Jessica Rose

'Mountain City Girls' honours the eccentric kin that shaped Canadian music

rabble staff — Thu, 04 Feb 2016 14:58:20 +0000

February 4, 2016

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Step into the family history of Canadian music trio Kate, Anna and Jane McGarrigle and explore quirky family characters and the ever-present influence of music.

Holiday gift guide

rabble staff — Fri, 20 Dec 2013 12:46:12 +0000

Friday, December 20, 2013

Trust us, you don't have to be a craft expert to avoid consuming this holiday. Here are just a few of the many ways to keep your holiday gifting sustainable, ethical and economical.

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'Tis the season of last-minute trips to big box stores, frantic online shopping and parking space disputes, but it doesn’t have to be. All it takes is a little bit of creativity to give gifts that don’t leave you feeling like a guilty consumer. The good news is you don’t need to break the bank to do it. Here are just a few of the many ways to keep your holiday gifting sustainable, ethical and economical.

Do It Yourself

Why we shopped second hand

rabble staff — Tue, 17 Dec 2013 21:37:10 +0000

Friday, December 20, 2013

For the second year in a row, my dad's side of the family committed to buying second hand, which meant combing thrift stores, vintage boutiques, flea markets and antique stores for the perfect gift.

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Two Saturday mornings ago, I started my Christmas shopping, but I didn’t hit the likeliest of spots. Instead, I wandered down Ottawa Street, a stretch that acts as a throwback to Hamilton’s industrial past. The street, which once housed the booming garment and textile industry during WWI and WWII, is still known for its fabric shops, as well as many cozy cafés and antique stores, the latter being the reason for my visit.

Women in CanLit rise to the top and elevate literary arts and discussion on gender equality

rabble staff — Wed, 13 Nov 2013 12:57:43 +0000

Wednesday, November 13, 2013

2013 has been a big year for CanLit, specifically women in CanLit. Munro won the Nobel Prize in Literature, Coady won the Giller Prize, Catton won the Man Booker Prize and all got us talking!

Last week, writer Lynn Coady received Canada’s most prestigious literary honour, the Giller Prize, for her short story collection Hellgoing, cementing that 2013 is not only the year of the short story, but also the year of the female writer in mainstream literature.

Coady’s win came less than a month after one of her mentors, Alice Munro, became the first Canadian woman to win the Nobel Prize in Literature, and only the 13th woman since the prize was first awarded in 1901.

Hamilton, Ontario: A farmers' market paradise for the locals

Eat Local — Sun, 06 Oct 2013 15:26:18 +0000

Our small one-bedroom apartment has a lot of character on the inside, but outside, it’s little more than a large brick rectangle on a tiny piece of land. With the exception of a few stray daffodils that poke through the soil every spring, our garden space is nil.

'Everything Is So Political' interprets 'What is political?' into a diverse and memorable marriage of art and politics

Kaitlin McNabb — Wed, 17 Jul 2013 23:15:54 +0000

July 18, 2013

In a 2005 interview with Salman Rushdie, interviewer Jack Livings of The Paris Review asked a seemingly simple question of the author: "Could you possibly write an apolitical book?" Rushdie, known for his novels with overtly political themes, replied that he had "great interest in it," using the example of Jane Austen, whom he said could "explain the lives of her characters without a reference to the public sphere."

'Everything Is So Political' is a series of contemporary short stories written by Canadian writers that is rooted in the question "What makes something political?" and subsequent answer "Everything."

Stopping sex violence in schools

alex — Fri, 19 Aug 2011 21:34:44 +0000

August 25, 2011

"She deserved it." "She was fast." "She shouldn't have been alone." In 2001, Joanne N. Smith listened as young female students regurgitated the opinions of their parents, teachers, and peers, blaming an eight-year-old victim who had recently been followed, dragged, raped and left bloodied on her way to school.

Hey, Shorty! is a must read book for parents, educators and young boys and girls who live the reality of an often unsafe and oppressive public school culture.

Slutwalk Hamilton draws hundreds

rabble staff — Wed, 08 Jun 2011 17:41:57 +0000

Just over two months after the first SlutWalk took place in Toronto, approximately 400 demonstrators gathered in front of Hamilton's City Hall before embarking on a march through the streets of downtown. SlutWalk Hamilton was the latest in a string of marches aimed at raising awareness about sexual violence and demanding an end to victim-blaming and slut-shaming.

Hot off the press: Best of rabble 2010!

rabble staff — Fri, 29 Apr 2011 18:46:42 +0000

To commemorate our 10th anniversary, rabble.ca has launched the fourth installment in our best of rabble.ca series. The best of 2010 book includes some of the best examples of news and views that the site had to offer in 2010, including pieces by Krystalline Kraus, Murray Dobbin, Libby Davies and our very own news and features editor, Cathryn Atkinson.

Veganize it!

alex — Fri, 22 Apr 2011 15:42:36 +0000

April 22, 2011

Just like any good chef, a vegan chef needs to be equipped with the right tools: fresh plant-based ingredients, a sharp knife, and -- of course -- a few good books. Over the course of rabble.ca's vegan challenge, the book lounge will provide a sampling of some recently published books available for vegans and aspiring vegans.

This is the second of a two-part series. Read the first part here!

Part two of this series features books that make it easier for home cooks to embrace a vegan lifestyle and give readers the confidence to create meatless versions of their favourite recipes.

Chowin' down vegan style

alex — Fri, 15 Apr 2011 02:27:01 +0000

April 15, 2011

Just like any good chef, a vegan chef needs to be equipped with the right tools: fresh plant-based ingredients, a sharp knife, and -- of course -- a few good books.

Breaking the feminist mould

alex — Fri, 11 Mar 2011 20:08:56 +0000

March 11, 2011

What is a feminist?

Is a feminist an academic who can quote bell hooks and Betty Friedan with ease? Is a feminist a great orator who steps up to podiums, demanding freedom for all women, using buzzwords such as marginalization, empowerment and exploitation? Is a feminist white, benefitting from class privilege and well-versed in feminist theory, as the representation in last week's highly criticized CBC documentary The F Word might suggest? Or is being a feminist simply antiquated, as columnist Margaret Wente declares "The war for women's rights is over. And we won."

Each of the contributors in Feminism FOR REAL share their own -- often unsettling -- truths, revealing the ways in which they have felt alienated and oppressed within mainstream feminism and academia.

I read banned books (and so should you)

bound but not gagged — Sun, 27 Feb 2011 14:08:37 +0000

This post is a part of a three-part series on Freedom to Read Week.

I was probably ten the first time I read The Agony of Alice, a book for young adults written in 1985 by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor. Alice McKinley, Naylor's protagonist, was slightly older than me. She was in sixth grade, fumbling through adolescence without a female role model, wearing two shirts to hide her breasts because she didn't know how to buy a bra, and agonizing over her yet-to-come first kiss.

Hamilton vs. U.S. Steel

Cathryn Atkinson — Mon, 31 Jan 2011 18:25:39 +0000

Monday, January 31, 2011

Fighting to keep pension rights for retired steelworkers and to support workers locked-out since November, 10,000 demonstrators -- including the new mayor -- rally in Hamilton.

"Whose economy? Our economy! Who decides? We decide!" This rally cry was just one of the dozens heard when 10,000 demonstrators took to the streets of Hamilton on Saturday, showing solidarity with 900 locked-out members of the United Steelworkers Local 1005. The workers were locked out on Nov. 7 for refusing to agree to pension cutbacks that would affect 9,000 pensioners.

Busloads of labour activists came from cities as far away as Montreal and Sudbury, some departing as early as 4:00 a.m., to join the fight against United States Steel, as well as Stephen Harper's government for failing to protect workers from what many called corporate greed.

'Small, radical acts' drive big changes

alex — Thu, 02 Dec 2010 20:22:12 +0000

December 2, 2010

Save the world.

These three ambiguous words have slipped off the tongues of well-meaning parents and empathetic teachers for decades, designed to empower and thrust youth into action. To us, the children of the 80s and 90s, this seemed like a challenge -- a charge to change the world placed firmly on our shoulders.

Our elementary school classrooms were plastered with posters urging us to save the whales, the forests, and the bald eagles. "Reduce, reuse, recycle" was more than just a slogan; it was a mantra. And even before we knew what the ozone layer was, we knew that we had to save it.

This is a good thing, right? Maybe not, argues Courtney E. Martin, the author of Do It Anyway: The New Generation of Activists.

Save the world. These three words have slipped off the tongues of well-meaning parents for decades. This is a good thing, right? Maybe not, argues Courtney E. Martin, author of Do It Anyway.