Tag Archives: Wednesday Weekly Blogging Challenge

Wednesday Weekly Blogging Challenge: What to Read to Learn About Canadian History

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Click here to read everyone else’s replies to this week’s question and to read everyone else’s replies to this week’s question and here to see the full list of topics for the year.

A person wearing a red jacket is walking into a snowy forest. There looks to be about a foot of snow on the ground and the fir trees have branches filled with snow, too. The person looks small when compared to how tall the trees are. Here are some books I’d recommend reading if you’re interested in learning more about Canadian history.

This is not an exhaustive list by any means. Canadian history is still something I want to learn more about myself, especially when it comes to the lives of ordinary people. I think those stories can be the most interesting ones of all in many cases because that’s how the vast majority of people actually lived back then.

How a prime minister or a queen or king lives is nothing like the experiences of millions of us who quietly go about our business every day.

I will be adding context to a few of these answers as I don’t know how much you all already know about Canadian history.

1. Canada: A People’s History (Volume 1) by Don Gillmor

2. The New Peoples: Being And Becoming Metis In North America by Jacqueline Peterson

3. Influenza 1918: Disease, Death, and Struggle in Winnipeg by Esyllt W. Jones

Here in Toronto we have a statue and drinking fountain dedicated to the memory of Dr. Young who treated many patients who had this disease, caught the 1918 flu from one of them, and sadly passed away from it. What a hero.

4. Blacks on the Border: The Black Refugees in British North America, 1815–1860 by Harvey Amani Whitfield

5. Once Upon a Tomb: Stories From Canadian Graveyards by Nancy Millar

6. Laying the Children’s Ghosts to Rest: Canada’s Home Children in the West by Sean Arthur Joyce

7. Shingwauk’s Vision: A History of Native Residential Schools by J.R. Miller

8. Terry Fox: His Story by Leslie Scrivener

Terry was a young man with bone cancer who decided to run from one side of Canada to the other in hopes of raising enough money to find a cure for his illness. There are still Terry Fox runs every summer here!

9. War of 1812 by Pierre Berton

Canadians sometimes like to joke about how we burned down the White House in the war of 1812 even though we were still part of Britain at that point in history. So, technically it was the British who did it…but we still take credit. 😉

10. The Day the World Came to Town: 9/11 in Gander, Newfoundland by Jim DeFede

All joking aside, we love our American neighbours!  This is the heartwarming story of what happened when all North American planes were ordered to stop flying immediately on 9/11 and a small Canadian town stepped up to help the confused passengers from one of those flights who were suddenly stranded far from home.

This title is written more like a memoir than a history book, so it might be a good place to start if you don’t typically read a lot about the past.

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Wednesday Weekly Blogging Challenge: A Story About a Memorable Acquaintance

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Click here to read everyone else’s replies to this week’s question and to read everyone else’s replies to this week’s question and here to see the full list of topics for the year.

Photo of three small mailboxes that have been installed on a wooden walls. The mailboxes are numbered 1 through 3 and are painted red, orange, and yellow respectively. You can also see a few branches from a bush growing in the lower right corner of the photo.

Toronto is a big place, but most people shop for groceries and do other errands in their own neighbourhoods when possible. I mean, why drive, walk, or take public transit for an hour when you can pop by the corner store two minutes away for most things instead? It only makes sense.

This means that you tend to see a lot of the same folks over and over again while buying groceries, doing laundry, or going to the post office even though there are millions of people in this city.

The neighbour I’m talking about today is someone I generally see out and about a few times a week. She’s a short, friendly, talkative, and energetic woman who is probably in her early 70s by now.

If there’s a problem with our elevators or some other neighbourhood news, she will not only already know about it but also may have insider information about what really happened.

Here’s the most interesting thing about her to me, though: she treats everyone just a little like they’re her own kids or grandkids. If you didn’t know the backstory, you’d think she had a gigantic multicultural and multiracial family because of how diverse Toronto is and how many different types of people she’s taken under her wing, so to speak. She loves everyone.

If you’re coughing, she will fuss over you and tell you to stay warm and get better.

If your coat isn’t thick enough for the cold weather in her opinion, she’ll want to know where you’re going and if you have mittens and a hat with you.

If you got a great deal at the local pharmacy or grocery store, she wants to know what’s on sale!

I don’t get the sense that she means to be overbearing with these comments as she won’t press the matter if you tell her you’ve already seen a doctor, or that you’re not going outside in this cold weather, or similar explanations.

If anything, she seems a little lonely to me. I like our occasional moments of small talk.

When I’m missing my mom (who lives far away from here and who I don’t get to see as often as I’d like to), I can get a little taste of having a mom fuss over me for a minute just by talking to that friendly neighbour. It’s kind of sweet.

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Wednesday Weekly Blogging Challenge: Book Quotes That Make Me Think

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A lightbulb is lying on a blackboard. Someone has drawing a chalk thought bubble around the lightbulb as if the thinker is just about to have a brilliant thought. 1. “Just because we have the best hammer does not mean that every problem is a nail.”

 – Barack Obama

 

2. “Cynics are simply thwarted romantics.”

William Goldman, The Princess Bride

 

3. “Sometimes, as we’re stumbling along in the dark, we hit something good.”

Susan Ee, Angelfall

 

4. “People aren’t born with kindness, it grows with them…”

Natsuki Takaya

 

5. “If you didn’t grow up like I did then you don’t know, and if you don’t know it’s probably better you don’t judge.”

Junot Díaz, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

 

6. “There is a thin line that separates laughter and pain, comedy and tragedy, humor and hurt.”
Erma Bombeck

 

7. “Grown ups are complicated creatures, full of quirks and secrets.”
Roald Dahl

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Wednesday Weekly Blogging Challenge: Book Quotes That Make Me Laugh

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A Shiba Inu dog who is wearing a pink party hat. the dog’s outstretched panting tongue is the same colour as the hat! Let’s see what I can come up with…

 

1. “The story so far:
In the beginning the Universe was created.
This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move.”
Douglas Adams, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

 

2. “Some humans would do anything to see if it was possible to do it. If you put a large switch in some cave somewhere, with a sign on it saying ‘End-of-the-World Switch. PLEASE DO NOT TOUCH’, the paint wouldn’t even have time to dry.”
Terry Pratchett, Thief of Time

(I once had a dream about finding a utility box that would turn off electricity for the entire world if you turned a certain switch on it. Dream Lydia paused for a moment and then decided to flick that switch to see what happened. Everything did, indeed, go dark! Real Lydia would never do that, though).

 

 

3. “We’ll never survive!”
“Nonsense. You’re only saying that because no one ever has.”
William Goldman, The Princess Bride

 

 

4. “I love to see a young girl go out and grab the world by the lapels. Life’s a bitch. You’ve got to go out and kick ass.”
― Maya Angelou

 

5. “Reality continues to ruin my life.”
Bill Watterson, The Complete Calvin and Hobbes

 

6. “For some stories, it’s easy. The moral of ‘The Three Bears,’ for instance, is “Never break into someone else’s house.’ The moral of ‘Snow White’ is ‘Never eat apples.’ The moral of World War I is ‘Never assassinate Archduke Ferdinand.”
Lemony Snicket, The Wide Window

 

7. “Do flat-earthers believe that other planets are also flat?”
Oliver Markus Malloy, Inside The Mind of an Introvert: Comics, Deep Thoughts and Quotable Quotes

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Wednesday Weekly Blogging Challenge: Favourite Things to Do in the Winter

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Click here to read everyone else’s replies to this week’s question and to read everyone else’s replies to this week’s question and here to see the full list of topics for the year.

A penguin standing in a patch of sunlight on some snow and stretching out both wings as it looks to the right. Behind it there are deep shadows over the snow. Perhaps it’s next to a mountain or a very large heap of snow that’s casting shadows?To be honest with all of you, the cold, dark days of winter are something I struggle with due to the winter blues.

When I was a kid, I loved building snowmen and going sledding during the winter. This isn’t something I’ve  done much if at all as an adult, but maybe I should someday after getting warmer and more water-resistant outerwear.

These are the sorts of activities I more routinely enjoy during the winter:

  • Watching documentaries with nature-themed ones at the top of my list. Yes, this includes penguins.
  • Doing puzzles and games (sudoku, jigsaw puzzles, solitaire, and the like).
  • Reading much more, especially if I’m recovering from a cold or other illness and must rest.
  • Working ahead on blog posts and other writing stuff.*
  • Taking outdoor walks on milder days (e.g. temperatures above 0 C or 32 Fahrenheit)
  • Taking indoor walks at the mall on cold, snowy, and/or blustery days.
  • Baking and cooking, especially warm and nourishing food like chili or spaghetti.
  • Drinking herbal tea and dairy-free hot chocolate.
  • Exercising at home with yoga, dance, kickboxing or other workouts.
  • Jokingly asking my spouse if they want to celebrate Valentine’s Day this year.**
  • Deep cleaning my home when the weather warms up a tad and I can open the windows briefly.
  • Rewatching favorite films and tv shows. The two tribble episodes from Star Trek are close to the top of my list for rewatches!
  • Watching new episodes of modern shows like Call the Midwife or The Handmaid’s Tale.
  • Catching up gradually on the countless older shows I need to finish like Blackish.
  • Attending free bookish events either virtually or in-person at the library***
  • Visiting coffee shops. To be fair, I do this one all year round.
  • Occasionally visiting local museums if the weather holds. Some museums here even have free nights or other good deals if you’re flexible about when you go!

 

*I schedule some posts months in advance, especially if I know a certain week or month is going to be busy beforehand.

*We prefer to save our special dates nights for other times of the year when restaurants aren’t packed with people. Servers have time to give us more attention that way if needed, and we are also less likely to wait in a long line in the freezing cold or be told they’re out of what we were hoping to order.

**Aren’t libraries the best?

I look forward to seeing what we all have in common!

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Wednesday Weekly Blogging Challenge: What I Think of AI (Artificial Intelligence)

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Click here to read everyone else’s replies to this week’s question and to read everyone else’s replies to this week’s question and here to see the full list of topics for the year.

Two square white message balloons pasted overlapping each other onto a hot pink background. If we’re talking about AI as in LLMs (large language models like ChatGPT), I am wholeheartedly opposed to the use of them for the following reasons:

1) Dangerously wrong advice.

The article linked to above is one of many examples of these chat bots telling users to do things that could end their lives in excruciating ways by saying that poisonous wild plants are safe to eat, venomous snakes are harmless, etc.

Most of us can generally notice at least some bad advice about a small to medium-sized number of topics right away, but few people will have deep enough knowledge or experience in every important subject to realize how terrible and even deadly some of the LLM responses are, especially if vulnerable people like a kid or someone who has an intellectual disability is asking.

 

2) Stealing other people’s work. 

At best, the vast majority of these programs were trained on the artwork and writing of people who were not paid for their work, did not consent to it being used, and haven’t even been given something as simple as attribution for their ideas.

Just like you (hopefully!) wouldn’t sneak into your neighbour’s backyard to steal their dog, cat, tomatoes, flowers, children, or anything/anyone else you might find there even if you don’t think anyone will notice or care, nobody should be stealing other people’s creative works either.

A business model that depends on unpaid, non-consenting people to make it feasible should not exist. If they need a wide variety of photos or different types of writing to make an LLM work, pay people fairly and regularly for their contributions! This is a basic business expense that should come as a surprise to no one.

 

3) Academic and Business Cheating

From what I have read, there is a tsunami of students and workers who have switched to using LLMs to write anything from papers to exam answers to reports for their bosses. This means that they are not learning or reinforcing proper written communication skills and will become even less likely to notice mistakes in future work.

We need to encourage strong writing, critical thinking, and communication skills in people of all ages. Asking one of these models to do all of your work for you teaches little if anything useful and only makes life harder for those who use it in the long run because they won’t develop the skills they need in these areas.

 

4) Environmental Degradation 

All of these queries are also wasting staggering amounts of water and electricity for frivolous purposes.  I’ve read varying numbers as far as how much is being wasted and I don’t know which ones are correct, so I won’t quote specifics here.

Climate change is already wreaking havoc on the environment, and the last thing we should be doing now is making it worse.

I’d argue that the cost of the wasted water, electricity, and other materials should be the full and permanent responsibility of the LLM companies. They will either lose money or will have to dramatically raise the price of using them to account for all of the environmental damage they have done, are doing, and will do in the future.

 

5) Privacy concerns.

Do you really want LLMs to know so much private information about you? Who else is going to have access to your chats about your physical or mental health, occupation, relationships, sexual orientation, religious and political views, finances, possibly embarrassing family medical or legal history, and other possibly sensitive subjects to? If or when that information is leaked, whether purposefully or unintentionally, where will it go from there and how might it be used against you?

 

Brent Spiner playing Data on the set of "Star Trek: Nemesis.” He’s wearing a black jacket and looking off to the side as someone out-of-view speaks to him. In the background there is a set that shows a blue sky with a few wispy white clouds in it and a hilly, desert landscape behind him. Data looks like a very pale white man with black hair, if you’re not aware of what this character looks like. He’s an android but otherwise looks like a human when his complexion isn’t taken into account.

Image credit: Grcote at Wikipedia

On the other hand…

 

If we’re talking about Data from Star Trek, I’d welcome him to human society without hesitation.

He’s one of my favourite Star Trek: The Next Generation characters and I’d trust his judgment on nearly any subject because instead of simply guessing which word in a sentence should come next like LLMs do he was capable of deep, independent thought, had a wide breadth of knowledge, and was sentient.

If you asked him a question, he would either immediately understand it or ask for more details if necessary.

He would also never advise mixing glue into the cheese one puts on pizza to make it better like one LLM did a year or two ago because he was trustworthy and understood basic human physiology among many other subjects.

End rant! 😉

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The 2025 Wednesday Weekly Blogging Challenge Topics

This is a graphic that shares all 50 Wednesday Weekly Blogging challenge topics for 2025. I will transcribe them in the post as there isn’t space here. Above the list in this image you can see an opened laptop on a wooden table. Long and Short Reviews has released the list of topics for their seventh year of Wednesday Weekly Blogging Challenge posts. (Can you believe it has been around for long already? I feel like I just heard about it yesterday).

All of the details on how to participate can be found on their site.

If you’re having trouble reading the image, scroll down for a transcription of the weekly topics. Everyone is welcome to join in at any point of the year for as many or as few of the prompts as you wish!

The first one of the year is happening today, and there’s still time to join in! (Apologies for the last minute notice there. I only learned of this list myself late last night, and then I needed to write my post for the first prompt as well as type this one up).

 

January 1 – New Books I Want to Read This Month/Year

January 8 – What I Think of AI (Artificial Intelligence)

January 15 – Favourite Things to Do in the Winter

January 22 – Book Quotes That Make Me Laugh

January 29 – Book Quotes That Make Me Think

 

February 5 – A Story About a Memorable Acquaintance

February 12 – What to Read to Learn About X

February 19 – Fictional Worlds I’d Rather Not Visit

February 26 – Favourite Hobby and Why

 

March 5 – A Book I’m Nervous to Read (and Why)

March 12 – Characters I Want to Meet

March 19 – Favourite Websites/Podcasts/Blogs

March 26 – Favourite Comfort Foods and Why (+ Recipes)

 

April 2 – Characters I Never Want to Meet

April 9 – 10 Unusual Things About Me

April 16 – Books I Discovered on Social Media

April 23 – X Things I Wish More Books Talked About

April 30 – Books I Want Youth to Discover

 

May 7 – Favourite TV Shows and Why

May 14 – Books I Love That Became Films or TV Shows

May 21 – Lessons I Learned From a Book Character

May 28 – Books That Need a Sequel

 

June 4 – Favourite Book Covers and Why

June 11 – Favourite Things to Do in the Summer

June 18 – Humorous Book Titles

June 25 – Do You Follow Celebrity Gossip? Why or Why Not?

 

July 2 – Board and Card Games I Like

July 9 – Fictional Worlds I’d Love to Visit

July 16 – My Favourite Quotes From Books

July 23 – TV Shows I’ve Binge-Watched

July 30 – Books I Loved But Never Wrote Reviews For

 

August 6 – Books I Had to Read in School and Didn’t Like

August 13 – What I Read When I’m Not Feeling Well

August 20 – Books I Had to Read in School and Liked

August 27 – Books  That Deal Well With Tough Topics

 

September 3 – Books I Keep Meaning to Read (but Haven’t)

September 10 – What Is My Superpower?

September 17 – Authors I Wish More People Knew About

September 24 – How I Handle Bad Days

 

October 1 – Books I Would or Wouldn’t Reread and Why

October 8 – Popular/Famous Books I Don’t Plan to Read

October 15 – Books I Read on Someone’s Recommendation

October 22 – Things That Scare Me

October 29 – Books I’ve Recommended and Why

 

November 5 – A Strange or Useless Talent I Have

November 12 –  Things I’m Thankful For

November 19 – Books That Influenced My Life

November 26 – A Genre I Wish Were More Popular

 

December 3 – My Earliest Memory

December 10 – 10 Gifts for People Who Love X

December 17 – Something I Wish I Were Better At Doing

 

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Wednesday Weekly Blogging Challenge: New Books I Want to Read this Month/Year

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Click here to read everyone else’s replies to this week’s question and to read everyone else’s replies to this week’s question and here to see the full list of topics for the year.

Top Ten Tuesday had a similar topic last month and another one coming out later on this month, so there will be some repetition in my answers.

Book cover for Isaac's Song by Daniel Black. Image on cover shows a drawing of a young black man whose facial features are just barely included. You can see his eyebrows and the ridge of his nose. He’s standing in front a city filled with skyscrapers as an orange bird flies in the air behind him.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

My #1 answer is  Isaac’s Song by Daniel Black

Publication Date: January 14

I gushed about the first book in this series, Don’t Cry for Me, last year. It was written from the perspective of a (black) man who grew up in the south during the segregation era. He had a harsh childhood and passed on those impossible and sometimes abusive expectations to his son, Isaac, who cut contact with the protagonist as a young adult.

That was not an easy read by any means due to the themes of racism, homophobia, and generational abuse, but it was beautifully written. I can’t wait to view this world through Isaac’s eyes and hopefully see some sort of reconciliation or other form of healing by the end of it.

 

 

My #2 answer is speculative in nature and I don’t know if it will happen this year. I want a new book from Becky Chambers who is one of my favourite modern science fiction and fantasy writers. She has written some wonderfully gentle, cozy stories, and I need another one of them from her if possible.  (Especially after I read #1 on this list, I think!)

 

 

Book cover for Dream Count by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. Image on cover is a drawing of a flame that has a blue centre, a white middle, and then various shades of red and orange as one moves closer to the edges of it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

My #3 answer is Dream Count by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Publication Date: March 4

Why I’m Interested: A little literary fiction in the spring sounds nice. I’ve really enjoyed the previous work from her that I’ve read, too.

 

 

My #4 answer is another wish for a book that may or may not exist yet. Sarah Waters hasn’t released anything new in years, and I’d love for that to change this year.

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Wednesday Weekly Blogging Challenge: Myths or Legends From Where I Live

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Click here to read everyone else’s replies to this week’s question and to read everyone else’s replies to this week’s question and here to see the full list of topics for the year.

A photo of a plastic toy shaped like Bigfoot. It is about six inches tall and is sitting in a forest that’s strewn with last year’s autumn leaves and that has just begun to grow this year’s crop of leaves. The toy is positioned so that it looks like it’s walking through the leaves.

One of the negative stereotypes about people from Toronto is that we think we’re the centre of the universe and that the way life is here is the way it is everywhere else in Canada, too.

I certainly do not agree with that, so I am purposefully not mentioning my city at all in the rest of this post.

A few years ago I blogged about famous urban legends in Toronto, so today I’ll be sharing some legends from other parts of Ontario. It’s a big province, and I only wish I had space here to talk about all of our amazing myths and stories.

Old Yellow Top

Many different parts of North America have legends about Bigfoot or Sasquatch, but Ontario is the only one I know of who has stories about one of these creatures that has blonde hair. All of the other stories I’ve heard about this cryptid describes it being covered in brown hair. Maybe there was a rare genetic mutation in this one?

 

The Little People of Doghead Mountain

The Anishinaabe in Northern Ontario have a very cool story about the little people of Doghead Mountain which is close to the town of Nipigon. 

The mountain is called Doghead Mountain because it is shaped like the head of a dog, and the Anishinaabe word for it is Memegwesiwijiw. It is said that the little people who live there like to trick anyone who crosses their path, so watch out for things like your water being spilled or your trap lines being set off without catching any prey if you decide to visit.

 

Black Donnellys

The Black Donnellys were an Irish Catholic immigrant family who settled in Biddulph township, Upper Canada (which is now known as Ontario) in the 1850s.  There was a dispute between them and their neighbours about who really owned the farm that the Donnellys believed they had legally purchased but who others had been squatting on for a long time. After multiple altercations, a local group ironically named the Peace Society visited the farm with the intention of merely harming the Donnelly men and scaring them into giving up their land.

Tensions rose, though, and many members of this family ended up being murdered that night. Some of the details are kind of violent, so I’ll leave it up to my readers to click on the link above if they want more information.

 

Gaasyendietha

The Seneca tribe in Ontario tells of the legend of the Gaasyendietha, a fire-breathing dragon that is said to live in all of the Great Lakes but prefers Lake Ontario. It is said to have been created when a large meteor fell from the sky into the lake. All of their tales warn people to avoid this creature, so I will definitely not be seeking it out!

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Wednesday Weekly Blogging Challenge: Something I Wish Would Come Back Into Fashion

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Click here to read everyone else’s replies to this week’s question and to read everyone else’s replies to this week’s question and here to see the full list of topics for the year.

A photo of a large, spotted, white and black dog wearing a black and white cloak while sitting in the snow in front of an evergreen forest. I have one word for you all today: cloaks.

Why should they come back into fashion?

They are versatile. Other than being used as a coat, you can wrap up in one if you need a blanket, take it off and use it to carry all sorts of things, or spread it out and share the warmth with someone else.

They fit people – and animals – of all sizes. It’s uncommon for a cloak to be too large or to small for someone as the fabric is purposefully designed to have a lot of extra space in it just by the nature of how such items are made. This means that you don’t have to try six different cloaks on to find the right fit.

They are unique. The colour or pattern of a cloak can make one of them look quite different from the next.  I think there’s something to be said for standing out from the crowd sometimes.

They are beautiful. I adore the way the edges of cloaks seem to float through the air when someone wearing one is walking at a fast pace. It almost looks as thought they’re flying from a certain angle!

In short, cloaks are amazing and I wish they were popular.

 

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