The Sunday Magazine for September 27, 2020
This week on The Sunday Magazine with host Piya Chattopadhyay:
The throne speech and Indigenous relations: During the Sep. 23 throne speech, the federal government reaffirmed its commitment to walking the path of reconciliation with Indigenous people. But after a year of rising tensions across the country — from the Wet'suwet'en standoff to the Caledonia land occupation and the recent Mi'kmaq fishing rights struggle — Mi'kmaw lawyer and professor Pam Palmater says that commitment to reconciliation has been little more than empty words.
The purpose of public education in society: COVID-19 has proven to be a transformative moment for schooling. And it's forcing big questions about what the purpose of public education should be going forward. To dig into them, Chattopadhyay speaks with long-time educator Charles Pascal, one of the architects of all-day kindergarten in Ontario, to discuss what the way we teach kids says about the world we want, how the pandemic has unveiled shortcomings of our current systems, and the big thinking it will take to chart a course for a more equitable future.
Two names for the same season on Word Processing: In the latest installment of our recurring segment "Word Processing", Wall Street Journal language columnist Ben Zimmer explains why North Americans say "fall" while the British say "autumn"... and the surprising histories of the words that might disrupt any notions about the superiority of the Queen's English.
A family's turbulent history in Taiwan's lush landscape: In her memoir Two Trees Make a Forest, Canadian writer and environmental historian Jessica J. Lee returns to her mother's homeland of Taiwan to understand the landscape that shaped her family - and in turn, shapes her. The book intertwines her grandparents' histories, the political history of Taiwan and the island's geological history. She speaks with Chattopadhyay about home, multiplicity and belonging.
How food can be its own language: We kick off an ongoing focus on what food can reveal about life, culture and society with Francesca Ekwuyasi, the Nigerian-Canadian novelist behind the Giller Prize longlisted novel Butter Honey Pig Bread. She speaks with Chattopadhyay about the role food plays in complex family dynamics and how cooking can be a way of expressing care, regret, desire for forgiveness, and more.
READ: How food becomes the 'punctuation between all the talking' in Francesca Ekwuyasi's debut novel
