Highbraü 6 - Love & Struggle by Highbrau Magazine

Volume II, Issue II

SUMMER 012

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LOVE & STRUGGLE

HIGHBRAÜ MAGAZINE HbMAG.CA Volume II - Issue II - SUMMER 012 13IMAGES

Words A. ARCHER JIM CAVILL MARK CIESLUK DR. RORY DICKSON JESSIE FINKELBERG DR. GARY FOSTER ADAM LEWIS & LAURA MCDONALD ASHLING LIGATE DEREK LINDMAN CIARÂN MYERS J.J. STEINFELD VINCE STRICKLAND WANDERING PONDERER

Mark Ciesluk

6-7 15 20 19 8-9 4-5 16-17 14 12-13 18 15 10-11 13

JOHN GOSSELIN 3 DAN KELLAR 20 MELISSA LUKEZIC 4,9 CHRISTINA MACLELLAN 15,10-11 LISA NGUYEN 6-7 DAVE THOMPSON 16

Cover: Danielle McCrorey Back cover: IAN WILLMS

EDITORS-IN-CHIEF

Graham Engel

Poetry & Copy Editor: Ariel Kroon Website EDTIOR: Samuel tisi

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Our Pledge to You, The Reader/Future Anthropologist Highbraü Magazine is funded first and foremost by the editor-initiators, our friends and our family. Thank you. We are open and receptive to the support of advertisers whose continued success we consider to be in the community’s interest. We intend and pledge to bring together local and international selections which celebrate excellence in word and form, art and argument. Highbraü is predicated on the hope that through communal collaboration an enrichment of all of our perspectives and talents is possible. This forum hereby solicits any and all submissions offered in the spirit of inquiry and exposition; obviously, we are not in the business of providing a platform for discriminatory or inflammatory expression. Our first principle: No Haters. Whatever else Highbraü may come to be said to be, we sincerely hope that it will always be recognised as being offered to our community in the spirit of Peace. Highbraü Magazine seeks submissions on any topic related to the theme of a particular issue. We do not wish to represent any particular bias or slant save the ones given by the contributors of individual works. All original perspectives are welcomed. Highbraü needs contributors! If you would like to submit photos, sketches, paintings, digital art, written pieces, or anything else, please contact:

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VIRTUAL REALITIES, VIRTUAL SOVEREIGNTY Are the freedoms of the information age under attack? What does the future hold for our cyber spaces and online identities? What are the pitfalls and possibilites which will arise from new technology in years to come? Submissions Due: September 14th

THE WATERSHED

Highbraü is situated upon the Grand River watershed, and if you’re reading this you probably are as well. Tell us about your personal, historical, political, environmental, spiritual, or other connections to the river and the land we all love and share. Submissions Due: December 1st

JOHN GOSSELIN

LOVE, CONFLICT, & THE MYTH OF COMPLETENESS BY DR. GARY FOSTER “The stories we tell are always too simple. I was a man in love with a woman, but how much of the mobility and inconstancy of my emotions could such a sentence hope to carry?” - Alain De Botton

ove! The word promises us so much and yet, anyone who has been in love or has loved someone knows how much struggle and conflict is entailed in the experience. The twentieth century Existentialist philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre attributed the conflict implied by love to a fundamental feature of human existence. By our very nature human beings are incomplete and yet we seek some kind of completeness. We want to possess the completeness that we normally attribute to rocks and trees. We engage in various strategies in order to gain such completeness. We study science or law or medicine. We master a trade, try to perfect our ability at playing a musical instrument or work at becoming a good writer. Each of these projects Sartre thought, are means that we use for defining and completing our ‘self ’. But we cannot complete our self in solitude. Love then becomes a specific and important strategy for accomplishing this goal. We somehow feel that if we were to meet our “true love”, our “soul mate” or our “other half ”, we would gain that elusive completeness. But how can love really make us feel complete? After all, even when two people love each other they are still two individuals who are now in a relationship. The idea (or illusion) that love can make us complete arises from the fact that who or what we are can be experienced from two different perspectives. From our own perspective,

we experience our self as a subject. From the perspective of another person, we appear as an object. What we want, Sartre thought, was to experience both sides of our self. We want to not only see our self from our own vantage point (which has its limitations), but we want to know how that self appears in the world beyond our limited perspective. When I act or speak, how are my expressions understood by others? The idea here is that the private, subjective self which has often been privileged in western philosophy, is only one aspect of who we are. Our public, social self is just as much our ‘true self ’ as its private counterpart. If this is true, then we need someone who can help us see, interpret and understand that side of us. Our beloved would seem to be a prime candidate for this role. But of course this is where the problem begins and the illusion starts to break down.

MELISSA LUKEZIC

“A man can acquire anything in solitude except a character.” - Stendhal

y character, my self, my beloved… All of these words sug-

gest something that one possesses like a thing or an object. Language deceives us. These words all refer to incomplete phenomena. One struggles to understand oneself. When someone else comes into our life we not only struggle to understand her but we struggle to understand our self as she understands us. Am I selfish? Am I fair? Am I a good lover? My actions in this world are taken up and interpreted by others. My words are given meaning according to how others understand what I say. My own perspective is in no way a privileged one – unless I exist alone. I resist the interpretations that my beloved imposes upon my words and my actions. “That is not what I meant” the lover often protests. “That is not how I am.” Likewise, the beloved resists the picture that I paint of her. “You don’t understand me.” “I would never think like that.” The struggle continues as long as love continues. Sometimes we give up the struggle and separate. Shy of physical separation, we sometimes give up the struggle and settle for a unilateral picture of the beloved or mutually false (but peaceful) images of each other. Is this still love? Maybe… Sartre thought that love, or the aim of love, like the entire project of becoming complete (becoming a self ) was doomed to failure. It is doomed to fail because it entails a contradictory ideal. We want to complete something which by its very nature is not meant to be complete. It is language and the myths that influence our culture that gives rise to the false hope that love can make us and our beloved complete. These myths of love go back at least as far as Plato. In his Symposium, we hear the comic poet Aristophanes tell the tale of how we once were double creatures who possessed both male and female qualities. These beings were divided in two by the gods as a punishment for their hubris. Ever since that time we

have been searching for our missing half, for that part of us which would make us complete. This story and the later romantic myths have instilled in us a false hope. It is a false hope, but one which has a powerful attraction as it touches us deeply due to our feeling of incompleteness.

ut is this the final word on love? Not only Sartre, but a host of other voices in modern (and post-modern) times have given us cause to be sceptical. Yet, in spite of this scepticism, people still seem to love, to seek love and to fall in love. Are we merely the dupe of a more primitive biological drive – as the pessimist philosopher Schopenhauer suggests? Sartre offers us a glimpse of hope concerning the enterprise of love. Even though love presents us with an impossible ideal, the very striving for love gives meaning to our lives. The ideal drives us, creates passion, and endows what we do with significance.

Sartre’s life long companion Simone de Beauvoir is perhaps more optimistic about the possibility of love. Once we give up the illusion of becoming complete (becoming God as Sartre puts it), we can be free to embrace the ambiguity that life presents to us. Life is ambiguous in the sense that we desire the completion of our self (our fundamental project as Sartre calls it) while simultaneously recognizing the impossibility of the goal. The love that entails the idea of “living happily ever after” is a love that has been objectified, turned into a thing by the power of myth. The more authentic idea of love recognizes the reality of conflict and struggle which is inevitable in a relationship between two incomplete beings (Sartre recognized, as did Plato, the fact that complete beings do not need relationships). It is this very struggle and our unwillingness to sacrifice authentic love to the myth of completeness that gives love its meaning.

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I DON’T LOVE YOU LIKE I DON’T HATE TOMATOES BY A. ARCHER

told my Mom I didn’t love her today. I didn’t want to hurt her. I didn’t want to make her cry or overdose again. I just wanted her to know the indifference I felt. Saying ‘I don’t love you’ is just like saying ‘I don’t hate you,’ right? I don’t love tomatoes, but I don’t hate tomatoes. They just don’t mean very much to me. They’re an annoyance- the disappointing accompaniment to my salad as I move my fork around picking out each tiny piece. I feel a bit more relieved as the tomato pile grows larger on the side of my plate. Suddenly, to my disdain, anxiety sets in as I begin to eat the salad. What if I missed a piece? I don’t want to taste the tomatoes. That’s why I picked them out to begin with. What if I unknowingly knock the tomato pile back in and take a bite full of tomatoes? Finally, I give up on the salad, pushing it aside as the inevitable doom of the ruined next bite becomes too much for me to handle. Tomatoes are very much like my mother, always spoiling even the crispest, freshest salad. Life is easier when I don’t speak to her. Things are less complicated and I feel a little more at peace. Her never ending list of complaints and

“Saying ‘I don’t love you’ is just like saying ‘I don’t hate you,’ right?”

would pretend I didn’t have a mother. She died in a plane crash, I would say. Which, I felt wasn’t really a lie because when I was 14 and she left me with my step dad, I’d wake up in a cold sweata reoccurring dream haunting me as I watched her plane, engulfed in flames, crash to the ground. I bought a dream dictionary and looked up “death of a loved one.” It said that when you dream about someone dying, you must look at what they represent. It’s what they represent that is truly dying in your waking life, that there was no longer a place for it. My mother no longer had a place in my life. A place. No longer. In my life.

struggled to understand what my mother represented. Was it undying youth? A Bud Light in a can coozy, singing karaoke and smoking cigarettes on the patio with her friendsnot caring that it was hours passed me and my sister’s bedtime. Or did my mother represent cruelty? Like the time my sister was 4 and didn’t like what my mother had made us for breakfast; scrambled eggs with ham and cheese. She protested and would not eat them. My mother smashed the entire plate against her face, the plate in one hand and the back of my sister’s head in the other. My sister’s eyelashes glued together with egg remnants, leaving just enough room for the tears to flow out. Sometimes when I think of my mother, I think of spam with macaroni and cheese, but don’t tell her that. She’d smack me if she Lisa NGUYEN knew that’s how I rememextreme self-pity, the stagnant way bered her cooking. She’d prefer I rein which she lives, refusing to grow membered the meals that she slaved up, it’s too much for me. When I over for hours, like that spaghetti was younger and around strangers, I sauce she used to make that my friend

Amanda loved. But, that’s not what I remember. My Mom is processed food and canned meat. When I was 11 I got my period. I was scared. She yelled at me and told me I was pretending to get it. She insisted that I just wanted my period because I liked boys entirely too much and that I was going to be a slut when I grew up. She didn’t know that two of her husbands had put their hands in places they shouldn’t have and made me put my hands in places that killed a part of me.

aybe I was a slut, I remember thinking. But, I hadn’t kissed a boy yet. I did think the short, blonde boy named Chris, who was the smartest person in our 6th grade class, was cute. He never noticed me though, not back then. I was awkward and didn’t fit in, I lived in a trailer and he lived in a big house on the golf course. When we were 15 years old, we fell in love. Until we fell out of it when we were 17. Occasionally we write to the other person to say hello, see how things are going, to make sure the other person is still alive. He held me a lot, when I was 15, and would cry because nothing felt right. And I would touch the acne that had taken over his face, reassuring him that he was handsome, I promise. I got used to my mother not being around, my friends parents taking pity on me, “the girl with no parents.” Or, my advisor in high school who never sent notices home to my alcoholic step dad. The notices acknowledging that I got kicked out of class for cursing again. Not that he would care, but wasn’t that the point? I’ll never forget when she called me into her office to tell me that she had submitted college applications with a letter of recommendation to six schools on my behalf. There are great things in store for you in the future, she held my hand and looked directly into my eyes, tears swelling in the dark blue depths. I remember when I was 21 and I found out I was pregnant. I was the

first of my friends to have a baby. I was embarrassed to let people know. Of course she would get pregnant, the girl whose mother died in a plane crash, the girl without a daddy and no money. I knew they would think those things but never say them to me. I’ve always been so paranoid. Maybe it’s because I never understood why my Mother was mad at me. Why she’d rather sit on the phone, smoking a cigarette, complaining about how my sister and I never cleaned our room. I’d run into our bedroom, and look around. Nothing would be out of

Lisa NGUYEN

“He held me a lot, when I was 15, and would cry because nothing felt right. And I would touch the acne that had taken over his face, reassuring him that he was handsome, I promise.” place. Every toy in it’s spot, each garment of clothing in the proper drawer. So, then I’d stare at myself in the mirror and wonder if I was the mess instead. As I grew in love with my

daughter, I questioned my own mother’s ability to love. I wondered why she’d decided to have me. Her happiness did not stem from her children. It came from the nights at the bars and the endless search for the right man that brought her joy. Apparently the piece my mother represented in my life, the piece that died when she left, was not maternal instinct.

struggled, coming to terms with my feelings. I cut people out of my life, became a bit of a recluse, unable to maintain more than a few friendships at a time. My head and my heart were constantly swollen with conflicting emotions. I didn’t love my mother, I felt like a bad person. I was too embarrassed to say the words out loud. Aren’t you supposed to love your parents? Garrett insists I’m a good person, an amazing mother, as I cradle our daughter after a nightmare. I want to see myself the way he sees me; the way Chris saw me. I want to see that bit of hope that my advisor saw, that my friends parents saw. Then it hits me as I look down at my daughter and the way my arms wrap around her, soothing the bad dreams from her mind. I realize that she will be so much safer and happier than I ever was. I don’t need anything now that I have her. I’m not empty anymore. The past can’t haunt me, because the future means so much more than anything in that grey, destructive mass ever could. My salad isn’t slathered with tomatoes. I’m not afraid to eat. I can take bites without the worry of the enjoyment being spoiled by that single, rotten tomato. But I don’t love you. I feel nothing. She never says a word back to me. I stare at my phone, hoping I didn’t kill her, but finally feeling free. I have my own family and life to worry about now.

Find more articles & past issues online at hbmag.ca

FAMILY BY JESSIE FINKELBERG

ll my family beyond my immediate nuclear unit live at least an hour away from me, and they always have. Most live farther, in Montreal or Florida or Israel. I have varying levels of attachment to the people who make up my extended family; there are cousins I adore and there are cousins I don’t know the names of or how exactly they’re related to me. Despite trips to visit the various branches a handful of times a year over the course of my lifetime, I worry that I’ve never quite formed strong mutual bonds with even the people I feel closest to. I love them, but I struggle to feel known on a more significant level than just as a holiday-time relative. I’m quiet. I can be shy. These qualities were more profound when I was younger; as a child I was much happier hiding upstairs with a book than greeting family come to visit. Now that I’m an adult and it’s less acceptable for me to be a social recluse, I’m finding that I regret all the time I was able to hide. I regret connections only tenuously forged. The single largest obstacle here, though, is that I lack the confidence to take the initiative and strengthen them. It’s awkward, in part because I feel that, by my current mid-20’s age, these connections should be long made already. It feels silly to want to reintroduce myself to people I’ve known all my life. It seems like it should be unnecessary. When I see my closest core of extended family all together, it’s the best thing. I love to watch them – my dad joking with his brothers, my uncles

teasing my older cousins, my grandparents unknowingly adding an extra layer of absurd humour to situations now and again. There’s something I love beyond measure in the easy way they all interact. It gives me a warm belonging feeling, despite the fact that I’m not really involved in the action. As I entered my teens, especially my later teens, I really began to feel set apart, and it was made all the harder knowing that it was just my own insecurity and social awkwardness that was holding me back. I remember watching my uncles mercilessly teasing my grown cousin and them reflecting on it jokingly, “If we hadn’t toughened you up, you would never be able to stand up to your brothersin-law! You needed this treatment.” They all laughed. I spoke up, asking something about why hadn’t I ever gotten that same kind of friendly needling. One of my uncles replied that we just don’t have that kind of relationship; I don’t think it ever occurred to him that I might want it. My relatives turned back to their former conversation, and only in that moment did it occur to me that if I ever want that relationship I’m going to have to actively and extrovertedly seek it.

hen I was 16 I decided that I would get a tattoo to remind myself, throughout the rest of the year, of the times I do feel a special closeness with my extended family. I recognized that the oldest members wouldn’t be around forever, and I wanted to somehow freeze time on my

A tuna sandwich was his favourite food out of everything in the whole world. I’m not sure if it gets any more neutral than that. It may be an odd example, but I think it captures a sense of the way my grampa wasn’t caught up in life’s smaller matters. 8

skin so I would never lose that connection. Inability to commit to a design kept me from going ahead with the plan, though I never abandoned it completely. Now that my grandfather has passed on, I can’t decide if I missed my chance to capture the moment while I was in it or if the tattoo could instead be a way to hold onto his memory. A new issue has arisen, however: I’ve realized that I would be kind of embarrassed for my extended family to find out that I love them so much that I permanently marked my skin with the sentiment. Such an overt display after years of being so quiet feels flamboyant. Again, I struggle, because it’s almost certain that this judgement of my actions is again all in my head. My relatives really aren’t the judging kind.

here are exceptions to this rule of emotional awkwardness. My grampa, for one, was someone I never felt I had to struggle to talk to; he didn’t talk much at all, really. He was quieter than I will ever be, an accepting observer of those around him. Despite numerous embarrassing conversations I’m positive he overheard during my stays at the apartment in Montreal or at the cottage in the Laurentians (giggling with my best friend over the word testicles as a preteen, having naughty phone conversations with my boyfriend at the cottage late at night), my grampa never mentioned them. At those times, my special-family-occasion self was nowhere to be seen – just me at my most ridiculous and least officially presentable. My grandfather passed away last year. It has been rough. I miss him terribly, although my memories of actual interactions with him are vague. I miss his quiet presence. I miss his acceptance. Of my paternal grandparents, my grampa was the slightly more culturally-aware one. “‘Alternative’? What’s ‘alternative’?” my grandma asked, never having heard the word used in the context of style or subculture before. “Your granddaughter is ‘alternative’,” was my grampa’s

answer. Of the two, he was also the one who knew where I worked when I was employed at a sex shop, never mentioning it or passing judgement. My grandma is wonderful and loving, and I do feel quite close to her, but there are distinct limits to how much she can relate to my experience, even when I do try to share them with her. I suspect that it may be too easy to feel that I was so close to my grandfather – maybe I projected more onto the relationship than was accurate, simply because his quiet allowed it. His personality made it easy to assume he knew (and accepted) more about me than he really did. I recall, a few years back, thinking that I should try to get to know my grampa better. “What’s your favourite food?” I asked him. It took him a while to think of an an-

swer. “A sandwich,” was what he finally came up with. I laughed, “Just any sandwich? Not even a specific kind?”

Now that I’m an adult and it’s less acceptable for me to be a social recluse, I’m finding that I regret all the time I was able to hide. I regret connections only tenuously forged. After a few more minutes of thinking, he decided on tuna. A tuna sandwich was his favourite food out of everything in the whole world. I’m not sure if it gets any more neutral than that. It may be an odd example, but I think it captures a sense of the way my grampa wasn’t caught up in life’s smaller matters. A man who doesn’t even

have a default favourite sandwich can be anything you need him to be, as a kind of imagined confidant. The answer to my predicament, I suppose, lies in making myself let my guard down and relax into myself around the rest of my extended family the way I unwittingly did around my grampa. Although there will necessarily be those who, like my grandma, can’t quite see what I’m on about in regards to certain subjects, there will most likely be others ready and willing to engage with me and hear my stories. As I struggle with myself to overcome the shyness, let go of the insecurity and allow myself to be seen, I can only hope that in the meantime these people instinctively know what they mean to me, even if I’m all too often just a quiet presence in the room.

HIGHBRAÜ IS PROUD TO PRESENT:

PotDocs #1 The premiere of KW’s newest annual documentary film festival! PotDocs is dedicated to shining a spotlight on issues related to the decriminalisation and legalisation of marijuana. In years to come we hope to exclusively showcase local independent filmmakers, but for our first exhibition we will be hosting a discussion of The Prince of Pot (the Marc Emery story) as well as viewing several short films.

October 20 2012 Location TBD hbmag.ca/potdocs 9

OUR BODIES: A TRANSMALE EXPERIENCE BY VINCE STRICKLAND We struggle to love our bodies. We all struggle to love our bodies.

don’t believe it’s news to you when I say we are inundated with messages all the time telling us we are not pretty enough, handsome enough, thin enough, hard enough, tall enough, tanned enough, young enough, and all the other judgmental BS we have to walk through every single day. A friend of mine once said to me, “No matter what my size there will always be days where I think I am fat.” Hearing her say that broke my heart. This friend is a very strong, feminist, cis-female, who works tirelessly to empower women. She is consistently fighting against the patriarchal system that is sending us all these shame based messages of ‘you’re not good enough.’ Where do we learn to fully accept, appreciate, and love our bodies? I asked a cis-male friend to tell me his history of body image, and he recalled to me not feeling buff and bulky enough in his youth because the image he was sold was one where all women are attracted to big muscles. He also spoke about his past anxiety that his penis was not big enough because of seeing advertisements in Maxim for male enhancement. The bulky, hard, tall man with a huge pant bulge, coupled with the thin, big breasted, smooth legged woman, is an image often seen within our society. In this economy of mass consumerism, where our seemingly only worth is what we buy and the only thing we are actually sold is an image, we are all bound to have severe body image issues. Where are the answers to combat this juggernaut of selfdeprecation and the tools to build our

self-images around love, acceptance, and wholeness? My unique experience as a transmale has offered me some insight into this very question.

CHRISTINA MACLELLAN

“Where do we learn to fully accept, appreciate, and love our bodies?”

trans body is a unique body, much like all our bodies are unique, but the particular uniqueness of the trans body is one where there are no real social expectations of what a trans body should look like. A trans body is a meld between the male and female forms and this understanding has allowed me to reject the body expectations of both. No matter how many bodily changes hormones produce or how much plastic surgery I may choose to have, I will never have a cismale body and there will always be aspects of my body that are like ghosts of my former female self. My body is

caught in limbo, where my physique is not male nor is it female, it is transmale. What my body looks like is dependent on the choices I have made and the access to medical care I was privileged to have. The trans experience is characterized by gender dysphoria, which is defined by the World Professional Association for Transgender Health in their Standards of Care v. 7 as “discomfort or distress that is caused by a discrepancy between a person’s gender identity and that person’s sex assigned at birth (and the associated gender role and/or primary and secondary sex characteristics).” Choices can then be made as to whether and to what extent the person wishes to alter their body in order to match the person’s gender identity (which is a simplified response without getting into the politics of choice and medical access for the trans community.) When thinking about the choices I have made, I often wonder, to what extent were those choices based on social expectations of what I imagined a male body should be. A particular example, why did I choose to have ‘top’ surgery, the removal of my breasts? Was it because only women have breasts? Well then, are men with the medical condition gynecomastia, development of large mammary glands, any less ‘manly’? Or women who have had their breasts removed for cancer treatment, any less ‘womanly’? Was it because I didn’t identify in my body with my breasts and so had no significant emotional attachment to them? How do we link what our chests look like based on gender expectations? I bound my breasts for 2 years prior to surgery to give my chest a flatter, male look, so I could pass easier. That was the most uncomfortable part of transitioning, so by the time my surgery came around I was ecstatic to get rid of them. But while I was researching total breast reduction and looked at pictures online of other transmen, it occurred to me that I was not going to have a cis-male looking chest either. There was going to be scarring

“After all I have been through to transition and get to this point I don’t need to prove my maleness based on stereotypical expectations. I reject it.”

his is not to say that my body is not policed by the larger society. I present as male and I experience this policing as the expectation that I should have a cis-male body and all the stereotypical characteristics that go with it. Last year, a temp agency consistently sent me to jobs where I was expected to lift heavy objects, positions that were only given to men, and they were jobs that I just did not have the upper body strength to do. I’m sure I was perceived as ‘not a very strong man,’ but I know that my

CHRISTINA MACLELLAN

and puckering, and the risk of completely losing my nipples if the grafts didn’t hold. With a shirt on I was going to have a flat chest like most of the male population, but with a shirt off I would have a distinctly transmale chest. If I went into the surgery with the expectation of wanting a cis-male chest, what sort of body dysphoria would I feel post-surgery with having a chest scarred like I just had breasts removed? Would I never go topless at the beach, or swimming at the pool? Now, 2 years post-surgery, I can say it was the right decision, because I am happy with my chest, scars and all, and have never before felt this comfortable in my body. I own my trans chest and accept it. I don’t belittle myself over something I can’t really control because society likes to plaster huge billboards with rock-hard topless men trying to sell me cologne.

physique has not been built around muscle mass and I don’t spend hours at the gym to develop it. Frankly, I don’t care if someone doesn’t think I’m a ‘strong man;’ I don’t internalize that as ‘not good enough.’ After all I have been through to transition and get to this point I don’t need to prove my maleness based on stereotypical expectations. I reject it. The images we are sold in this society that form the judgments we make on our bodies are not real. Computer graphic programs can produce any kind of image, and celebrities, well you would look like that too with all the time and money devoted to their bodies. These generated images function, not only to sell you something through direct advertising, but also act as part of a mass propaganda machine to sway public opinion and expectations. Living in reality means that bodies change through time and maturing with our bodies means loving and accepting those changes as part of our bodily history. Transitioning involved some very abrupt changes for my body that I had to adapt to, and I could only do that by appreciating the process and loving the outcome. What my experience has taught me, and what I have had to internalize in order to rebuff social expectations, is that my body is different and it has a story, a unique story, my story, and I will not be ashamed of it. What’s your body’s story? Society is hell bent on conformity, but I always remember that natural systems are the most resilient when diversity thrives. Be diverse, love and celebrate your unique body that tells your story, because there is no other story like it anywhere in the universe!

View colour paintings by Christina Maclellan at

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RINSE & REPEAT & RINSE & REPEAT & BY DEREK LINDMAN

hen I hear “Love & Struggle” I hear the echoes of Che Guevara and his conceptualization of how the act of revolution, the act of struggle, is and constantly must be about love. It is because we love that we struggle. It is because we believe that this culture of domination must end that we struggle. It is because we believe and know that “another world is possible” and that the consequences of being unable to create this “world” are dire that we struggle. Yet, when I was first contacted about potentially writing a piece for Highbraü on this theme of “Love & Struggle” I first thought to something that is, at first examination, far away from conceptualization of “we struggle because we love.” My thoughts lay in the direction of how much it is a struggle to love. On how it is a struggle to recognize and not dehumanize the inherent but so often negated humanity of another. In truth, I thought of my nonna and how much it is a struggle to love her.

My nonna is 86. She is old. She has dementia. She is vastly curious and incredibly forgetful. My nonna is 86. She is old. She has dementia. She is vastly curious and incredibly forgetful. She wets the bed and wears a diaper. She leaves the bathroom door open and rarely washes her hands unprompted. At night she roams the halls, often waking up my sister and father. She is constantly looking for work to do which most often times prevents my mom, myself, my sisters and other caretakers who need to do other work to do that work. She is dependent and while she is someone who I have great sympathy with this dependence is reason for

resentment. To say that my nonna can be annoying is not an understatement. It is not uncommon to be asked the same question or the same series of questions thirty to fifty times in an hour:

“Where’s my daughter?” “At work.”

“Where does she work?”

“At an insurance company.”

“Where?”

“Kitchener.”

“Kitchener? Where we are now? “Waterloo.”

“When she coming home?” “5:30”

Rinse and repeat.

hen I first started to be involved in taking care of my nonna, I was unemployed and had recently moved back to Waterloo from the East Coast. She was sick and could not go to a day program at a regional care facility. I took care of her during the day for two weeks, wanting her to be better so that I could go on the internet to have more time to spend on a job search. On the second day that I took care of her she didn’t wheeze or cough for the first twenty minutes in the morning and I fantasized that she was better. I took her to the

care facility and left her in their care even though I strongly suspected that is was the wrong decision and that I would be putting other elderly people at risk of becoming sick. I talked myself into this fantasy so that I could get a break. A break from being asked the same question a hundred times of when my mother, her daughter, would be home from work. Do you, the reader, remember that she will be home at 5:30? Driving back to the care facility and picking her up after receiving a curt phone call was a humiliating moment for me - it was a sad realization; that at 26 I still had so much growingup to do. This particular failure to love was in many ways a “wake-up call.” In the subsequent days, I grew a bit more patient. I tried to stop thinking of her as a “burden” and tried to create conceptualizations of my nonna that stopped implicitly thinking of her as disposable. As my understanding changed, I noticed more and more the distance both spiritually and physically that I had created and how they were in many ways the same distance. Instead of sitting next to her, I would sit across the room, in a chair. Instead of sitting down and having a conversation, asking questions, sharing stories, I would have a book, a newspaper, a magazine to separate me from her. I started to act with more and more effort, sometimes successfully many times unsuccessfully, at breaking down this distance, this resentment, this negation of humanity, that I had created.

s I began to break down the distance, I began to notice patterns and I began to recognize her needs. I started to provide more genuine care

I tried to stop thinking of her as a “burden” and tried tocreate conceptualizations of my nonna that stopped implicitly thinking of her as disposable. As my understanding changed, I noticed more and more the distance both spiritually and physically that I had created and how they were in many ways the same distance.

while making sure that I could call a friend for a couple moments to share how hard today was and give myself some respite from the hard work of care giving. I started to try to take some joy and fulfilment from the work that I was doing. I tried to become more patient and I learned that when I was the most patient the quicker things went. I began to notice that, for my nonna, the most joy she felt in her day was when there was physical affection. She likes big kisses on the cheek. To be centered on her chair and moved closer to the table at dinner. She likes hugs. She likes, wants, and needs to be involved in her surroundings. I also began to notice that she dislikes not being able to remember easily details and names. She dislikes that she asks so many questions. She often considers herself “stupida” and she

hates that she cannot work like she used to and so she considers herself a “vagabond.” I think, in many ways, it is a struggle for my nonna to love herself. As I reflect on my own struggles to love myself, given the frequency with which I have ideations of suicide, my own times that I have thought of myself as a “stupida” or as a “vagabond” and that I am not a worthy enough of a human being to live, that I would like to connect the thought of “we struggle because we love” with the fact that we need to struggle because we live in a system of domination that makes it so hard and such a struggle to love. We must begin to break down this system of negation. And I would like to suggest that in this struggle we have nothing to lose but that which attempts to negate us from our own and each others humanity.

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HEY, YOU!! BY THE WANDERING PONDERER

his one? It's for you! I'm just taking some time, a moment if you will, to appreciate you! I do this for a few different reasons: 1) You, as yourself are an Amazing being! There's only one of you on this Earth. And you....you really can accomplish anything you want to. Try not to waste it now Y'hear? 2) Second Reason I'm writing this... maybe no-one has ever taken the time for you, or to appreciate and Thank you. So please allow me to take this moment just to say it....and trust me...I have, I have just verbally Thanked you. I dunno, maybe I'm weird but at least, I've taken this time and not been selfish with it. I could've but the fact that I haven't should further drive my point home, my point which is Yes, Yes I care. I care about you, your life, and your well being.

You whom I've possibly met, but probably haven't. 3) Third and final reason why I'm writing this letter now?? I personally catch myself sometimes saying "No one cares" or having a similar , negative thought process, which then further deteriorates my mood, so instead of that happening. I have disarmed you: it is in writing that someone, somewhere out there DOES care. Maybe that's enough... I dunno, but trust me... I DO care, and in my experience, if we all cared a tiny bit more, we'd all be a lot better off. That's just me though, and this, this was a way to forward the simple, positive and powerful thought process. Just to reiterate it to everyone, I'll tell you again, This one?? It's all for you, so Thank you, for everything, nothing, and your existence here with me, in this World.

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MUSE BY ASHLING LIGATE i’m standing naked on a platform my hands clasped on my right hip, spine straight looking ahead like a crisply chiseled statue of a greek lesbo. two heaters hum from the left corner of the small studio space throwing heat with poor aim leaving my torso to freeze while my feet are aflame

not much has changed since my days as a girl except now i’m a queer and i have body hair and baggage. being a nude model means that i am paid in cash to be naked

how much longer must i hold this pose

look closer

it’s best if you squint to find my exact foundation

my labia are going numb, i swear

the in-between my breasts smudge the shadows

listen to the sounds of art being birthed the chuh chuch chuh chuch chuh of the pencils marking out my frame

men! who sit in this room in a circle around me

i am not a Greek statue i am fierce and i am flesh

i’m boring a hole in the wall

when i was a child i lived to be naked i ran around topless in the fall like the boys in the summer panties were the devil’s invention

whose light will illuminate the pages of their worn out workbooks if they would try hard enough.

my body takes notice of where your eyes travel and how long they stay for and how quickly they dart

my tits are like snowballs the skin pulls and it wrinkles my nipples, pursed like lemony lips.

the fff ffff of the fingers rubbing against the grain of paper smudging, shading, making shadows on the pages where i stand naked on a platform my hands clasped on my right hip, spine straight looking ahead.

easels erect pencils, charcoals, erasers at the ready and me in the middle on a platform lit from all angles performing the part of a muse

slowly

CHRISTINA MACLELLAN

usually the room fills up before the hour with gaggles of would-be artists with purpose and debts creased into their brows of course, there was the Occasional Woman. i will always remember the night when there were five three middle-aged, two college bros sitting in a circle

and take your time and struggle maybe you’ll feel what it’s like for maybe an hour to really love the lines of a woman who you would do harm to were this a bar and i the fucking dyke.

RECLUSE BY JIM CAVILL

My love is a recluse, Pacing the same, Worn floorboards Of an airless attic. It can be lured. Traplike taunts trip. Sirens on cop cars And in miniskirts. Often hard to tell when falsely confident; Confident in falsehood, Safety is solace. Safety is boredom. Remain in control, Venture out for supplies. It’s familiar inside. The fumes of this place, Panted in lust. I choke and I splutter, Cough my heart up my throat.

Notes on Recluse: I wrote this during a particularly difficult time in my life. I gave it to my (then) girlfriend for her birthday. I wanted her to get an idea of who I really was, and how I was really feeling, as I felt like I’d been shutting her out. She stared at it vacantly for a few moments and then asked whether I had gotten her a ‘real’ present.

MELISSA LUKEZIC

THEY DIDN’T EXACTLY FALL IN LOVE BY J.J. STEINFELD they each had a colourful tattoo the name of a love no longer alive his of a first sweetheart long forgotten hers of a husband who died before his time otherwise they were mismatched and misaligned in a celestial sort of way but it was a much anticipated first date for both of them, what with too many lonely nights, broken fantasies thoughts best not articulated and after the evening concert walking down their small town’s most forgettable traversed street she said, shall we discuss myths or murder mysteries the night is young

and I don’t want to abandon you just yet to his silence as he looked at her trying to recall the last time he had slept with a woman she went on: give me a version of your favourite Biblical story make it suspenseful add a few new characters keep me on the edge of my seat he couldn’t think of anything to say she kept asking questions making imaginative suggestions and when they reached the end of the street he rolled up a sleeve and said, I was only nineteen and she rolled up a sleeve and said, I was already past fifty while they didn’t exactly fall in love they did arrange for a second date

LOVE & STRUGGLE BY ADAM LEWIS & LAURA MCDONALD

Adam: The G20 protests in Toronto

in June 2010 are but one recent event that has tested the bonds of communities and relationships. Many were arrested, detained, jailed and separated from those they love. But love, as a core part of our struggles, of why we choose to confront the state and all forces of oppression, keeps us going. It is a love for the people, the spaces, and the things that make life worth living, that fill us with love, but also promote our rage to defend what is most sacred to us and depose the injustices that confront us. This is but one story of love and rage….of love and struggle. I was arrested June 26th, 2010 at 10am outside a friend’s house in Toronto: jumped by two plainclothes cops, thrown to the ground and handcuffed. I had been involved in organizing resistance to the G20 leaders’ summit with SOAR (Southern Ontario Anarchist Resistance) and AW@L (Anti-War At Laurier). Both were infiltrated by undercover police officers beginning in 2008. We were targeted for our links to Indigenous communities, and our commitment to direct action and support for a diversity of tactics, affirming the right of all people to resist in ways they find effective and empowering. We were charged in a so-called “conspiracy”, most arrested before any of the window smashing and joy-

ous police car burning had occurred on June 26th or 27th. We spent varying amounts of time in jail before being released on restrictive bail conditions lasting through our preliminary hearing in September 2011, well over a year after our initial arrests. Seventeen of us took a plea deal that

saw 11 people’s charges dropped and 6 plead guilty to ‘counseling to commit mischief ’. I was sentenced to 6 months in jail, serving 2.5 months after subtracting time served and good behaviour. The experiences of jail, house arrest, and non-association have been difficult, alienating, lonely, and otherwise enraging. But something has kept me going through all of this. The relationships in my life have allowed me to emerge a stronger, more defiant person, further solidifying bonds of solidarity and support with those I am closest to. Below, my partner and I discuss our experiences with love and struggle.

Love Adam:

There have been many trying times over these last two years of love, anger, frustration, uncertainty, passion….but all undercut with the knowledge that one of the most important people in my life is here to stay. We have affirmed that we are in this together, no matter what gets thrown in front of us. We know we can count on one another, that support goes both ways. There is no real way to thank Laura for all the support and love that she has shown me over these past two years. I only hope that we won’t forget the passion and strength that brought us this far. Dave Thompson

“All the laws on the statutes, all the courts in the universe, cannot tear it from the soil, once love has taken root.” - Emma Goldman

Laura: Not knowing what was happening was the hardest part. When he got arrested, he was just gone, and I didn’t know when I would see him again, let alone what our lives would look like for the coming years. Also hard was still being a big part of his life but not having him be a part of mine. A long-distance relationship

is one thing, but a forced one is another story. Being Adam’s main support person – and almost sole contact with the outside world – was a lot of pressure. Yet, it meant that we spent a lot of time just being together, and appreciating each other. His jail sentence was actually one of the easiest parts, because I knew what was happening. I had time to prepare, and I knew when he’d be home. I could finally start planning for the future. That said, it was still a pretty difficult time. But, as a friend said after Adam’s arrest, if we could get through this, we can get through anything. And we will.

but in these circumstances you realize the love and support around you. It affirms that what matters is that we maintain those things that the state tries to take away. So what do we do? We build again – we foster new relationships, find love and joy with those still in our lives.

Exile

Adam: It was strange picking up af-

Adam:

I was given non-association bail conditions, meaning I could have no communication with anyone I knew to be in AW@L or SOAR, whether any of those people were charged, at the G20 or otherwise. I also had the same condition for all of my co-accused. It is intended to punish when one has not even been convicted of a crime. Not being able to talk to your best friends, for two years…is a fucker. Housemates, bicycle buddies, and fellow organizers. I could not talk to, debrief, cry, laugh, or love with any of these people, those I would normally rely on in times of confusion, lost hope, and uncertainty. A large amount of my community was declared illegal with the stroke of one Justice of the Peace’s pen. Even being in the same room–or subway car–with someone with whom I was not supposed to associate could mean going back to jail, with little chance of getting out again. Couple this with extremely restrictive house arrest – I couldn’t leave without mom or dad right beside me – and you quickly learn that simple gestures of support such as visits are not so simple. You really see who cares enough to make these real physical efforts at support. Not everyone can make these efforts, or be expected to,

Laura:

I consciously worked to maintain connections between Adam and friends he couldn’t talk to. I filled in for Adam in his absence as much as I could – as a friend, a confidant, a biking buddy, a late night adventure partner, and gained new friends in the process.

ter two years with people who were once such solid parts of my life. How do you ask someone what they’ve been up to for the past two years? How do you let them know you wanted to be there through all the ups and downs, but couldn’t? How do you explain that feeling of loss when you saw them bike by and couldn’t even make eye contact, couldn’t wave, couldn’t call out? But the one thing about the love between the best of friends is that it lasts. It is stronger than prison bars, stronger than the walls put up between our bodies, minds, and souls. Love, in these situations, leads to rage – rage against the systems, courts, jails and cops – but a rage that keeps us connected. This love and rage keeps our passion to build something better alive in our communities, our friendships, and our hearts.

Conspire to breathe together Adam:

When you go to jail with a bunch of badass anarchists and political organizers you form a special bond. When you are handcuffed and being led to a cell or a court room and you see the same happening to a friend you realize that although this is scary as hell you are not alone. My

co-accused and I have gone through a clusterfuck of state repression and punitive attempts to silence us. But we survived. We had each other. We created new relationships where the state sought to empty out such possibilities. They thought that by targeting us, we would be forced to fuck over each other to survive, but instead we continued to work together. This experience strengthened our bonds of solidarity. Where I may have known some of my co-accused only from meetings, I now know them as friends, as allies, as people I can count on, as those that I shared a significant experience with that made us stronger and affirmed our desire to fight.

Laura: Us “free” friends also formed

relationships. Despite explicit attempts to “set an example” and frighten the rest of us away from organizing, we instead came together into stronger networks of allies. We also gained new extended families – supporting friends on house arrest meant meeting parents and attending family dinners. This sense of family has created stronger, deeper relationships among all of us.

Adam: We shared each others’ hearts,

filled them with collective rage and emerged from this ready to keep fighting. We weren’t broken. They tried and they failed. That doesn’t mean that the fight is over – Alex and Mandy are still in jail for many months to come. But it means that I now know a whole host of badass people in many cities. By seeking to squash anarchist organizing that was happening within SOAR, the state and its police drove us closer together and got us to form lasting relationships. It forced us to conspire in the best sorts of ways – to learn to breathe together. All I know is that I feel stronger in my will to fight. We are not broken. And we know so many more people whose hearts are filled with love and rage and ready to fight back.

THROUGH LOVE’S GLASS 6. Fits

BY CIARÂN MYERS

(With apologies to Mr. Yeats) 1. The Youngest In his eyes she skips From her spine and her kicks Bounding around the raspy asphalt. She floats like cats at a dance. Seeing her so indifferently He wonders, is this joyous simplicity Honest to me? It feels funny to be forbidden From the friendly little touch Of effeminate fingers. Or from intimately meeting minds By chasing all the prospects Of a shallow sandbox. Something in her skip Expresses their difference. Society’s separatence Shuts the window On his hopeful hello.

3. Firsts Eyes close. Lips open. The mind tries to memorize Until— Everything melts, Red and soft. Molten.

4. The Mirror

Skinny thighs Passing by Lubricate his boyish eyes. His little heaving heart and lungs Make this man an athlete of the mind. Necessity teaches him to hide himself Has him suffering in the night, Pushing him through the sharp discarded Shards if himself, Contemplative, crystallite.

From then on the triumphs of his hands Would never be entirely his. At times his hands would seize and shake With the joys of this heartache. Her hands witnessed this.

He tells her that she is his mirror, In a hidden hint of intimacy, That he sees who he is Only through her. When in fact, What he really sees is himself Swathed all over her.

5. Closure 2. Grade School

Their first little slide of fingers into fingers Says, this hand fits.

He walks through her door, Bones and breath in tremors. One as uncertain as before, One in silent certainty. He is stung with a hope for something, Some something, to seal this memory. (A strange incomplete burst, Perhaps a kiss, foreign like the first). But a leveled head and horrored hope Cannot calm a raising voice And no kiss or glance or touch Will change this choice. A stuttered breath. A stony throat. A wish. A touch. An unfair thought. He will not remember her right. Now, once again through the door, One in silent certainty, The other, uncertain as before.

7. Ashes With only the finest dust Of their bodies, Warmed with hidden insecurities, They wetted a human into life. As she, laboured with ache and elation, He, wizened with wonder and worry, It rattled through, breaking the pain Of their transparent triumphs With the first ounce of air That it took from the room. Glassy eyes miles shy. They wash away the ashes of the womb. She, I cannot believe that came from me. He, What else could our love possibly be? While, Light’s first fire in the babe’s blind eyes Shows the endless window to its looming tomb.

8. Fidelity He looks into her eyes every day And sees a life More certain, more strong, Stunning, and Stranger than he can say. Sometimes he’ll see any woman By the eyes. She is always immense, And beautiful: An entire life away.

9. The Mirror Revisited When the saddest things become simple And the simplest things seem strange He cannot search for her even in the brightest day Without seeing her first inside. As his external eyes Finally wrap themselves around her Every inch in him Is made suddenly familiar And, inside, he is multiplied.

10. Young and Old A boy once found a magic glass That seduced him to its drink, In his lurching purpose to indulge, He spilled it down the sink. A young man found it on the floor, Some little driplets still inside: He could just touch them with his tongue; Addicted licks exalting him inside! He suckled and touched it oblique and dim ‘Til his life turned choked and dry. Then built an altar to its honour Where throngs have, longing, praised it since he died.

LOVE, CONFLICT, & THE MYTH OF COMPLETENESS BY DR. RORY DICKSON

ne of the more striking statements I’ve come across in studying the Sufi tradition goes as follows: “All wisdom can be expressed in two phrases: what is being done for you, allow it. What you must do yourself, make sure you do it.” In a sense, there really is not much more to say than that. Regarding the first phrase, there are times in our lives when things seem to come together without our doing anything to make it happen: we get an unexpected job offer, or we have a chance meeting with someone that turns into a relationship that changes our life. It can seem as though something is conspiring to arrange the serendipitous in our lives, often with a timing that is unexpected and even uncanny. As the first part of the Sufi saying describes, there are a great many things in our lives that are done for us, that just sort of appear, or happen, with apparent disregard for our merit, plans, or expectations.

Most people do not feel that they deserve their dreams. According to the Sufi quote above, our job in such cases is to allow these things to be done for Wus: to embrace an opportunity, event, or person we may not feel we deserve in our life. We may however want to get in the way of such unearned gifts, and in such cases it truly can be harder to receive than to give. As Paulo Coelho has noted, most people do not feel that they deserve their dreams, and as a result tend to “destroy the things they love.” The fear of success can be more acute than the fear of failure: what if you get what you really want? Then what? You are responsible to take care of it, and you can’t just say you didn’t really want it if you screw it up ...

his leads to what we ourselves must do, and knowing what that is often makes the difference between a happy life and an unhappy one. Perhaps the greatest failure of perspective I see is in those who believe that they are simply unlucky, that life has conspired against them, and that there is really nothing they can do to improve their situation. Such a perspective ensures that one will never take the necessary action to remedy their situation, as they imagine that there is no action they could take, that the situation is completely beyond their control. Appreciating the magnitude of one’s personal power to effect change in one’s own life is paramount. We can in fact change our situation - usually by applying some sort of discipline, by struggling, sending off applications, putting ourselves “out there” to meet people, joining with others in common cause, working out more, creating and implementing a plan to stop a destructive habit - whatever we may feel is necessary to improve the conditions of our life and the lives of others. We all encounter a time in life when the only thing to do is put the shovel to the ground and start digging - hard, back breaking work. And yet, life is a subtle balance it seems, between love and struggle: life is not all ditch digging, nor is it always finding oneself happily enjoying what seems to be a cosmic free lunch. Knowing when to let love do it’s thing in our lives, and when to struggle is a knowing most of us aren’t born with. And yet according to the Sufi saying previously mentioned, all wisdom lies in this knowing. We are tasked then, with diving into both love and struggle. We will fail in both. But in failing, we start to learn when to let what is being done for us be done, and when to do what we need to do.

SLUDGE PLANTS STOP EM BY MARK CIESLUK Two row! WAMPUM! Sludge plants! STOP EM!

his and similar chants rang out through downtown Dundalk on July 7th of this year when approximately 150 individuals, some local to the area and some belonging to groups from Toronto, Guelph, KW, and Six Nations, marched in protest of a proposed biosolid waste processing plant which stands ready to go into operation mere metres away from the headwaters of the Grand River. Lystek, an ‘Organic Materials Recovery firm’ headquartered in Cambridge, has aggressively moved forward with the planning and construction of holding ponds and a processing facility which would receive Toronto’s sludge - the tailings left over from medical, industrial, and human waste. At 1,750 feet above sea level - Waterloo is merely 1079 - Dundalk is sit-

uated on what some locals called the “dome of Ontario”: the rainfall which the Dundalk area receives flows away in every direction to form the headwaters of several rivers. Consequently, Lystek’s proposed sludge plant is uniquely poorly situated. Of particular concern to some is the proximity of a school to the site’s proposed waste ponds - less than 350 metres would separate local children from the runoff of Toronto’s medical, industrial, and human waste. Isabelle, a 12 year old Dundalk resident who was out for the march, told me that “Dundalk has a history and it’s being destroyed by whole bunch of Toronto’s crap. A whole bunch of my friends are moving away because of it, and I don’t want them to leave. I don’t want the entire town smelling like a toilet.”

coalition to oppose Lystek’s efforts to bring sludge to Dundalk has grown around the efforts of the Southgate Public Interest Research Group, an organization of concerned

citizens. In late February a blockade of the development site was established by locals. On April 23rd, Haudenosaunee land defenders from Six Nations joined them in order to express their territorial rights along the Grand River and to display their commitment to ensuring a clean and healthy Grand. As John, a land defender from Six Nations commented, “When we poison the water, poison the earth, poison the animals, we poison ourselves. It was great to hear that there is a community resisting what is happening here... You have to think in a way that’s not thinking about just now. Everything we do impacts everybody, and it’s not in a good way to take actions now that are going to harm the way people live - that’s very selfish.” On August 24th, friends and allies of the blockaders in Dundalk visited a meeting of the Grand River Conservation Authority’s board of directors. Wes and Missy Elliot of Six Nations questioned why the GRCA had seen fit to grant approval to the sludge plant, and emphasised the importance of renegotiating the consultation agreement between the GRCA and Six Nations. The special spiritual, historical, and legal standings of the Haudenosaunee in regards to the preservation of the Grand were stressed, but seemed to move few on the board. The result of the meeting was a commitment extracted from chairperson Jane Mitchell by a concerned board member: that the GRCA would revisist the approval process for the Lystek plant and present their findings at an October meeting. Those who had come to support the people of Dundalk and Six Nations vowed to be back in October to continue to fight the sludge plant, with Kathryn Wettlaufer, a spokesperson for the group of assembled supporters, asserting that “The GRCA’s job is to protect the river. If they’re not going to, we will.”

For more information visit www.stopthewastepark.com DAN KELLAR

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International & Intergenerational Conference Education to Globalize the Human Mind September 22-23, 2012 Tom Mahon

Dr. Vincent Kouwenhoven

Dr. Atif Khalil

Venture Capital Investor, Amsterdam

Dr. Kamran Modif

St. Peters College, New Jersey

Writer, Silicon Valley University of Lethbridge Founder, Globalisation for the Common Good Initiative

(Rev.) Dr. Mark DeStephano Dr. V. N. Jha

Pune University, India

Register http://guestlistapp.com/events/101946 http://spiritualeducation.org Lyle S. Hallman Faculty of Social Work, Wilfrid Laurier University 120 Duke Street West, Kitchener, Ontario N2H 3W8

The Harmonia Centre for Life & Growth (519) 743-3375 info@harmoniacentre.ca Spread Your Wings!