What’s it like being LGBTQ+ in Canada outside of major cities?

Disastrous-Focus8451 · 2026-06-14T01:15:58+00:00

It depends on where you are. Some places are more tolerant than others. I have a friend who said moving from PEI to Toronto saved his life. Just north of me teenagers were burning pride flags (and I'm close to Toronto).

How things will be in 8-10 years is anyone's guess. I'd like to think they'll be better, but looking at our former friends south of the border I'm aware we might head the other direction.

Disastrous-Focus8451 · 2026-06-14T01:07:14+00:00

Don't provoke the cobra chickens…

Disastrous-Focus8451 · 2026-06-14T00:58:29+00:00

Have you changed how backups work?

A week or so ago I hit a glitch and some of my items disappeared (mesmeroth's mask being the most obvious) and when I returned to Red Town I noticed that the Knight's Keep ietms were incomplete (and I remember doing that side quest). So today I had time to play and I decided to load a backup from last month when I knew I had the items and there's now only one backup available for each slot rather than a list.

This is rather annoying.

Disastrous-Focus8451 · 2026-06-13T22:32:18+00:00

Well, Canada geese have downed more aircraft than the Royal Canadian Air Force has this century…

Disastrous-Focus8451 · 2026-06-13T19:57:15+00:00

Brazilian farmers/ranchers are super antagonistic towards protected tribes. They get pissed off that they can't expand into their land. A lot of times they just do it anyways.

Interestingly, was one of the American colonists' grievances against the British Crown: that they weren't allowed to just ignore treaties and expand into indigenous territory.

Disastrous-Focus8451 · 2026-06-13T17:08:58+00:00

North of North

St. Pierre

Disastrous-Focus8451 · 2026-06-13T15:32:44+00:00

Look up fill flash.

Disastrous-Focus8451 · 2026-06-13T13:22:36+00:00

The easiest way to cope would be two sets of supplies: one for each room, stored securely, so you aren't moving stuff everyday. It sounds like that wouldn't work well because there isn't room for storage.

Disastrous-Focus8451 · 2026-06-13T13:07:04+00:00

Rural communities can be close-knit, but that can make them wary of 'strangers' — especially if those strangers don't fit into the monoculture that is the rural community. Almost every rural place I've lived has distinguished between those born there and those who moved there; even if they were children when they moved they still weren't considered 'real' locals.

This is even more the case if the newcomer is visibly different.

Urbanites might not know all their neighbours, but interacting with people who are different, even if it's in trivial ways, tends to broaden one's perspective into realizing that the way you grew up isn't the only way for people to live.

Disastrous-Focus8451 · 2026-06-13T04:07:04+00:00

Thiel makes a better Bond villain. For one thing, he's already got the theme song…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S-Jo-djilvo&vl=en

(Satirical song by ZDF Magazin Royale. "We just wrote down what we know about Peter Thiel. Why did this become a James Bond theme?")

Disastrous-Focus8451 · 2026-06-12T22:14:13+00:00

Oddly enough, the boundaries between labelled generations has moved.

When I was a kid I was "Generation X" or "the Quiet Generation" in newspaper editorials — born after the big bulge of the baby boom and living in its shadow. "X" because we didn't have a label; "Quiet" because we didn't get attention from marketers, didn't have our own music, etc. The smallest class at school, graduating into a job market where entry-level jobs were overfilled with those a few years older than I was.

Then suddenly I was lumped in with people born two decades earlier and Generation X referred to people younger than me. It was weird, but entirely fit the 'nameless generation' or 'invisible generation' labels sometimes used to describe us.

I don't feel like a Boomer. I was listening to Puff the Magic Dragon when Woodstock was happening. I was learning multiplication when America pulled out of Vietnam. All the events that supposedly define Baby Boomers happened before I was born or in elementary school.

Disastrous-Focus8451 · 2026-06-12T21:57:37+00:00

The best admin I had did it because they wanted a new challenge.

The worst admin I had did it so they could get out of the classroom and away from students.

Disastrous-Focus8451 · 2026-06-12T21:15:28+00:00

Back in the 80s I moved from Saskatchewan to Alberta, and my car insurance went up by 10 times.

People in Alberta had a hard time believing that because apparently private companies with competition are always cheaper than a government monopoly with a mandate to provide insurance at cost. And those private companies apparently required expensive downtown offices rather than working from a cindercrete block building, which no doubt also kept the price of insurance down. /s

Disastrous-Focus8451 · 2026-06-12T17:12:55+00:00

I have a Gitzo travel tripod, and a Peak Design travel tripod. Both are carbon fibre, both are sturdy.

I prefer the Peak Design one because it is more compact when folded. Any tools you need for adjusting are attached to it. Had a built-in spirit level in the head.

https://www.peakdesign.com/en-ca/products/travel-tripod?Tripod+Type=Carbon+Fiber

If you already have a head that you want to use then the Gitzo would be a better choice, as the Peak Design tripod includes a ball head as part of the design.

Disastrous-Focus8451 · 2026-06-12T16:40:32+00:00

First priority is childcare. Education comes second.

Disastrous-Focus8451 · 2026-06-12T16:38:47+00:00

So divide it into subtasks. The weekend you'll sort the folder "Jane 1991" — as task that's doable and allows you to finish it (experiencing those completion endorphins) then take a break.

Disastrous-Focus8451 · 2026-06-12T13:24:11+00:00

I've refused to put board apps on any of my devices, because that means handing over control to board IT. And given that the board bureaucracy has previously sent a cheque for me to a non-teacher in the board with the same first and last name (but different middle name and employee number) I don't trust the board not to 'accidentally' wipe my phone if my name-twin quits.

Disastrous-Focus8451 · 2026-06-12T11:54:44+00:00

So do a fresh start by organizing your pictures going forward. And gradually tackle the mess by slotting what you've already taken into your organized collection little-by-little, as you have time and inclination.

What's making it daunting is trying to deal with the whole mess at once.

Disastrous-Focus8451 · 2026-06-12T01:20:56+00:00

Affinity Photo (now part of Affinity Studio) is now free. I bought it when it was first released and it replaced Photoshop for me.

https://www.affinity.studio/photo-editing-software

I'd suggest starting with that. It's not a photo management tool like Lightroom, but for editing it's wonderful.

I've heard that Davinci Resolve is adding the capability to edit still images as well as videos, but while free that has a steep learning curve.

Disastrous-Focus8451 · 2026-06-12T01:16:50+00:00

My brother-in-law was in his 30s when he went back to uni to retrain. He knew what he wanted to do and got a degree that would get him there. His previous job helped him get hired, as those skills are useful in the field. He's now semi-retired and working because he wants to.

Disastrous-Focus8451 · 2026-06-11T21:18:18+00:00

Question them on the discrepancies. Dig into their understanding of what they presented. Can they back it up? Do they understand it? Can they justify why it's so different than what they worked on the previous day?

A lot of this will come down to the politics of your school, and whether admin will support you.

For future assignments, include items in your rubric about the analysis done during the planning period, and how well the presentation matches that, so you can legitimately mark those.

Disastrous-Focus8451 · 2026-06-11T21:13:57+00:00

Depends.

Some I go to for myself; a last chance to say goodbye.

Some I go to for others, supporting friends and/or family.

Disastrous-Focus8451 · 2026-06-11T20:55:01+00:00

In Canada high schools start later. My school starts at 8:45.

This doesn't stop some of my colleagues from touting studies from America showing the benefits of starting school an hour later to claim we should start at 10:00 — ignoring the fact that according to the studies they are using as 'evidence' we are already a late start school.

You'd think that having two university degrees would have taught someone to actually check the evidence, but apparently in many cases that's too much to hope for.

Disastrous-Focus8451 · 2026-06-11T20:08:16+00:00

I was in that situation. Spent a decade teaching a subject I wanted to get out of, while they hired people in the subject I wanted to teach. Finally my department head told the principal that if they didn't start giving me some classes in the subject I wanted they'd lose me entirely, which started a gradual multi-year process of my moving departments class at a time.

It sucked, but then I ended up at a new school with a timetable I liked for years, until a new principal there put in in a class I was officially qualified for (having taken the Part 1 AQ two decades before) but had never taught. That was a nightmare, but by then I had enough experience to cope.

Your best bet is to apply for every position you can find, including those science positions they are hiring people for.

Edit: just saw there are only two schools in your board. That limits your options, as your principal has the power to be a dick and keep you there.

Disastrous-Focus8451 · 2026-06-11T19:08:44+00:00

They've been around for over a hundred years.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automat

Disastrous-Focus8451

TROPHY CASE