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It is well-known that trans and non-binary individuals experience worse health outcomes due to experiences of violence and discrimination. For this reason, accessible healthcare for trans and non-binary people is crucial. There is a lack of Canadian literature on the experiences of non-binary people within the healthcare system. This study sought to understand barriers to healthcare among non-binary people living in a mid-sized urban/rural region of Canada. Interviews were conducted between November 2019 to March 2020 with 12 non-binary individuals assigned female at birth, living in Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada, as a part of a larger qualitative study exploring experiences within the community, healthcare and employment. Three broad themes were developed: erasure, barriers to access to healthcare, and assessing whether (or not) to come out. Sub-themes included institutional erasure, informational erasure, general healthcare barriers, medical transition healthcare barriers, anticipated discrimination, and assessing safety. Policy and institutional changes are needed to increase the safety and accessibility of healthcare services to non-binary individuals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Domestically produced Canadian superheroes face an uphill climb in their bids to be taken seriously. A domestically produced Canadian comic is one that is authored and published within Canada or within a territory on what is called Canada. Canada's troubled sociopolitical relationships with nationalism, colonialism, federalism, and separatism, merge with notorious Canadian stereotypes—like national inferiority complexes and apology culture—and serve to unnerve and disarm the Canadian superhero. While psychosocial in nature, these feelings, unconsciously nationalized, are rooted in cultural economics where imports from Britain or the United States are perceived to have higher financial and social value. These unsettlements continually prompt Canadian readers to question whether they can—or should—identify with a domestically produced Canadian superhero in le neuvième art. The answer tentatively seems to be yes, but only if they are humbled, satirized, or taken down a peg—knowingly or unknowingly, or only if these heroes are, in some manner, reflectively self-deprecating. Richard Comely's early run on the Captain Canuck franchise, particularly in his promotional pre-Captain Canuck no. 1 paratexts, root the character in deprecation as the hero is mocked and satirized by the citizens of his own comic. This fate is uniquely applied to Canuck while other nationalist and provincial superheroes—such as Pierre Fournier's Les Aventures du Capitaine Kébec (1973) and Mark Allard-Will's and Elaine Will's Saskatch-A-Man (2015)—engage in self-mockery without accidental patronization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background and Objectives: In Canada, the time deferral for gay, bisexual and other men who have sex with men (gbMSM) to donate blood has gradually decreased. In September 2022, this deferral was replaced with sexual behaviour‐based screening for all donors. We investigate how data from targeted research programmes addressed knowledge gaps to support this change. Materials and Methods: We conducted a scoping review describing the Canadian literature available before the research programmes relating to (1) behavioural indicators of HIV risk and (2) attitudes to blood donation among gbMSM, current donors and the general population. We summarize the targeted research programmes, their outputs and impact to date. Results: For question 1, five projects met inclusion criteria. For question 2, three articles met inclusion criteria. Knowledge gaps identified were insufficient evidence of HIV incidence in gbMSM who met other donor eligibility criteria and scant data on opinions and views of blood donation and screening criteria for sexual risk behaviours. The research programmes funded 19 projects at 11 different research sites involving over 100 individual researchers/collaborators resulting in 19 peer‐reviewed publications to date. Leveraging existing gbMSM cohorts yielded relevant HIV incidence data to inform safety modelling studies. Findings indicated that sexual behaviour‐based screening was acceptable to gbMSM and donors, and donor discomfort around specific questions could be mitigated with clear explanations. Conclusion: Targeted research programmes filled critical knowledge gaps and informed a change to gender‐neutral, sexual behaviour‐based screening for all donors. Findings supported successful implementation of these changes with research‐informed staff training. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Trans and gender nonconforming (TGNC) people who make refugee claims in Canada negotiate a complex nexus of identity, belonging, and citizenship. Drawing on insights from TGNC refugees, immigration lawyers, and frontline workers, in this paper we examine the ways the state controls the trans body through the refugee claims process and in the process of integration into life in Canada, while also highlighting trans refugee methods of survival and resistance. What emerges is an understanding of the ways that refugees navigate the tension between gender, sexuality, and homecoming as both intimately felt and geopolitically managed. We convey TGNC refugee narratives to demonstrate how they both confirm and expand upon the existing literature on Canadian LGBTQ+ refugees. TGNC refugees' experiences at the Immigration and Refugee Board confirm insights from existing LGBTQ+ refugee studies. However, TGNC refugees' day‐to‐day lives differ significantly from LGB refugee lives as recounted in the literature. In TGNC refugees' attempts to access gender‐affirming documentation, healthcare, housing, and income, they confront distinct systems of transgender exceptionalism, border imperialism, and racial and heteropatriarchal capitalism that limit their access to basic necessities and impact how they build home both conceptually and materially. Key Messages: Refugee narratives elicited at the Immigration and Refugee Board follow a logic of "transgender exceptionalism" and often diverge from the complexity of Trans and gender nonconforming (TGNC) refugee experiences.TGNC refugees experience barriers to accessing housing, healthcare, adequate documentation, and employment due to histories and systems of oppression.These narratives demonstrate that the trans refugee homemaking process is implicated in nationalism, but also shows the needs to push against this limiting frame. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

"The American Western in Canadian Literature" by Joel Deshaye is a comprehensive study that explores the presence and significance of the American Western genre in Canadian literature. The book delves into the historical and cultural factors that have shaped the development of the Western genre in Canada, highlighting the lack of a corresponding frontier mythos in the country. Deshaye's research is extensive, providing a valuable resource for those interested in the topic. While the Western genre has shallow roots in Canada, the book offers insights into the few Canadian Western works that exist and their unique perspectives. Despite initial reservations, the reviewer highly recommends the book for its originality and scholarly value. [Extracted from the article]

• The Canadian Model for Peatlands (CaMP) was run across 5 ecozones from 1990 to 2019. • Canada's peatlands were a carbon sink over those 30 years. • In large fire years, peatlands switched to a carbon source. • There are regional differences in C emissions and removals. • Forested peatlands have high sink-rates but are also more vulnerable to disturbances. This study applied the Canadian Model for Peatlands (CaMP) to 63.9 million hectares of peatlands within boreal and temperate ecozones of Canada to assess the trends in atmospheric carbon (C) emissions and removals and C sequestration over 30 years (1990–2019). The CaMP modelled net ecosystem productivity (NEP) for peatlands within the study area indicated a net C sink at an annual mean rate of 30.9 Mt C y−1 (48.4 g C m−2 y−1). Net Biome Productivity (NBP), which accounts for losses of carbon due to wildfire, reduced the C sink to 19.0 Mt C y−1 (29.8 g C m−2 y−1). On an area-weighted basis, the Hudson Plains and the Boreal Plains had the highest NBP (34.9 and 34.0 g C m−2 y−1, respectively) and the Atlantic Maritime and Boreal Shield West had the lowest (25.3 and 24.6 g C m−2 y−1 respectively), with the Boreal Shield East having intermediate NBP (27.5 g C m−2 y−1). NBP was highest in peatlands with forest cover, rising with increasing nutrient status (bog < poor fen < rich fen). These modelled values compare well with long-term carbon accumulation rates found in the literature for Canadian peatlands ranging from 6 to 70 g C m−2 y−1. While most years peatlands were a net sink of C, years with extensive fires resulted in peatlands being a small net source of C. The study highlighted that forested peatlands were important in driving the C sequestration sink but were also sensitive to climate warming due to high rates of soil CO 2 emission and large wildfire C emissions. This highlights an important, yet vulnerable role these forested peatlands play in Canada's national greenhouse gas accounting. While this research is the first to produce estimates of C sequestration and greenhouse gas emission and removal rates across such a large area of Canada, further research is required across peatland types and ecozones to improve parameterization, validation, and process representations. Our results stress the importance of ecozone-specific analyses and accounting for infrequent large fire years and fire risk in land management policy and carbon accounting. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Few studies have assessed the relationship between poverty and the risk of infection with antimicrobial resistant organisms (AROs). We sought to identify, appraise, and synthesize the available published Canadian literature that analyzes living in poverty and risk of AROs. Methods: A structured narrative review methodology was used, including a systematic search of three databases: MedLINE, EMBASE and Web of Science for articles pertaining to poverty, and infection with AROs in Canada between 1990 and 2020. Poverty was broadly defined to include economic measures and associated social determinants of health. Based on inclusion and exclusion criteria, there were 889 initial articles, and 43 included in the final review. The final articles were extracted using a standard format and appraised using the Joanna Briggs Institute Levels of Evidence framework. Results: Of 43 studies, 15 (35%) related to methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA). One study found a 73% risk reduction (RR 0.27, 95%CI 0.19–0.39, p = < 0.0001) in community-acquired MRSA (CA-MRSA) infection for each $100,000 income increase. Results pertaining to homelessness and MRSA suggested transmission was related to patterns of frequent drug use, skin-to-skin contact and sexual contact more than shelter contact. Indigenous persons have high rates of CA-MRSA, with more rooms in the house being a significant protective factor (OR 0.86, p = 0.023). One study found household income over $60,000 (OR 0.83, p = 0.039) in univariate analysis and higher maternal education (OR 0.76, 95%CI 0.63–0.92, p = 0.005) in multivariate analysis were protective for otitis media due to an ARO among children. Twenty of 43 (46.5%) articles pertained to tuberculosis (TB). Foreign-born persons were four times more likely to have resistant TB compared to Canadian-born persons. None of the 20 studies used income in their analyses. Conclusions: There is an association between higher income and protection from CA-MRSA. Mixed results exist regarding the impact of homelessness and MRSA, demonstrating a nuanced relationship with behavioural risk factors. Higher income and maternal education were associated with reduced ARO-associated acute otitis media in children in one study. We do not have a robust understanding of the social measures of marginalization related to being foreign-born that contribute to higher rates of resistant TB infection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article aims to share key findings from a scoping review of the literature about LGBTQI migrants from a global context. The scoping review methodology allows for rapid assessment of a broad range of literature while also highlighting key knowledge and policy strengths and gaps. Although this review focuses on the Canadian-specific literature, it also compares the Canadian context with the broader global context. Upon presenting a synthesis of the knowledge produced about LGBTQI migrants, implications on Canadian refugee and newcomer settlement policies are critically assessed. This review presents how the Canadian literature has shifted over the past decade from a focus on legal scholarship to broader knowledge from multiple disciplines about the social, political, economic and transnational contexts for LGBTQI migrations to Canada. Although there have been key improvements to Canadian refugee policy, there remains a lack of federal and provincial policies and settlement programs designed to attend to the particular needs of LGBTQI migrants. The relevance of the Canadian knowledge and policies in relation to knowledge emerging from the Global South and elsewhere in the Global North will also enrich the discussion about present and future research and policy directions in this area. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]