Positionality Statement

I live and work next to the Pacific ocean as an uninvited guest on the traditional unceded lands of the Musqueam people. I was born next to the Atlantic ocean on Mik’maq territory, but grew up at the confluence of the Red and Assiniboine Rivers on Treaty One territory, and on the banks of the Fraser River on the traditional unceded lands of the Semá:th (Sumas) Nation. I am a white settler of Irish, English and Scottish descent. Boats and a deep relationship to water run throughout my family history—seal boat captains, fishermen, sailors and swimmers. My mother taught me from a young age that water is home.

I grew up on a hill just above a reserve and went to school with kids from the Semá:th (Sumas) Nation. At school, we helped carve a totem pole and learned traditional weaving techniques on “Sto:Lo” day, but we never learned about genocide and the history of residential schools. I later learned that the only recorded lynching to take place in Canada happened in the late 1800’s to a Sto:Lo boy just down the street from my home, right around “Wonderland,” the mini golf course. I have worked so hard to put distance between myself and the place I grew up—it’s difficult to reckon with this story. What it means about the past, the privilege of my childhood, the active suppression of history.

As a teacher of writing, I am keenly aware of the importance of multiple stories. My first language is English but I have learned to speak fluently in other languages, uncovering different parts of myself, involuntarily hiding others. I come to my discipline as both an insider and an outsider—I am trained in my field, but identify more as a teacher and a writer/artist, less as an academic. I have spent years leading communications for grassroots humanitarian and non-governmental organizations—wielding words to drive change. I have also spent decades unlearning the harmful words of racism, misogyny, colonization, and homophobia that were communicated to me throughout my childhood in churches and classrooms. As a teacher, I try to hold both of these things to be true: that language can be harmful, and it can also be transformative.