In the weeks leading up to the 2015 federal election, Stephen Harper’s Conservatives seized on the niqab as a wedge issue. They fought the wearing of the traditional Islamic face veil in citizenship ceremonies; they proposed banning it outright for public servants. And these proposals gained a great deal of support — 55 percent of Canadians polled by Ipsos Reid at that time approved of a ban on the niqab even after a federal court struck down the government’s challenge — exposing a fault line in our treasured multicultural foundation. It wasn’t enough to secure Harper’s re-election, but recent events show that a certain fear remains: In the wake of November’s attacks in Paris, a mosque was set ablaze in Peterborough, Ont.; days later, in Toronto, a Muslim woman was assaulted near a school and two young women were pushed on a subway. The next month, to cheers at a South Carolina rally, presidential candidate Donald Trump called for a “total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States.” Read More Here
“A Victorian chatelaine is essentially a tool belt of a highly personal nature. Picture a Swiss Army knife crossed with a charm bracelet and you’ll start to get the idea. Nineteenth-century chatelaines are highly customized to suit the needs of their individual owners; the two elements they all share are the clip, which hangs them from their owner’s waist, and a series of chains hanging from that clip to tether various accessory tools.”
—Excerpted from This Victorian Life, by Sarah A. Chrisman, Skyhorse Publishing, 2015.
