I remember seeing an artistic tattoo, “beautiful disaster”, in stylized lettering, on someone’s arm a few years ago. If you looked at it one way, it seemed to read “beautiful”, and from the other perspective, it seemed to say “disaster”. I was mesmerized. How could something be both disastrous and beautiful?

And yet, here we are, in the midst of a global beautiful disaster. Around the world, people are both hoarding toilet paper and volunteering to shop for the elderly and otherwise vulnerable. People are both “stuck” at home under government- or self-imposed isolation, and taking glorious “social distancing” walks in large open areas, breathing in earth’s abundance like never before. Hospitals are inundated and overwhelmed, and some of the most smog-impacted places on earth are healing and clearing up due to the reduced CO2 emissions resulting from social distancing and the (temporary?) collapse of the airline industry.

If these are not examples of “beautiful disaster”, then I don’t know what is!

As an educator long interested in the possibilities of the internet and digital tools for collaborative, global learning, I personally am intrigued to see how those who have been saying, “we can’t” and “not yet” are now jumping to “we must immediately”!

While nervous for students and their anxious parents who are waiting to see what all of this means for “public education”, I’ve also been extraordinarily inspired by the many corporations and individual educators who are developing/co-developing and/or sharing for free some of the most creative resources I have seen in a long time.

The global implications of this beautiful disaster are profound, in education as anywhere else. Earlier this week I attended a webinar put on by an Ed Tech company, on the topic of “supporting remote learning”. The panel consisted of a principal, a Kindergarten teacher and a middle school tech teacher. In the chat pod, i counted over 150 participants, from at least 11 different countries. I found out about the session from an educator I follow on social media. I’ve never met her in person.

The big themes in that session, shared by the people on the ground, were threefold: First, a reminder that teaching is a highly personal profession. For all the systemic complaints some people may express, the truth is that Teachers usually have a lot of control over what they, personally, do with students and how they do it. Second, teaching well is about relationships. Relationship with students and their families, and relationships with one’s colleagues. If and as teaching moves to online, teachers will have to leverage new and existing tools to (re)establish and maintain strong relationships with the little (and big, in secondary) friends who often have spent more time with their teachers than their parents! Finally, differentiation. “Live where they are” said one of the educators on the panel, referring to the fact that — since the middle schoolers she taught “hung out” on Instagram — that was where she was posting her lessons. This women knew her clientele!

In our excitement to contribute, there will be a lot of “stuff” that continues to be created and shared. It will be a challenge for the average person, also dealing with the personal fallout of this pandemic (possible job losses, small abode with kids and other at home, lack of resources due to panic-buying, etc.) to critically select what’s worth pursuing, and what can be relegated to background “noise”. Now, more than ever, it will be important to consider the criteria by which we choose the things we expose our children to and share with our students. The choices we make in the coming days, weeks and months will set a precedent for whatever comes next. There is no “going back to normal”.

Like never before, we have an opportunity to work together to create something new, something more beautiful than disastrous.

Here’s hoping we get it right!

A friend sent some photos tonight, from the bridge that ties PEI to the rest of Canada. The Mikmaq there are standing with their Indigenous sisters and brothers in BC, as are so many indigenous groups and their Canadian allies, across Turtle island these days.

It’s hard to know where to begin this blog post.  On the one hand, what can I possibly contribute to this story?  On the other hand, it’s important to me that others do not mistake my silence as playing accomplice to a system I have benefitted from in many ways, despite the parts of my identity that are subject to oppression within it.  Some people are saying „it’s not our business“, and yet, as a white, settler Canadian, I believe what’s happening right now is very much our business, and we have a unique opportunity to decide which side of history we will stand on. I feel empathy for those who are severely inconvenienced by the trains being canceled, but rage for white, able-bodied, cis-gender male politicians who demand that it is the protesters who should „check their privilege“, while they themselves continue to support a system that does not provide adequate living conditions for citizens from certain cultural groups, and are selective about which laws to enforce and who to shield from both laws and crimes.

And so, as a Canadian by birth, I want to blog, and I hope you will join me in my discomfort as I bumble my way through what can only be described as a difficult state of affairs in our country right now.

Over the past several weeks, I have been immersing myself in (un)learning.

Now that protests have shut down the railroads across Canada, mainstream media is finally reporting on a story that I‘d become aware of some months ago already, largely because of a promise I’d made to myself to diversify who I follow on social media.  As a result of this promise, I began to follow a white „settler“ who speaks out fiercely and courageously in favour of indigenous folks.  Through her Instagram acct, I happened upon more and more accts that were telling the story of what was unfolding in BC, on land that — as it turns out — is unceded and in fact by Canadian Law itself was never traded to Canada, and therefore technically still under Indigenous law: 22 000 square km of Wet‘suwet‘en territory is not covered by any treaty with the Canadian State, and therefore not really subject to colonial rule (or, as Trudeau likes to call it, rule of law).

Well, depending on who you ask.

To be honest, it‘s a big, complicated mess, one made more complicated by the fact that many Canadians my age are wrestling with the realization that we were taught a history growing up that not only included huge gaps, but also potentially downright untruths.  Incorrect facts.  Corporate lies designed to keep up the myth of the colonialist state of Canada, along with its system of oppression for anyone who might interfere with the machine‘s path forward. So for some of us, it‘s a long, messy road to understanding the various salient details and diverse perspectives that contribute to (or in some cases actively hide) „The Truth“!

As those of us who avail ourselves of the opportunity to unlearn those lies re-educate ourselves through the images and text freely available through an increasing variety of social media and other outlets, we are shocked and appalled at what is unfolding here in our diverse and „inclusive“ country.

We shouldn‘t be shocked, however.  Oppression, as I am learning, is not new in Canada.

While I have known bits and pieces of our „not like in the US“ sham of a history, as 2020 unfolds, I am learning more.  And the details are disturbing.

White people and other „settler“ Canadians: If you haven‘t already done so, I urge you to pick up a copy of Desmond Cole‘s „The Skin We’re In“.  It‘s a must read for any Canadian.  Affirming for Black and Indigenous Canadians, and an important wake up call for those of us who are not.

The challenge is what to do once you know.  Because see, if you do nothing, then you‘re implicated. 

So I‘ve been reaching out to the few indigenous folks I know.  (The photos above are from a passage about people of colour generally, and black people in particular.  But Cole draws lots of connections to the plight of Indigenous people in Canada, and spends a full chapter specifically on that topic.)

Dinner last night with a student pilot friend who is studying at a school located on reserve here in Ontario yielded a reminder that even today, post-secondary institutions of knowledge - if they are geared toward First Nations - may not enjoy the clean water that most of us take for granted when we turn on the tap at home.  Yes, in this day and age in a „first world country“, her school has to provide bottled drinking water, and the poor woman has to shower in toxic stew while she studies here for four years!!!

My general message of support to a friend on PEI, my beloved east coast island, yielded in return a text with photos of the blockade she‘s supporting at the bridge. Confederation Bridge.  Named for something that most Canadians would think of as a unifying symbol.  And yet, we spend millions on bridges and pipelines while indigenous women are disproportionally sexually assaulted, kidnapped and murdered, while many of Canada‘s indigenous population continue to be relegated to insufficient, out of the way reserves with no access to clean drinking water, with crumbling or no schools past elementary, while indigenous people continue to be disproportionately represented in data on unemployment, illiteracy and incarceration. How can we then consider ourselves a „unified“ nation?!

We righteously shake our fists at the injustices we read about around the world, and write cheques to support poor children across the globe, while turning a blind eye to the systemic injustice and careful brainwashing and bias-building our own tax dollars support right here at home!

While the mainstream media is beginning to report on the uprising that has been building now for some months, they are careful to include nice, clean photos of protests, rather than the blood on the snow and heavily armed RCMP with guns in peaceful protester‘s faces that are captured in the photos from people actually on the front lines.

While articles like this one offer a good primer for those still new to the topic, they - like my history classes in elementary school - include lots of gaps! I therefore urge my fellow settler Canadians to check out websites like  Unist‘ot‘en  and It’s Going Down, and follow accts like @gidimten_checkpoint, @decolonizemyself and @settle_in_settlers in Instagram to get a more fulsome picture of what’s actually happening.

I‘ve recently started reposting accts mentioned above to my IG stories, and I worry a little that my friends, family and colleagues might be a little annoyed by the abundance of activism and protest posts. Or perhaps at best, just swipe through.  But I am pleasantly surprised by the refreshing and authentic messages I‘ve been receiving over the past few days, like the one below:

The amount of resistance that even the most activist social justice minded folks among us feel is not to be underestimated. Apart from the usual general apathy and unwillingness to give up our unearned privilege and inconvenience ourselves (and yes, I include myself in this!), there is the more altruistic grief, in a sense, of possibly losing the concept of Canada as this inclusive, diversity minded, hopeful social experiment, for those of us who consider ourselves pretty patriotic (again, me too - I sometimes cry when I hear a particularly moving rendition of our national anthem!)

When matriarchs burned the Canadian flag and declared reconciliation to be dead earlier this week, a piece of me died inside.  While many settler Canadians had not yet heard about it (it happened a day or two before the mainstream media picked up this story), those of us who had been following from afar already knew that we were entering a new reality, one which could not be navigated by simply rattling off the obligatory land recognition at the beginning of big, important meetings.

There is no going back.

Reconciliation as an official political policy may be dead, but I am hopeful that in this new age of instantaneous information sharing informed by an openness of some Canadians to a new (old!) way of being together, we can forge a new path forward.

Capital R Reconciliation may be dead, but reconciliation as a concept isn‘t. It‘s going to take a shit tonne of work and patience on all sides, especially as we bring along new supporters and gently but firmly leave behind those who refuse to be re-educated. But I am cautiously optimistic that if the Indigenous who continue to protect the important things on this land will also continue to teach those of us who want to be allies, and if we are willing to do the hard work, then there CAN be a beautiful new way ahead, together.

Who‘s in?

I must be getting old. Either that, or I’m suffering from low grade depression or something. When my partner invited me to join her on a layover in New York for New Year’s Eve 2019, all I could think about was how awesome it would be to instead get home from work, change into my jammies and lounge around on the couch.

If Seinfeld had the summer of George, I’m having the NYE of Vera... and so far, it’s awesome!

After a horrible week spent mostly in bed with fever and a resultant loss of appetite on account of having an awful cold/sinus infection, I found my tastebuds slowly regaining their passion this afternoon. Consequently, I elected to order in through Uber Eats, and tried out a new Indian restaurant.

With my partner away at work and my kids away at a party, I had a whole quiet evening to myself. And after getting ripped off with Christmas, being sick and all, I was looking forward to some quality downtime with myself!

Unlike George’s summer, this evening did not disappoint: In addition to devouring my tasty Indian dinner, I reviewed a little math, studied some flight stuff, and started a new music app to learn to play blues chords on the piano.

Afterwards, I spend some time prepping a handout for one of my Airbnb Experiences, “Learn German and Eat Potato Salad”, for which I have a booking tomorrow.

In an effort to add value but reduce paper, I’ve been creating and providing electronic “handouts” for some of my experiences, which I use during the experience itself. Last week I made a plane spotting “bingo card” for my “Discover the Secret World of Aviation” experience, and tonight I made a visual language reference for the “Kartoffelsalat” which we’ll be making and eating tomorrow.

Since it’s new year’s, I’m all alone, and I don’t really drink, I decided to splurge on a bubble tea, delivered directly to my door through Uber Eats. What with the delivery charge, small order surcharge and tip, it was ridiculously expensive, but kind of fun in a naughty sort of way - not the type of thing I would normally do! But, I haven’t had a bubble tea in SO. LONG. And besides, I would have spent way more had I actually hopped on the plane with my partner to New York. So I thought, hey, why not?!

The poor delivery guy got lost of course, as do all folks who trust in Google to get them to our secret, off the beaten path hideout, with with a few custom directions from the convenience of my couch, I soon had my bubble tea in hand.

If I were really on my own, I’d probably wrap up the NYE of Vera shortly, walk the dog, and then head to bed. But being a responsible parent of independent, young teenagers who are attending their first “real” party (their words, not mine), I feel somewhat compelled to stay up and ensure they actually arrive home at the appointed hour. (My colleagues with older kids warned of this stage years ago, when Alex and Simon were babies screaming all the time and wouldn’t sleep, and I was complaining of being tired - they wisely shared that the tired part wouldn’t end when the kids got older, since I would then/now be awake worrying about whether they were okay, and whether they’d get home safely. I guess we’ve finally entered that stage!)

Also I want to talk to my honey when the clock strikes 12 and she calls me in a drunken stupor from her dinner out with the crew at the hotel restaurant in Newark.

So it’s off to the next item on agenda of the Boring Old Person’s Stay-at-Home Guide to NYE: A little Netflix and dog snuggling... still in my jammies!

Good night, y’all, and in case I fall asleep on the couch before midnight, happy new year 2020!

Our night in Hong Kong was never intended to be the focus of our 10-day vacation... Headed for Thailand to do some snorkelling/diving and visit an elephant sanctuary, we were looking for a quick place on route to stop over for one or two nights, mainly to recover from the foreseeably long flights through multiple time zones before settling in at our intended destination for a week.

I knew little to nothing about Hong Kong, and was admittedly ill-prepared for this leg of the adventure. Other than exchanging some Canadian dollars for local currency and looking up a bus route from the airport to our Airbnb before we left Toronto, I’m ashamed to say I knew virtually nothing about this part of the world.

I have been (mostly) pleasantly and embarrassingly surprised throughout our little stopover.

The city offers a fascinating contemporary urban architecture against a backdrop of millennia-old geography, infused with a curious combination of ancient and modern cultural quirks. The view from Victoria Peak at night is unbeatable, and the wide variety of food, entertainment and available tourist accommodations is laudable.

But what really interests me is the “real“ life in a city, not what the tourists come to see, but what happens “behind the scenes”, as an almost invisible yet ubiquitous part of the fabric of a place.

As it turns out, I had the opportunity to catch a small glimpse of this on our second morning here.

Still horrifically jetlagged after our arrival from North America the previous morning, I awoke multiple times throughout the night, and eager not to wake my sleeping travel companions, I quietly dressed myself and snuck out of the apartment around 5 AM.

The streets near our Airbnb at the intersection of Nathan and Jordan Roads downtown were quiet, but nowhere near deserted.

In the distance, the golden arches beckoned, as they do now in virtually every city of every country around the world.

Eager for some free Wi-Fi and curious how their breakfast items compare to those in Canada, I wandered inside.

It’s quiet, but already filling up with early morning meal seekers. Several folks sit sipping their coffees and nibbling on globally recognizable fast food breakfast items at a large central table, their faces buried in their mobile devices.

But a second, shocking “sub-population” makes up the periphery of the restaurant: Every bench of every table booth is filled with what appears to be sleeping street people!

A quick Internet search reveals that the 25 or so homeless folks I count at this McDonald’s are — sadly — not an anomaly. With increasing rent prices, the increase in homelessness has also soared, and a study published in March 2018 indicates that the number of homeless spending the night in 24 hour McDonald’s restaurants has doubled in the past three years!

I’m reminded of how fortunate I am to be a visitor here, and how lucky, irrespective of where “home“ is, to have found a path in life that has afforded me a steady income with regular access to food and a decent apartment, as well as the ability to travel. I’m also intrigued by the reaction of the food-purchasing locals. No one seems to bat an eyelash at their less fortunate neighbours, many of whom are still fast asleep on their benches when I leave an hour later, heads resting on backpacks presumably containing all their worldly possessions. (I consider that in Toronto, where both the climate and the mindsets towards such public integrations seem to be much colder, such sleepers would surely have been evicted from their temporary posts rather than left to find a few hours of relatively safe and peaceful escape from the elements.)

Hong Kong is similar to and yet significantly different from how I imagined it.

As I stumble out from my early morning of blogging at the familiar restaurant-come-homeless shelter and back into the street to wander “home” with the sun finally rising in the distance, my mind turns to our afternoon at Kowloon Park yesterday.

Filled with greenery, Asian “kitsch” and some impressive accessibility features for the visually impaired, this urban park tells the city’s story from a different angle.

And as I return to the older building where we’re staying for the night, I realize again how lucky I am, this time with timing: About 20 police officers are milling about with face masks and hard helmets, commuting with one another by radio. I can’t understand what they’re saying of course, but as more of them pull on their masks, I infer they’re preparing for yet another protest, and I’m grateful to have arrived safely back at my Airbnb before that erupted!

How glad I am that we had the opportunity to spend a day in this bustling metropolis. Like all travel, this experience is one that expands the mind and provides opportunity for reflection, both on life‘s big problems, and ones personal contributions to either the problem or possible solutions.

I followed it all the way to the end and saw two beautiful great blue herons.

They wouldn’t let me get close enough to take a photo, but I stuck my toes in the rapidly moving water to assure myself that it was considerably colder than the gently lapping waters of the wide ocean behind it!

Some people who knew I was spending the summer on Prince Edward Island were surprised to hear that I spent part of my three months here living in a tent!

Although it’s true I co-own a house, it is typically in use by my co-owner for part of the summer, and we also sometimes rent it out to help pay for the various expenses that come with owning a home and country property. This year in particular, we had several folks stay, as we had to replace the roof last winter (not a cheap endeavour!)

So, I did get about three weeks in a comfy bed in my room in the house, while spouse and kids were visiting. But at other times, I slept in an assortment of other places!

Last year, I spent a week in a tiny tent behind my music cabin; this year I got a lucky and generous upgrade (thanks to my neighbour whose property I was managing) to a 7 m canvas bell tent! Here I slept for most of June (COLD at the beginning; required warm dog and five blankets!!) and the first half of July.

Sleeping in a bell tent was an interesting experience, and one that certainly brought me closer to nature. I went to sleep each night to the sound of crickets chirping, and awoke each morning to the sound of birds singing and — depending on the month — lobster boats heading out of the bay in the distance.

Sneakers enjoyed it, too, and eagerly ran to the tent’s entrance each night, waiting for me to unzip the door so that she could bound inside for our night of snuggling down under the covers!

Sleeping so far from a flush toilet also meant creative waste management solutions (being in the over 40 club and a birth mother to twins, there is not a chance in hell that I can make it through an 8-hour night without at least one washroom visit, lol!!)

At first I got ambitious and — after much research in the tiny home and off-grid community — installed a compost bin and commissioned a local guy to build us an outdoor composting toilet, which I kept well stocked from a nearby source of sawdust. I even worked in an outdoor shower with a rain barrel and down spout set up behind the music cabin... but honestly, most nights in the tent I ended up using a chamber pot. #lazy. LOL!!

That said, I did enjoy daytime “business” at the back of the property, with the outhouse door open, gazing into the forest.

After some weeks in my house, it was back to the tent for me... and eventually, I moved to the music cabin, as the time came to prepare for my departure from the island and return home to Toronto. Here I experimented with sleeping in a hammock, which has provided many deliciously luxurious afternoon naps, but did not work out so well for a full night’s sleep as it turned out.

In addition to these nighttime adventures, I slept around in the day, too! This included the OG hammock over at my place, under the deck, as well as a new rope hammock at Rick’s, and a cushioned swing inside the dog run.

Each sleeping partner had its benefits and drawbacks, but overall, I’d say that sleeping around on PEI this summer was a relatively safe and fun experience. Though I am looking forward to getting back to my own bed in Toronto, largely because it often includes a cute pilot (when she’s not away on a layover)!!!