Writing this review of Michelle Porter's poetic memoir, Approaching Fire, taught me a lot about the distorting power of official public memory. The review was published in the Literary Review of Canada (reviewcanada.ca), March, 2021. Three underlying facts propel this...
Renewing a lived relationship with the earth is essential to renewing our responsibility to sustain it as a habitat hospitable to human habitation. This is the implicit message of a book by Jerry Fontaine I just reviewed for the environmental magazine, Watershed...
I want to amplify the voice of this clear-thinking and generous-hearted Anishinaabe-kwe linguist and lawyer by sharing a review I did of her book about Indigenous langugage and law revitalization, published in the Literary Review of Canada, June, 2019. When I headed...
Here's us line-dancing women on Gabriola, B.C. We're taking up the Jerusalema Dance Challenge that's been going around the world to raise joy during the Covid pandemic. The song was composed by South African musician Master KG, and performed by Nomcebo. I’m glad I...
'Today I Stand Upon the Shore' original music written and performed by Pat Mayberry 2014 Video by Heather Menzies Blog Series: A journey of reckoning and reconnection I went looking for my ancestors after writing No Time: Stress & the Crisis of Modern Life, which...
Two books – Is Racism an Environmental Threat by Ghassan Hage and As We Have Always Done by Leanne Betasamosake Simpson – explore the personal in the political.
Based on Heather Menzies' presentation at Camp Gabriola on August 26, 2016. Part 1 of 2 A politics of hope can prevail over a politics of despair if it’s guided by a vision that itself is grounded in what has worked in the past... when the so-called unseen hand of...
Based on Heather Menzies’ presentation at Camp Gabriola on August 26, 2016. Part 2 of 2 I won’t go into what killed the commons. Nor will I risk being a romantic and nostalgic by suggesting that it always worked out well. And I certainly don’t want to suggest that we...
Based on her presentation celebrating the re-opening of the LAC to the public By Heather Menzies It might be rude when celebrating the Library and Archives of Canada being re-opened as a public cultural space to ask why this matters. But it still might be appropriate,...
If we are to heal the earth, we must also heal ourselves, individually and as communities. Moreover, the two are inter-connected. It’s all about relations -- relations of mutual recognition and respect and mutual support and sustainability. It’s also about the daily...