Photo by Natilyn Photography

I am admittedly a formerly pretentious, insecure hater of all things popular, pastel, and mainstream. As a teenager I forced myself to sit down and read Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky, making long lists of Russian names, trying to keep complex plots straight that were honestly above my paygrade. Though I still think Anna Karenina is a deeply beautiful and sad story that any Ottessa Moshfegh fan would like, I clung to a highly curated, highbrow air that was intertwined with my own internalized misogyny and white supremacy. Me? Listen to pop music? Never. I only listened to indie music I unearthed from the depths of MySpace.

I dedicated myself to becoming “not like the other girls,” or more accurately, “not how I constructed the other girls to be.” I threw myself into what I saw as alternatives: teenage goth Sam with a dyed black pixie cut and eyeliner drawn down to the tops of my cheeks; emo Sam with layered teased hair and off-brand slip-on Vans; pretentious Sam reading Russian literature; and indie-music Sam, worshiping at the altar of the manic pixies. Even into my twenties and my first tastes of adulthood, I threw myself into various alt scenes, making sure my baby bangs were blunt and my distaste for “normies” even blunter. No matter where I landed on the alt spectrum, there were still women I compared myself to, both inside my circles and out. Yet regardless of what armour I was trying to encase myself in, I was wholly in a competition not against other women and girls, but against myself.

Throughout every phase, each carefully curated taste, I found genuine interests. I love getting lost in books; the screamo and emo music of the early aughts is my nostalgic homecalling; I made lifelong friends through arts and music scenes. Through all of this, I never let myself love what I actually love, because deep down I was too scared that if I stepped one toe outside of my imagined line, the fragile house of cards I had built for myself would topple to the ground and leave my true form revealed: a shy, chubby 12-year-old in slacks and a Walmart blouse.

This is not without nuance, and within my own journey there are multiple intersections of class, race, and gender privilege and oppression I both hold and face. Womanhood, in all its complexities, is constructed in ephemera and is a varied experience across communities. I, in my lived experience as a fair-skinned, cisgender Métis woman from rural Northern B.C., performed with the best of them in a theatre of public opinion.

As growing parts of our lives are lived through social media, we are all in some sort of death-knell competition where obsession with liking the right thing is the law and we are all our own jury and executioner. To put it simply: we love to hate. Being a hater is a tongue-in-cheek, relatable identity we slip into that provides us with shallow boundaries, shallow connections, and the idea of control in a world that feels like it’s slipping into chaos. Why rally against capitalism, colonialism, and crumbling Western democracy when we can all rally against Bethany and her ivory Stanley cup? Or point fingers at long lines of eager consumers lining up outside Target to buy the newest Stanley collab? We are all implicated under a crumbling colonial and capitalist empire, and it’s easier to point fingers at others than to look in our own backyards.

Now, before anyone gets the idea that I’m here to defend the harbingers of Christian Girl Autumn with their perfect Utah curl: I’m not. We need to challenge our consumption habits and the ways in which we are all media trained to think “me good, them bad.” Social media has given us a new gateway into fast-moving microtrends that tell us “x is out and y is in” on what feels like a near-weekly basis. Just as fast as the rise of the soft girls, we saw their downfall and the rise of the mob-wife aesthetic, which just happened to coincide with the 25th anniversary of The Sopranos. This is the gears of late-stage capitalism telling us to consume more.

Sure, influencers are showing us unobtainable lifestyles built on consumption, but these are small symptoms of much larger issues of systemic capitalism and hungry empire. It’s easier to look at individuals and see them as the problem than it is to look at the larger structures of oppression, the ways in which we are harmed, and the ways in which we harm.

Coastal grandma, vanilla girl, mob wife, and whatever new viral trend will pop up in the next five to 10 business days all suffer from the same suffocating delicate whiteness that erases the aesthetic and political history of many of these trends. Much of what is “new” today was created within Black and racialized communities. Think Hailey Bieber’s “brownie-glazed lips.” If you grew up around Black and brown women in the 1990s, you recognized this trend instantly. Yet, when these trends were stewarded by racialized people well before the rise of TikTok, they were met with racist backlash. Now, heralded by a new generation of young white women, they are trendy, and cosmetic colours better suited for deeper skin tones— which are already less available— are selling out as a result.

Critique is not hate. None of us are above critique, but we are all socially indoctrinated into thinking that we are better than one another based on the things we enjoy. Boycotting, speaking truth to ignored histories, and fighting against systemic injustices is not being a hater.

Lately, I’ve been trying to ask myself two questions before I throw myself into discourse:

Do I hate this thing everyone loves because I have solid critique or reason, or is it because I am projecting my anger and frustration on something innocuous?

If I hate it because I just don’t like it, do I need to share this publicly?

It feels like we’re in an era where individualist pressure to be “right” surpasses the need to organize along collective lines. Nothing we do is without critique, without us having to live our values, and identify where we need to be accountable. But what if we did this work without also fighting in stan death matches, defending multimillionaire celebrities who are never held to the same standards we hold each other to?

Recently, I’ve started letting myself openly love and enjoy the things I loved in secret: cheesy romance novels, action movies (ask me about the Fast & Furious franchise), all the indie folk you can imagine, and yes, I have a lovely teal Stanley cup. I’ve shed my near-pathological need to try to force myself to only read whatever is being lauded as The Literature of the season, apologize anytime I listen to music out loud insisting it’s only a guilty pleasure, or sit through long arty films that bore me to tears. It’s not that I don’t enjoy these things, but I’m getting far too old and far too exhausted to try and like the right things, to cultivate my personality around them.

If I’m being completely honest, in the last couple of years I’ve been relearning who I am and just letting my interests and desires lead my process. Who knew that I’d end up being a former snob now revelling in romantasy books about fairies and getting too caught up in reality TV dating competitions? Maybe it’s basic, laughed at by people who think they’re better because of the media and art they consume, but I’m learning how to have fun again. And yes, Titanic is my favourite movie, and I have an annual, nostalgia-fueled Twilight rewatch every year. When I was younger, I used to make jokes about basic girls, but deep down, I was a basic bitch with a yearning heart.

This is me officially retiring my hater hat. I simply cannot waste any more energy on what water bottle Midwest momfluencers are using. Sure, there are things I see and need to make jokes about, but I’ve found my people I can do that with—privately.

We are watching untold horrors unfold: genocide, climate collapse, the rise of fascism, and ever-increasing instability. If reading smut and drinking from a fancy water bottle gets you through the day, I love that for you. But let’s be accountable to each other so neither of us get lost in the hypocrisy of capitalism and white supremacy. Let’s hold ourselves to the same standards we hold each other to.

Art by Valerie Thai

Robin had been ready to start school for a year. On the first day, she was prepared, wearing a blue dress with pink hearts and carrying a giant backpack that tugged at her mother’s heart.

Robin’s parents both came to drop her off. As they left, they waved goodbye to their oldest child and called out: “Ona!” Goodbye in Mohawk. Robin wasn’t starting at just any elementary school. She was starting at a Mohawk language immersion school, or more specifically, the Language Nest program, Totáhne, run by Tsi Tyónnheht Onkwawén:na (TTO), the Language and Cultural Centre in Tyendinaga.

“It was a really good feeling,” Robin’s mom, Alyssa Bardy, says, smiling when she remembers that morning. “To drop her off, and say hello and greet the teachers in Mohawk.”

TTO was established in 2000, by a group of community members concerned with the revitalization of the Mohawk language in Tyendinaga. The name means keeping the words alive. Their services include a Mohawk immersion elementary school and an adult learning program. For the youngest community members, there’s the nursery program, or Language Nest, which includes language learning, culture-based learning, and lots of outdoor play.

Bardy is Upper Cayuga of Six Nations and mixed settler. She belongs to Mohawks of the Bay of Quinte (she’s also my cousin—we’re related through our Dutch-Canadian mothers). She and her husband, Markus, decided to send Robin to the TTO because “it’s kind of a way that we can take back the parts of our culture that were taken away from us,” Bardy says. “On my dad’s side, we have family members who did attend residential school. Specifically we have stories in our family in which, at the residential schools, children were punished physically for speaking the language.”

That’s the fire that motivates her, Bardy says, in terms of putting her daughter into Mohawk language immersion school today. “It’s kind of a way to show honour to those people before us, who had a language, which is a key element to culture, taken away… It’s like an act of reclamation.” It’s particularly special because Robin is the first generation in Bardy’s family that’s been able to immerse herself in it. “To me, there’s nothing more important than being able to take [the language] back,” Bardy says.

Bardy’s watched her daughter thrive in the new school, absorbing words and bringing them home for the rest of the family to learn. Alyssa and Markus are planning to keep her in Mohawk language immersion. But currently, the TTO only offers up to Grade 4. After that, Robin will have to switch to a different school. There’s currently no school near the family that offers Mohawk language immersion from kindergarten to Grade 12. For Robin’s family, and for other Indigenous families reclaiming what’s theirs, this causes a very real concern: if their children have to leave immersion school, will they retain the language they’ve learned up to that point—or lose it?

*

Over the past couple of decades, many Indigenous groups have been pushing hard for language preservation. Grassroots movements have tried to match the demand from parents and communities for schools that offer language programming. There have been tremendous successes, such as the creation of community led, non-profit organizations across Ontario, like TTO. In Six Nations, Kawenní:io/Gawení:yo Private School (KGPS) recently received their high school accreditation—it’s the only school in Canada that offers Cayuga and Mohawk languages from kindergarten to Grade 12. Some communities have found strength in collaboration, like the First Nations with Schools Collective, a group of eight First Nations in Ontario who work together with the aim of achieving “full control of our lifelong-learning education systems, including schools on reserve.”

Data from Statistics Canada shows that for the 2021-2022 school year (the most recent year for which data is available), there were 59,355 students in Indigenous language programs in public elementary and secondary schools in Canada. An additional 8,238 students were in Indigenous language immersion programs. These numbers do not include private schools. However, whether public or private, nearly all of these schools face challenges, including a lack of first-language speakers, space and funding, and curriculum resources.

“If you want to run an immersion school, you have to be ready to take on a number of things,” says Neil Debassige, an education expert from M’Chigeeng First Nation. He joins the Zoom call smiling, with a long beard, baseball cap, and glasses, sitting in a wood-panelled room. He’s spent his career in First Nations education systems, including as a kindergarten student in one of the earliest immersion programs, and later as a teacher and principal at that same school, Lakeview Elementary School. He ran an immersion program there which he describes as “relatively successful.”

When looking at how education systems are developed, and what they need to be successful, Debassige says they really need to answer four key questions:

1.) Are we clear in what our learners need to know and demonstrate in order to meet our sovereign definition of success?

2.) Are we clear in how students are going to demonstrate their learning?

3.) Are we clear in their response when they don’t learn it?

4.) Are we clear in how the community privileges education?

But even when these questions can be answered, Debassige says, immersion schools are a contentious issue in many communities. “It’s not because people don’t think it’s important,” he says, but because “this colonized process of this system that we’re in, it operates on a divide-and-conquer approach. So if communities can be divided in terms of what they think is important in their education system, it’s easier to defeat them.”

Debassige talks about deprivation theory, how people have been conditioned through dependency and the idea that there’s not enough to go around. When grassroots language programs emerge, they might be seen as competition to mainstream schools on reserves. He says those schools, which follow the Ontario curriculum and receive government funding, are severely underfunded, “but at least it’s some first-level funding.”

Starting an immersion school, Debassige says, means taking on the challenge of being underresourced, and fighting for financial support. While schools on reserve (which may offer Indigenous language programming) can receive government funding, immersion schools, similar to private schools, may not be eligible for the same amount. Their funding can come from a variety of sources, including government grants, community fundraising, or other organizations. The TTO, for example, has received funding through the Association of Iroquois and Allied Indians (AIAI), the Mohawks of the Bay of Quinte band council (MBQ), and through the province’s Ontario Trillium Commission.

Yet numerous studies show that students who are exposed to a language in an immersive way will exhibit higher levels of fluency. “If you want to get good at something fast, you need to be immersed,” Debassige says. “That makes perfect sense.” But he says it can be a hard choice for parents to decide to put a child in a grassroots language school, especially a newly founded one. If it’s an immersion school, Debassige says, and parents know that they’re underfunded, they have to consider whether they’re willing to risk the chances of their child not having access to equal sports opportunities, special education, and more.

Debassige says he’d rather describe the schools as bilingual or trilingual. The connotations of bilingual programs and students are more positive. Even so, there’s a level of uncertainty with these programs. “We’re not sure if they’re going to work,” Debassige says.

Today, Debassige runs a couple of tourism businesses, including captaining a chartered boat to take people fishing, renting cottages, and co-hosting a TV show that’s produced on the reserve and airs nationally. These are his passions, but he’s still involved in education work through his own consulting business. They do school evaluations, appraisals of principals, and capacity development. It’s obvious that he cares deeply about language schools, but it’s also obvious that the work comes with a great deal of challenge. I ask what keeps him in it, and he softens a little.

“I have a stake in it,” he says. “I’m a parent. I have two daughters.” One goes to McMaster University, and the other is in Grade 12. “We wanted them to be the kids that were the top Ojibwe language students and the valedictorian of their class, and they were that every year,” he says. Proudly, he tells me that when she graduated, his daughter was the first ever Indigenous valedictorian at her provincial high school. “They were proof that it could be done.”

Debassige says the same is possible for every First Nation kid, if they’re dealt a better hand. “You know, if the system supports that, then I think we can get to fluency and I think—we can do literacy in our language, and be literate in English as well at the end of Grade 8. I honestly think that.”

*

Cyndie Wemigwans is a fluent Nishnaabemwin speaker from Dooganing (South Bay) Wiikwemkoong Unceded Territory. She’s had a varied career: she worked as a chef and as a mechanic before accepting a job as an interpreter at Rainbow District School Board. Recognizing a need for first-language teachers, the board encouraged her to become a certified teacher, and she went through Nipissing University to get her Teacher of Indigenous Language as A Second Language certificate. Now, she’s a teacher at the Wiikwemkoong Board of Education.

Wemigwans teaches her students with Nishnaabemwin immersion, speaking to them about 40 percent in Nishnaabemwin and 60 percent in English at the start of the school year, and shifting toward 80 percent Nishnaabemwin and 20 percent English by the end. She notices a difference between the way she teaches compared to second-language teachers in the school. “I find a lot of teachers are afraid— they’re teaching the curriculum, but they want to infuse the Nishnaabemwin in with the curriculum, but they’re kind of lost on how to go about it.”

Conversely, it can also be tricky for first-language speakers who don’t have teaching experience to teach the language. “For them it’s a little bit difficult, like how to teach the kids, the language itself…It’s hard to find people that have both experience in a school setting and the language.”

In her first year teaching, just before Christmas break, Wemigwans remembers putting her students to the test, asking them to build sentences out of everything they’d learned up to that point. They aced it. Watching them converse in Nishnaabemwin, Wemigwans says, “I had tears coming down. I’ve given them that sentence structure, how to figure out what’s animate, inanimate, the endings… and they understood it. They didn’t have to really think so hard because they understood it.”

Wemigwans says that for her, passing her language on to generations to come is important because “that’s who we are.” She has three kids, including a seven-year-old daughter who is fluent in Nishnaabemwin. “How I explain that to my little one is, when I move on from this world to the next world, if you’re speaking English… I’m not going to understand you,” Wemigwans says. “It’s important that my children speak the language, so that I can still communicate with them.”

Bardy says that the schools play such an important role not only for children, but also for their families. Last January, the Bardys went to a Midwinter Ceremony, a social celebration hosted by Robin’s school to celebrate the beginning of midwinter, an important time of year in the Haudenosaunee calendar. When they got there, Robin and one of her school friends saw each other from across the longhouse. Her friend greeted Robin with her Mohawk name, and the two ran to each other and embraced. The interaction happened completely in Mohawk.

“It was so cool,” Bardy says, “to see that was the first way she was acknowledged, by her Mohawk name, and how Robin responded to that. So inspiring.” Bardy says it’s hard to say at this age how the language might be benefitting her daughter, but “there’s definitely a confidence there.”

“She’s not a shy girl, she’s not afraid to correct us if we say something wrong, or if we say something in English and she feels like it should be said in Mohawk,” Bardy says. “I think it’s instilling a sense of pride in who she is, as maybe a potential language speaker.”

Bardy says the schools play a vital role in reconnecting families to their language and parts of their culture. She worries about Robin losing what she’s learned after immersion school. “We’re going to have to dig deep as a family and do the work to sustain it, and surround ourselves with people who know the languages, and make sure we have everything in place, all the resources that we can possibly have.”

“My biggest fear about that is that we don’t make it a habit of our daily life,” Bardy says, “And it slips away from us.” Though some schools, like Robin’s, currently only offer immersion for younger grades, this could change in the future as First Nations communities, families, parents, and schools continue working to expand. Expansion could include everything from offering more grade levels to expanding their resources and programming. Some parents are just trying to get an immersion school near them.

“We need immersion schools in our communities,” says Tracy Cleland. Cleland is from Wiikwemkoong, Ontario. She’s passionate about the Ojibwe language and was involved in a language nest nearby, Nawewin Gamik, that was started by local elders. Nawewin Gamik ran for about four years, Cleland says, and during that time they had well over 300 attendees, in addition to seven kids and their parents who were there every day. It was forced to close last year due to a lack of funding. Though there are schools that offer a lot of language classes, “it’s not a hundred percent immersion,” Cleland says. “If there was [an Ojibwe school] built in Toronto or something, I literally would move there just to get it. That’s how important I feel it is,” Cleland says. “I’m so close to moving to Wisconsin cause they do have one.” She stresses the importance of dedicated funding for creating immersion schools. “And not just short-term funding—you can’t get things done in a year or six months.”

Part of Debassige’s consulting work with the First Nations with Schools Collective has included developing a new funding formula. They’re trying to negotiate with the federal government to advocate for better access to quality programming. By lobbying for more provincial and federal money, Indigenous language immersion schools could continue doing their work and expand to serve more children. Some schools have also had success at community fundraising, but this can be hard to sustain long term. In the meantime, communities and families are left to find ways to teach their language to the next generations.

*

Testimony from Indigenous communities and a growing body of research speaks to the benefits of learning ancestral languages. Language experts say that maintaining Indigenous languages in early childhood helps to preserve culture and identity. Losing the language impacts an entire community’s well-being.

For Bardy, having her daughter learn Mohawk is about something much bigger. “Aside from knowing the language itself, I want [Robin] to know how the language ties into who she is as a Onkwehón:we,” Bardy says. Onkwehón:we translates to original people. Languages can also be a way to share knowledge systems and to shape people’s worldview and relationships with the land. “One word in Mohawk can be like a sentence in English,” Bardy says. “So I want her to have an appreciation of how descriptive and flowery and beautiful the language is, and how it ties into our place in the natural world and here on earth and as Onkwehón:we and as caretakers of the land.”

Robin is now in her second year in the Totáhne. Last autumn, her younger brother also started at the Language Nest, learning more of the Mohawk language along with his sister. He already had a handful of words when he started, thanks to Robin bringing them home.

Their experience with the immersion school so far has been incredible, Bardy says, and she’s really grateful to have that resource in their community. “Watching your child thrive and flourish in the language, it gives me so much pride,” she says. “When you go outside or you’re looking at a book, and your daughter tells you the name of something in Mohawk, it’s a really special moment.”

“Those bits of culture that were taken away—to me, that reclamation is one of the number one priorities in raising my kids. The schools are an extension of how families and Onkwehón:we can take back what was taken away so many years ago.”

Editor’s note: Robin’s name has been changed to protect her privacy 

LEARNING MORE

Want more information about Indigenous language education? Here are some places you can start:

First Nations with Schools Collective

Kingston Indigenous Languages Nest

Six Nations Language Commission

Woodland Cultural Centre

Illustration by Emily Elise

The guy who bought the house next to my apartment is the heir to a chain of hardware stores. I saw him teaching a young woman about the stock market at a local coffee shop. I watched him as he leaned over the young woman’s laptop, his chubby index finger pressed into the screen, making a little rainbow as he told her how to spend her money. There was something fervent about the way he was bent over, about that finger. He licked his lips.

I was grading papers for the first-year English courses I was teaching on a terrible per-course contract at the university, scritching in pencil in the margins and trying to be as nice as possible so the students wouldn’t hate me, so they wouldn’t hate English—the language or the literature. I had read about the recent stock market drama: people were using Reddit to drive up stock prices. It didn’t mean much to me, but the heir to the hardware stores was telling the young woman all about it and the young woman was on her computer buying stocks. I was half listening, half scanning for comma splices and subject-verb agreement, trying to understand what the heir was saying. This was the closest I had ever been to him. He had a Gerber baby face even though he was in his forties. He wore designer clothes that were made to look scruffy with frayed hems and manicured tears. He had round blue eyes and laminated eyebrows.

In the past two years, two luxury hotels had gone up on my street, a Marriott and a Four Seasons. Things were changing and the heir to the hardware stores knew it. Now those hotels overshadowed the whole bottom half of the street. There was no more sunshine at all for the houses behind them. Up by my place there was still lots of sun and I understood how the house next door would be appealing to someone with money because it had three separate suites and sat on a double lot. Shortly after I saw the heir to the hardware stores teaching the woman about the stock market in the café, he evicted everyone in the three suites.

The first eviction was Chris, who sold drugs and was always either fighting with his girlfriend or walking down the street clutching her hand. Chris, who had stolen another neighbour’s TV while he was cat sitting and sold it a little further down the road.

The second eviction was a gay couple who had lived on the middle floor of the house for twenty years. They did up their back deck really fancy in the summer with a big umbrella they cranked up every morning; planted lavender and strawberries in pots on the rail. They drank cocktails and beers out there with friends, the smell of weed wafting over into my bedroom window.

The third eviction was a nuclear family of four from the top floor suite. Two kids and another on the way. The mom sat on the kitchen counter next to a huge picture window in a baggy t-shirt and underwear watching videos on her phone all day, smoking and flicking her butts into my yard, wrist resting on her huge belly as she scrolled. The two daughters went off to daycare and kindergarten and the dad left on foot every morning wearing aviator sunglasses with a black duffle bag slung over his shoulder. When the eviction notice came, the mom told me she was glad they were moving out.

“Fucking silverfish everywhere in there,” she said, dragging on a cigarette on the step outside the building while her daughters played hopscotch.

Construction on the Marriott went fast. A hole in the ground, a foundation, steel I-beams, Tyvek, windows. Until near the end, when a construction worker fell off the roof to his death. I heard a rumour that it was suicide. Then later, what I figured must be closer to the truth, which was that the guy wasn’t harnessed on and the railings weren’t properly installed around the top of the building. Someone knocked over a heavy piece of equipment, a surveying tripod, it was said. The guy who died, there in that moment before he died, his reflexes told him to reach out and grab that tripod as it fell. But the weight was too much, it had momentum, and he had reached too far, crossed over a critical apex.

Construction stopped for two months after that for the investigation, and then one day it started again. Tonkas revved, cranes fired up and swung across the pale blue sky. Men in hardhats covered the Tyvek with the final exterior veneer. And there it was, a glossy new hotel with a bar looking out onto the overpass. Windows from floor to ceiling reflected the clouds as I walked by; through the windows, red velvet banquet benches, the type with buttons pulling the fabric taut and luxurious; a big parking lot out back and an even bigger shadow cast up the street.

After the evictions, the heir renovated, tripled the rent, and hired a property management company to find tenants. They listed the apartments as short term and vacation rentals. I found them on Airbnb and Marketplace and VRBO, scrolled through all the pictures. Wondered if the silverfish were still there, hiding under the fresh laminate flooring. The heir’s new tenants were a steady stream of mostly film industry people and rich kids. He had stopped mowing the lawn out back and it was all overgrown with weeds that crept toward my yard. I called the city hotline to complain but nothing happened.

I asked him to mow it, but he wouldn’t commit. He stood there on the steps of the top floor suite rubbing his stomach while we talked. He lifted his shirt right up to his chest and did big circles on his belly which was tanned orange, hairless, and soft. I couldn’t help but stare.

“Do you know anyone who would be able to mow it?” he asked, as though it was my responsibility.

“I don’t know anyone who mows,” I said, watching his hands slide up and down his belly. I thought about his determined finger prodding the computer screen in the café as I turned and went inside.

That semester I was teaching three English courses, mainly for international students who spoke English as a second language, and working at the Writing Centre, helping undergrads edit their papers. The Writing Centre was a windowless room in the library. Students trickled in after lunch that day, and I took my seat next to a boy I had been working with all term. He rubbed his eye under his glasses and I could hear it squelching. I pointed to his thesis statement, circled a dangling modifier. I wondered if he would like to mow the heir’s lawn.

Around that time there were several home invasions in my neighbourhood, mostly old people answering the door to a young man, only to get beaten up and have all their valuables stolen. I started checking out the window before answering the door. I kept a baseball bat by my shoes, and my cell phone with me at all times. When I got home from work, Chris, the drug dealer who had been evicted from the heir’s basement suite, knocked on the door. I knew him, so I answered. As the door swung open, I realized it was entirely possible that Chris was doing the home invasions. I stood there feeling freaked out and calculating the distance to the baseball bat. Chris was high, his eyes all puffy and red and his face shining with sweat. He was talking fast and clear.

“I noticed your cat outside. What a cute cat,” he said.

“Thanks Chris,” I said, hoping that maybe saying his name would prevent him from doing something terrible, then feeling bad for thinking he was going to do something terrible just because he was high and a drug dealer. I thought about how I was an asshole, but then clutched the doorknob tighter and took a wide-legged stance. When I said his name, I looked into his eyes, and he blushed and looked away.

“Does she have any kittens?” Chris asked.

“Kittens?”

“Yeah, like any kittens you want to sell?”

“I don’t have any kittens.”

“I’m looking for a kitten,” he said. “My little girl wants a kitten.”

“She’s fixed, Chris,” I said.

“She wants a kitten for her birthday,” Chris said and then turned and started to move away. I felt my hand clammy and guilty on the doorknob and then on the deadbolt as I turned it firmly into place.

That night I dreamed that the heir got approval from the city to build a 50-storey apartment building on his lot next to my apartment. As it climbed up and up above the roofs of the houses, above the maple trees, its brown brick looming over me, its gleaming windows blinking down into my tiny, shared yard, all the light was sucked out of my life. My garden was in full shade, the day lilies never bloomed, the peonies withered brown, all the houseplants in my windows died.

When I got up the next morning, I bumped into the heir outside the house.

“New tenants coming tomorrow,” he said as he leafed through the stuffed mailbox.

“Any luck with the mowing?” I asked.

“They’re working on that new Disney movie that’s starting filming next month,” he said.

“Maybe I could do the mowing?” I said. “I’d do it for 50 bucks.”

“You would do that?”

“I really don’t want the weeds getting into my garden,” I said.

We went around the back of his property to have a look and, as we were rounding the corner of the building, the heir put his hand on my waist to move me out of the back gate’s arc. It was fleeting and probably meaningless, but I felt his palm there even after he moved it. A warm spot just above the line of my jeans.

At work the next day, I typed up an ad for someone to mow the heir’s lawn on the Writing Centre computer. I printed a small stack and cut little lines between the repeating rows of my phone number, which ran sideways along the bottom of each page for people to rip off. On my way home, I pinned the ads to the telephone poles on my street. When I checked the next morning, there was one phone number ripped off. I waited for the call.

It came later in the week. I wasn’t sure if I knew the voice, soft and low. We arranged for him to come on Sunday morning, and I texted the heir to announce when the job would be done.

On Sunday I woke early and went over to the shed on the side of the heir’s house. As I dug around for the weed wacker and the canister of gasoline, the heir pulled into the driveway in his Audi. I watched him through the shed window, then dislodged the weed wacker from a mess of extension cords and plastic buckets.

“Knock, knock,” he said from the doorway. He was holding two cups of coffee and handed one to me as I turned around.

“You didn’t need to do that,” I said. “I didn’t expect you to come, you don’t have to stay.”

“I thought I would check in,” he said.

I heard footsteps in the driveway and then heard a man’s voice calling out.

“Hello?”

“I’m in here,” I said.

“Who’s that?” asked the heir.

“Hi,” said the voice, as Chris, the drug dealer, peeked around the door to the shed.

“It’s you,” I said.

“I didn’t know it was you who posted the ad,” he said.

“What’s going on?” asked the heir.

“Chris will be mowing the lawn,” I said, handing Chris the weed wacker. “I think we’ll have to fill the gas tank,” I said and unscrewed the cap.

The mowing job took longer than expected and when Chris finished and I went outside again, I was surprised to see the heir was back. Or still there. Chris had all the yard waste in a huge mound at the end of the driveway. He was trudging up from the bottom of the yard with his shirt off and dangling from his back pocket. His clavicle and ribs pressed out against his skin.

“You’ll need a truck to get rid of all that,” he said as he got close.

“I didn’t plan that far ahead,” I said.

“I’ll get my guys to take it to the dump,” the heir said.

“Was that four hours?” I asked Chris.

“Yeah, a bit longer than I thought it would take,” Chris said as I took out my wallet. I went slow, watching out of the corner of my eye to see if the heir was going to take his wallet out too, but he just stood there, still holding a coffee cup.

After Chris left, the heir stayed. He checked the mailbox for the basement suite. He poked around the shed. I packed the weed wacker away and was nearly at my door when he turned to me.

“Do you want to get a drink down at the Marriott bar?”

I was so surprised that I said sure. I went into my house and put mascara on. I thought about the heir rubbing his stomach and grimaced into the mirror as I dragged the mascara brush up along my lashes, wiggling it back and forth slowly as I went. I changed into nice shoes and grabbed my purse, stuffed my lipstick and phone in.

Inside the Marriott smelled like a new car, plastic under floral perfume. We sat at the bar. The heir ordered a martini and turned to me.

“I’ll have the same,” I said to the bartender.

Later, in a room on the top floor, I stood in the window in my bra and underwear, looking out as night fell to see if I could see my house. I wondered how far up the street the shadow of the hotel stretched. I thought about the worker falling from the roof and looked down at the hard asphalt in the parking lot. I wondered if he fell past this window. I wondered what I would have seen if I’d been standing here then. The streak of his body? Did he cry out? What do people say as they fall? I imagined all the unheard whispers of people swooping toward the ground.

I couldn’t see my house, but I could see the house where Chris had sold the stolen TV. A sheet of plywood nailed over one of the front windows. The heir was dozing in the bed with his arm behind his head. I looked at the lumps of his body under the sheet. His pits had smelled like baby powder. There is something so vulnerable about armpits, the neck, the soft skin of the groin. Even he had those delicate spots, so prone to shaving cuts and chafing. I pulled my clothes on and said I had better be going. As I pushed through the shining door out of the lobby and into the night, I ran my hand over the warm skin above the waist of my jeans, before tottering back up the hill.

Photo by Daniel Thomas

Marcia Bryan knows firsthand the damage that can be wrought by a payday loan cycle.

Bryan moved from Jamaica to Canada with her mother in 1981, when she was 18. Her mom thought it would be a better place for them to make a life. Years later, at a time when Bryan was helping her teenage sister back in Jamaica pay for school, the Mississauga resident found herself short of funds required for basic necessities like rent and utilities. Despite having a job running a food catering business, there was no way she could see to make it work. Due to a lack of options, Bryan ended up taking out a payday loan.

She lives at Dundas and Hurontario, right across the street from a payday loan business. Her neighbourhood is full of them. What started as an initial loan of $2,700 to cover some business expenses quickly ballooned to over $12,000 as she took out subsequent loans to help with servicing the high repayment costs of her first. One loan turned into two, which eventually turned into seven.

“You don’t read the fine print when you are desperate,” Bryan, a mom of two adult daughters and grandmother to two children, says. “And these agencies can sense your desperation. I was paying over $700 per month for several months and was barely making a dent against the loan.”

Bryan is not alone. Rising interest rates have dominated Canadian headlines for months now. But the five to 6.5 percent rate that the average consumer is now paying on their mortgage is tiny compared to the exorbitant 35 percent interest rate that the two million people who take out payday loans in Canada each year are currently paying.

A payday loan is a short-term, high-interest, unsecured loan that is intended to bridge the borrower’s gap between paycheques. These loans are usually for small amounts, and the repayment is expected to be made in full on the borrower’s next payday.

Without credit history, and often without adequate supports, newcomers can be especially vulnerable to payday lenders. A positive credit history, of course, is a prerequisite for obtaining credit cards, loans, and mortgages. Without a credit score, newcomers may face challenges in accessing these essential financial tools, making goals like home ownership and basic needs like renting a place next to impossible. People rebuilding their lives need cash to do so, and often, there’s no other choice.

*

The payday loan industry is relatively new when compared to traditional lending institutions, having only emerged in Canada in the mid-1990s. Today there are about 1,400 payday loan locations across Canada. Big players in the industry include Money Mart, iCash, and Cash Money. For a sector that has only been in operation for 30 years, it has wreaked significant havoc. A study of 2,700 Ontarians who declared bankruptcy in 2022, conducted by Hoyes, Michalos and Associates, showed that over half of insolvencies involved payday loans. Just 10 years earlier, in 2012, only 21 percent of insolvencies included these loans.

Payday lenders would have us believe that they are filling a need in the market by providing loans to Canadians who otherwise wouldn’t be able to access those funds. The reality is that the very nature of payday loans, with their high rates and fee structure, often leads borrowers to being trapped in what has been coined as a payday loan cycle. In that same 2022 study, only a quarter of those loan recipients stopped at one transaction; 74 percent took out at least two loans, with seven percent taking out more than 10 loans.

Stats on how many newcomers seek these loans aren’t easily available, but it stands to reason that anyone without a strong credit score is susceptible to these predatory lending practices. Studies have shown that these loans are most common among vulnerable communities, and that includes newcomers, according to the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN).

In 2022, a record-breaking year for Canadian immigration, 437, 180 people made Canada their new home, and levels are going to continue to be strong for the foreseeable future. This means something needs to be done now to correct this problem before it inevitably gets worse.

Elizabeth Mulholland, CEO of Prosper Canada, a national charity dedicated to expanding economic opportunity for financially vulnerable Canadians, speaks to some of the unique challenges facing newcomers as they create new lives in Canada. She says that while many newcomers are savvy with money in their country of origin, the fact that Canada’s financial landscape is often so different makes it challenging to navigate. “Lack of a Canadian credit score, language barriers, the absence of mainstream lending alternatives in their communities—all of these factors may lead newcomers to opt for payday loans due to the perceived simplicity and accessibility of these services,” Mulholland says.

Payday loan providers know that new immigrants may have limited options in securing credit and are quite strategic in their outreach efforts with this demographic. Key tactics include an emphasis on promoting their services as inclusive and accessible to everyone, regardless of credit history or immigration status. Advertisements often highlight the speed at which borrowers can access funds. For newcomers facing immediate needs, the promise of quick cash is an attractive selling point. And these funds are often only a click away.

“Payday lenders are incredibly savvy with their marketing, and they can get a significant foothold in lower-income communities where mainstream lenders and credit unions have pulled out,” Mulholland says. She says people in these communities often have bad experiences with bigger lenders. Once, a woman told her that when she went to the bank to cash a government subsidy cheque, she overheard the teller say, “It must be nice to collect welfare all day while the rest of us work.” In comparison, payday loan providers are generally fast, discreet, polite, and treat their customers with dignity. “It’s incumbent on financial institutions to demonstrate this same level of respect,” Mulholland says.

While payday loan providers often make their clientele feel respected in the beginning, when it comes to collecting on their loans, the kid gloves come off. In the event of a missed payment, loan providers will attempt to withdraw the funds directly from the person’s bank account. If there are not sufficient funds to cover the payment, they will try again with a smaller amount. This can result in incurring additional NSF fees. If they fail to recoup their loan by garnishing someone’s bank account, the next steps escalate to include engaging a collection agency (which will have a negative effect on their credit score) or potentially going to small claims court to garnish their wages. This means any efforts newcomers with payday loans make to get ahead and build stable lives can be easily and repeatedly thwarted, keeping them trapped in a cycle that compounds other barriers they may face.

*

After months of consistent loan payments that failed to make any real progress on her overall amount owing, Bryan knew it was time to make a change. Between 2018 and 2022, she worked on repaying her loans and never missed a payment. Still, due to the loans’ high interest rates and short repayment periods, the principal remained pretty much the same.

“It was such a stressful time,” Bryan says. “I was paying $575 every month for a $400 payday loan, and then would end up borrowing more because I was always short of money. It was truly a vicious cycle.” She eventually connected with a debt consolidation agency that was able to work with her on combining her loans into a more manageable payment cadence. Doing so helped to bring her monthly payments from $575 per month down to $145 per month—and she is actually making progress now and will be free of this debt in the next two years. Credit Counselling Canada is one such agency that has helped hundreds of thousands of Canadians to pay off their debt.

Payday loans may be quick and easy, but given the high costs and risks associated with them, it is advisable to explore other options. Or, as Bryan advises, “Run. Don’t do it. It’s a trap.”

There are various alternatives to payday loans, offering more sustainable and affordable solutions. Credit unions, with their community focused initiatives, may be more willing to work with newcomers. Microfinance institutions, such as Windmill Microlending, specialize in offering small loans to people with low or no credit history. These loans are designed to help people build credit responsibly. Several banks, including TD, RBC, and CIBC, now provide newcomer-specific financing options, too.

Government assistance programs and social services also offer financial support or resources. These programs may include income support, housing assistance, and employment services. Some employers may provide salary advances or assistance programs to help employees facing unexpected expenses also.

For those looking to establish or rebuild their credit history, secured credit cards can be a valuable option. Making timely payments on these cards allows newcomers to build a positive credit record, paving the way for more affordable credit options in the future. Another option to consider is exploring credit-builder loans. With these loans, borrowers make small monthly payments, and the loan amount is typically held in a savings account until the loan is fully repaid. Considering these alternatives ensures a more secure path than relying on payday loans.

Though it can feel like a lot to ask, prompt payments of bills like rent and utilities also have a significant positive impact on one’s credit score—but only if the landlord or utility company reports it to a credit bureau. For those who already have a credit card, keeping balances low relative to the credit limit helps, too. High credit card balances can have a detrimental effect on credit scores. By incorporating these practices, newcomers can steadily build a credit history in Canada.

Financial literacy is a critical component of building a new life in Canada. It enhances a newcomer’s ability to participate in the economy, contribute to their communities, and build a stable and fulfilling life. New immigrants may be unfamiliar with the Canadian financial system, including banking procedures, credit systems, and regulations. Financial literacy education helps people navigate and understand these aspects, empowering them to make informed decisions in Canada. Prosper Canada has several good resources, including My Money in Canada, which provides plain-language information and online modules. The Government of Canada has free financial literacy programming, and the Centre for Newcomers in Calgary also provides free financial coaching for new Canadians.

Some of the key demands that ACORN is championing include the creation of a federally funded Fair Credit Benefit, which would be a grant or emergency fund available from the government, and supporting the provision of basic banking services at post offices.

Financial literacy training and coaching services can go far toward helping newcomers to make informed decisions with their money in a Canadian context. As Canada makes plans to boost immigration numbers in the coming years, it is important for newcomers, and those working with them, to consider these options. For a group already grappling with the challenges of resettlement, falling prey to the payday loan cycle can be particularly detrimental, jeopardizing their well-being and ultimately, their ability to build a better life in Canada.

*

While the rising inflation that was widely reported in the past year is finally cooling, the bottom line is that the cost of living in Canada is high, and ways to build credit aren’t equally accessible to all. Payday lenders assert their role in addressing a gap in the market by offering financial assistance to people encountering systemic barriers to fair credit access. However, their approach is ineffective, exacerbating challenges for the vulnerable people they purport to aid. These systemic barriers are the real root issue.

“Some people turn to payday loans because they have a temporary income-expense gap that they need to address,” Mulholland says. “However, for people who are turning to payday loan providers for basic recurring expenses, like buying groceries or paying rent, the fact that they are placed in this no-win situation means we need to better look at our welfare and disability support programs.” These income support programs should be adequate to an individual’s basic needs, she says. “If not, we’re forcing people into the wide-open arms of these payday loan predators.”

Having learned about the dark side of the payday loan industry the hard way, Bryan has since joined ACORN to fight for change. She is eager to see further government intervention in the industry. “My experience opened my eyes to the incredible injustice out there,” she says. “People need a voice, and ACORN is that voice.”

Thanks in part to the efforts of organizations like Prosper Canada and ACORN, the federal government has recently introduced some new measures to address these lending practices, including reducing the “criminal” rate of interest from 47 percent to 35 percent annual percentage rate (APR) and capping lending fees at $14 per $100 borrowed. Despite this, there is still a long way to go toward providing Canadians with a fair alternative to payday loan providers.

As Canada continues to welcome newcomers, it is essential to empower them with the knowledge and resources necessary for financial well-being. Payday loan providers’ destructive practices highlight the urgent need for comprehensive solutions, involving collaboration between government agencies, financial institutions, and nonprofit organizations. Regulating bodies, and the financial services industry at large, both have significant roles to play in levelling the playing field. By understanding the challenges faced by newcomers, addressing systemic issues, and promoting financial education, Canada can pave the way for a more inclusive and equitable future for all.

Photo courtesy of the Bent Arrow Traditional Healing Society and Community Outreach Transit Team

They’re slumped over on the seat, head almost touching the floor of the train car. The other passengers try to politely look away, avoiding sitting in their vicinity. Is the person asleep, unconscious? Possibly unhoused, with random personal items spilling out of a ripped backpack, they might need assistance. Yet no one moves to get involved.

Concerned, someone finally calls an Edmonton Transit Service peace officer. Someone else also shows up alongside them: a Bent Arrow Traditional Healing Society (BATHS) outreach worker. Together, they gather the groggy person up and help them off the train.

This new social program, the Community Outreach Transit Team (COTT), was put into action along Edmonton’s train lines as a pilot project in 2021 to help give meaningful and humane support to unhoused people and people in distress who use the trains and bus system as shelter. The wider purpose of BATHS, “is to make sure that all Indigenous children are connected to their culture and families, especially to make sure that we’re also building on the strengths of Indigenous children and families, to enable them to grow spiritually, emotionally, physically, and mentally so that they can walk both in Indigenous and non-Indigenous communities,” says BATHS senior manager Lloyd Yellowbird. Working off a similar program model as the Human-centred Engagement and Liaison Partnership in Calgary, the City of Edmonton, partnering with BATHS, felt that a related strategy could benefit the city’s unhoused people.

Together, this team is working to help end homelessness in Edmonton. Outreach workers, also staff members of BATHS trained in trauma-informed responses, connect people with inner-city programs that offer long-term solutions to those who choose to engage with the team members. They help unhoused people get ID and transportation to access medication and other services. Specialized training is important because, “a lot of times [houseless people] face living in a traumatic lifestyle to begin with. [They] don’t want to go to shelters because they don’t feel safe,” Yellowbird says.

After the successful end of the first pilot phase of the partnership in 2021- 22, 2,700 general interactions were logged, and there were 510 instances where referrals were made to assistive services. In March 2023, the city agreed to continue the COTT project, allocating funding of $2.1 million until Aug. 31, 2026. These funds are used by the outreach teams to connect their clients with housing programs and financial assistance services, and to reconnect families and communities. With seven active teams working along the transit system, from 6 a.m. to 2 a.m., seven days per week, Yellowbird says that there will hopefully be funding for four more teams soon. COTT also continues to assist those who have received support from them in the past. “It’s not just a one-off kind of system. Support is always there,” Yellowbird says.

The work that BATHS does to connect displaced people to their communities is something that could, and should, be replicated in other cities. BATHS’s success is one way to help those who have been marginalized to find the community connection that leads to personal fulfillment.

Photo by Jonathan Kemper

Kevin Sidlar’s garden has been a refuge for the past two decades, if not quite a major source of sustenance. For much of his adult life, he’s grown annual flowers, peas, and tomatoes in his backyard.

In the early days of 2020, something shifted within Sidlar. He felt nervous about disease and the security of our food systems. Surveying his abilities to meet his own basic needs in a suddenly uncertain future, the Thunder Bay resident decided to get serious about growing his own food.

Sidlar was sure that increasing his self-sufficiency would settle his nerves about what he felt could be an impending societal collapse, and spending more time with the earth would improve his mental health in the short term. He grew up on a farm that had been in his family for 100 years, and he’d absorbed the rhythms and methods surrounding him. “Gardening teaches me responsibility. Also, I’ve got more fresh food in the house, that leaves me less reliant on the grocery store and frozen foods,” he says. An application developer for the region’s major phone and internet company by day, Sidlar delves deep into one or two hobbies at a time. In his 40s, his major avocations have included foraging for wild mushrooms, sailing, and drumming with a local band. Translating that energy to food production made sense.

For one thing, grocery stores didn’t carry some of Sidlar’s childhood favourites, like kohlrabi, perhaps because it’s impossible to machine harvest large quantities. Also, shade from nearby apartment buildings and trees limits the kinds of crops viable in population-dense urban areas, and Sidlar wanted to diversify the crops he was able to grow. He found a Facebook post advertising affordable rental garden plots located a few minutes’ drive from his home, just within city limits.

Adventure 38 was Jay Tarabocchia’s response to the growing needs of his urban neighbours. He and his father were only able to use a small portion of the 38 acres they lived on, and Tarabocchia had seen how much joy and contentment gardening had brought his father in his senior years. Having moved back to Thunder Bay from Ottawa to care for his dad in the family home of 50 years, Tarabocchia extended use of the land to would-be gardeners who lacked the space. “I thought, ‘Why don’t we do some kind of project to keep expanding on the gardening theme, keep him excited for life?’ So I started making more gardens.” It wasn’t long before he thought to share the space with others.

Nutrient-rich soil and unimpeded sunlight offered exciting opportunities at Sidlar’s rental plot—he could finally grow corn after innumerable failed backyard attempts. His first growing season was a learning experience, though, and he took note of how different the conditions were between his lakeside backyard and the farm plot, which is farther inland.

Lake Superior affects the weather in Thunder Bay, which means more moderate temperatures in town. Adventure 38 experiences a shorter, more intense season. The hotter summer days offer greater outputs, provided gardeners are able to time sowings appropriately. Crops requiring higher evening temperatures, like okra, corn, and peppers, do well there. Seed packages offer guidelines, but it’s only through trial and error that farmers learn when to plant which crops, and which plant relationships are mutually beneficial when interplanted. This long-term thinking with considerations for the rhythms of the seasons gives Sidlar a sense of profound satisfaction, and an afternoon spent in the dirt offers a quiet ease that can be hard to attain in late-stage capitalism’s dizzying circus.

The deep disconnect many of us have from food sources has deleterious effects on mental and physical health. Joining a community garden like Tarabocchia’s is one way to stitch our relationships with food, ourselves, and the earth back together.

*

When food prices shot up enough that many fully employed people weren’t able to feed themselves or their families, it was time to go back to basics. Whether the unending, oppressive food scarcity is partially or entirely artificial, the only recourse many Canadians have is to seize the means of production.

Almost everyone has felt the mounting pressure from climbing food prices in the last two years. The Bank of Canada has, since 1991, tried to keep inflation to two percent yearly, yet grocery store prices have risen steadily since December 2021. The metric for prices is the Consumer Price Index (CPI), which uses a “basket” of foods most families consider staples to calculate the changing costs of a trip to the grocery store. As of August 2023 it contained hundreds of items spanning different cultural and dietary considerations: avocados, baby food, chicken, dried lentils. In 2022, the CPI for food had its largest year-over-year increase in 41 years at 11.4 percent. The metric for all items went up 6.8 percent, and that year saw an increase in average wages of only five percent. Following a 2022 poll, Statistics Canada estimated that 20 percent of Canadians would need to use a food bank in the next six months.

Primary causes for the jump in food prices include supply chain interruptions with COVID-19 outbreaks and facility closures, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and changing weather. With concurrent increases in housing and energy costs, most people have difficult choices to make. While harnessing solar or geothermal energy may be outside the budget for many, the average Canadian can take steps toward improving their food security.

Once thought of as a quaint hobby primarily enjoyed by retired folks, gardening has taken off and captured the hearts of people across demographics. Due to a surge in first-time home gardeners, stores in Canada’s cities were sold out of many gardening supplies in spring 2020, and similar purchasing frenzies occurred in 2021. As the vast majority of Canadians live in cities and lack the space, soil, and light sufficient to grow much food, community gardening solutions have proliferated to meet our changing needs.

A meta-analysis of community gardens in Canada and five other countries showed a 19 percent increase in use from 2018 through 2019. Following decreased interest at the onset of the pandemic, numbers surged again in 2021 and levelled off in 2022. The city of Edmonton created 350 ad-hoc community garden allotments in 2020, while Victoria reallocated resources at Beacon Hill Park to grow food for distribution, prioritizing socially vulnerable populations. Brampton responded to pandemic gardening needs by distributing gardening materials to home growers, who either consumed the food they grew or donated it to the community.

In Winnipeg, Wolseley Community Gardens (WCG) sprung up in 2021 as a response to some of this increased demand. They offer garden space mostly to those living in multi-family dwellings and apartment buildings. WCG co-chair Jade Raizenne says that they received 47 applications for 20 plots in 2021; 39 in 2022; and 37 in 2023. The group expanded the garden each year, so it now hosts 24 raised beds, a native pollinator garden, and an orchard of fruit trees. “Since we started, everyone I’ve talked to has mentioned how much they love coming here, and how good it is for their mental health. One man who doesn’t rent a plot, but walks through the orchards every day, said it’s often the high point of his day,” Raizenne says. At times of social unrest and anxiety, community gardens are resilient, offering respite and a relatively safe third space in cities.

*

As globalization and capitalism accelerate, operators of large farms have found it increasingly challenging to make a living growing food. Rates of suicide among farmers have soared in the past decade, and many young adults coming of age in the aughts were unable to envision a financially feasible future farming. Large farms became more technologically advanced over the past 20 years, with the proliferation of drones, robotics, and sensing technologies. While these advances can drastically increase quantities of food being produced, the ecological costs may not be fully understood.

The opposite is true for less tech-dependent, older methods. Permaculture has been a buzzword for the last two decades, and merits consideration by anyone looking to optimize their land use. It’s a framework that works with the land, rather than imposing changes in an effort to yield species that may not do well in a given region. Colonizers famously brought invasive species with them wherever they went, and despite how charming some of these species can be, like bellflower, they can choke out native plants that offer more to ecosystems. Most invasive plants, though, can be replaced by a native species with a little research.

And in a growing number of gardens, ancient, Indigenous cultivation methods are in use despite settlers’ efforts to supplant them. Three Sisters is commonly practiced among gardeners and the symbiosis of beans, squash, and corn gives each crop advantages they lack when grown individually. Intertwining stalks and varying growth habits makes that triumvirate impossible to machine harvest, so we see how cultivation with respect for innate qualities of plants and the earth they grow in is inextricably linked with slow food practices.

Regardless of what type of food plants are grown where, it is clear that monoculture is the enemy of sustainability. When agents of industry realized that one species of orange and one variety of banana performed best, those varieties were grown on huge farms to the exclusion of all others. Today, the only banana commercially available is the Cavendish seedless, which is a clone. Because every tree on a plantation has the same DNA, if a novel fungus attacks, the entire crop can be wiped out. This already happened with the Cavendish’s predecessor, the Gros Michel, in the 1950s. Without genetic diversity allowing for adaptations to changing pathogens, farmers have had to continually increase pesticide use on bananas. In the past decade, some years saw seasons of near-total losses of navel oranges and russet potatoes. Late-stage capitalism and an unconscious preference for uniformity have brought food production systems to a point where staple crops are needlessly vulnerable in ways that biodiverse farms aren’t.

At community gardens the world over, including Adventure 38, gardeners are constantly learning through trial and error, and by exchanging ideas. There are innumerable choices that farmers make, consciously and not. Whether to use pesticides, fertilizers, and whether to use cost-effective synthetic products versus old-school organics like bone meal and composted manure are just a few of the variables to consider. People are experimenting with and reviving traditions that had almost been forgotten, like hugelkultur. This German practice creates large mounds of decaying logs, offering lower-effort raised beds than the more commonly seen flat rectangles, fabricated with lumber. The sloping sides increase available growing space, and soil quality improves as the wood decomposes. One person whose plot neighbours Sidlar’s uses two-litre plastic bottles, standing upright in small hills. They fill with rainwater, overflow runs downslope, and these reservoirs keep plants happy without having to get out a hose. Not having to irrigate cuts down on labour, allowing the grower to make fewer trips to tend to their farm.

As small farmers return to pre-tractor methods that may decrease yield, they find that some kinds of input become unnecessary. Fertilizer prices skyrocketed following Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine and ensuing sanctions, as Russia and Belarus are two of the world’s top exporters. But bringing kitchen scraps to a composter, learning more about how to revitalize soil, and narrowing the scope of a farm have allowed hobby farmers and intentional communities to approach self-sufficiency. Sourcing hyperlocal materials such as a neighbour’s livestock manure can decrease dependence on global supply chains while building connections with others.

The idea of gardening was deeply implanted in Sidlar’s family history, but those new to gardening can consult books, radio programs, and community members. For those who are able, gardeners and small farmers are always looking for labour, and trading effort for produce is one way to broaden the reach of community gardens. For folks whose time is consumed by work, community-supported agriculture (CSA) boxes of produce can connect them with local food systems. This gives farmers more money for input at the beginning of the season, and customers get high-quality, local food at an accessible location without having to brave the markets.

It’s more of a challenge, but self-grown food is popular in the city, too. At the Thunder Bay Conservatory, a grassroots organization has put on workshops teaching alternative gardening methods, like straw-bale planting. Not everyone can rent and transport themselves to a garden, or perform the manual labour required. Time, fuel, and physical ability considerations make community gardens inaccessible to many. Planting into the surface of straw bales brings the garden a few feet off the ground, making them accessible to some wheelchair users or folks with physical limitations. Methods like these show that almost everyone can learn how to grow their own food.

*

While Canadians may be waiting a long while for agricultural trends to change, on a microscopic level, small farmers and gardeners can steer things in a more sustainable direction. Though quantities will always be smaller than what factory farms provide, the benefits to small-crop growth are immeasurable. Paying close attention to the relationships between plants and weather facilitates an attunement with natural rhythms. And being emotionally invested in food production prevents waste. “If I put my sweat into a tomato, I’m eating it before it goes bad,” Sidlar says.

CSA kohlrabi in Thunder Bay may cost more than the cheapest alternatives at big box stores. But it has more intact enzymes, a lower carbon cost, and promotes a future of resilient, biodiverse small-scale agriculture that won’t accelerate climate catastrophe or exploit disadvantaged farm labourers elsewhere. It’s probably a lot tastier, too.

Photo by Mooneydriver

In the middle of the 2023 fire season, A Critical Incident Stress Management counsellor came to our fire base. The season had been unprecedentedly busy, even with wildfires ramping up in recent years, and my crew in southern British Columbia had racked up more than 70 days on the fireline with no sign of it slowing down.

The counsellor’s visit was proactive. During a previous record-breaking year, I had witnessed the accumulating fatigue that led us to turn on one another. Pushed to our limits through months on end with little sleep, the social structure of the crew fractured, and infighting became common. But this year, my crew supervisor wanted to get ahead of the turmoil.

All 20 of us sit in a circle, and one by one we begin to air our grievances. One crew member speaks up. “I go home, and I just can’t listen to anyone. They tell me stories or things about their life and I just don’t care. I can’t help but trivialize everything they’re going through.” The rest of us nod our heads in agreement.

“I was at MEC and I just kept having power fantasies about beating the cashier to a pulp,” another crew member says. I feel a twinge of guilt. I’ve had similar intrusive thoughts, but I would have a hard time admitting it to a group.

“I don’t feel close to anyone in my life anymore,” I say when it’s my turn to speak. “I feel that all my friends, my family, are drifting away and I can’t stop it.” More nodding heads.

A second-year crew member raises his hand. “I just… I… miss my son.” He can’t say anything else. Tears come instead.

The counsellor speaks. “Listen, you guys are all living up here.” He raises his arm way above his head, and his wrist makes a shaky gesture. He’s referring to weeks with little sleep, the constant high-pressure thinking: contain the fire, avoid death. He’s referring to being away from our loved ones, to several months of moving from one objective to the next without any thought for ourselves or others. He’s referring to 19-year-old Devyn Gale, who died on the fireline near Revelstoke, B.C. just a few weeks before his visit. Again, we nod. I guess the counsellor is right—our normal is somewhere in the region around three feet above our heads.

“Now, when you leave the fireline and spend time at home, everyone else is down here.” His arm lowers to waist height. “Of course, being home is going to feel bad, it’s now an abnormal place for all of you.” The conclusion: being on the fireline is easy now. We have been in it long enough to adapt. It’s leaving it that’s hard.

The group counselling session helped us to recognize each other as members of a common struggle, reminding us to get through it together. However, as seasonal workers, we are laid off in October. Away from the support of our crewmates, in an environment that lives at waist height.

After a few weeks, some recover. They sleep long hours, rekindle relationships with their partners. Bodies worn out, the winter is spent recuperating. They travel, ski, and read. Some return from a chaotic summer and continue working or studying just as they had before. They do arborist work, massage therapy diplomas, forestry degrees. Life goes on.

Others do not fare so well. For many, off-season is a cruel time. It is lonely; the close ties with crewmates are severed. It is inexplicable; family and friends have a hard time understanding what we’ve been through. It is exhausting; previous months of herding fires and digging guards take a toll on the body. In an effort to reclaim, some spend their entire savings on gambling and compulsive drinking. However, usually the suffering is secret, silent. It lives under layers of despair, rotting in the decrepitude of hopelessness and isolation.

This was my fourth year on the job, and despite the struggle, I love it. I have worked in grease-stained industrial kitchens and on the icy ski slopes of New England; but to me, nothing compares to being a wildfire fighter. Nowhere else have I felt the camaraderie of carrying a fire hose with my squadmates until our legs give out, the meditative bliss of chainsaw bucking, or the satisfaction of successfully establishing a fire guard around a community. The job is challenging, thrilling, and communal, all in the astounding desolation of the Canadian wilderness.

After this season ended, I came to expect detachment and lingering fatigue. But this time something was different. Food tasteless, television and books uninteresting. I stumbled to my family doctor. The diagnosis: major depression.

It is one thing to be in such a sorry state for the five-month off-season. It is another to think that some of these burnt-out, emotionally comatose workers will return year after year without question. We are leaving. Across Canada, there are high rates of turnover and a chronic lack of retention.

One solution would be to improve mental health support during the off-season. For example, year-round access to insured therapy would be helpful. However, this would be a band-aid solution to an issue that stems from being overworked in the summer months, an issue that ultimately comes from working under an old model that is in need of revision.

The demands of the job have grown. Wildfire seasons have become more strenuous and crews are spending more days on deployment. As the nature of the job changes, the job itself must adapt to the growing destruction. Treating recovery during the season as a part of the job could be a good step. Earning paid time off after successive deployments would incentivize recovery instead of it being a financial cost to workers. And, at least in my home province of B.C., the ministry is adapting. Deployment length and rest periods have become more flexible. Pay has increased a bit. Washing ash and soot off our bodies is now considered on-the-clock work time. Gradually, things seem to be improving, one motion, one addendum at a time.

There is still more to be done. Depression should not be common among the workforce and burnout should not be an inevitable reality of the job. It may take more union clamouring and scheduling adjustments to make the job more sustainable.

It is unfortunate that my co-workers and I became wildfire fighters at a time when summers became more vicious, when the regulations of the job lagged behind the demands. That we are the ones caught in the gears of an intensity shift. I hope that those of us who are burnt-out, depressed, and isolated are catalysts for a change ahead, and not a sign of what’s to come.