Susan Elliott Sim

📍 Toronto

Arena Notes | Week 6

I expected to be outside my comfort zone and I got that in spades, probably more than I expected. For the first couple of weeks of the season, I had trouble falling asleep after games because I re-hash all the things I got wrong. They weren't big things,

We made the first trans woman at our church retreat cry

Today is Transgender Day of Remembrance. I've seen a lot of stories come across my social media feed this week. One of the observations was that if you don't know any trans people, it's probably because they don't feel safe around you.

Email to Families | Week 5 Update

Protest never works, except for when it does

After serving as campaign manager in two elections that were defined by historically low voter turnout, I'm surprised as anyone that the Ontario government did a complete U-turn in response to the threat of a general strike. At the same time, once Premier Ford and Minister Lecce preemptively

A line in the sand

When I was a teenager, I had the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms on my bedroom wall. It had pride of place right next to pinups of Duran Duran and Corey Hart. As an immigrant and racialized person, it appealed to me. The idealism of everyone being equal and

Another woman goes over the glass cliff

Last month, we saw Liz Truss go over a glass cliff. She was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom for a tumultuous 45 days. A glass cliff is tendency to promote women into a leadership role during a time of crisis when there is a high risk of failure. This

Putting children first

The Ontario Legislature is currently debating Bill 28, Keeping Students in Class Act, 2022. The purpose of the bill is to prevent education workers from going on strike and imposing a settlement on them. The worst parts of this bill are 1) preemptively invoking the notwithstanding clause of the Canadian

These little piggies stayed home

Voter turnout in the two most recent elections in Toronto reached historic lows. In the provincial election on June 2, 2022, the turnout was 48.2%, the lowest ever recorded for a provincial election. In the municipal election on October 24, 2022, the turnout was 29%, another lowest rate ever.

Email to Families | Week 2 Update

Arena Notes | Week 1

So I just completed my first weekend as head coach of a hockey team. I’m so out of my depth. The highlight of the weekend was Coach Matthew saying, “We’ll get worse before we get better.” I made mistakes that were avoidable: I was late for practice, because