Flattening the Curve, The Benefits and Risks of Self Isolation; & How we can care for each other during this pandemic.
Cortes Health Centre Staff, Tahmeena Ali, MD—visiting doctor—and Isabelle Laplante, RN—new staff nurse— speak out about all anyone is talking about, COVID-19, and what it means for the people of Cortes Island.
Continue reading COVID 19 Pandemic: Cortes Health Centre Staff Speak Out“It takes a community to raise a village,” it says on the Cortes Community Housing website (at cortescommunityhousing.org). This has clearly been the case on Cortes Island with two upcoming housing initiatives undertaken by the Housing Committee of the Cortes Island Seniors Society.
Continue reading It Takes A Community To Raise A Village
Today, I woke up and much of the day I spent thinking about how I was going to get my drug-of-choice packed up for my upcoming trip. How much do I need? What could I leave behind in order to fit my drug-of-choice into the one little bag that would last me a month? What would happen if I ran out? My drug of choice happens to be a particularly fine earl grey tea and why I like to think I am not addicted, when I think about going without the warmth and ritual of my morning cup, my heart starts to race and I snap at my children. There are few people I know that aren’t dependant on some sort of drug as part of their daily routine: caffeine, tobacco, marijuana, alcohol or the harder-to-get and less acceptable ones that are prescribed, gotten on the streets, or otherwise come by illicitly. I’ve noticed in my life, it’s often the people who once struggled with illicit drug use themselves that have the most nuanced understanding drug literacy and the varying relationships people have with psychoactive drugs.
Continue reading Drug LiteracyFrom Folk U: Reading Between the headlines – How to get more truth out of today’s media
It’s hard to navigate the world today for while information has never been so accessible, misinformation has also never been so accessible. Although, I find it helpful to remember that half-truths and alternative facts and falsehoods are not new. I was taking a class once where we read an author many hundreds of years past who was bemoaning the difficulties of easy information and half-truths obscuring the actual truth.
Continue reading Reading Between The Headlines WIth Rex WeylerAs an immigrant to Canada, I was shocked to learn about the Canadian legacy of residential schools. I had no idea growing up in the U.S. that such things were happened and had happened just north of the border. The indigenous residential schools operated in Canada starting in the 1870s with the last one not closing until1996. Children as young as four were taken—often against the will of their families or with coercive techniques such as threatening jail time—and it is estimated that over 150,000 Indian, Inuit, and Métis children attended residential school. I was reminded that it is a legacy that continues to shade aspects of Canadian culture and identity for all Canadians this year when I became a citizen. At the ceremony, the judge encouraged all of us new Canadians to make the act of reconciliation personal and spoke about how she was doing that in her life.
Continue reading These Are My Words
