For our special 50th anniversary issue, Canada’s brightest, boldest, and most rebellious thinkers, doers, and creators share their best big ideas. Through ideas macro and micro, radical and everyday, we present 50 essays, think pieces, and calls to action. Picture: plans for sustainable food systems, radical legislation, revolutionary health care, a greener planet, Indigenous self-government, vibrant cities, safe spaces, peaceful collaboration, and more—we encouraged our writers to dream big, to hope, and to courageously share their ideas and wish lists for our collective better future. Here’s to another 50 years!

When I first read the news about the massacre in Orlando, I sat and wept. My phone trembled in my palm as my newsfeed filled up with blood and bullets.

I wept like I haven’t wept in years. The grisly hate crime pounded a thousand drum beats on my chest, creeping into my marrow and heartbeat, shaking me to the core. I opened my mouth to scream, to hear my own voice and remember I am alive. Nothing would come out.

In the days that followed, the LGBTQ community wrestled with a collective grief and anger unlike anything I’ve experienced in my lifetime. I waded through post after post by broken-hearted friends and strangers struggling to find words, struggling to find energy to rage, struggling to find hope.

Struggling, while having their own voice stolen.

I watched as most of the media erased the skin colour, gender identity, and sexual orientation of the victims. I watched as religious leaders glorified the mass murder as an act of God. I watched as politicians used this as proof that their discriminatory beliefs are righteous. I watched, and I wept.

In the back of my mind, I wondered if we were even surprised. Although one of the most deadly acts of violence against the queer community, it was certainly not the first. Violence against us is shockingly common and sometimes numbingly so. This was not the first time that our deaths had been politicized for those in power to get what they want, while continuing to erase our dignity and humanity.

This was not the first time we realized that we are not safe. We knew this at such young ages; we knew this before we had words for anything. We knew this from the moment we realized that we are different and that our bodies and our relationships would be seen as different. We know this after decades of expending a tremendous amount of energy to defend our worthiness to live and, God forbid, to love, on this planet.

We know this because we receive so many invitations to self-extinguish that some of us can no longer refuse, and most of us have come too close to accepting. So yes, we were shocked, but were we surprised? While we wept for the deaths of 49 people we didn’t know, we were reminded of the millions of tiny deaths we experience and are witness to.

We haven’t wanted to seem ungrateful, because we are now allowed to marry the same gender and are not only seeing ourselves represented on TV as pedophiles and shallow gay best friends. But can we just quickly mention the jobs we’ve lost, and the family members who have forbidden us to see their children, and the churches who have excommunicated us, and the research we have to do before we travel to make sure we won’t be arrested for holding our partner’s hand?

Many Canadians were quick to lay the blame solely on America and its well-deserved reputation for violence and easy access to guns. “Thank God we’re Canadian!” people exclaimed. Believe me, I am thankful that I am in Canada. But the reality is that in our classrooms, in our faith communities, on our streets, we find a million ways to chip away at people’s lives. We may be less obvious, but we are not innocent. We have not yet arrived at the pinnacle of enlightenment and equality that we so often boast about. We may say “please” but we are just as lethal.

It’s true that things are much better than they were 50 years ago; we have benefited from the incredible pain and advocacy of our elders, LGBTQ and allies alike. But can’t our unwillingness to settle live in the same breath as our gratitude? It must if we are to have any integrity with the generations that follow us.

To achieve a better future, we must now move beyond lofty laws on paper and polite platitudes and hidden hatred. We must evolve into beings whose very DNA is imbued with an unquenchable thirst for equality, so that even one tiny death is one too many.

I look around at my community and see so clearly that inside our tears there is a stubborn and beautiful resiliency that fuels us. We are bone tired but more awake than ever. The wind may have been knocked out of us, but our voices are coming back stronger than ever. Too much of our lives have been silenced and spent on survival.

The crumbs and the closet are not enough.

Will the next generation of humans have to experience a million tiny deaths before they can even count to 10? Will we be able to live with ourselves, knowing we could’ve done more? All I know is that 50 years from now, if we stay awake, these tiny deaths can be replaced with a million tiny lights, each of us radiating in our unique ways, so that no one is forced to live or love in the shadows.

Photo courtesy of Pride Toronto/Flickr

Creative commons photo by Flickr user strangedejim.

That Catholic schools do not always look positively upon homosexuality may not come as a great surprise, given their collective track record. But in the past week, two news stories have brought new and unique anti-gay measures taken at Catholic schools to light.

First, officials at Missisauga’s St. Joseph’s Catholic  Secondary School allegedly restricted students’ use of rainbow banners at an anti-homophobia fundraiser, and then forbade them from donating the event’s proceeds to a gay rights charity.

In a second, separate, and more bizarre incident, comedian Dawn Whitwell was booked to speak at an anti-bullying assembly at Bishop Marrocco-Thomas Merton Catholic Secondary School in Toronto, but her performance was quickly cancelled when, she says, it was discovered she is married to a woman. Both schools say their actions were not motivated by an anti-gay bent and it is doubtful anything more will come of these allegations. But the Catholic school boards of Canada should recognize, in these stories, the need for them to reform, and return to theology as opposed to policing sexuality, lest their students abandon Catholic schools altogether.

Church attendance in Canada, and indeed around the world, went into a tailspin in the latter half of the twentieth century and seems unlikely to recover in our lifetimes. But the Catholic Canadians who now stay home from church in droves are not, according to a 2000 University of Lethbridge study, abandoning their religion. Rather, they are finding their own ways in which to worship.

The study attributed this new trend to people’s disillusionment with the church — as opposed to opposition to faith itself. Their problems were with the institution, not the teachings of the religion. It was the Church, not Catholicism, that was speaking out against gay marriage, contraception, and abortion — topics that divided many congregations. While people were looking to the religion itself for the values and morality they wanted, the Church was imposing hard and fast rules that a significant number of Catholics didn’t want or agree with.

Parents send their children to faith-based schools so that they can learn about their culture and religion, and grow up in an environment that recognizes that religion and the lessons it imparts. The Toronto Catholic District School Board’s website provides a great insight into the appeal of Catholic school. It has a page detailing the Board’s Equitable and Inclusive Educations strategy. It quotes St. Paul and discusses the open and accepting tenets of Catholicism, which is supposed to be applied to Catholic school  education. The intended message is that Catholic School will teach your children about their religion, instilling in them positive values of faith and tolerance.

And looking at that explanation, it is easily understandable why parents would want to send their kids to a Catholic school. But wanting your child to learn about the ancient teachings of Christ and the Apostles is very different from wanting your child to be subject to the institutional rules and judgments of school administrators, just as practising Catholicism can be very different from following the dogma of the Vatican.

There are plenty of examples of Catholic reformers working within the Church to change its doctrines on birth control, ordaining women, and embracing sexual minorities. There is no rule in Catholicism that Catholics can’t support LGBT rights or listen to a gay person present their feelings on bullying. The schools may say that Catholic teachings were the criteria that caused the rainbow-ban and Whitwell decisions to be made, but the fact is that they were not “Catholic” rules. They were rules imposed by the institution, lead by some individual or group of individuals who acted under the guise of channeling Catholicism. And, as such, they are rules that are apt to alienate students and parents alike.

Followers of a religion can be expected to adhere to, or at least respect, the guidelines of their religion. But rules made by a bureaucratic official based loosely on his or her interpretation of that religion’s teachings cannot be expected to inspire adherence. In fact, they are probably more likely to offend, especially when those interpretations result in the exclusion and intolerance that the religion ostensibly condemns. So, in the same way that people pushed back against the rules imposed by the Catholic Church, people may well begin pushing back against the rules imposed by Catholic schools, unless some action is taken to return to the positive values the TCDSB extols.

There is, and may always be, a debate over whether faith-based schools should be abolished in Canada. And in that debate there are many reasons to support abolishment, schools’ opposition to sexual diversity being among them. But the greatest argument in favour of keeping faith-based schools may be the large number of students who continue to enroll in these programs. Those numbers are essentially a straw poll of people’s support for religious education. Because of this, Catholic schools need their students, perhaps even more than students need their schools. If their flock abandons them to the same degree that the Church’s did, the Catholic school system will lose its greatest remaining reasons for survival and isn’t likely to be around for much longer. Whether that’s for the best or not is up to the parents and children to decide. But in the coming years, if institutional intolerance continues on, faithful Catholics may begin questioning just how well the Catholic school system represents their Christian values.

Protesters gather outside Union Station dressed as an oil spill in demonstration against Harper's environmental policy, June 17, 2010. Photo credit: Jesse Mintz

Unless you have been living under a fake rock beside a fake lake, chances are you’ve heard about this G8/G20 business in some way, shape, or form. The reasons why many people are protesting, however, may not be as clear. That’s probably because there isn’t any single issue uniting all protesters. And, despite what you may have heard, there is no one type of person who protests. Not all protesters are communists or socialists, not all are anarchists or against the government, and not all are ‘hapless hippies’, as one recent article stated.

You don’t have to be a feminist to believe that the Harper government’s paltry track record with domestic policies towards women has discredited any maternal health discussion led by our government. You don’t have to be a civil liberties advocate or an anarchist to oppose the spending of 1 billion dollars to turn Toronto into an military zone, complete with barricades, checkpoints and closed circuit security cameras monitoring our every move. And you certainly don’t have to be an environmentalist to doubt the Canadian government’s willingness to combat global warming and to turn a blind, or worse, defiant eye towards the Tar Sands issue.

While outrage over the price tag of the summits is pretty easy to understand, it’s the other issues on the table in front of us today in Canada, in our cities, and throughout the world, which are harder to untangle. It may require a lot of breath, but now is the perfect time to demand firm commitments instead of half measures and excuses on issues such as the environment, Indigenous rights, women’s and queer rights, the end of systematic economic injustice, justice for migrants and non-status people and an end to all wars and occupations. The interconnectedness of these issues shouldn’t be a problem–it should just provide more fuel for your fire.

Here are the reasons why everyone–not just the anarchists, hippies and commies–should give a damn and make yourselves seen, heard and understood in the week before the summits.

1. Gender justice: the Canadian government has pledged 1 billion dollars over 5 years for maternal health initiatives. This number stands in stark contrast with the 1 billion spent on security over the three days of the summit. The sad reality is that any initiative tabled by Harper will be a half-hearted one at best as he has refused to advocate the same rights for the women of the global south–specifically, the right to a safe abortion–as women enjoy in Canada. In addition, our government’s inability (or refusal) to understand the link between the health and status of women, children, the queer community, climate change and the failing global economy further, hinders any potential progress for these already marginalized communities.

2. Creating a just global economy: the road the current G8/G20 leaders in conjunction with the IMF and World Bank are taking us down will simply repeat the economic mistakes of the past. The economic crisis must impel leaders to implement a more sustainable development model worldwide. There are currently roughly 50 million people living below the poverty line–that is less then $1.25 U.S. a day–and this summit must be seen as an opportunity to push for fair economic trade regulations to help those in the global south.

3. Indigenous rights: The policies of the G8 have consistently marginalized indigenous populations around the world facilitating the transfer of wealth and power from the global south to the political elite. Domestically, indigenous populations have been dealing with the effects of globalization and neo-liberal economic policies that have ravaged their land and exploited their communities. Indigenous women and children are hit especially hard by ‘economic reform’ and budget cuts, and some Indigenous communities in Canada do not even have access to clean water.

4. Environmental justice: The summit presents the first opportunity since Copenhagen for world leaders to meet and reevaluate their commitments to reducing carbon emissions and aiding poorer nations in their attempts to adapt to climate change. Canada received the Fossil Award at Copenhagen as the nation that has done the most to impede global action on climate change. The summit must be used as an opportunity for us to ensure that our government knows that its environmental policy will not stand.

5.  Imperialism: The G8 nations are responsible for roughly two-thirds of the world’s military spending. G8 nations are engaged in a self-serving global war on terror that militarizes the world. Domestically, Harper has increased our defense budget in the wake of massive cuts to public services, such as feminist-minded NGOs and arts programs.

These protests cannot be for the select few; they must be the voice of the many. There isn’t one issue that concerns and unites all people–but that’s okay. These issues fall under the same banner of demanding justice and rights from our government, for us and for others throughout the world, and that in and of itself, is quite a mandate.

We are no longer dealing with “Canada the good”; and we can no longer afford to be silent.  So please, give a damn.