Letter from the Editor-in-Chief: Words, Silence, and the Space Between

by Gillian Smith-Clark, ​for The 44 North, Editor in Chief

In partnership with Harmony Movement, University of Toronto Schools, and Unsinkable, our event will feature 4 panellists who will explore the role of language in both reinforcing harm & creating the conditions for more respectful, inclusive, and courageous school communities. Gillian’s Letter from the Editor-in-Chief prefaces both our June/July 2026 issue & our Words Matter event.

On a hot April day more than two decades ago, in a parking lot in Chestertown, Maryland, an elderly Black woman shared a story with me.

I was a young mother then, carrying my eight-month-old daughter, and our conversation had naturally turned to children. The woman told me she had spent much of her life caring for children in white families’ homes. Once, she said, while bathing a little girl, the child looked at her and asked her mother why the woman’s skin was so black.

Her mother answered, “Because she’s dirty. She doesn’t clean herself properly.”

I have thought about that woman, and that story, many times over the past twenty-two years. I do not know her name. I do not know whether she is still living. But I know this: she understood something about words that we are still trying to teach. They can wound deeply. They can endure for a lifetime. They can shape a child’s understanding of the world before that child has language of their own.

That memory has returned to me often in the lead-up to our live podcast event, Beyond Words: Addressing Anti-Black Racism and Discriminatory Language in Schools. It has also shaped the way I have been thinking about this issue of The 44 North—about language, silence, memory, belonging, and the responsibility we all carry in the words we choose, repeat, challenge, or leave unspoken.

There are few things as ordinary, and simultaneously as powerful, as words.

A single word, an ordinary phrase, can carry enormous energy—not unlike a uranium fuel pellet, small enough to fit in the palm of your hand, yet dense with potential. That energy can be harnessed to power something lasting or mishandled in ways that cause profound harm. Words, too, carry that kind of force. A few words can comfort, persuade, invite, wound, exclude, repair, or remain with someone for years.

We use words to explain, to question, to remember, to apologize, to protest, to belong. We use them to tell people who we are, and to try to understand who they are. We use them to build relationships, communities, movements, families, and futures.

And sometimes, just as powerfully, we withhold them.

Silence can be peaceful, protective, or wise. It can give people space to breathe. But silence can also reject, alienate, erase, or abandon. It can make harm feel invisible. It can leave people wondering whether anyone noticed, whether anyone cared, whether what happened mattered at all.

This issue arrives at a time when language is doing a great deal of work in the world around us: June marks Indigenous History Month, PRIDE, and Juneteenth. It is also a time when we are reflecting on seniors and elders, on the environment, on public spaces, and on the communities we are trying to build and protect.

Each of these themes asks something of us: to remember, listen and to name histories honestly. To honour joy without ignoring struggle, and to recognize dignity across generations. We must understand that stewardship is not only environmental but relational. How we speak about land, identity, belonging, history, age, justice, and care shapes how we act—and who we include when we envision the future.

In this issue, those questions surface in many different ways: In a documentary review of International Students – First 48 Hours & Life After Graduation; in a discussion of Natalie Diaz’s haunting poem, “The First Water Is the Body”; and in reflections on Indigenous history, PRIDE, seniors, elders, and belonging, including this month’s Writer’s Room piece, “Pride Month for Seniors & Elders: Weeping Willow.” Taken together, these pieces, along with others, remind us that words are never only words. They shape what we remember, what we protect, who we honour, and how we imagine our responsibilities to one another.

Words can open doors. They can also slam them shut.

Language can invite someone into a conversation, or quietly let them know, “There is no place for you here.” They can help people feel seen or teach them to make themselves smaller. They can challenge cruelty or normalize it. They can make repair possible, or deepen the harm.

This is at the heart of our upcoming live podcast event, as well as in Lillian Currie’s powerful special-edition essay for The 44 North, “Words Matter: Harm builds over time. So does healing,” where she writes about the way language shapes school culture – not only through what is said, but through what is ignored, excused, laughed off, or left unchallenged.

One of the questions to which I keep returning is this: How do we find empathy and compassion in the midst of difficult conversations, especially when harmful or discriminatory language has been used? How do we express ourselves honestly, and sometimes forcefully, without sliding into disrespect, contempt, or silence ourselves? How do we advocate for change while still leaving room for growth, complexity, and repair?

These are not easy questions, but they are necessary ones.

This does not mean avoiding hard truths or softening injustice into something more comfortable. It does not mean asking those who have been harmed to make their pain more palatable for others. But it does mean understanding that the way we speak can either widen the circle of responsibility or harden people into defensiveness to the point where they become unreachable. It means knowing the difference between accountability and humiliation, between conviction and cruelty.

If I could speak to my younger self, I would tell her that one of the most valuable—and most painful—lessons I have learned is how to recognize contempt and disdain when they enter the room, and how to move through conversation without absorbing them as truth. 

That matters in classrooms, and it matters online. It matters in families, friendships, workplaces, public debate, and politics. Young people are growing up in a world where language moves quickly, harshly, and frequently with an anonymity that shields the source. They are asked to navigate comment sections, group chats, classrooms, social media, identity, crises, humour, and conflict daily.

We need more spaces now where both safety and honesty are possible. Where vulnerability is not punished. Where mistakes can be addressed without being ignored, and harm can be named without requiring those harmed to carry the entire burden of explanation.

Emotional safety does not mean the absence of discomfort. In fact, some of the most important conversations require discomfort. But it does mean creating conditions where people are not mocked, dismissed, dehumanized, or left alone with their unease. It means building spaces—online and in person—where people can speak, listen, repair, and change.

In many ways, this issue is about those spaces.

As you read it, I hope you find pieces that make you think, pause, question, self-examine, and care. I hope you find words that challenge you, comfort you, and perhaps invite you into a conversation you have been avoiding.

I often think of the woman in that small-town parking lot in Maryland; her story has stayed with me for more than twenty years.

She could not undo the harm of the words spoken in that bathroom so long ago. But by telling the story, she did something powerful: she refused to let those words remain hidden. She carried them into the light, where they could be seen, understood, and perhaps transformed into something else.

A single story, shared in an ordinary place, can ripple outward across years. It can shape how a young mother thinks about systems, language, parenting—morality. It has an echo. And in part, this echo is of faith and belief: In addressing racism, white people carry immense responsibility. But they must also believe that there is hope, among the racialized members of our communities, that we will bear it. This relationship—rooted in care and repair as actions that earn trust—is vital, whether between strangers in a parking lot, friends, family, or colleagues we craft meaningful events with.

Because harm builds over time, but so does healing.

And sometimes, healing begins with the courage to speak and the humility to truly listen.

Thank you, as always, for reading.

Warmly,

Gillian Smith-Clark

Editor-in-Chief, The 44 North Media

Police Presence Has Increased on the TTC. But How Can We Truly Measure the Feeling of Safety?

by Wardah Malik for The 44 North, Contributing Writer - Politics

Police officers at the Union Station PATH entrance

"While the feeling of safety is difficult to pinpoint, what is known is that many transit riders do not associate police with safety. " 

Half of Toronto Transit Commission (TTC) riders don’t feel safe using the system. At least, that’s the impression you might get scrolling through Councillor Brad Bradford’s (Beaches—East York) social media. He has made transit safety a major pillar of his mayoral campaign, arguing for increased regulation. His latest motion to place police officers at every station was approved in March. Despite overall crime rates declining, Councillor Bradford maintains that “safety isn’t defined by statistics in a spreadsheet. It’s about how people feel.” If that’s the case, how do we know whether increased police presence actually leads to greater safety? In other words, can the feeling of safety truly be measured?

On July 7, 2023, a graphic video of a man being stabbed inside a Toronto subway car circulated widely on social media. In the shaky footage, a passenger can be heard yelling, "Help him. He’s stabbing him up. He’s killing him.” The fear in the speaker's voice resonated with viewers, many of whom cite the incident, along with other viral videos depicting violent episodes on the TTC, as evidence in favour of increased security measures on the transit system. These videos and images, while useful for holding individuals accountable, also have the effect of creating an environment of heightened unease and judgment. Online forums, in particular, have contributed to this dynamic. “Oh, another one?” one user writes in response to a March stabbing. “More poverty, more problems,” says another. Although reductive, these comments reflect and reinforce broader conversations taking place beyond digital spaces. Incidents of violent crime are being treated as a marker of the TTC and are increasingly being used to advocate for stricter policing of public spaces. In an article for the National Post, Councillor Bradford writes, “It’s the indiscriminate nature of these incidents that stays with you, the fact that in a crowded vehicle or on a narrow platform, there is nowhere to go when trouble begins.” 

Toronto police presence on the TTC subway system, January 2023. Via CITYNEWS/Sean Toussaint

For Councillor Bradford, the high-profile incidents of recent years are not isolated events. Instead, they reveal a trend and serve as a warning for TTC riders: On your next commute, you could be the victim of an attack. While the TTC insists that this isn’t the case and hundreds of millions of trips go on every year “without incident,” its own data complicates that narrative. In a 2024 annual report, the TTC noted that Special Constables made 215 apprehensions under the Mental Health Act, an increase of 9% from the previous year. The report described these apprehensions as responses to “calls received for persons who were in distress or posed a threat to themselves or others.” A 2025 investigation by CBC and the Investigative Journalism Foundation adds to this, finding that the number of reported assaults on Toronto-area transit increased by 160 percent between 2016 and 2024. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rf2xhFNyDh4

The rise of violence on the TTC is difficult to attribute to a single cause. However, many experts argue that these incidents signal an urgent need for better support services for people struggling with homelessness, mental illness, and addiction. Often described as a microcosm of Toronto, the TTC reflects broader dynamics across the city and reproduces the tensions that exist beyond the platform. This means that high rental costs, overcrowded shelters and warming centers, and a growing housing affordability crisis will inevitably translate to more people using subways and streetcars as “makeshift bedrooms.” At the same time, the closure of supervised consumption sites has contributed to more visible drug use and discarded equipment across the TTC system. 

And although the TTC and the City of Toronto have taken action to minimize these impacts through the introduction of several programs (including community safety ambassadors and security officers), many argue that it’s simply not enough support. Frontline transit workers, specifically, have called for more overdose response teams, outreach and crisis workers, and mental health professionals to ease their burden and reduce the expectation that they act as social workers to counsel vulnerable riders and de-escalate emergencies. However, rather than responding more robustly to this call, Councillor Bradford and others who view policing as a means of creating a safer Toronto have opted to increase police presence. 

“We agree that the burden of responding to emergencies shouldn’t be placed on transit workers alone. However, we also know that police often escalate tensions on transit by, for example, harassing riders and using unnecessary force. Expanding police presence on the TTC contributes to a culture of fear within communities that are already overpoliced, such as racialized riders, Indigenous riders, immigrants, unhoused people, and people experiencing mental health crises,” Nico Nothwehr from the transit advocacy organization TTCRiders tells The 44 North. 

A case study by the Ontario Human Rights Commission reaffirmed these concerns, showing that Black people in Toronto were 3.25 times more likely to experience a Toronto Police Service check than White people. The study’s community consultations also called for greater investment in social programs rather than policing, arguing that reallocating funding toward community supports would create safer, healthier, and more equitable communities that are less reliant on police services. On the TTC, this could mean expanding community-based, health-focused responses that de-escalate emergencies and strengthen non-police mental health crisis services.

Past initiatives have already demonstrated the effectiveness of these approaches. For example, the Toronto Community Crisis Service (TCCS), a free, confidential, 24/7 mobile mental health crisis response service that is available citywide to people 16 years of age and older, received more than 29,000 calls for service in 2024 and dispatched mobile crisis teams over 23,000 times across the city. Notably, 78 percent of calls transferred to TCCS by 911 were successfully resolved without any police involvement, demonstrating that non-police crisis response models can effectively support public safety while reducing unnecessary police interactions. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CR0-Yo3pn7w

Still, even as advocates and community organizations continue to call for expanded, permanent support services and raise concerns about overpolicing, the TTC has steadily increased police presence across its properties and vehicles since 2021, arguably in an effort to restore pre-pandemic ridership levels. However, this strategy hasn't necessarily made riders safer. That reality makes it difficult to believe that Councillor Bradford’s latest policy will do anything other than target the city’s most vulnerable residents to create an immeasurable feeling of safety for a select few. In fact, over time, this policy will likely do more harm than good. It risks normalizing an expanded police presence in public spaces and making people increasingly dependent on policing as the primary model of safety. 

While the feeling of safety is difficult to pinpoint, what is known is that many transit riders do not associate police with safety. Policy-makers mustn’t ignore this and, instead, use it to guide consultations and engagement with riders on what truly brings about community well-being. And although a new TTC safety plan to implement a crisis worker program is a step in the right direction, issues beyond the platform need to be addressed as well. For Nothwehr, “[T]he most effective solutions will be upstream—like increasing the number of dignified and accessible shelter spaces, building more supportive housing units that use a housing first approach, reopening supervised consumption sites, and increasing funding for mental health and addiction supports.”

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Wardah Malik is a Toronto-based researcher, editor, and historian. She is the founder of Historyless Magazine, an independent publication covering global affairs and underreported political narratives. Her work spans media, human rights, and community-based research, including projects on press freedom, public health, and gender-based violence. Her research interests include governance, decolonizing language, and the preservation of underrepresented histories. Wardah holds an MPhil in World History from the University of Cambridge.

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Words Matter: Harm builds over time. So does healing.

by Lillian Currie for The 44 North, Guest Writer

In partnership with Harmony Movement, University of Toronto Schools, and Unsinkable, our discussion will feature 4 panellists who will explore the role of language in both reinforcing harm & creating the conditions for more respectful, inclusive, and courageous school communities. Lillian’s essay is a special-edition feature in support of this event.

"Belonging is more than simply being allowed into a space. Belonging is knowing your humanity will be respected once you are there." 

Language is often referred to as “just words.” But anyone who has ever walked into a classroom and suddenly felt smaller because of a joke, comment, nickname, or even silence knows that words are never just words.

Words shape how people are treated.

They shape who feels safe enough to speak.

They shape who is defended and who is left behind.

In schools, language quietly shapes the atmosphere. It can make a classroom feel welcoming, and just as easily make someone feel they’re only surviving the day instead of truly belonging there. One sentence can stay with a person long after the bell rings.

Anti-Black language in schools is not always obvious. Sometimes it’s a racial slur yelled across a hallway. Other times it hides behind “jokes,” stereotypes, or comments that people dismiss as harmless. It can sound like a surprise when someone tells a Black student, “Wow, you’re so articulate,” as if intelligence were unexpected. It can appear in assumptions about attitude, behaviour, or intelligence. It can appear when Black students are punished more harshly than others for the same actions. And sometimes, the most painful part is not what’s said, but what’s not said: The silence after racism happens—the silence that makes students feel completely alone.

That silence can hurt more than the words themselves.

People often think courage and vulnerability are opposites. Courage sounds fearless and strong, while vulnerability sounds exposed and uncertain. But when it comes to confronting anti-Black language in schools, the two are deeply connected. Real courage requires vulnerability. Speaking up means risking awkwardness, rejection, conflict, or isolation. It means saying something even when staying quiet would be easier. It means caring more about another person’s dignity than your own comfort.

For many Black students, vulnerability is not a choice. It happens the moment they walk into spaces where they feel pressured to monitor how they speak, act, or express themselves. There’s a constant awareness of how they might be perceived: “too loud,” “too angry,” “too intimidating,” or “too ghetto.” That pressure is exhausting. It means code-switching and rehearsing your tone before asking a question in class. It means wondering whether defending yourself will make you seem “aggressive.” It means hearing stereotypes repeated casually and then being told, “It’s not that serious,” when it hurts.

One of the hardest things about harmful language is how quickly people focus on intention instead of impact. Students excuse comments as “just jokes.” Teachers sometimes overlook harmful remarks because they were not “meant badly.” Friends defend each other by saying, “That’s just how they talk.” But words don’t stop hurting simply because someone claims they didn’t mean harm. Pain doesn’t disappear because the person who caused it was laughing.

One of the most dangerous things schools can do is allow harmful language to become normal. When anti-Black comments happen so often that people stop reacting, it sends a message. It tells Black students that their pain is something they’re expected to handle quietly. It teaches others that racism only matters when it’s ‘extreme enough’ to make national news.

But racism doesn’t start with headlines.

It starts with what people allow.

It starts when someone says the n-word and nobody corrects them.

It starts when Black hairstyles are labelled “unprofessional.”

It starts when Black students are punished for behaviours others are excused for.

It starts when teachers avoid conversations about race because they’re afraid of getting uncomfortable.

It starts when students decide silence feels safer than speaking up.

But silence is never neutral. Silence protects harm by allowing it to continue.

As someone who is white, I think it’s important to recognize that confronting anti-Black language cannot only fall on Black students or students of colour. Too often, the people most harmed by racism are also the ones expected to carry the full responsibility of addressing it. But white students, teachers, and community members should also carry responsibility to challenge anti-Black racism, especially in moments where silence feels easier. During my last years of middle school, I constantly overheard predominantly white peers calling their friends racist, stereotypical names like “monkey” or “gorilla” as a joke. At the time, I didn’t dare to say anything—I didn’t have the courage to. 

I still remember hearing the laughter surrounding those comments, and I feel uncomfortable as if it happened yesterday. 

In those moments, I was afraid of speaking up and making things awkward, especially since I didn’t know the people who spoke those words. What makes these moments especially important to address is that those students are about to enter a new stage in their lives, perhaps with the belief that their language is acceptable. The more we excuse it as humour, or “just joking around,” the more normalized it becomes. Racism doesn’t become dangerous only when it becomes extreme or violent; it becomes dangerous when people grow comfortable enough to stop recognizing it as harmful at all. That’s why courage matters not only in major public moments, but in ordinary everyday conversations where harmful language is allowed to pass unchecked.

There’s a specific kind of loneliness that comes from experiencing racism in places that constantly claim to value inclusion. Schools may hang posters celebrating diversity, hold assemblies about equity, and talk about belonging, while students still feel unseen in everyday life. Representation without accountability becomes performative. Inclusion without action becomes empty.

Real inclusion feels different.

It feels like entering a classroom without preparing yourself to be hurt.

It feels like knowing that if someone says something racist, others will step in before you even have to ask.

It feels like teachers are listening instead of becoming defensive.

It feels like learning about Black history in ways that go beyond pain and oppression to also celebrate brilliance, creativity, joy, resistance, and humanity.

Belonging is more than simply being allowed into a space. Belonging is knowing your humanity will be respected once you are there.

The responsibility to create that kind of environment belongs to everyone, although courage can look different depending on who you are.

For students, courage can mean interrupting a racist joke even when friends laugh or roll their eyes. It can mean saying, “That’s not okay,” even when it risks social backlash. For Black students, courage can mean continuing to speak honestly about experiences people would rather ignore. There is strength in refusing to make yourself smaller so others can stay comfortable.

For teachers, courage means understanding that neutrality is impossible. Teachers shape school culture every day through what they challenge, ignore, or normalize. Courage can mean addressing racism immediately instead of awkwardly moving on. It can mean admitting when they don’t know something and being willing to learn. Some educators avoid conversations about race because they fear making mistakes, but silence often causes more harm than imperfect effort.

Vulnerability for educators means recognizing that good intentions do not erase blind spots. It means understanding that being corrected is not an attack but an opportunity to grow. A teacher willing to say, “I didn’t realize the impact of that comment, but I want to understand,” creates far more trust than one who refuses to listen.

For administrators, courage means going beyond statements and promises. Diversity initiatives mean little if students still don’t feel safe reporting racism. Schools cannot claim to value equity while ignoring unequal discipline, achievement gaps, or student experiences. Accountability is uncomfortable because it forces people to confront systems they may benefit from or contribute to. But discomfort isn’t the same thing as harm. Many students live with discomfort every single day simply trying to exist in these spaces.

What makes vulnerability difficult is that it requires honesty. Nobody wants to believe they may have contributed to harm. Nobody wants to admit they stayed silent when they should have spoken. But healing cannot happen without honesty.

Repair is another form of courage.

Too often, accountability is treated only as punishment. But real accountability is about growth and change. It’s about creating environments where harm is recognized, addressed, and prevented from happening again. Apologies alone are not enough. Repair requires reflection, education, changed behaviour, and consistency.

A student who uses anti-Black language should not simply be suspended and forgotten. They should understand why those words carry so much harm. They should learn the history behind them and the impact they continue to have. Accountability without education can become performative, but education without accountability becomes meaningless.

Repair also means listening to people who were hurt without expecting them to explain their pain perfectly or politely. Black students should not have to become educators while trying to process their own experiences. There is something deeply unfair about expecting people to calmly defend their humanity while they’re hurting.

Social media has made these realities impossible to ignore. Videos constantly surface of students using racial slurs, teachers making discriminatory comments, or Black students being humiliated while others watch and record. These moments remind people that racism is not simply part of history—it still exists in everyday life. But social media also reveals how quickly people rush to defend harmful behaviour instead of confronting it. Comment sections fill up with excuses like, “They’re just kids,” or “Everyone is too sensitive.”

What those responses fail to recognize is that harmful language shapes environments long before visible violence occurs. History has repeatedly shown that dehumanizing language allows people to tolerate dehumanization itself.

At the same time, social media has also revealed incredible courage. Students organizing walkouts. Young people sharing their experiences publicly despite fear. Communities demanding accountability from schools that ignored racism for years. There’s power in people refusing to stay silent. Every person who speaks up makes it easier for someone else to do the same.

Still, courage in real life is usually quiet. But that doesn’t make it less meaningful.

It’s the student sitting beside someone who feels isolated after a racist incident.

It’s the teacher checking in privately with a student who seemed hurt after a discussion.

It’s the friend saying, “That wasn’t funny,” even when nobody else does.

It’s the administrator willing to listen without becoming defensive.

It’s the parent teaching empathy before prejudice has the chance to take root.

These moments may seem small, but school culture is built from moments like these. Harm builds over time. So does healing.

The future I hope for is not one where schools become perfect overnight. Bias does not disappear instantly. But I hope for schools where students no longer carry these burdens alone. Schools where anti-Black language is challenged immediately, not because policies demand it, but because people genuinely care about one another’s dignity. Schools where vulnerability is seen as strength instead of weakness.

I hope for classrooms where conversations about race are approached honestly instead of being avoided out of fear. Where Black students do not have to wonder whether their experiences will be believed. Where inclusion is not treated as a yearly event, but as something practiced daily through language, actions, leadership, and accountability.

Most importantly, I hope for a future where students no longer confuse endurance with belonging.

Because surviving a school environment is not the same as feeling safe in it.

The deepest wounds caused by harmful language are often invisible. People remember the slurs, but they also remember the hesitation. They remember who looked away. They remember who stayed silent. They remember sitting frozen while others laughed. They remember learning, sometimes very young, that their dignity depended on how much discomfort others were willing to tolerate.

That is why courage matters so much.

Courage is not about being fearless.

It’s about choosing humanity even when it’s uncomfortable.

And vulnerability is not weakness. It’s caring deeply enough that staying silent no longer feels acceptable.

To build schools rooted in dignity, accountability, repair, and inclusion, people must first be willing to face uncomfortable truths. They must be willing to unlearn harmful language, challenge systems that normalize harm, and truly listen to experiences beyond their own. That work is difficult, but maybe education was never only meant to teach academic success. Maybe part of its purpose is teaching people how to care for one another ethically and compassionately.

Language will always shape school culture. The question is whether it will create environments where some students are merely tolerated or environments where every student feels genuinely seen, respected, protected, and valued.

And the answer depends on whether enough people are willing to speak, willing to listen, and willing to change.

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EVENT INFO & REGISTRATION

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Lillian Currie is a creative and compassionate high-school student with a strong interest in helping others and making a positive impact in her community. She is passionate about pathways involving children and youth, including social work and pediatric healthcare, and enjoys studying topics such as criminal law, history, and sociology.

Outside of school, Lillian is highly involved in her community. She is an active Youth Steering Committee Member for the Women in Leadership Foundation and also serves on the youth council for Harmony Movement. In addition, she works closely with the Glocal Foundation of Canada, contributing to the writing and research of academic papers. Through all three volunteer opportunities, she has accumulated nearly 200 volunteer hours.

Beyond academics, Lillian is passionate about dance. She has been dancing recreationally for three years and competitively for two, already achieving notable success in her dance journey. She is known for being kind, hardworking, and dedicated to supporting the people around her while continuing to grow both personally and academically.

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