Active History

Holy Angels School Building, photo by author.

Mallory Davies

This is the seventh entry in a monthly series on Thinking Historically. See the Introduction here.

Coined by activist American women of colour in the 1990s, reproductive justice is an activist framework that provides an intersectional understanding of reproductive autonomy. Reproductive justice invokes the “sexual autonomy and gender freedom for every human being,” among the right to reproductive decision making.[1] Despite advancements, the last few years have witnessed a reduction in reproductive rights protections in the United States and Canada. In the United States, the overturning of Roe v Wade has led to a host of changes to medical care, often with the result that individuals are denied their reproductive rights.

In Canada, these conversations are being broached in the realm of education with the Alberta premier proposing anti-trans policies aimed at the sex education curriculum and switching to an opt-in approach for sex education, as was recently discussed in a blog post on this site by Karissa Patton and Nancy Janovicek. These contemporary conversations propose to limit reproductive decision-making for citizens and curtail the kinds of education available to students. Now more than ever, we need reproductive justice as a framework to be incorporated into the education system.  To understand how early efforts of reproductive justice were incorporated into educational systems, I focus on some very early findings from my study on the history of education for teen mothers in Calgary, Alberta.

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Prime Minister Brian Mulroney and Art Miki sitting down at the signing of the redress. Roger Obata, Audrey Kobayashi, Gerry Weiner, and Maryka Omatsu are among the people standing behind them. Source: Nikkei National Museum and Cultural Centre,. Gordon King Collection 2010.32.26.

Daniel R. Meister

Following his death, assessments of Brian Mulroney’s legacy ranged from “one of the greatest prime ministers in Canadian history” to “the most hated PM in Canadian history.” For those lionizing, Mulroney should be remembered for supporting free trade, expanding environmental protections, and for opposing apartheid in South Africa. For those vilifying, Mulroney should be remembered for neoliberal policies of austerity and privatization, stubborn accusations of corruption, and the violent military response to the Kanehsatà:ke Resistance (otherwise known as “the Oka Crisis”).

Mulroney may be divisive, but what prime minister wasn’t? Running down the list, I thought maybe John Thompson, but his Catholicism certainly was at the time (though this says less about him and more about the society at the time). Moreover, there is a tendency when examining political figures to portray them as either good or evil, with little room for nuance or depth.

Take Mulroney and multiculturalism, for example. He is either praised for passing the Multiculturalism Act (1988) or condemned for supposedly neoliberalizing multiculturalism.[1] In ensuring the passage of the Multiculturalism Act, Mulroney gave needed legislative basis to a policy proclaimed nearly two decades prior. Ethnic groups had been lobbying for such a move for nearly as long and welcomed the development. But the Mulroney government is also remembered for its “Multiculturalism Means Business” approach to the policy. This was the name of a conference organized by minister of multiculturalism Otto Jelenik, held in Toronto in 1984 and at which Mulroney spoke.

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