Canadian True Crime - Debrief with special guest Métis journalist Danielle Paradis

Episode Date: October 2, 2021

Danielle Paradis is a journalist based in Edmonton, Alberta with a special interest in Indigenous and women's issues.She's been published by Chatelaine, CANADALAND, BUSTLE, Star Metro Edmonton, Gig City, The Spraw and more.Dani has also pitched, researched and contributed to the writing of several episodes for Canadian True Crime - including Saskatoon Freezing Deaths and Mayerthorpe Tragedy... with more to come.Approximate timestamps of our discussion:00:00 - Introduction to Dani Paradis, background, how she got into journalism05:00 - Métis heritage08:00 - Truth & Reconciliation Day - September 3020:00 - Maranda Shelly Peter30:00 - What Dani is working on right nowResources and links:Follow Dani on Twitter: @DaniParadis and check out her website www.danielleparadis.com/Some of Dani's writing:Canada’s Media Was Always Going To Dismiss Genocide Against Indigenous Women  (CANADALAND)The Death Of Cindy Gladue, And The Criminal Defence Tactic That Should Alarm Every Woman in Canada (Chatelaine)What You Need To Know About The Biggest Indigenous Issues This Election (Chatelaine)Lit Fest: Canada's original nonfiction festival October 14-24Indigenous Friends New book:Praying to the West: How Muslims Shaped the Americas by Omar MouallemAll Music by We Talk of Dreams Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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I have got a bit of a flurry of episodes happening at the moment. And today, as a special episode for the first ever Truth and Reconciliation Day, I'm grateful to be able to chat with Danielle Paradis, an Indigenous journalist from Edmonton, Alberta. Now, Dani describes herself as a Métis prairie girl. We'll chat about that. And she's researched and helped me write several Canadian true crime episodes, including the Mayerthorpe tragedy and Saskatoon freezing deaths. And we have more with her in the works. We have tried several times to have a chat after an episode, but this is the

first time we've been able to synchronize our schedules. As well as Truth and Reconciliation Day, we'll also be chatting about the Miranda Peter episode, a bit of a discussion about the concept of justice and storytelling. Dani will be telling us what she's been writing about and what she's doing and more. See the show notes for approximate timestamps and all the links to the things that we talk about. So without further ado, hello to Danielle Paradis. Hi, Christy. How are you? I'm great. How are you? Oh, great, great. Now, Dani, as we were talking about earlier, you are a prolific writer and creator, and you have a special interest in Indigenous and women's issues.

You've written pieces for Chatelaine, Canada Land, and more. And I want to know, what's your background? How on earth are you so productive? And how can I steal some of your energy? It's so funny to hear somebody else say that. some of your energy. It's so funny to hear somebody else say that. I think that I feel the same way about a lot of other people. So if that makes you feel better, I'm just pretending to have it all together. And I don't have it any more together than anyone else. As to my secret, I think just sort of like a constant feeling of guilt that I carry around that I'm like not doing enough

that really seems to provide me with a lot of energy. So yeah, that and of course, coffee, the tool of any writer and the odd yoga class just to really try and get away from thinking about crime. How did you get into journalism? And why am I seeing you everywhere right now? You know, it kind of comes in fits and starts in journalism. And then that's, there comes a certain point, I guess, when you become like emerging, maybe, I would call it and I think it right at this point, that's where I am. So that's why you're seeing me everywhere, because I'm like, refuse, I'm just saying yes to everything. And then like frantically trying to figure out how I'm supposed to fit it into my days. As for writing, I've been, I know.

I'm one of those people. Dani, do this. And I love it. And you're like, yes. And I just say yes. So I have no one to blame but myself. See, I'm the opposite. I say no to everything.

Well, you know, that's good. That's like really good time management. So congratulations to you. Well, thanks. Good boundary setting. Yes, as I hang out in the basement all by myself. That's right. Background wise, I've been writing for over 10 years now. I started, you know, I started in blogging early, early on. And I really started writing through fighting with men's rights activists online, actually. Oh, right. Nice. So yeah, it was...

I didn't expect that. I know, I know. I was in school for writing, and I was blogging and like, and tweeting. But I became involved in activism. Like I led this local slut walks here. When I was in my I'm 34. Now I was about 2122 when I was planning these things. And I stumbled one day I stumbled across this little video about like feminism being evil. And so in my naivety I was like oh like I'm gonna explain feminism to this guy and like he just doesn't really understand what it's all about so I like innocently made this little video and it was insane like you know the amount of like attention it got I was not ready for and then I kind of like so then they wanted to do all these like

they're always like you know debate me coward it's the online thing and I kind of give up on that because I realized like oh um like there's these particular people I'm fighting with like have a lot of time on their hands and I don't so that kind of gave me like a first launch into writing and then I've written for um bustle in the States, the Good Men Project. I wrote a lot about feminism and gender and sexual violence. And that was partly informed by my activism, partly informed by like my own personal experiences with sexual violence and sort of coming to terms with that, which I think I really healed through activism. And so that was always a passion of mine.

And then being Métis, so that was a process of discovery, I would say. In my early writing, it doesn't really show up. I mean, I knew that we had some Indigenous background, but that was something that the family didn't really talk about. And then my sister became very interested and I became very interested and she's better at paperwork than I am. So she's a part of the, she's a formal member of the Métis nation and I have to finish signing all my forms and send them off in Manitoba. But, you know, so we were in a process of reconnecting to our backgrounds and that was, I mean, that's been kind of going on throughout large pieces of our life. So as the older sister, you know, she's taking on like the family historian roles, telling me stories about our backgrounds. And then in that time, I came to understand that in particular, Indigenous women are, you know, the targets of violence often,

like within the community and like externally, so in the whole broader Canadian world. And that became, I suppose I vote, I was in foster care when I was younger, and I've always been sensitized to, you know, certain stories. And one of them would be stories about women and one another would be stories about, about violence and injustice. And I, and I think it comes from those early life experiences. Wow. Yeah. Thank you for asking. That was really, really great. Now, since my audience is not all from Canada, would you mind telling us a little bit about what Métis is and what you've kind of discovered about your heritage and stuff? often a really complex topic. So for people like, let's say if you have listeners from the US, a really familiar concept in the States would be called blood quantum, which would be about like, what percentage of Indigenous are you or how much Indigenous blood do you have? In Canada,

that has sort of been imported as a question that people ask, but it's not really how a nation would identify whether or not you are Indigenous. So for Métis, I will say like my family is from Red River, we belong to the Manitoba Métis Federation. And so that's a specific collective of Indigenous people. And we so I guess I'm being very careful to set that up because the Manitoba Métis have certain conceptions about who counts as Métis and who doesn't. And that can be quite controversial. And I guess I'm not really I don't tend to speak a lot on whether or not I think somebody should be Métis. Right now, we just got a notice that like the nation is withdrawing from the Métis National Council due to fights over who gets to be considered Métis. So that's, that's really fascinating. So like right in the middle of this where that's going on.

And I think, let's say the foundations of Métis, as I understand it, as a Red River Métis, would be the marriage of settlers, often Scottish, Irish, and French, in the prairie provinces. So often with Cree, or in some cases, Anishinaabe people, who came together and then formed a specific, distinct culture from either one of the communities that they had existed in before. distinct culture from either one of the communities that they had existed in before. So you will hear some people say that Métis is mixed, but it's more than that. Like say if you are a white settler in Quebec and you marry an Anishinaabe person and you have children, your children aren't Métis. Métis belongs to a specific cultural subset and that's within predominantly the prairies,

although there are some other groups who call themselves Eastern Métis in Ontario. It's all really interesting and I'm thankful that you've taken the time to explain it to us, Dani. So before we start today, I wanted to acknowledge that at the time of recording, tomorrow is September the 30th, 2021, and it's the first National Day for Truth and Reconciliation here in Canada. And the day has been acknowledged previously as Orange Shirt Day, and it honors the lost children and survivors of residential schools, their families, and their communities. It's a public commemoration. It's been designated as a

national public holiday, although it's up to the individual provinces to decide whether it is a holiday in the provinces. And sadly, I live in one of the provinces that said it's not. And I believe you do too, Dani. I don't know for sure, but I'm guessing Alberta said no. Yes. for sure but I'm guessing Alberta said no yes yeah it's like Ontario and Alberta they're the tragic like provinces although I have to say Alberta's probably a little bit worse right now we're pretty tragic yes oh man if you don't laugh, you'll cry, right? Exactly. Yes, very much so. Dani, one of the things that I've noticed about this is that there's been a lot of commercialization around the whole wear an orange t-shirt thing.

With my kids being in school, every year we're asked to buy an orange t-shirt. my kids being in school, every year we're asked to buy an orange t-shirt and we've never been told ever like where we should buy this t-shirt from. And this year I found out that there is an actual Orange Shirt Day organization that donates the profits back to Indigenous aid organizations. But their cutoff was like before the schools were notified to wear an orange shirt. So I feel like by the time parents were out there buying their shirts, we couldn't buy it from official channels that gave the money back to Indigenous organisations.

And in the meantime, there's all kinds of rogue operators out there trying to make money off the selling of these shirts to commemorate a day of Indigenous tragedy. But yet they're keeping the profits for themselves. And it really, really annoys me. Like, I also hate Valentine's Day too. So, like, you know, it's like the commercialization of emotion and people profiting off this that they shouldn't be so next year I've put a notification on my calendar for early September to say buy your freaking orange shirt day t-shirt now so that you you know buy it from the correct place and not have to buy it from old navy or

something but um that's my preamble. Denny, I wanted to know, like, as a Métis person, what does the day mean to you beyond that or even including that? Yeah, I mean, there's always going to be some grifters out there. I don't know what we do about that, but I really appreciate, you know, your efforts to actually to look and make sure that Indigenous organizations are being supported I would say in previous years perhaps that infrastructure wasn't set up either um yeah so you know don't don't beat yourself up about it but um I think what the 30th means to me um I mean, for one, I've been writing about some Indigenous, well, they themselves

are not survivors, but their mother was a survivor of a residential school. And so for a piece that will come out later in a local magazine, I interviewed two sisters and spoke to them about their mother and her experience in residential residential schools and she had passed away but Beverly and Linda the sisters were very haunted by the experiences that their that their mother had and then even attempts to heal or you know make sure that there was recognition for what had happened to her were traumatizing to her because she I I mean, as the sisters told me in an interview, like she spent her whole life trying to forget things. So certain stories that came out like stories of a police van that they called the Black Maria that would take the children away

from their communities and that would go and look for children when they'd run away. You know, it gave me shivers, yeah, to hear those things. And then, you know, the mother lived with that as her early childhood experience her whole life and spent most of her time trying to forget that it had happened. More broadly, they're a part of what's called the Michelle Band in Alberta. And for the listeners who haven't heard of Michelle Band, they were involuntarily enfranchised, according to their website and their members. And what that means is that they lost their status under the Indian Act in Canada. So except for a few members who couldn't be enfranchised because they were, in one case, locked up in a mental institution. So these members are trying to reckon with a legacy of being removed as, you know, indigenous. but forgot to get rid of the Indians, in her words. And so even in the midst of this understanding of residential schools, there's other things that have been done

to Indigenous communities to erase them and to Indigenous women, like a non-Indigenous man and you're an Indigenous woman, you'd lose your status. And there was actually court cases that fought that out and helped to reestablish and sort sort of and i don't know what the term would be it wouldn't be enfranchised but like it would give them back their uh indigenous status under the indian act yeah and that would

be i mean you know simultaneously we're dealing with like a very paternalistic piece of legislation. But also the only thing that gives you your cultural identifiers and the hunting and fishing and gathering rights that a lot of communities still survive on. So I've just been thinking, yeah, there's not just one story. You know, there's not just the children being taken away and dying in residential schools. There's also the children like Bev and Linda's mother who survived and lived outside of her community for her whole life, like just never went home, and their family lost their culture that way.

After the break, Dani and I talk about Cindy Gladu, Miranda Shelley-Peter, what's going on in her neck of the woods in Edmonton and more. It's hockey season and you can get anything you need delivered with Uber Eats. We'll be right back. those are groceries and we deliver those too along with your favorite restaurant food alcohol and other everyday essentials order uber eats now for alcohol you must be legal drinking age please enjoy responsibly product availability varies by region see app for details death is in our air this year's most anticipated series fx's shogun only on disney plus we live and we die we control nothing beyond that an epic saga based on the global best-selling novel by James Clavel. To show your true heart is to risk your life.

Will I die here? You'll never leave Japan alive. FX's Shogun, a new original series streaming February 27th exclusively on Disney+. 18 plus subscription required. T's and C's apply. Hi everyone. Today we're talking passion projects that turn into careers. A topic that obviously resonates quite a bit with me. In collaboration with the Ontario Cannabis Store and Acast Creative, I want to introduce you to someone who took his passion for cannabis, turned it into a career, and is now an industry trailblazer. This is Nico Soziac. He's the chief financial officer of Canara Biotech, a prominent producer based in Montreal.

Nico, I know that you've had a passion for cannabis for quite a few years, but you seem a lot younger than what I was expecting. I have to know how and when you got into the cannabis business. Yeah, absolutely. I look younger, but I'm aging by the day. But no, I'm 35 years old. I got into cannabis about five years ago. I started with Canara. But you were a consumer before that. Yeah, I've been a consumer. I had friends in the legacy side of the business and watched what they did. I tried the different strains and genetics, watched how they grew, really found a passion for cannabis and the products. But my professional career is an accountant.

So while I had a passion for cannabis, I was also a straight A student. Wow. And then Canada decided to legalize cannabis. And that was when I was like, okay, this is kind of my calling. I have to try to figure out how do I can get into the industry. And Canara had just became a public company. I joined them in April, 2019 and built the finance department here at Canara and worked with the founder. And at one point I was given the keys to that. And now I'm here today. And I was given the keys to that.

And now I'm here today. Wow, that's such a cool story. So how do you feel about being called a trailblazer in the legal market now? It's an honor. I've looked up to many trailblazers in this industry today that come from the legacy side that went to legal. You know, I'm happy to be part of that. Actually, I wanted to ask you about the legacy market. How did you incorporate it into operations on the legal side? I don't pretend that the cannabis market just got created in 2017, right?

For me, legacy means that everyone that's been working, all the businesses that have been in the industry pre-legalization. I'm not going to reinvent the wheel in terms of thinking I know what consumers want. There's been an industry that's been built for many, many, many years. in terms of thinking I know what consumers want. There's been an industry that's been built for many, many, many years. So it's all the ideas and creations that were pre-legalization, figuring out how do we evolve that into the legal side with all the regulatory frameworks. What would you say is the best part of working in the legal market?

Knowing that your product is clean, knowing what you're consuming, we're ensuring quality, We're ensuring the price. I think we're ahead of other industries. Okay, so final question. What gets you excited to go to work every day? This is my dream. This is my passion.

I get excited. Work doesn't feel like work for me. When you're creating things that you dream about, I give the idea to the team. The team is able to execute different innovations. That's what really gets me excited. Thanks for listening to this Trailblazers story, brought to you by the Ontario Cannabis Store and ACAST Creative. If you like the trail Nico Soziak is blazing, you will love what's happening in legal cannabis. Visit ocs.ca slash trailblazers to learn more.

So Denny, I know that you've worked on quite a few Indigenous stories now with the story of Bev and Linda and their mother most recently, what others have you worked on? Yeah, like the one that I just mentioned is kind of the main one, but there's also Cindy Gladue, which will be an episode for you one day. The family is, I think, very exhausted from trial after trial, and so they haven't yet been willing to talk. I do hope that they do, But even if they don't, I think, you know, Cindy's story is very important. I wrote for that one for Chatelaine. And that's about an Indigenous mother who died in a motel room at the hands of a truck driver who essentially left her to bleed to death in a bathtub. That's not the kind of story that you can hear and just forget.

So, you know, I've been thinking a lot about Cindy and her family and the multiple court cases that they had to go through to get some modicum of justice. And, I mean, I haven't heard directly from the family, but the victim impact statements, you know, how do you get justice after having to go through so many court cases and hear so many things and even see like, there's the media and the and the defendant both used a picture of Cindy smoking as for example, and it's just a picture of her looking at the camera and smoking and there are lots of pictures of Cindy out there but this seems to be one of the most common ones and so I

spoke to a lawyer who represented Cindy's family during um during these court cases like more for emotional support and because as as your listeners will be aware the crown isn't there to defend the families they're there to defend the state so this lawyer was here at lisa weber was advocating for the family and that picture is a really like it's such a difficult one for them because that picture was introduced primarily to show the court that oh she was she was smoking and that's like smoking and drinking is in fact yeah she was bad to her death well and that they tried to use it for like a medical rationale as to why she died why she bled to death so it was yeah i mean of course it's also it's also showing oh

here's this smoking indigenous woman and she drank and and there's some victim blaming aspects in there but they kind of extended that into like the medical world and so it's just really horrifying to see you know a picture that was that's like a picture of you or a picture of a family member used against the victim yeah so i mean those are those are just two stories that have been on my mind. There's a few, there's a few others that are just sort of, I'm just sort of starting to research them. So I'm not sure I'm ready to write about them yet or to talk about them yet. Right. So what, what will you be doing to commemorate the day or to kind of acknowledge the day? I know you were saying that you're working on a whole bunch of content and I'm looking forward to sharing it.

Thank you, yes. I also, in addition to writing, I work for what's called Indigenous Friends Association and that organization's produced some, I mean, just statements on Every Child Matters on Orange Shirt Day. So I'll, of course, have that. And also I'm a journalism professor. Actually, sorry.

Let me rephrase that. I don't – I'm not a professor, but my kids keep calling me a professor. So I – I was just about to faint. I'm like, what? What? You can't – I'm an instructor.

No, please. Get some sleep. I – okay, let me say it again. I'm an instructor. Get some sleep. I teach journalism at McEwen University this year, two courses. And so one of them does fall on the 30th. And so I was just earlier today considering the ways in which I can mark the event. And I think the best way to do that is through story. I think the best way to do that is through story. You know, Indigenous people are amazing storytellers and journalism is the discipline of stories.

So I'm going to show them a video that actually talks about, that shares some survivors' experiences in the residential system or how it affected their families. So that and a little bit of reflection is kind of what I'm introducing in for the students to think about, think about residential schools, think about Canada as a country, and kind of a small way to start them down the path of looking and understanding Indigenous stories more deeply than it has been before. than it has been before. So let's talk about Miranda Shelley Peter. This case was actually proposed to me very early on in the podcast and a person just kind of submitted it as the case of James Joe Ward, the Yukon teenager who murdered his girlfriend and kept her body under his bed. And my researcher, Hayley Gray, picked the case out from a short list, but I didn't realize

until after I'd received the research that it was the very embodiment of a missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls and two-spirit case. And from then I was like, okay, so I can't just tell a story. I have to explain some concepts and some history. And I went through the records, the news archives from Whitehorse during the time to see exactly how the print media covered her disappearance. And it was crazy to see how little her case was focused on and Miranda was always at the end. And, you know, even when her picture was shown, like it was like an afterthought and it just made me so sad how the first announcement of her disappearance didn't show in the paper until she'd been gone for three weeks.

And despite her mother reporting it in the first two days, and it just made me so sad. Like it was just such a stark and a stark like example of the plight of these poor people and what they have to deal with when they report crimes. And I feel like the case has kind of been it's it's another one of those stories that's been swept under the rug you know what did you think yeah I mean it was it's a really complex story and and but you're absolutely right like Miranda was just so much of an afterthought in the media and and i guess partly because this happened prior to the rise of murdered and missing indigenous women like

as a as a known cultural phenomena and um and as a like as the demands for the inquiry grew but it's just really striking the way that she was erased or even in the like I'm not going to be telling too many spoilers right are we assuming they've listened to the episode no yeah we're assuming they've listened to the episode okay so um you know just how little was done to find her and and how how one organization and in this case the rcmp got to tell the whole narrative like it was really striking how you talked about multiple like they were talking about oh we're doing this like cross-country search but she's under her boyfriend's bed like that's where her body is yeah that just makes my skin crawl like how little concern like nobody looked under his bed

right I just keep imagining the RCMP going and speaking to Miranda's mother Jessie Jessie saying okay well I saw her with James and then the RCMP go to James's house and obviously he's taken off on his 10-day bender trip and his father is there and what did his father say to the RCMP yeah yeah he's gone uh yeah he's fine he didn't do it and then they just left I don't like did they ask to have a look in his room like I don't understand why like if if a 15 year old is missing and her boyfriend is has run off like doesn't that tell you that there's something a little bit more to be looked into yeah i mean you think you would at least like ask to look in his like in his room or even you know mean, attempt to get a warrant, obviously. But, like, just the bare minimum was not done. And then even, I mean, how much more horrifying that became for the family, like, knowing how close their loved one was and yet how little was done to find her.

Yeah, because months after she disappeared, they were still saying, saying like the cause of her disappearance is unknown and we don't think there's any foul play involved like how could they have come to that conclusion yeah and i mean especially as like experienced police officers like they this isn't a unfamiliar story unfortunately like domestic violence domestic incidents you know that's something that they deal with a lot. But it seems like they kind of, although I don't think this was explicitly said, it reminded me of those like runaway stories, right? Like, oh, well, she must have just decided she wanted to leave and just run away.

Like that's what it seemed like to me, even though I don't think that they made that statement. No, they didn't make that statement. It was always just she has a history of running away but she's never been gone for longer than a week so like I don't know why after a week they're still thinking that she might still be a runaway but clearly that's what they thought. Yeah. I also wanted to know what you thought about Justin Jim, the teenager who was kind of swirled up in the Miranda Peters story but was found to have had a freezing death. That case to me was, I don't know if it's because we worked on the Saskatoon freezing deaths episode,

but it seemed like there were so many similarities. It just seemed to me like the kid had only had slightly above the amount of alcohol to drive in his system. It's not like it was two or three times the legal limit. So it's like the toxicology report says he wasn't so drunk that he wandered into the woods and fell asleep never to wake up yeah because we did do the um freezing deaths episode in saskatchewan that that stood out to me too and of course we're not saying that like the rcmp dropped off oh no no no but like the whole story is not there having just a slightly above the legal limit. Some people are not even intoxicated in that situation, or they don't, they wouldn't be acting intoxicated. So and the location of

the body being sort of like, almost like it was an attempt to hide it or in kind of an area that you wouldn't think there'd be any reason for a person to be walking. Yeah, I found that very suspicious as well. And you know know maybe it's a maybe it's a matter of not getting a ride when he thought he was going to get a ride or a friend going to pick him up and and not like we'll never know but it would have been nice to to hear more about what actually happened to him rather than what seems to have been like, oh, well, he was just like another drunk Indigenous person that died. Fell asleep under a tree and died. I know. There's just this epidemic of us falling asleep under trees and dying.

Yeah. Well, I mean, it was kind of the same as what I heard on the Thunder Bay podcast, you know, people going down to the river and dying. It's, I don't know, it's like people don't just do that. Exactly. I know that you had some comments to make about the difficulties of getting justice. And in a case like this, where we're talking about several different factors that have come together and have overcomplicated the case. What do you think about kind of the families of victims saying this isn't justice in these types of situations? Well, I think when we look at James Ward, his story was also sad. His killing of Miranda was horrifying.

And listening to that reminded me of how serious certain things are in domestic incidents. And one of them is choking and just how serious that is. How serious that is and how if if you know of somebody in that kind of relationship, you need to recognize that as a significant red flag that that, you know, this person's in danger. Choking is usually a precursor to worse violence. And, you know, of course, there's this history that that James had of being violent. history that that James had of being violent. And at the same time, he was completely failed by a system as well. I mean, the judges comments, there was no intervention into his drinking to be a severe alcoholic at 15. You know, you're being failed by your parents, you're being failed by a school system, a medical medical system like it just everything really was not there for this for this child who you know was himself also very young and

and obviously had very poor reasoning skills or coping mechanisms to deal with anything so this is where I think about what it means to be a storyteller. And I think that means holding space for two truths here. Of course, Miranda's family has every right to be angry and victim rights advocates have every right to say that they need more accountability when it comes to domestic violence crimes and murdered and missing Indigenous women. And yet there's still restorative justice. There's still people who advocated for James's rights, as well as the rights of all Indigenous people who find themselves on the other side of the carceral system. And, you know, within Cree um an elder that I that I speak with Nokom Joanne talks about how within within Cree culture when one group is talking you you come around to their side and you you have to say like when you're talking you're absolutely right in what you're

saying and when I'm talking I'm absolutely right in what I'm saying. And when I'm talking, I'm absolutely right in what I'm saying. Yeah. And, and that's really true in this case, like both sides are right. And that makes justice a complicated conversation. Yeah, it does. And when we tell these stories, you know, like, that's what I guess, just to reiterate reiterate it is our it is our responsibility to hold space for these truths and and listeners will have their perspectives as well and there's just no way around that there's not there's not one right answer to tragedies like this yeah it was definitely a tragedy that's for sure Danielle thank you so much for joining us I wanted to ask you what's going on around where you are in Edmonton? Yeah so like everywhere else we're well I mean we've always been in a pandemic but I guess we choose to believe sometimes we are

less in the pandemic but we have a lot of online and in-person events still going on here. And one of them is Lit Fest, which is actually Canada's only nonfiction literary festival. So we're having Canadian authors, I think a lot of local authors, but also authors flying in to speak about their books. One of the books out is by a friend, Omar Mualim, and it's called Praying to the West about Islam's influence in Western cultures, which is a really fascinating read. So lots of interesting authors being featured there. If you're stuck at home and looking for something to zoom into.

I will leave some links in the show notes to this and some other things that Dani has been talking about, some of her other articles that she's written. And Dani, where can people find you? I know I follow you on Twitter at Dani Paradis, P-A-R-A-D-I-S. And where else? Where else? I mean, I think on Twitter is probably the best place, but you can also find me at Danielle parody.com. If you're wanting to look at my website, that just says I'm working on a, I'm redeveloping it right now, but it's a, it's got links to some of the, some of my work as well. And some other things that I'm, I'm doing.

I've been perusing it. I need to update that. I forget that people look at your website sometimes. You know, you're like, oh, yeah, got to keep this fresh. Oh, I feel you. Like if it wasn't for every one of my episodes being posted there, I would probably forget to update it altogether. Well, thanks again, Dani, for joining us. Hopefully you'll

come back one day to discuss a case with me. We have one in the works, which is going to take a bit more time, but there will be others, I'm sure. So will you come back one day and chat with us some more? I will come back and chat with you. I've had fun today. Oh, good. Thank you. I will come back and chat with you. I've had fun today. Oh, good. Thank you. Thanks again to Danielle Paradis for giving us her time during an extremely busy and important period.

Don't forget to check the show notes for links to everything we mentioned here, and I'll see you in the few weeks with the next episode. I'm going to go. We'll be right back. groceries, and we deliver those too. Along with your favorite restaurant food, alcohol, and other everyday essentials. Order Uber Eats now. For alcohol, you must be legal drinking age. Please enjoy responsibly. Product availability varies by region. See app for details.