WRITER – CULTURAL CRITIC – ACTIVIST
In Literary Review of Canada, January-February 2021
"In the lamplight shadows, we would watch him with an intensity we rarely gave the darkened forest itself."
Read Susan Crean's book review of Peter Christie's Unnatural Companions: Rethinking Our Love of Pets in an Age of Wildlife Extinction.
In Literary Review of Canada, June 2022
"There are many ways to appreciate birds, including being among them. This is not easy to do by proxy, but Merilyn Simonds’s Woman, Watching: Louise de Kiriline Lawrence and the Songbirds of Pimisi Bay offers a way."
Read Susan Crean's book review of Merilyn Simonds's Woman, Watching: Louise de Kiriline Lawrence and the Songbirds of Pimisi Bay.
In Literary Review of Canada, April 2020, Susan Crean writes about her experiences travelling to the Arctic, how climate change is poised to radically transform it, and why the region is ground zero for the coming global climate catastrophe.
"Scientists, naturalists, and Indigenous elders have been pointing to the evidence for decades, their messages about irreversible damage largely ignored by governments and the mainstream."
Read Susan Crean's article Forebodings: Notes on Climate Catastrophe online. You can also download it as a PDF.
In Inside Broadside: A Decade of Feminist Journalism. Ed, Philinda Masters, Second Story Press Oct. 8 2019.
"The point is not to criticize Chicago for her choice of guests; nor for attempting to take in all of western civilization in her sweep of history.... The point is, however, that Chicago's politics are not particularly radical. Her visualization of feminism, rhetoric aside, fits right in with the trendy notions of 'liberated' upper class matrons."
Broadside: A Feminist Review was a groundbreaking Canadian feminist newspaper published between 1979 and 1989. While Broadside paid attention to everything from feminists making art to street activism, it also covered the mainstream, from pop culture to peacemaking. The Broadside team uncovered the work of female artists and developed challenging and risky new ideas, all while participating in the day-to-day organizing of a grassroots movement.
Broadside helped reinvent journalism to make room for a feminist voice. This collection looks at the impact of the newspaper on the lives of women. Through a selection of key articles, the book explores the issues and events, the conflicts and controversies, and the debates and discoveries of feminist theory and activism that formed the context and content of a decade of change.
Buy the book here.
In Literary Review of Canada, Sept. 2019
"What we often forget — and should remember — is that every piece of code was, indeed, written by someone."
Read Susan Crean's book review of Clive Thompson's Coders: The Making of a New Tribe and the Remaking of the World online here.
In New Canadian Media, June 1, 2019
The story of Chinese immigration to Canada is best known for two things. First, the arrival of Chinese labourers in large numbers in the late 1800s to build the crucial last link of the Canadian Pacific Railway—the most difficult and dangerous section which required crossing the Rocky Mountains. And second, for the institution of a head tax meant to dissuade those very men from remaining in the country once the work was completed…
Read the full article Finding Mr. Wong: A Tale From Canada’s Exclusion Era here.
In Toronto No Mean City, University of Toronto Press, Jun. 21, 2017
Eric Arthur fell in love with Toronto the first time he saw it. The year was 1923; he was twenty-five years old, newly arrived to teach architecture at the University of Toronto. For the next sixty years he dedicated himself to saving the great buildings of Toronto's past. Toronto, No Mean City sounded a clarion call in his crusade. First published in 1964, it sparked the preservation movement of the 1960s and 1970s and became its bible. This reprint of the third edition, prepared by Stephen Otto, updates Arthur's classic to include information and illustrations uncovered since the appearance of the first edition.
Four new essays were commissioned for this reprint. Christopher Hume, architecture critic and urban affairs columnist for the Toronto Star, addresses the changes to the city since the appearance of the third edition in 1986. Architect and heritage preservation activist Catherine Nasmith assesses the current status of the city's heritage preservation movement. Susan Crean, a freelance writer in Toronto, explores Toronto's vibrant arts scene. Mark Kingwell, professor and cultural commentator, reflects on the development of professional and amateur sports in and around town.
Readers will delight in these anecdotal accounts of the city's rich architectural heritage.
Monograph published by The Ottawa Art Gallery; 1st edition (October 12, 2016). Authors: Susan Crean and Michelle Gewurtz.
Working in oils, watercolour, pastels and glass media, Jerry Grey explores themes of nature, politics and history. Her work from the 1970s links directly to her time participating in the highly influential Emma Lake Artists’ Workshops in Saskatchewan. Modern painting in North America was evolving toward ever more austere, reduced realms of colour and form and Grey participated in the 1964 and 1965 Emma Lake Artists’ Workshops, which were jointly led by painter Jules Olitsky & composer Stefan Wolpe (’64) and artist Lawrence Alloway and John Cage (’65). The works she produced between 1968-1978 stand as meditative monuments to the grid as a visual structure that continues to offer up transformative possibilities.
Buy the book Jerry Grey on the Grid 1968-1978 here.
In This Magazine Sept-Oct 2016
"The theme of remembering runs through the 94 recommendations of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC). It is behind the suggestion that Indigenous curricula be mandatory and in Justice Murray Sinclair’s insistence that non-Indigenous Canadians learn about residential schools and Indigenous history. In the context of reconciliation, how do we do this?"
Read Susan Crean's article "Canadians must acknowledge Indigenous history," online here.
12(1)(b), the infamous clause in the Indian Act which stripped Native women of their status when they married non-Native men, was repealed in 1985. Like many, I assumed that ended of the story. We were all wrong !! Here is what Ottawa served up in its place. as explained to me by constitutional and human rights lawyer, Mary Eberts. PLEASE SHARE.
“The legislation that removed 12(1)(b) is still known colloquially as Bill C-31, passed in 1985, to coincide with the coming into force of section l5 of the Charter, which guarantees equality.
“Bill C-31 did several things. It began by preserving all the rights of the Indian men and the non-Indian women who got Indian status by marrying those men, and the children of these marriages. All of them became what is known in the vernacular as 6(1)(a)’s, after the section in Bill C-31 which preserved their status.
“The other fundamental plank of Bill C-31 was to provide, in 6(1)(f), that in order to get “full” status in the future, a person has to be born of two parents with status under the Indian Act. In the past, status was available with only one Indian parent as long as the parent was the father (or, in the case of a child born out of wedlock, an Indian mother). Instead of achieving equality by giving the woman the same right to pass on status as the sole Indian parent, as men had had under the old Act, the framers of Bill C-31 made a new rule insisting that two Indian parents were needed to provide “full” status.
“I use the term “full status” because the distinction between full status –which can be passed on to one’s children – and having only a life interest in status was another innovation of Bill C-31. (ie: status dies with you and cannot be transmitted.) More to follow…
“Under 6(1)(c) of Bill C-31, a woman who had lost status because she married a non-Indian man was restored to Indian status. That was an improvement over the old situation. However, that woman’s children with her non-Indian husband would only have one parent who is an Indian, and thus could not get “full” status under s 6(1)(f). Children with only one parent who is Indian got status under s.6(2). They could not pass this status on to their children, unless they had children with a status person.
“Canada has instituted some very harsh rules to govern the administration of this 6(1)(f) / 6(2) situation. If you are a woman status Indian who has a child outside of marriage, or has a child with an unknown or unidentified father, then the government will consider that you are the only Indian parent of that child. That means that if you are a 6(1), you can give your child status. But if you are a 6(2) you cannot. Since 1985, there have been about 40,000 children (estimated) denied status because their fathers were unknown or unidentified.
“This situation actually rolls back the rights of the woman which had existed under the old, pre-1985 legislation. Under that, an Indian woman could pass her status along to a child born out of wedlock, as long as no one came forward and proved that the child’s father was not Indian. Now, the woman has to establish that the father IS Indian. This is difficult in cases of, say, rape, incest, or other violations. For me, it is a sign that colonialism is alive and well; Canada is still using bureaucratic means (the registration system) to reduce the numbers of status Indians, in the hope of making “the Indian problem” go away.
“The last big change made in the 1985 Act, bill C-31, was to give the Bands permission to enact their own criteria for band membership. If they do not do this, then band membership follows Indian status, as it used to before l985. If the Bands do enact their own membership codes, they can exclude from membership people who might otherwise be members because they are status Indians. A good example is the Caughnewaga membership code which says that a man who marries a Caughnewaga member is not a member. If you are not a member, you cannot live on Band land. So the Band is asking the woman to choose between her husband and her band…..marry this guy and you are exiled. Same story, different way of accomplishing it.”