#Canada Book day

[allthecanadianpolitics]

Toronto's oldest queer bookshop was on the brink of closing its doors last month after facing eviction but it is now back on its feet after an outpouring of community support — and just in time for Pride Month. On Monday, Glad Day Bookshop, located in the heart of Toronto's Gay Village, launched an online fundraiser to appeal to the community to save its business. The store said it needed $100,000 to avoid eviction in July. Just a few days later, the business was able to collect more than $112,000 after community members rallied together to support the long-running shop. Michael Erickson, co-owner of Glad Day Bookshop, said it feels like a "Pride miracle.  "The fact that 2,000 people supported us within three [to] four days is pretty incredible," Erickson told CBC Toronto.

Continue Reading.

Tagging: @newsfromstolenland

[ya-world-challenge]

Ah, I realized it's Fuck Columbus Day and people are reblogging my old post of indigenous books. I meant to make a new, updated one at some point. So here's a bunch of covers of ones I'd like to read (and one that I have). I'm especially eyeing those anthologies (the first 2 images)

Never Whistle at Night: An Indigenous Dark Fiction Anthology

Love After the End: Two-Spirit Utopias and Dystopias

A Grandmother Begins the Story by Michelle Porter

Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer

The Barren Grounds by David A Robertson

Weird Rules to Follow by Kim Spencer

Rez Ball by Byron Graves

A Snake Falls to Earth by Darcie Little Badger

Warrior Girl Unearthed by Angeline Boulley

We Didn't Think It Through by Gary Lonesborough

Living on Stolen Land by Ambelin Kwaymullina

Fire from the Sky by Moa Backe Astot

[yellowsugarwords]

The Diaries of Franz Kafka

[nicco-ck]

I wanna draw so bad but I'm trying to stay on top of my readings so I have like 3 chapters to read but it's so boring and I don't wanna read it </3 😔😔

[reedreadsbooks]

glad day is literally the coolest bookstore ever btw.

it’s the oldest surviving queer bookstore in the world and they always have art and zines by independent artists and they do drag brunches every Sunday and they have a bar/cafe so you can get a little drink while you’re there (and they have lots of non-alcoholic cocktail options, all of which are just as fun as the alcoholic version)

and ik they’re struggling to stay open right now so if you’re near Toronto you should check them out because they are so cool and the staff are so nice and it’s been the highlight of my visit the last few times i’ve been in Toronto

[jellogram]

In light of nothing at all that is happening in the news this week, Americans might like to know that we're allowed entry to numerous countries without a visa. In Canada, Mexico, the UK, and some Caribbean nations, we're allowed for six months on just a passport. In most of Europe and South America, plus some of Asia, it's 90 days per country. Here's a the whole list with more! Because it's so fun to think about these things!

[givemethedamnflowers]

One thing that always fucked with my head is aftg is how they manage to keep their languages skills with barely any practice

The vocabulary the pronunciation how to form a sentence how to conjugate a verb theese fly out the window real fast when you dont pratice

[rabbitcruiser]

The children’s book Winnie-the-Pooh, by A. A. Milne and E. H. Shepard, was first published on October 14, 1926.

[six-of-ravens]

on the plus side a) the sheets over my windows have kept the apartment somewhat cool (not like, actually cool but comfortable as long as I don't dare to wear real clothes lol) and b) part of my indigo order has shipped!

[gennsoup]

and John, that goddamned railroad never made this a great nation, cause the railway shut down and this country is still quarreling over unity

Marilyn Dumont, Letter to Sir John A. Macdonald

[alliwanttodoiscollectpoetry]

Catherine Owen

[osuracakima]

• Reading philosophy and waiting for the sun to touch me •

[desdasiwrites]

He tastes like coffee and maple syrup and coming home after a long day.

– Carley Fortune, Meet Me at the Lake

[canadachronicles]

A Foggy Day, indeed, both literally and because I miss my girl --who was here with me only yesterday-- terribly. Oscar Peterson can always soothe me, tough...

[icewindandboringhorror]

Daily Log

Trying out (probably just temporarily) making short daily-ish notes about things, in an attempt to see if it helps me be more reflective or productive lol.

Activities: Badly carved an eye into an avocado pit with a nail cuticle tool thing. trying to think of better designs to carve into avocado pits. I don't really have the right tools, maybe should order some carving tools. I hate buying things online eeeeee..

Worked on translating a poem into Avirrekava (my constructed language for one of my fantasy species) so I can paint it onto a tapestry sort of thing I'm making, kind of in the style of medieval illuminated manuscripts? I do not have paintbrushes small enough.

Spent a lot of time thinking more about the story with an investigator tracking a doctor who's doing strange experiments and they eventually become friends(ish) after trying to kill each other a few times, lol (set in my fantasy world though, so magic is involved, etc. It's just interesting to think about testing the limitations of magic and what type of experimentation people would do, especially if you own a hospital or morgue or other scenario where you have access to bodies, or good cover for hiding them, etc. Plus worldbuilding religions in the world, what their ideas of morality would be, what an "investigator" or police force would even look like in that setting, etc. Two jhevona main characters in a city full of elves and the in-world politics of that, class war and royals, pretentious scholar communities and how they'd operate, actual magic combat between two advanced magic users and what that would look like (mixing illusions or higher level spells with minor brute force tactics, evasion, enchantments, shapeshifting, etc.) etc. etc. ).

Organized some of my plants, but still need to replant some fully. Succulents grow SO fast, I think I'll run out of room. Also one has burnt to a crisp during the heat wave last week.. my son.. ToT.

Edited a few costume photos then gave up because my camera is evil and I always have that thing where it looks really cool in the mirror but then the final photos suck, which demotivates me to even do anything with them/feels like a waste.

Still chronic health issue sick stinky as usual, plus it's still warm inside from the heat a few days ago so being hot makes joint pain worse... evil.. no energy. fell asleep on the floor for like 30 minutes.

Tried a new oreo flavor and ranked it on my comprehensive oreo ranking list. Mediocre as usual, but I'm too far in to give up now gghj.. I have to just try them all. A fool's labor.

Notable sights: found one 6 leaf clover, two 5 leaf clovers, and eleven 4 leaf clovers. Saw a rabbit, 3 cats in windows, and 4 ducks. Also at some point I was squishing gum in my hand and pulling it apart and when stretched out it would make these really cool spindly spider web patterns. The sky later in the day was hazy pink, purple, and blue pastel sunset.

Goals moving forward: Wake up on time even if I feel sick when I wake up!!! Focus on more immediate projects, don't get distracted. Actually make room for investing in social time and replying to people even with minimal energy reserves. Stay consistent with physical therapy exercises. Plant nasturtiums. Finish and upload videos, email doctors, edit pictures, post the poll adventure thing that has been sitting in a draft for weeks.

Notable foods: None today, but I have asparagus for later which is exciting... my new favorite vegetable whilst on the stinky Nutritionist Prescribed Special Limited Diet

[leam1983]

Oh (no) Canada...

We've made ourselves some pasta salad and some deviled eggs, and Walt thought he'd break ground by introducing us to Maria Chapdelaine, the 2020 adaptation of Louis Hémon's 1910s novel on the long-suffering nature of your average French Canadian Catholic settler.

To be fair, he knew what to expect and pointed a finger at me. "Don't spoil it for me or Sarah, Mister French Literature degree!" he'd said, while bringing his slice of Key Lime pie to slowly peck at it over the movie's runtime.

I'm not about to give anyone who could read this an expert class, but let's just say that the early twentieth century was one that saw Eastern Canada be oppressively stifled by our Catholic priesthood, to the point of instilling gonzo virtues in the local literary output - such as the notion that a self-respecting colonist moved way up north into Pine Country, hacked foundations out of soil that never completely thaws using primitive tools and then spent a precious few months out of the entire year cultivating a few veggies out of the hardscrabble, with the end-goal of either covering his loan for his lot and tools or dying a good, long, agonizing and Christian death while the sawbones is trying to push a frustrated gelding through fifteen inches of snow. The priest got to you first if you were lucky, you were given your Last Rites and, well, that was it.

So. In this context, we find young and demure Maria Chapdelaine, settled in a verdant hellhole I'd call the Saguenay Lac-Saint-Jean region generations prior to modern-day logging camps and factories. As the exact same spot today is heavily industrialized outside of the pine preserves, but back then, it basically was a clean slate. For people from Montreal or Quebec City, the North was their second Klondike of choice: either you moved down to the States to adapt to the Big City or you abandoned civilization out of the honestly unproven notion that you could just Harvest Moon your way to prosperity.

Maria is sixteen, marriageable, demure, soft-spoken - and absolutely gonzo for a Métis trapper called François Paradis. He represents the 1910s Judeo-Christian ideal in the region, the "Civilized Wild Man" with all the virtues needed to thrive in Society and all the backbone and gumption you'd need to stake out your own fortune in an inhospitable environment. He loves her in the same way - desperately. She hasn't obtained her father's consent, however, so nothing happens. Nothing happens for long enough, in fact, that François up and dies in those pine-strewn wastes after betraying his status as a supposedly-flawless tracker. Maria is beyond distraught, but her social conditioning holds fast. She's the second woman of the household, so her grief only shows at night.

The problem is, Paradis hadn't proposed to her. He hadn't so much as engaged her, either, so it's effectively a love being pined for out of wedlock. You can imagine what the local priests, hypocrites that they are, would've thought about that.

Then comes the second john; a man going by Lorenzo Surprenant. He's the Self-Made Man, the Guy Who's Made it - or to borrow from French songwriter Bernard Lavilliers, the archetypal Tonton d'America, pulling several tall tales about Buffalo, Indiana's trolley system, its electric lights, its well-heated and lit brownstones and, well, the whole glitz and glam of the City, when all you've known is pines that are snowy about eight months out of twelve. Maria hasn't gone over the loss of her pelt-wearing Ken doll, so she responds to Lorenzo's advances noncommittally.

Finally follows Eutrope Gagnon, her neighbour by a few country miles who more or less promises a straight-line continuation of her current life. If anything, he's barely more of an optimized version of her father, as he's budgeted every purchase decades in advance and clearly has contingency plans set in place that could allow for failing crops or subpar yields to generate some profit. He has none of the first's passion, none of the second's pragmatic outlook on holding down a city-based job - and also none of the elder Chapdelaine's hangups about working on a milder lot further down south, where yields are better even if the social and moral credit of giving it a shot up north is abandoned.

If you thought she'd throw her conventions aside during a Disney musical number and confront Buffalo as a new challenge for her to undertake, you haven't really studied up on how the upper States and Provinces in the East coast were still stupefyingly Conservative as of World War One. The Roaring Twenties would improve things in cities, but only the sixties would see Progressivism fully kick the French Canadian clergy in the teeth.

As all this - the suffering of people like Maria's character, her settling for an unambitious life focused on servitude - was seeded in place by our clergy. We were born humble, made for humble lives and destined for hardship. To the Anglophones and Americans went tall tale of pre- and postwar success, we were being held down and more or less morally and intellectually abused by a ruling class of stole-wearing fuckwads who were the defacto lords-o-the-manor for most lots across Quebec that weren't, in fact, in Anglophone hands.

Considering this, should you really be surprised that Quebec and Ontario are as Liberal and Progressive as they are? We didn't just cast our chains off in the Quiet Revolution - we broke them to smithereens. It makes most of us default allies to POC, to the LGBTQA+, all of it because we know precisely well what it feels like to be marginalized. We know precisely how it feels to have natural instincts, personal goals or greater hopes be considered anathema by morons with a collar who hid behind their status as divinely-anointed representatives to control local politics, stifle minds and hoard their admittedly surprising scientific knowledge base (see Jesuits and their interest in Natural Sciences, for instance) for themselves alone.

They got money, they got resources, and French Canadians were told to shut up and take it, to the point where one of our leading character archetypes in adventure serials was Maria Chapdelaine's clone!

Shut up and like it. Carry your burden nobly. Suffer for sins you know nothing of. Endure in silence, for your reward is in Heaven.

Walt's background is consequently different. He grew up reading of Ontario's own Catholic and Anglican priesthoods, but Ontario and the ROC never really had this masochistic complex on being less than nothing and remaining as such. Ontarians are Diet Americans, in a sense - same gusto, same gumption, with just a dash of extra manners inherited from their long-removed English roots. If Louis Hémon had couched his story anywhere close to Sarnia, for instance, the poor kid would've hightailed it to Buffalo without question.

So, as the movie ended, and did so with the slight alteration of Maria not giving any of the three men a definitive answer - Walt gave me a puzzled look.

"Why didn't she leave with Lorenzo? I don't get it."

"Because the story isn't concerned with making sense, Walt," I told him. "This is catechism for shiftless Frenchie kids in their mid-teens as of 1910, hawked to them by well-meaning child molesters who only really think of putting more money in the diocese's coffers by acting as money-lenders to reckless kids with a sense of adventure and some misplaced Judeo-Christian sense of duty."

Sarah, who didn't study Lit, is equally confused. "Why send anyone up north like that? The ground's no good without modern tech or hydroponics!"

I scoffed. "You think fucking priests knew this? These guys seriously thought you could pray horniness away and pray fertility into a bunch of rocks and roots. Oh, and let's not forget that this didn't concern anyone's identity as a Québécois - anyone who did this was a Canadian French; un Canadien errant."

Walt falls silent as he processes this for a few seconds. "I mean, I sort of already knew why, but after this? After seeing this, your Atheism makes a Hell of a lot more sense. Damn, I'd have kicked one of those sanctimonious pricks in the balls, too!"

So... Québécois Lit 101, or Why Catholicism is a fucking grift that's only just recently realized that people are growing increasingly harder to indoctrinate into unquestioning belief.

Which is sort of funny, seeing as you see a lot of local hardcore Atheists sort of take to a hodgepodge of various spiritual, occult or "magical" practices - but hey, they reason, as long as you're not putting more money in the pockets of some shriveled old goat in a white stole in the Vatican, it's all good, right?

I mean, I guess. It's not like Brighid or Odin the Allfather or fucking Baron Samedi have tax collectors indoctrinating people left and right, hm?

Anyway - Happy Canada Day, if you're the type to go shop at Roots.