IS A PAINTING A PICKET SIGN? It was for the artists on staff at the Emily Carr University of Art and Design in Vancouver.

IT DOESN’T ONLY HAPPEN IN THE MOVIES. The Black community in Shelburne, NS will get a happy ending. It will finally get clean water. But it took a movie star to get it for them.

TUNDÈ BALOGUN PULLS NO PUNCHES. He says things a lot of people don’t like to hear. He uses words that shock. For Tundè, it is the only way to break through to confront—and defeat—the reality of anti-Black racism in Nova Scotia.

ED ARVELIN DROVE 848 KILOMETERS TO WALK THE LINE. All the way from Dryden, Ontario to Regina Saskatchewan. It’s what union solidarity means to the Region 7 vice-president of OPSEU (Ontario Public Service Employees Union). He’s not alone.

THE TRUTH ABOUT GIGGING IS BRUTAL A deeper truth is that thousands of workers believe that joining or forming unions can make a new truth.

THEY DID IT WITHOUT NAKED LIBRARIANS. The Millennium Library in Winnipeg will soon add social workers, a crisis support centre, and free snacks and drinks to it’s services. The decision was a response to significant public pressure—but nothing like the kind used by protesters in the recent Hollywood movie The Public.

WE DON’T COUNT ON CAPITALISM WHEN THE CHIPS ARE DOWN. That’s just one of the singular insights Linda McGuaig offers up in her latest book The Sport & Prey of Capitalists: How the Rich are Stealing Canada’s Public Wealth.

'It's a fundamental human right to be safe at work.'

Most popular CLI original stories in 2019

ALL HE GOT WAS $2.01. Everett Richardson had worked 10 days to get it. Ten days on on a deepsea dragger on the North Atlantic off Nova Scotia, on the open deck, in February, 10 days—and that was all he got!