For our special 50th anniversary issue, Canada’s brightest, boldest, and most rebellious thinkers, doers, and creators share their best big ideas. Through ideas macro and micro, radical and everyday, we present 50 essays, think pieces, and calls to action. Picture: plans for sustainable food systems, radical legislation, revolutionary health care, a greener planet, Indigenous self-government, vibrant cities, safe spaces, peaceful collaboration, and more—we encouraged our writers to dream big, to hope, and to courageously share their ideas and wish lists for our collective better future. Here’s to another 50 years!

I want a future Canada where words matter. Where stories are honoured and storytellers are valued. I want a Canada where diversity and equity are more than catch phrases. Words matter in future Canada. Words matter because they are the fabric that wove together Peace and Friendship Treaties. In future Canada we consult with one another; we respect difference without trying to erase it.

We respect the lands here in future Canada. We learn from the Original Peoples how to care for waters and respect lands. We acknowledge the names of the traditional territories we live on. If we are settler colonials we have learned about violences we inherited. And when stories are told in future Canada we listen to the storytellers. We sit at their feet and learn.

Here, in future Canada, we celebrate the multiplicity and richness of Black cultures and communities without forgetting that Canada was built by enslaved peoples.

In future Canada, if you are a displaced person or a refugee, we welcome you without asking you to foot your own bill. We work with you to access the health care, support, education, and public transit you need to start to settle into life here. Your neighbours bring you food, help you acclimatize to the seasons.

Future Canada is queer, by the way. Future Canada is bi-. Future Canada is transgender. Future Canada loves a rainbow, and it loves diversity of sexualities and identities more. Future Canada loves multiplicities and future Canada is made up of an army of lovers.

Here in future Canada we dance.

In future Canada mentorship is generous and respectful and doesn’t come with the risk of abuse. And guess what? In future Canada rape chants and racism don’t happen on college and university campuses with the dependable regularity of new notebooks being purchased for fall semester. In future Canada we just get the new notebooks.

In future Canada we believe survivors, but we don’t have any more victims, because in future Canada respect is real and consent is the bedrock of interaction. I’ll say it again: in future Canada we believe survivors. Always, we believe survivors.

In future Canada Tanya Tagaq is one of our most respected artists. El Jones is our poet laureate and we sit down and listen when she recites. In future Canada poetry changes minds and hearts. And the poets? They get paid, because in future Canada funding for the arts is at an all-time high.

Illustration by Matthew Daley

For our special 50th anniversary issue, Canada’s brightest, boldest, and most rebellious thinkers, doers, and creators share their best big ideas. Through ideas macro and micro, radical and everyday, we present 50 essays, think pieces, and calls to action. Picture: plans for sustainable food systems, radical legislation, revolutionary health care, a greener planet, Indigenous self-government, vibrant cities, safe spaces, peaceful collaboration, and more—we encouraged our writers to dream big, to hope, and to courageously share their ideas and wish lists for our collective better future. Here’s to another 50 years!

Almost 50 years ago, in 1970, my friend Stephen Clarkson asked 50 people to guess what things would be like in 50 years and published them under the clever title Visions 2020. I made the cut then and—who’d have guessed—have made it again. I predicted that the world would still be run by multinational corporations and, I must say, was remarkably prescient.

I could try to say the same thing. But I won’t. Instead, I’ll stand my prediction on its head and imagine what I hope will happen: what must happen if we are to survive in our age of catastrophes, of global warming, droughts, wildfires, rising sea levels, species extinction, pandemics, terrorism and wars on terror, cyber wars, and new horrors not yet named.

As for the monster corporation, it must wither away to create the room for the smaller institutions of community. Corporate rights, as embedded in trade agreements, must yield to human rights. Corporate globalization must give way to communities that are in solidarity, fundamentally egalitarian.

After the great wave of economic globalization prior to World War I, Karl Polanyi described how the economy, separated from the society in which it had long been embedded, had taken on a life of its own. From that utopian project came the Great Depression of the 1930s and fascism in Germany. But, in a great victory of democracy over capitalism, there had also come, as counter-movement, the American New Deal, albeit with many flaws, and its modest Canadian equivalent.

Learning nothing from history, globalization in the raw was born again. The separation of finance from society and democratic control led to the 2008 global financial crisis. The state saved the whole system but resisted attempts at reform.

Meanwhile, the world worsened. This time globalization had yanked nature, ecology itself, from society; the disasters that resulted from that were made manifest. The good news is that again movement has led to counter-movement. Tellingly, deep analysis has been accompanied by political action, Bill McKibben and Naomi Klein being leading examples.

In my distant days on the editorial board of This Magazine, I wrote the Innis Memorial Column named for the great Canadian economic historian and student of civilizations, Harold Innis. Innis was much concerned with the conditions essential for creativity and stability, which he saw as a proper balance of space and time, of matters spatial and matters temporal. Globalization, gathering force in his lifetime, meant control of space, of the global economy.

Innis made “a plea for time,” in an essay of that title in 1950. Though agnostic, he appealed to Holy Writ: “Without vision the people perish.” This agnostic would insist on the plural: “Without visions …” The singular smacks of utopia and, even in my lifetime, of totalitarianism of the left and the right.

This Magazine is to be thanked for anticipating this point, for inviting 50 “visions.” To survive for 50 years is a considerable achievement. We are entitled to celebrate. To do another 50 is itself a vision and a hope, a project well worth the effort. Call this my Innis Memorial Column redux, my own abbreviated plea for time. Time for history as collective memory. Time for dialogue, not debate. Time to reflect, not react. Time to heed and to help. Time to care and share. Time to contemplate and meditate. Time to create the good. Time to heal and not hurt. Time to spare.

And lest I forget: time to renew your subscription to This Magazine. Ask for the special 50-year rate.

The question I ask is who has written, decided, and preserved the prevailing Canadian narrative? Considering the colonial and predominantly white, english, and male control of the Canadian ideal, the national myth is essentially homogenous. However, this homogeneity is hidden behind a strategically woven story, a deceptive narrative neatly integrated into civil structures, institutions and government processes ­ described, listed and lived within the supposed ideals of multiculturalism, plurality and benevolence.

What would be an effective way to rupture this homogeneity? To interrupt the dominant story, and influence the Canadian narrative in a radical and truly disruptive fashion? How can we reveal potential and possibility in Canada and its future without breaking down the barriers that exist within the psychic and physical infrastructure of the nation?

I was paralyzed by these questions when confronted with the task of articulating my vision for Canada over the next 150 years. I felt trapped… as I often do, when considering my place within Canadian national identity and the institutions that govern its natural and cultural systems. It is easy to become apathetic and lost in a situation dominated by a voice that is ignorant to its own prerogative and far removed from personal experience.

I can’t continue to blindly play along, and circle back into the dominant structure of the national narrative. I want to break out of that cycle. As a self identified queer, feminist, white, English, cisgender female, eighth-generation Canadian, I don’t want to continue taking up space. I want others to speak, to vision, to imagine and create a new fantasy we can stumble about in together. Of course I have a voice too, (in this case and in many other opportunities I have been presented,) and my voice is enabled, by its varied privileges, to step aside. To open the dialogue and advocate for a discourse that is created between multiple voices of varied backgrounds and situated circumstances.

Where will Canada be, what should Canada do and how should we proceed should be answered through discourse powered by the voices of the people who currently live in and around the borderlands of the dominant narrative. Search for Canada, the imagined reality, the through the voices of people who already live on the edge of the dominant reality. Who really one could say already live in the realm of fantasy ­ a courageous place of possibility.

Listen to the borderlands. Be present in their imaginings, their desires. Be silent, my privileged voice, and listen…

Helaina Laland:

The year is 2164. The last fifteen decades or so have been rather trying for mankind. Canadians have had an especially hard time of it, what with the beaver fever outbreak of 2081 and the 2142 U.S. invasion of Fort McMurray and ensuing Martial Law. Thankfully, that was put to an end with the development of bovine methane power. This, in addition to greatly lowering greenhouse gas emissions globally, is what has made Canada one of the most influential (wealthy) countries in the world because of its vast expanses of forest and meadow, which have been mowed down to golf course standard and now serve as pasture for billions of cattle.

In the sports world, we have recently been celebrating Quilla daughter of Mabel’s zirconium medal win in four­-armed backstroke at the 2164 Olympic Games. Corporeal enhancements have made it a good time to be in athletics, along with the fact that athletes are now the highest wage earners in the country.

Since paper was banned in 2150 in order to conserve Canada’s few remaining trees, artists have been searching for alternative forms of hard media, which some believe to be more authentic than digital art, however primitive it may seem. Most recently, the trend has been toward lino cut, a technique that has been facilitated in modern times by high-­precision, cutting laser pointers.

Of course, it’s impossible to talk about the state of things without mentioning the latest fad to sweep the nation ­ analog watches. This isn’t the first time an archaic technology has become popular among “mode­-ites”, and it almost certainly won’t be the last. So­-called fad­-augurs are predicting a return to eyeglasses might be next, but really, who knows what the future holds?

Josie Baker:

I am not proud of Canada right now. We seem to be governed by the ideology that government’s role is not to build and maintain a stable, just society, but to facilitate corporate profits and to ensure a compliant workforce ripe for exploitation. As a nation we are actively ignoring the threats posed by climate change and increasingly desperate poverty. We are actively criminalizing First Nations activists, migrants, refugees, immigrants, and environmentalists. Canada today is embodying the worst of what our history has to offer; a history of colonialism, imperialism, and genocide.

The bold vision I would suggest for the future of Canada is to work to truly embody a Canadian ideal – that of democracy. A truly democratic system could nourish vibrant, resilient, communities across Canada. To be truly democratic, we need to fundamentally change the power balance of our society.

We need to reshape our economy–eliminating poverty has been within our power as a country for a long time, but it has not been considered profitable. The economic system that we have creates and profits from poverty. It creates and profits from environmental destruction. Poverty and extreme wealth are not acceptable and demand a price that we cannot afford. No one should have to choose between paying for medicine or buying food. No one needs to stay with their abuser because they can’t afford to leave with their children. No one should work full time and still have to rely on food banks.

We need to take steps to build resilience and abundance in our communities. We need to empower and enable communities to put their human creativity and ingenuity to work to face our common problems. To truly fulfill our democratic ideals, to work towards social and environmental justice, we need to build relationships of trust and collaboration with those on the margins. The voices of a few have dominated for too long. We cannot afford to continue to marginalize people – we need the voices and perspectives of everyone to meet our common problems. The change needs to come through community –we need to do the hard work of recognizing the wounds that we have inherited from our history and build alternatives that don’t repeat the mistakes of our ancestors. Inclusion takes a lot of work, and it is challenging, but in the process we learn about ourselves, about our assumptions, and we build relationships and we build trust. To create a democratic Canada, we need to face the wounds of our history, and we need to recognize the blindspots in our world view. As a nation, we must work towards our common survival and we need a vast spectrum of human creativity and wisdom to succeed.

Merray Gerges: 

Hi Becka,

After I messaged you last, I went back through previous bits of research and transcribed conversations and it became clear to me that I must use this opportunity to give space for someone who’s considerably more frustrated than I am. I spoke with Pamela Edmonds, a Toronto-­based curator of colour, a few months ago for a piece about tokenism in the Canadian art world that I was working on. I selected a few quotes from our conversation that I feel respond to the question at hand far more eloquently than I ever could. Feel free to pick and choose according to your needs. I’ve also attached the resulting piece for context:

“I strived to bring art that connected to different ethnic and cultural communities. I felt somewhat tokenized, and I still do even now, 15 or so years later. But that’s just the place that we’re at. We’re still not there. I learned that you take three steps forward and then there’s two back. But at least you got one ahead. That’s the price that you pay to be within the mainstream. I always try to be somewhat subversive within the programming that I do.

“You can’t just pick and choose and have everyone in this equal place because that’s not how it is in reality. You have to recognize that there’s discrimination that’s not being recognized. It’s sort of disingenuous. People don’t really believe it. I don’t think they really believe the exoticisation of cultures. On multicultural day, you sample the food. It’s not an understanding of that culture in terms of their contributions. It’s a nice idea. I wouldn’t want to give it up. But it has to be a critical multiculturalism somehow.

“It’s important to reach diverse communities but vital to reach the art world too to say, ‘I’m sorry but you’re gonna have to give up some of your power.’ People have to be ready for that dialogue at some point. It’s gotta happen. Recognition of that oppression is not easy to deal with. But I think it will happen because people will change over the generations. Might not be in my lifetime. That foothold of the white middle class male? It can’t keep up. It’s too multicultural of a world for that to stay. I don’t see it staying that way. We have to look at what art is in a different way, because the west­-centric art idea has changed. I don’t want to be in response to you, or intervening anymore. I just wanna go in and do stuff. Why do you have to reinterpret European art? Just forget about it. It’s tired. I don’t wanna respond to that anymore. I just wanna go about my business.”

Talk soon,

M

Diana Hosseini:

The Canada of tomorrow, the one that perhaps my great grand­children will grow up in, will be a place where they will never feel culturally alienated. No one should ever feel ‘other’ and thus strive to strip away and reject their home culture(s). I do not think that our society fully understands the potential social and psychological damage of today’s form of assimilation nor the fact that it even exists. We may not be in a situation where assimilation is forced and the process at hand is different than that of the shameful part of our history. However, it peaks its ugly head when people introduce themselves with alternate names or when a mother tongue is lost from one generation to the next. A name may seem like a very simple thing however they are our very first markers of identity. When a person provides a different name or a different pronunciation of a name, they sense that this is a requirement in our society, which means that their true self is excluded. Step by step, there are changes in the self, some of which are unfortunately irreversible or take years to heal. In terms of the mother tongue, it is a loss of knowledge and a sort of break in communication between parent and child. Remember that a translation may always have deficiencies.

There needs to be a superior level of understanding amongst us. At the end of the day, besides the Native population, we are all immigrants. Some of us can trace our Canadian lineage far back while some of us have just begun creating one. Being Canadian may mean something different for each of us but we are all here because our parents, our ancestors or we sought something better. Let us not be ignorant of differing languages, foods and perspectives on life. Instead, we should embrace the greatest privilege that we have and that is to be able to live amongst a multitude of cultures. We should be aware and respectful of our differences, it is by doing so that no one is excluded or feels ‘other’. In the Canada of tomorrow, I would hope that we have finally reached a stage where we can without hesitation claim to be a true model of multiculturalism.

Mireille Eagan:

“Under the eye of God, near the giant river,
The Canadian grows hoping.
He was born of a proud race,
Blessed was his birthplace.
The sky has noted his career
In this new world.”
–Translation of the original version of “Ô Canada” (1880)

It is said that Walt Disney is cryogenically frozen at the point just before death, under the Pirates of the Caribbean ride at the theme park that bears his name. When science is willing, Disney will be revived. The story may be a rumour, but it is far more interesting to imagine that it’s true. It speaks to the quality of our time – a result of 150 years of fluctuations between the apocalyptic and the romantic.

In Canada, for instance, a robust optimism informed the late­1800s to mid­1900s. It was predicted that Canada, with its harsh climates and vast natural resources, would forge a hardy people, a “True North, Strong and Free.” An indicator of the time is found in its art, in the celebration of (some of) Canada’s rugged landscapes. The whole thing was a myth, of course, intended to provoke a national identity. The next 50 years would assert the errors found in this approach, that just beyond the frame of the painted solitary trees were people ­ among them First Nations, immigrants, and women.

It is the nature of progress that we respond to what came before. Future people will, therefore, find us misguided, confined by the ideologies of our time. It is humbling to consider that all our current predictions, fear stories, and saccharine antidotes may be charming relics.

If all goes well in terms of science and rumour, Walt Disney will be our ambassador to the future. A product of his time in many ways, he adapted old stories and fairytales to eliminate the macabre, and invoked happy endings where they may not have been before. As Disney hobbles around the future in his freezer-­burnt body and antiquated moustache, I hope that he will realize that he has become what he gave us, what we want—a reminder. In his words: “People look at you and me to see what they are supposed to be. And, if we don’t disappoint them, maybe, just maybe, they won’t disappoint us.”

The voices represented by the ­co-authors—Diana Hosseini, Helaina Lalande, Merray Gerges, Marie Fox, Josie Baker and Mireille Eagan—are a small selection of people. I acknowledge that some key demographics/communities are missing including but not limited to francophone, indigenous, senior citizens, disabilities, varied genders… this essay is an attempt to present a theory in practice, and is not claiming to be all encompassing. I actually feel that this essay’s approach is reflected in the A Bold Vision anthology’s structure and very existence.

My vision for Canada over the next 150 years requires that as a nation, we forgive ourselves for eagerly consuming a diluted sense of ourselves. Our story has been simplified to invoke happy endings for a powerful few. A homogenous wash over a complex and difficult history. But this isn’t the end, the Canadian narrative continues, and we all play a part its’ creation. Let us embrace our failures, acknowledge the complexity of a truly multi­-peopled culture, look to the silenced and listen for possibility.

To be Canadian shouldn’t be comfortable. It should be unstable, disruptive, and unrelentlessly challenged by difficult discourses that are propelled by the far reaches of accepted reality.

For our special 50th anniversary issue, Canada’s brightest, boldest, and most rebellious thinkers, doers, and creators share their best big ideas. Through ideas macro and micro, radical and everyday, we present 50 essays, think pieces, and calls to action. Picture: plans for sustainable food systems, radical legislation, revolutionary health care, a greener planet, Indigenous self-government, vibrant cities, safe spaces, peaceful collaboration, and more—we encouraged our writers to dream big, to hope, and to courageously share their ideas and wish lists for our collective better future. Here’s to another 50 years!

Your Majesties, Highnesses, Princesses and Princes Royal, assorted Duchesses, Earls, Lords This and Lords That, please know that the following argument is not personal, i.e. against your personages. How could it be? I’ve never met any of you, nor will I ever. And I do like to visit London, despite what passes for plumbing in your lesser hotels.

No, I’m certain you are lovely people, unique and charming in your own ways. Furthermore, if the following proposal were to come to pass, I suspect I might like your sort as actual people and not think of you, as I do today, as symptoms-made-flesh; as waving, smiling, sometimes skiing and sometimes cutting ribbons personifications of a psychological disorder.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. It is time to be blunt: the future of Canada cannot include a Royal Family. Thank you, you various HRHs, for being so patient while Canadians took generations to figure ourselves out, while we collectively acted like an adult child that lives in its parents’ basement until its 40s. And thank you also for occasionally visiting us and wearing cute hats. But the relationship between Canada and Royalty is dysfunctional and we both need to move on.

Know that you are not the problem, we are. Canada will never be a grown-up country while its head of state lives across an ocean and earns that title by genetic lottery. Your presence in our lives makes us forever dissatisfied with ourselves and unfulfilled by our very real achievements. Canada does not need absentee parents; we need to parent ourselves.

I’ve heard all the arguments, sentimental and legal, but the most often touted position is also the most telling: that for Canada to become a Royal-Free Zone, Canadians would have to endure a messy constitutional debate. Politicians in Canada love to talk about “democratic reform” while at the same time warning us that “constitutional debates” are dangerous, expensive, and distracting. How the hell else do things change?

The reluctance on the part of our political class to even begin another round of constitutional discussions is inherent to the psychological stunting having far-off rulers creates. When a nation willingly situates its concepts of governance and power outside of its borders that nation’s psyche stagnates. We are too slow at becoming who we want to be. When you believe “the centre” is always elsewhere, you develop unhealthy attachments to whatever you have in front of you, good or bad. The status quo becomes a perverse kind of self-actualization.

We are a great country, we tell ourselves today, because we remain largely unchanged. This is not the same thing as stability. Stable nations welcome change and growth because they have faith in themselves. Canada clings to all kinds of broken statuses quo because we don’t believe enough in ourselves to engage with disruption and uncertainty, with the upsetting side of change. We suffer from this fear because we depend too much on symbols from our colonial past.

If that sounds like an exaggeration of the Royal Family’s presence in the Canadian psyche, think about how often you see images and symbols of the Royals: on your money; on your stamps; on the covers of magazines; in the modifier “Royal” that is added to everything from Legion halls to submarines; in no end of television specials. In another, more sinister context, such a relentless parade of imagery would be likened to programming. But the Royal Family is not sinister (they are not that interesting). Their presence in our daily lives, and thus in our minds, is more like an overly familiar pop tune, the kind that gets played by lazy DJs at weddings or funerals.

If we are ever to have true change in Canada, ever to address our chronic democratic shortages, we need to start with the most glaring example of the undemocratic: our dynastic, nonresident heads of state. Once we get past that psychological hurdle, re-organizing everything from how parliamentarians are chosen to what to do with the creaking Senate will seem not only less burdensome but, and this is the important part, natural—even exciting.

Imagine redirecting all that glamour, fascination, and energy that the media machine called The Royals creates inward, finally, onto us, onto Canadians. We can make our own cute hats, and purses to match.

For our special 50th anniversary issue, Canada’s brightest, boldest, and most rebellious thinkers, doers, and creators share their best big ideas. Through ideas macro and micro, radical and everyday, we present 50 essays, think pieces, and calls to action. Picture: plans for sustainable food systems, radical legislation, revolutionary health care, a greener planet, Indigenous self-government, vibrant cities, safe spaces, peaceful collaboration, and more—we encouraged our writers to dream big, to hope, and to courageously share their ideas and wish lists for our collective better future. Here’s to another 50 years!

I’ve read a lot of hospital memoirs lately: anecdotes featuring shit and piss—stories that detail the bloody mess of having a body. I can see myself in them. It’s soothing to witness your own physical pain and trauma (and moments of hilarious bodily fluid explosions) mirrored back. As a disabled woman, I ache for community that normalizes my “abnormal” body.

At the same time, I often cringe. It’s a complicated cringe. I’m not grossed out. It’s more a cringe of fear. When I read about other sick and disabled people who stipulate that their bodies be respected and their truths be heard, I feel admiration, respect, and a certain kind of panic. It’s a (perhaps irrational)worry that good health care provision is a finite resource that will be taxed by too many of us asking, asking, asking.

Over the years my strained relationship with the Canadian health care complex has achieved a fine balance: I don’t ask for a lot but I firmly demand what I need. My strategy for self-advocacy when navigating the doctor’s office: wear a nice blouse. Speak calmly and know how to describe your pain. Don’t complain when they touch your body without asking first. My strategy is significantly bolstered by my white skin. My tactics are assisted by my expensive clothes. It matters that I am a cisgender woman. All the ways that I pass make it easier.

In Canada we are lucky to have access to health care and I am grateful. But still I long for more—for better. I dream of a future where our Canadian health care system is radically restructured. I want for health care to be truly accessible. I imagine a world where patients are recognized and trusted as holding expert knowledge concerning their own bodies.

In this dream world hospitals would be better funded. In this dream world health care practitioners would work less and have more space and time for each patient. Medical school would not only teach students how to care for the sick but also learn empathy. The medical understanding of the human experience would be intersectional. Imagine a world where your health care practitioner could acknowledge the physical implications of living in a white supremacist patriarchy, as well as understand the functionality of your liver. Imagine a tiered system where hospitals involved social service workers, counsellors, and peer support workers as well as nurses and doctors.

Imagine a world where disability or physical difference was not a problem to be solved, rectified, and rendered normal, but where we instead honoured our individual resilience. I want for a doctor’s office that can offer me relief, but still see me as strong. I want to take a page from all of those memoirs and confidently ask, ask, and ask. I want for my body to leak, sway, and take up space, and to demand no less for all of that.

For our special 50th anniversary issue, Canada’s brightest, boldest, and most rebellious thinkers, doers, and creators share their best big ideas. Through ideas macro and micro, radical and everyday, we present 50 essays, think pieces, and calls to action. Picture: plans for sustainable food systems, radical legislation, revolutionary health care, a greener planet, Indigenous self-government, vibrant cities, safe spaces, peaceful collaboration, and more—we encouraged our writers to dream big, to hope, and to courageously share their ideas and wish lists for our collective better future. Here’s to another 50 years!

We need a new internet.

The current one is, of course, incredibly useful. It has given activists, artists, and everyday folk the world-spanning communicative powers that once belonged solely to industrial giants. But it’s become far too corporatized and centralized. Much of our online activity takes place on the servers of a small cluster of companies. This creates all manner of civic problems. It’s a lot easier for governments to spy when most of our talk is warehoused in a few massive corporate servers. Worse, it means these firms and governments set the rules of engagement. They can shut down communications they find inconvenient, throttle the speed of our connections, or —too often, these days—ignore the rampant abuse on their networks.

That’s where we come in. We need to build another internet—a parallel one controlled by its users. Specifically, what techies call “peer-to-peer” services—where my device talks directly to your device, without needing any big corporate middleman to deliver the files, the chatter, the videos.

Imagine a world in which you have, say, a photo-sharing tool or social network. It runs directly on your own phone or laptop. When your friends want to see your posts, your phone or laptop sends the files along—and your friends’ devices also help out, by passing the info along, bucket-brigade-style. It’s all encrypted, so you can control who’s seeing what, and it’s much harder to snoop. There’s no company tracking you or forcing you to look at ads—because, well, there’s no company running things at all. It’s just you, running the software yourself.

Public-minded hackers are already making this theory a reality. You could put down this article right now and go try out Zeronet, easy-to-use software that lets you run a peerto-peer website. Plenty of other similar tools are coming into view, like IPFS (for trading websites and files), Webtorrent (for sharing things like video files), Bitorrent Bleep (for chatting). If you want to be totally anonymous with a website there’s Freenet.

Most of these peer-to-peer tools are slower and clumsier than glossy for-profit ones. But as more people use them— as more people join the bucket brigades—they’ll speed up. (Donations to those making these free tools would help.) Sure, we’ll keep on using the big corporate services like YouTube or Twitter. They’ll remain great for lots of things. But we’ll have options—ones we control ourselves. The more citizens and activists do their part, the sooner we’ll build the web of us.

For our special 50th anniversary issue, Canada’s brightest, boldest, and most rebellious thinkers, doers, and creators share their best big ideas. Through ideas macro and micro, radical and everyday, we present 50 essays, think pieces, and calls to action. Picture: plans for sustainable food systems, radical legislation, revolutionary health care, a greener planet, Indigenous self-government, vibrant cities, safe spaces, peaceful collaboration, and more—we encouraged our writers to dream big, to hope, and to courageously share their ideas and wish lists for our collective better future. Here’s to another 50 years!

Living as a fat person in this world is hard—really fucking hard. As a fat woman, I’m exposed to near-constant discussion about my body by those who have no right to discuss it. It’s a never-ending fight not to be undermined and viewed as physically, economically, or emotionally unnecessary.

Every person’s body journey is different. While finding your voice, you can encounter several different types of activism, different types of empowerment and draw inspiration from people both online and offline. And then there’s the unexpected stuff: hate from within the fat activism community, cliquey attitudes, and false empowerment deemed as activism.

Here is the thing: body politics are complicated and uncomfortable. But that doesn’t mean we can’t strive to be better and more inclusive—to ensure the dialogue we’re promoting isn’t as harmful as the feared body-shamers that many of us battle each and every single day.

When I co-founded the blog Fat Girl Food Squad, I created a platform to share thoughts and opinions in the body positivity community. The aim of our blog, which developed into a community space, was to “provide a safe, positive space for all bodies, while showcasing those who identify themselves as fat.” It is not okay to dismiss another fat person’s experiences just because they are “only” a size 16. It’s not empowering or uplifting to call out others in the fat community as “skinny-fats” and tell them their opinions don’t matter.

Privilege does exist, but at the end of the day, fat bodies still matter—all fat bodies. It’s incredibly frustrating that so-called “skinny-fats” are shamed and shunned from the straight-sized community and also deemed unworthy by the fat community. We’re allowed to feel complicated feels and we’re allowed to feel discomfort, but we need to ask ourselves: When do those feelings border on bullying? Where do we draw the line?

There is so much to unpack when we use the word fat. It’s a powerful word, one that we’re still fighting hard to reclaim and one that still makes many people uncomfortable. It’s a three letter word and yet it holds so much power. People are afraid of fatness, they are afraid of you owning your fatness, and they are afraid of your fat being a source of political energy. Let’s stop separating which fat bodies are right and which fat bodies are wrong. Fat holds so much energy over others. Rather than using that energy to tear down one another, we should use it to uplift, empower, and liberate other fat bodies.

For our special 50th anniversary issue, Canada’s brightest, boldest, and most rebellious thinkers, doers, and creators share their best big ideas. Through ideas macro and micro, radical and everyday, we present 50 essays, think pieces, and calls to action. Picture: plans for sustainable food systems, radical legislation, revolutionary health care, a greener planet, Indigenous self-government, vibrant cities, safe spaces, peaceful collaboration, and more—we encouraged our writers to dream big, to hope, and to courageously share their ideas and wish lists for our collective better future. Here’s to another 50 years!

In the cocaine-tinted days of shoulder pads and synth pop, urban professionalism propelled a mantra of “run government like a business.” The 1980s were a reactionary rebellion against what was seen as government inefficiency, and a terrible idea from which we’ve never recovered.

At the time, I was a teenager working my first job as a cook at a family restaurant in suburban Ontario and wondering about the future amidst daily headlines such as “13,000 face temporary layoff at GM,” “Shutdowns affect 835 employees at IPSCO units,” and “Half of head office staff at Kidd Creek lose jobs.” Those were all from just one day in 1986. The mid-’80s had record unemployment in Canada—around 11 percent when I got that steak cook job for three bucks an hour, and down a bit from when it broke 13 percent a year or two earlier. (By contrast, it’s about seven percent today.)

That’s the first reason not to run government like a business: Businesses are focused on profit regardless of the human cost. The second reason is that business isn’t necessarily a good model, even for businesses.

According to Industry Canada, 83,240 small and medium enterprises disappeared in 2013. And that was a good year. Thousands of companies go belly-up every year because their primary objective is to turn a profit, and higher risk breeds higher profits. Governments should not participate in such high-risk behaviours. They should provide stable, long-term services that a community needs. And therein lies the most fundamental reason why we need to stop running governments like businesses: They exist for different reasons.

Like many of my generation, I headed west during the 1991 recession. I landed in Alberta, which was still reeling from the late-’80s oil bust. As I took piecework jobs on construction crews, or stood on “Workers’ Corner” hoping for landscaping gigs to pay for groceries, many of my neighbours were clinically depressed. I visited them at Holy Cross Hospital because of their suicidal feelings or, on occasion, suicide attempts.

Then Ralph Klein’s cuts pushed the hand of the hospital’s directors, who took a “run it like a business” decision and closed the downtown hospital and its psychiatric ward, making a distant suburban hospital the nearest facility—abandoning the city’s most vulnerable residents.

Every city has stories like this.

In Ontario, where I live today, corporate taxes are at a record low thanks to a decade of cuts. Toronto has some of the lowest property taxes anywhere. Windsor has frozen property taxes for nearly a decade. There’s room to restore services if we believe that serving the people should be the priority of a government, rather than turning a quick budget buck.

And the quick budget buck is very much the latest trend in running government like a business. It began with public-private partnerships (P3s). They were supposed to take advantage of the efficient ways in which businesses operate, unlike sluggish, bloated governments. After a couple decades of tragedies, we know businesslike greed outweighs any inefficiency our governments may once have had. Ontario famously has the most expensive toll road in the world because of a ridiculous P3 contract.

P3s are popular with governments because they transfer up-front costs off the balance sheet and appear to shift risk to the private sector. That is not, as a recent University of Calgary School of Public Policy paper reveals, the reality. The Golden Ears Bridge in B.C., for instance, came in 25 percent above initial estimates. The cost of Kelowna’s W.R. Bennett Bridge jumped 44 percent. A rapid-transit line in Vancouver went from $1.35 billion to $2.1 billion. In fact, most P3 projects only come in on schedule and on budget because the schedules and budgets get adjusted along the way.

And now Canadian governments are in the throes of just handing public assets over to the private sector for short-term gain. These actions do nothing more than hide a deficit on the government’s balance sheet until after the next election. As with P3s, it’s not really about benefiting the public; it’s about political expediency.

Stop running governments like they’re businesses. Start running them like, well, governments.

Illustration by Matthew Daley

For our special 50th anniversary issue, Canada’s brightest, boldest, and most rebellious thinkers, doers, and creators share their best big ideas. Through ideas macro and micro, radical and everyday, we present 50 essays, think pieces, and calls to action. Picture: plans for sustainable food systems, radical legislation, revolutionary health care, a greener planet, Indigenous self-government, vibrant cities, safe spaces, peaceful collaboration, and more—we encouraged our writers to dream big, to hope, and to courageously share their ideas and wish lists for our collective better future. Here’s to another 50 years!

My first foray into activism was a training session at a rape crisis centre. That night was a crash course in anti-oppression and identity-based frameworks as we split into group and caucus: straight women’s group, queer women’s caucus, white women’s group, women of colour caucus, and so on.

I was 18 and it was the first moment in my life where I found myself in an intentionally politicized space with other women of colour. It was uncomfortable.

The facilitator started by asking us to look to the other women in the room and to think about the ways in which we are socialized to compete with each other, to put each other down, and to be suspicious of one another. She asked us to think about how nobody understands our experiences more than someone who faces the same oppressions, yet we so often distance ourselves from one another.

This was an incredibly simple statement, but it was my feminist moment, a moment upon which all my other feminist and anti-oppressive politics were built. I saw that my distrust toward other people who looked like me came from a deep distrust in myself—an unfortunate byproduct of colonialism and the patriarchy, and I started to understand that in order to resist these systems, I needed not only to honour my own feelings, but also to value the connections that we share as marginalized peoples.

When I think about a future that is more just than the present, I think about the concept of radical empathy—a politicized practice of empathy that connects our relationships with ourselves to our relationships with others. Radical empathy connects our pain and struggles so that when 49 queer people in Orlando are massacred, hundreds of people in Toronto shed tears; when a national celebrity is acquitted of charges of sexual violence, hundreds of survivors feel rage; and when a police officer in Lousiana murders another Black man, we feel profound loss everywhere. It also connects our joy, so that when you see someone finally breaking ground, or loving themselves, or being appreciated or honoured by their community— you feel joy and pride as well.

This empathy already exists—we see it in protests and public outcry every day, and (admittedly less frequently) in public celebrations. The political piece comes in the ongoing reflection on who we choose to connect with in this way, who we choose to identify with, and who we choose to see as human in the same way we see ourselves as human. The radical piece comes in how we choose to honour this historically feminized way of knowing, alongside other ways of knowing, the valuing of feelings alongside thoughts and active listening.

When marginalized people take up space with all of the feels, we are giving value to something in ourselves that we’ve been taught not to value. When we connect these feelings to other people, we transform the hyper-individualization that comes from living under capitalism; we form meaningful relationships; we think and feel more collectively; and we engage in activism that builds loving communities.

This approach to empathic ways of knowing allows us to not just engage in political dialogue and argument, but to feel. It adds clarity to processes of activism that embody the politics we want to see in the world, and it allows us not just to resist, but to transform, imagine, and speculate.