That snub appeared to fuel Mailer’s vengeful writings about Miller, Monroe and her death.  

Mailer’s bio-novel, Marilyn: A Biography (1973) was his creative interpretation of Monroe’s life. In 1980, Mailer wrote a second imagined autobiography titled, Of Women and Their Elegance. His play Strawhead, co-written with Richard Hannum, an adaptation of Women and Their Elegance, focused on imagined interviews between Monroe and Mailer during the last hours of her life. Mailer went so far as to cast his daughter, Kate Mailer, as Monroe.

American Devotion delves into the ravages of celebrity culture that’s reliant on fickle fans; the expectations placed on art and the need to remain relevant. The play also explores political paranoia and the personal cost of public loyalty.  

Playwright Franca Miraglia puts two larger-than-life men together in a room. They then have  to figure out how to pass the time while they wait for the notoriously late Monroe to finally make her entrance. 

Eventually, the debate devolves into a battle, pitting Miller’s brains against Mailer’s brawn. This culminates in an epic, “take no prisoners” fight with Monroe as the ultimate prize. But, never underestimate a brilliant woman, because Monroe knows the dynamics stating, “Two men together in the same room. Of course it’s a competition: one wins, the other doesn’t.” And, Monroe ultimately has her own plans.

Misha Harding portrays Monroe in Miraglia’s production. It will be making its world debut June 4 in Toronto. Harding believes very few people, past or present, are as iconic as Monroe. 

“Everyone carries an image in their head of who she is. A favourite movie, what she looks like, what she sounds like. It’s hard to imagine any actor living up to that blonde bombshell image. But ‘Marilyn’ was just that: an image, a persona, one carefully and consciously curated by the woman herself,” Harding told rabble.ca via email.

What struck Harding most was the conflicting duality within Monroe that’s reflected in her own writings. Despite being emotionally perceptive, fragile and deeply vulnerable, Monroe had a poetic optimism and grounded sense of humanity.

Often portrayed as the dumb blonde or the victim of circumstance, Monroe was a self-educated, self-made success in an industry dominated by powerful men. By leveraging her sharp skills as a comedian and reclaiming her sexuality, Monroe cleverly and consciously crafted an unforgettable persona while risking her career by pushing back against the studio system, demanding better roles, fair pay and creative control. In fact, Monroe even co-founded her own production company, Marilyn Monroe Productions, with Milton Greene in 1955.

Her strong moral compass and capacity for empathy meant Monroe spoke openly about the sexual abuse she experienced as a child while she used her substantial influence to give a hand-up to other women, most notably Ella Fitzgerald. In order to help Fitzgerald get a booking at the Mocambo nightclub, Monroe promised to sit in the front row each and every night. 

When asked how it feels to play such an objectified and misunderstood woman as Monroe, Harding replied, “It’s a deeply exciting, and truthfully intimidating, honour. I may be depicting a fictional version of Marilyn, but she was a real person. And, given how well-known she is, I think it’s safe to say that playing her comes with certain expectations. For me, the challenge is finding the balance between giving audiences a sense of the icon they recognize and portraying a more intimate, complex interpretation of the real woman behind the persona.”

Miraglia remembers always having an outsized fascination with Monroe. “It is crazy to think that many of her contemporaries dismissed her as a “starlet” or a “sex symbol” and yet she has endured all these years. June 1st will be the 100th Anniversary of her Birthday and the number of special exhibits, events and celebrations around the world planned to honour her is amazing!” Miraglia told rabble.ca.

She remembers watching Some Like It Hot as a young woman and being enthralled with Monroe’s mix of pure sexiness and strong sense of self-worth. That confirmed for Miraglia that she did not need to fit nicely into any box “others” used to define her.

Miraglia wrote American Devotion over 12 years ago. While it had many close calls, it never got a production partially because some felt McCarthyism was a forgotten part of US history. 

Miraglia had almost given up on getting American Devotion produced. Then Trump got elected for a second term and the US history of dabbling with fascism during McCarthyism suddenly seemed relevant and worth exploring.

“Suddenly the rising tide of fascism around the world with strongman political leaders that use fear fueled by social media to control populations, makes it worthwhile to take a closer look at McCarthyism and specifically how it pressured actors, screenwriters, directors and entertainers to “name names” of friends with ties (real or imagined) with communism. And if they didn’t cooperate with the House of Un-American Activities (HUAC) then they risked being blacklisted and silenced along with financial ruin,” said Miraglia.

“Speaking truth to power is something that needs to be protected – our media, our artists, our schools all need to have this fundamental right protected as the first-line of defence against the encroachment of fascism,” she added. 

As a Canadian playwright, Miraglia believes we can’t look to the US and just assume that nightmare couldn’t happen here. She highlights the obligations of citizens. Those of which require each of us to be informed, stay vigilant and hold politicians responsible for delivering on social and economic policies that best serve the country and all of its citizens.  

June 1, 2026 would have been Marilyn Monroe’s 100th birthday. In celebration of that momentous occasion, By the Word Productions is presenting the World Premiere of American Devotion. And, the timing couldn’t be better as America and the world slogs its way through three and a half more years of Trumpism and everyone with a social conscience or sense of social justice is being labelled a communist while women are relegated to being blonde, dumb and obedient.

“She was more than just her pain and addiction, she was funny, smart, curious, empathetic, and I want the audience to see that too. Ultimately, I hope to do her justice,” said Harding.

The post New Play Explores McCarthyism in the Time of Trump appeared first on rabble.ca.

All Hookers Go To Heaven by Angel B.H.

All Hookers Go To Heaven is a fiction novel by Nova Scotia-born writer Angel B.H. The novel follows Mag, a sex worker from a rural Eastern Canadian town, as she navigates Purity Culture, sexuality, faith, and financial insecurity. Mag questions her conservative upbringing after she develops feelings for another girl while attending an Evangelical Missionary program for youth.

Praise for All Hookers Go To Heaven

“At once fearless and tender, this book is a sex worker heroine’s journey that shimmers with beauty, longing, fierce intelligence, emotional complexity, and bursts of wry humor,” said Chinese-Canadian writer Kai Cheng Thom. “At the heart of this deeply absorbing novel is an unforgettable protagonist whose search for the sacred within herself in a world that routinely dehumanizes and devalues sex workers is sure to linger in readers’ hearts.”  

Crooked Teeth by Danny Ramadan

Crooked Teeth is a memoir by Syrian-Canadian author Danny Ramadan. In this rejection of an oversimplified refugee narrative, Ramadan invites readers into his nuanced journey as a queer refugee. Crooked Teeth explores Damascus, Syria’s underground network of queer safe homes, the Arab Spring uprisings throughout the Middle East, and continuous threats against Syria’s 2SLGBTQIA+ community.

Praise for Crooked Teeth

“I take my hat off to Danny Ramadan and his brilliant muses. This is a mesmerizing story of growing up gay in a Muslim Syrian family, of the challenges and joys of finding and creating loving communities, and the miracle not just of physical survival but of an effervescent celebration of the human heart,” said renowned Canadian novelist Lawrence Hill. “Once I began reading, I couldn’t stop until the final page. Countless others will be thankful for this raw, idiosyncratic, utterly compelling account of Danny’s long journey home.” 

The Regulation of Desire by Gary Kinsman

The Regulation of Desire is a 2SLGBTQ+ book written by Toronto-born sociologist Gary Kinsman. At the time of its initial publication in 1987, The Regulation of Desire was recognized as the first book-length study of Canada’s sexual regulation. In the third edition of the text (published in 2024), Kinsman analyzes the role that Indigenous liberation and police and prison abolition have in 2SLGBTQIA+ politics.

Praise for The Regulation of Desire

“The 3rd edition of Regulation of Desire by Gary Kinsman is a brilliant, thoughtful and captivating text. It is one that offers us insight into his process of uncovering and disrupting the discourses and practices of whiteness, homonormativity, capitalism and neoliberalism of the contemporary white queer movement in Canada,” said University of Toronto professor Beverly Bain.

“In this new edition, Kinsman reveals how the social organizing of forgetting has worked to subvert the histories of organizing by Black, racialized, queer, trans and two-spirited people. He endeavors to address these erasures by centering the most recent revolts and uprisings by Black and Indigenous and Two-Spirit Peoples.”

a body more tolerable by jaye simpson

a body more tolerable is a poetry collection by Oji-Cree Saulteaux Indigiqueer writer jaye simpson. In a body more tolerable, simpson explores female rage, trans identity, sexuality and Indigenous grief through a series of visceral poems.

Praise for a body more tolerable

“jaye simpson’s a body more tolerable is a singular achievement. Her poetic project, at once forward-dawning and ancestral, both revolutionary and decolonizing, is given total expression in this book,” said Cree poet Billy-Ray Belcourt.

“These poems moved me immensely; there is so much beauty, feeling, and power in all of them. No one is writing like jaye simpson.”

Perfect Little Angels by Vincent Anioke

Perfect Little Angels is a story collection by Nigerian-Canadian writer Vincent Anioke. Set predominantly in Nigeria, the characters in Anioke’s Perfect Little Angels are used as a vehicle to explore themes of self-expression, religion, masculinity, marginalization and 2SLGBTQ+ identity.

Praise for Perfect Little Angels

“The stories in Perfect Little Angels are, by turns, scathing, brilliant, and incredibly compelling. Anioke’s characters wade through startling and at times violent circumstances with tender humanity; they grapple with the harsh consequences of unforgiving traditions and defiant desires,” said Nigerian-Canadian writer and director francesca ekwuyasi.

“With striking lyricism and unexpected plot twists, Perfect Little Angels is deeply moving and thoroughly enjoyable.”

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