A harm reduction doctor who resigned in protest after trying to save lives. An Indigenous poet and literacy educator. A young journalist with a big election scoop on racism. Women’s basketball players rallying around a trans teammate.
This past year has seen many Nanaimo women and gender non-conforming people taking action to better our community — and The Discourse has shared their stories.
Saturday is International Women’s Day, an annual celebration of women and their social, economic, cultural and political achievements.
The global event also serves as a call to action to fight for equality.
International Women’s Day has been taking place for more than a century. It doesn’t belong to one country, group or organization. At The Discourse, we recognize it as a day to celebrate all women — not just cisgender ones — as well as non-binary people and allies.
But more still needs to be done to be more inclusive of our communities’ diversity, as we work towards equity and gender parity. We strive to reflect this in our reporting, and are always learning and growing to become more inclusive story-tellers ourselves.
Here’s a roundup of some stories from the past year featuring women and gender non-conforming folk who are shining a light and showing leadership in Nanaimo:
VIU women’s basketball team supports trans teammate, boycotts games at Bible college
One of the most striking examples of solidarity between women in Nanaimo this past year was the entire women’s basketball team at Vancouver Island University standing up for their teammate Harriette Mackenzie.
Mackenzie is a transgender athlete targeted last fall while playing against Abbotsford’s Columbia Bible College Bearcats.
After what a team-signed letter described as foot-dragging from the Pacific Western Athletics Association into complaints against the Bearcats’s coach over anti-trans statements, the VIU women’s basketball team boycotted two scheduled away games.
Their protest forced a resolution to the investigation into the coach’s actions, resulting in her being suspended for the season.
And their actions also led to the provincial basketball championships being moved from Columbia Bible College to North Vancouver’s Capilano University.
The two teams would face each other again in the gold medal game of the championship, where the VIU Mariners defeated the Bearcats 69-59 — and Mackenzie was named the Most Valuable Player of the tournament.
Read the rest of Mackenzie and her team’s story.
Q&A: MJ McGregor speaks their TRUTH
Over the past few years, I’ve seen MJ McGregor’s musical project TRUTH a number of times, and it is a unique and emotional experience to watch them perform.
We have become acquaintances through my concert photography, but we never had a chance to talk at length or in depth about their arts practice.
So I met up with MJ at The Vault Cafe, where we had a long and fascinating conversation about their journey: growing up in an isolated religious household near Ladysmith; becoming an artist and musician in a queer relationship in Nanaimo; and using their music to “talk back” to the environment in which they were raised.
Read our interview with McGregor.
‘It makes you feel not alone’: VIU meal program fights student hunger and loneliness
A normally empty meeting room in Vancouver Island University’s social sciences building was transformed into a busy eatery last November as more than 100 students were served plates of Thai curry on rice.
It wasn’t a new campus restaurant — but actually a new hot meal program called No Hunger at VIU.
The free program serves students every two weeks in Building 355. It started when Leah Vaisanen, a political studies student, saw food prices rising over the past year and heard from fellow students barely able to afford food — even though they were working while in school.
“Some students don’t even eat, or they don’t have time to eat. And that’s the main idea that led into this,” she said. “So students have at least one hot meal instead of sitting in class hungry.”
In addition to her anti-hunger work on campus, Vaisanen also organized this year’s march for missing and murdered Indigenous women, girls and two-spirit people.
Read how Vaisanen is fighting student hunger.
Nanaimo addictions doctor behind pop-up overdose site resigns in protest
Last month, Dr. Jessica Wilder garnered headlines when she resigned from her two senior positions in harm reduction and addiction medicine at Nanaimo Regional General Hospital.
She’d made waves within Island Health over the fall, helping spearhead a movement of doctors who set up overdose prevention sites outside hospitals in Nanaimo and Victoria, and later in Courtenay.
In her Feb. 5 resignation letter, which was obtained by The Discourse, Wilder wrote that her decision did “not come lightly.”
She expressed a “growing lack of faith” in the Addictions Medicine and Substance Use leadership team, alleging that they attempted to “dissuade and suppress the public advocacy work of physicians demanding evidence-based, life-saving interventions.” And she warned that would have “harmful consequences” for patients most at risk.
“In the current political climate, the patients who trust us with their care deserve bold leadership and decisive action,” she wrote, “particularly amid our decade-long public health emergency.”
Wilder’s resignation letter revealed she was put on administrative leave from her leadership positions as “a punitive response” to her advocacy — adding that she is “deeply concerned about the message this sends.”
Read more about Wilder’s advocacy — and what it cost her.
Indigenous poet pens love letter to women for International Women’s Day
Every year since 2019, the grassroots organizers behind Cowichan Valley International Women’s Day have made space to showcase the work of local women poets and spoken-word artists.
At last year’s event, Nanaimo-based poet Aimee Chalifoux contributed a newly commissioned work, The Young Woman’s Guide To Liberation. The piece shares its title with a 1971 book by U.S. feminist lawyer and activist Karen DeCrow.
The Cree, Saulteaux and Métis poet grew up on Vancouver Island, where she works as the Indigenous literacy co-ordinator for Literacy Central Vancouver Island.
Chalifoux’s poem was printed on postcards and distributed throughout the Cowichan Valley and Nanaimo — and wherever else they could land — to honour International Women’s Day.
Hear from Chalifoux in her own words — and her poem.
How a VIU student journalist broke an election scandal
Vancouver Island University student journalist Alyona Latsinnik is only in her second year of post-secondary education.
But last October, she scooped everyone in B.C.’s Press Gallery with a revealing provincial election night interview with Marina Sapozhnikov, Conservative candidate for Juan de Fuca-Malahat.
It was an interview that made province-wide headlines — and exposed the candidate’s harmful and racist views about Indigenous Peoples.
Sapozhnikov was initially only 23 votes short of being elected in the riding. Although a recount eventually confirmed she’d lost to the B.C. NDP’s Dana Lajeunesse, Conservative Leader John Rustad later responded to public pressure — vowing she will not be running for the party again.
