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Sandy Burke

Kafkaesque citizenship laws bestow rights, and take them away

Navigating the extensive family of Canadian citizenship laws leaves a paper cut that could shred a moose. There is the son, Bill C–37, (male personal pro-noun intentional); the father, 1977...

Denying the deserving a right to call Canada home

Paul Martin Sr., the father of former Canadian Prime Minster of the same name, minus the suffix, didn’t know he was on a quest for a symbol to represent "the character of Canada", but he found one,...

Canada's most irritating activist gets the job done

By his own description, Don Chapman is irritating. Politicians grow weary of hearing from him, he says.  But he never gives up. His persistence has made him immensely effective in gaining the...

Fifty-nine years does not make you Canadian. Papers do.

Today we call it identification, but back then it was simply called ‘papers.’ “When I went to draw out my application for my old age pension and they asked me for my papers, I said what papers?”...

Canadian Sandy Burke's fight for Canadian citizenship, health care and Old Age Security

“The problem is that they have sewn the laws so tight that people like Sandy can’t get through,” Pam Murray said of her mother-in-law who waited her turn to speak on the phone. “Sandy does not have a...