On Monday, May 5, a bilingual panel discussion called “Women and Radio in Canada”/ « Les femmes et la radio au Canada » will be held at McGill University in Montreal, featuring a range of women from academia and the world of radio, Shameless favourite Patti Schmidt (CBC Radio 2).

The panel with explore the challenges of radio in the 21st century, the differences between working in French or English in this milieu, historical contributions of women to radio, the role of women in the industry, and the contributions of minorities. They will also share a few trade secrets of the trade and anecdotes.

A complete program can be found here.

Participants: Colette Brin (Laval University), Kristiana Clemens (CKUT, 90.3 FM), Annie Lessard (RockDétente, 107,3 FM), Christine Maki (McGill University), Andra McCartney (Concordia University), Lise Millette (103.3 FM), Thomasina Phillips (The Monster, K103.7 FM), Gertrude Robinson (McGill University), Kim Rossi (CHOM, 97.7 FM), Patti Schmidt (CBC Radio 2, 93.5 FM), Gregory Taylor (McGill University).

Presented by the McGill Institute for the Study of Canada
Monday, May 2, 2008
Thomson House Ballroom, 2nd Floor, 3650 McTavish, 1 p.m.

RSVP to genevieve.bonin at mail dot mcgill dot ca

White Ribbon Campaign Canada has partnered with a group of youth from Serve!’s Experience This! program who have organized “Da Big Block Party” event at Nathan Phillips Square in downtown Toronto.

The event starts at 5pm this Friday, April 4th, and features musicians, spoken word artists and poets. This event seeks to raise awareness about eliminating violence against women.

The line up includes Canadian Idol finalist Kamilla Miller; spoken word artist Truth Is, who was the Up From the Roots’ 5th Annual Toronto International Poetry Slam finalist and Boonaa Mohammed, who has won numerous poetry slams around Toronto and is the 2007 CBC poetry face-off champion. Da Big Block Party will also feature folk musicians, hip- hop (“Stolen from Africa”), Reggae (Trinity Chris), drama and dance artists.

MuchMusic VJ Hannah Simone is also scheduled to appear.

The Miss G______ Project for Equity in Education is looking to put together an activist anthology (an “actology” if you will) of art and writing by high school aged youth that take on and challenge the media. The working title for the project is “‘The Media is Not Fooling Me’: an Actology.”

Interested? Here are the details:

We want you to put your fabulous critical lenses on and take a long hard look at the media and mass-produced images of “how people should be” in society. At the same time, we want you to share your own positive affirmations, images, and ideas that are alternatives to those currently being produced by the mainstream.

Be creative, be critical, be satiric, be political!

(more inside…)

If you’re looking for feminist superheroes, look no further than the Guerrilla Girls. These gorilla-masked feminist avengers — anonymous activists who work under the assumed names of dead female artists — tackle sexism and racism in the art world and beyond, through poster campaigns, billboards, books and presentations.

Launched in 1985, the Guerrilla Girls’ first campaign was born out of frustration with the Museum of Modern Art’s exhibition “An International Survey of Painting and Sculpture,” which, though supposedly a roundup of the world’s best contemporary art, turned out to be 92 per cent male and 100 per cent white.

More than 20 years later, founding members Frida Kahlo and Kathe Kollwitz are still hard at work, lecturing at campuses and museums, writing a book about women in Hollywood and, of course, stirring shit up in the art world. They’ll be speaking in Toronto tonight at 7pm, at a lecture presented by the Ryerson Student-Run Lecture Series (info here). The event is sold-out, but free rush tickets may be available at the door.

I had the chance to chat with Kahlo for an article appearing in today’s EYE WEEKLY. For the full text of our conversation, click the “More” link below.
(more inside…)

What!? Free Movie!? I can’t believe it.

But it’s true. For tomorrow night’s screening of A Winter Tale at the Revue the admission is free. This looks like an amazing film and a profound tool to start meaningful discussions about youth violence:

SCREENINGS FOR FEBRUARY & MARCH 2008
February 13th to 28th @ The Revue Cinema (400 Roncesvalles (Toronto)
February 29th to March 6th @ Rainbow Cinemas (Woodbine Mall)

A Winter Tale tells the story of a black men’s support group that forms at a Caribbean Takeaway restaurant in Parkdale, after a ten-year-old boy is killed by a stray bullet. The film is followed by a one-hour discussion with members of the cast to engage youth and young adults on violence, the impact it has in their schools and communities, as well as the media’s handling of such events.

Visit: AWinterTale.ca to view the film’s trailer.

Faced with choosing one of 600 odd channels on my sister’s satellite dish last night (and I thought I had choices to make in my pathetic TV-free life), we decided on a CBC show called Who Do You Think You Are?. The show is a genealogical exploration of 13 Canadian celebrities, one per half-hour episode. It’s part detective story, part biography, and part big-picture Canadian history. Lucky me, I caught the show on Avi Lewis. Avi Lewis, well-known Canadian “journalist-activist” and son of AIDS in Africa crusader Stephen Lewis, uncovered more of his politician grandfather David Lewis’s past. He discovered that the RCMP and CSIS kept scrupulous records on his grandfather’s activities, but couldn’t get many of the records released. He traces his grandfather’s passion for political change all the way back to his membership in a socialist, labour-focused, Jewish political party in Svisloch (now a part of modern Belarus). Much of the information was unknown even to Avi’s father.

So it turns out that Avi’s passion for social justice goes way back. Pretty cool, huh? What I found inspiring about this story is that we never get to see old histories of resistance, in our familes and otherwise…how many feminists back can you trace in your family, for example? These are the stories that aren’t often documented enough. Their site also offers a chance to see the methods used on the show and uncover your own family tree.

Other celebrities on the show include Don Cherry, Scott Thompson, Mary Walsh, Shaun Majumder, Margaret Trudeau, and notably Chantal Kreviazuk - who explored her family’s big unspoken secret of Metis heritage.

Oh yeah - and Avi is partnered with Naomi Klein, most recently the author of The Rise of Disaster Capitalism. When she spoke at my university a few years back, she organized a meeting with a bunch of us student activists and made sure to centrally mention our struggle against our university’s administration in her very public speech later that evening. The university’s president looked none too impressed. We were pretty happy to have a high-profile author and intellectual on our side!

(OK, I admit it: afterwards we watched the first hour of The Celebrity Apprentice. I swear it was my first time.)

See below for a call for submissions for the awesome Worn Magazine!

“Everything I know about fashion, I learned from my mother.”

Almost every one of us got our first lessons in style from our mothers. Whether by practical advice or in setting an example, how (and with whom) we grow up has a huge influence on the evolution of our aesthetic tastes. Hell, even the complete absence of fashion effects us somehow.

Do you have a story about how your mother influenced your sense of style?
Do you have sage advice the rest of us need to hear?
Have you carried your mother’s sense of style with you all your life?

We think you do - and we think a whole bunch of people are going to want to hear about it.

Worn Fashion Journal is sending out a call for submissions.

We are putting together a ‘zine all about how moms shape our view of fashion and how their influence and advice follows us all our lives.

Pitch us your best stories and get your mom the recognition she deserves.

We are looking mainly for essay/anecdotal stories, 800 - 1000 words.
You may include pictures, but it’s not required.
We will consider other formats for your ideas - just let us know what you’d like to do and we’ll let you know if we can swing it.

Send us your pitches and ideas by: February 10, 2008

All final drafts by: March 1, 2008


Unfortunately, as an independent magazine, Worn can’t pay writers for selected submissions - but we will make sure you get a free copy of the ‘zine so your mom won’t think you made it all up.

Don’t procrastinate.
Just think what your mother would say…

Contact Worn with your story ideas or let us know if you have any questions: dearworn@wornjournal.com

Check out our website for more contact information or find Worn retailers in your neighbourhood.

…I bring you Cat and Girl, from the brilliant Dorothy Gambrell.

I don’t know about you, but for me nothing eases the sting of term papers, bibliographies, and external examiner nominations than this comic strip. Calvin and Hobbes meets Dorothy Parker? Al Burian meets Judith Butler? Samuel Beckett meets Le Tigre? All of the above get together for a slumber party where they start a Ramones cover band and read The Babysitters Club to each other? Who cares, this stuff is genius.

Sorry I’ve been remiss. Back on the blogging team soon.

p.s. if no one buys me her “Capitalists Do It Ruthlessly” shirt for my next birthday, I’m disowning the world.

There’s a piece in the Feb/Mar 08 issue of Bust Magazine about career waitresses. I haven’t had a chance to pick up a copy, but a post on Girlistic brought me to careerwaitresses.com, “a multimedia project that profiles career waitresses aged 50 and older who have been dishing out everything from eggs to insults for up to 60 years.”

The site is worth a look because it, through the beautiful photographs of Candacy Taylor, honours women in a field that of faces the stigma of being “just a waitress,” and values them as “some of the healthiest, most vibrant, hardest working women in the U.S.” The photographs are currently on tour. Check out the gallery here.

photograph: Candacy Taylor