Teen Dreams, a Provincial Bully, and Cold Cases

Plus the "knowledge vacuum" in women's health

First Nations in Ontario want the Thunder Bay police department disbanded —the force’s investigation into the deaths of Indigenous Peoples has turned the city into a “cold case factory.” In 2017, Robert Jago probed the impact of a series of stalled police investigations in “The Deadly Racism of Thunder Bay ”:

It’s impossible to look past the agony of families who have been left waiting for answers, as well as the disquieting hints coming out the ongoing Office Of Independent Police Review Director investigation. Speaking to CBC, OIPRD director Gerry McNeilly was reluctant to give many details about what they had learned about the thirty-nine cases his organization is looking into, but he did say this: “We’re seeing some patterns that obviously concern me.” The patterns he refers to are likely the same ones on display in [Marlan Chookomolin’s] case: a seeming lack of urgency in reaching any conclusion, overlooked evidence, dismissed witnesses. Ultimately, justice for the victims, and for their families, is denied. [Read more ]

A sweeping new bill in Alberta would bring party politics to municipal elections and allow the province to overturn bylaws among other big changes. Some are calling the new powers an overstep of authority. Tim Querengesser explored how progressive mayors in Edmonton and Calgary have been undermined for political gain in “Why Alberta Is Bullying Its Cities ”:

New UCP policies mean Alberta now withholds grants it has long given to cities in lieu of the payment of property taxes for its government buildings, despite the province running multibillion-dollar surpluses. In 2019, the UCP stripped down a deal for more funding for city transit that its New Democratic Party predecessors had agreed to with Edmonton and Calgary. It also whittled down new big-city powers under city charters. In early 2022, as Edmonton’s city council debated a municipal face-mask bylaw, the UCP government announced, even as the meeting was under way, that it had just made such a bylaw illegal. “We are?.?.?.?treated like kids by the province,” [Edmonton mayor Amarjeet] Sohi said at the meeting. “It’s a really sad day.” [Read more ]

Feeling shy and lonely? Don’t worry; a new Degrassi documentary is in the works . For the show’s twenty-fifth anniversary, Emily Landau argued that the teen soap remains popular culture's most honest depiction of teen life:

For teen audiences, it was comforting to see kids go through the same awkward, and sometimes devastating, experiences. In the pre-Internet days, Degrassi was a rare place where they could find empathy without censure. Parents and teachers preached, peers judged, and educational materials came across as naive, but the program spoke to teenagers on their own level. It made adolescence—an age when you feel as if no one understands you—less alienating. Its integrity and candour established a kinship between the characters and the audience, an intimacy that glossier teen soaps cannot replicate. Degrassi was the prototype, as well as a complete anomaly in television history. [Read more ]

A new study is looking closely at how periods impact people’s mental health amid the menstruation “knowledge vacuum,” Vox reports . Women also face the stress of not having their endometriosis pain taken seriously, Amirah El-Safty found in her review of Tracey Lindeman ’s Bleed:

There is a strong possibility that some readers will see the bold, red capital letters of the title of Lindeman’s book in bookstores and turn away. The book is an evidence file for female pain, and the idea that women exaggerate their pain has been used to override women’s complaints for centuries and continues to inform how any expression of strong emotion is perceived. There is another possible world where people who are living with endometriosis—or any other condition that affects female bodies—will pick up the book and see themselves and their suffering reflected in its pages, and that will be meaningful. [Read more ]

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