#kingston ontario

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Happy to be a member of the Kingston Workers History Project in Kingston, Ontario. I've neglected to share some of the articles we are putting out, so here's one on tenant activism in the 1960s and 1970s:

"In 1968, a group of tenants and activists came together in Kingston to form the Association of Tenants Action in Kingston (ATAK). They opposed high rents, argued that tenants should be able to bargain with landlords, and built a wider movement to defend working class and poor people in Ontario against unjust housing conditions. Led by tireless activists, ATAK used diverse tactics to challenge rising rent prices, low vacancy, and hostile landlords. ATAK provides us with an important historical lesson about the effectiveness of grassroots organizing and the dedication of intelligent, diligent leadership to hold governments accountable and advocate for tenants, workers, the poor, and the unhoused."

- "ATAK: Tenant Action in the ’60s and ’70s," Kingston Workers' History Project. November 27, 2022.

[theclaudecash]

Hey! Forgot to post this on here, but I celebrated 6 months of drag this december!! I am incredibly thankful of all the people who have supported me. It feels crazy how much I have progressed since first starting. But... I'm still not sure exactly who I am. I hope to figure that out tho!

Glitching at end of video

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Trains at night

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my little neighborhood with all its precious dwellings and telephone wires and barren branches was made for twilight

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Click here to learn more!

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GET TO KNOW Keaton: Kingston’s Most-Praised & Most-Loved Rapper

Kingston, Ontario, a city two hours east of Toronto is known for a wide variety of things. Known for its most prestigious and academically immaculate post-secondary institution, Queen’s University, as well as its remarkable nature view and being a ‘military city’, Kingston is also known to have a variety of dope forms of entertainment. From acts like Bedouin Soundclash to Bryan Adams to the most…

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Following the Wolfe Islander III into her dock at Kingston, Ontario, Canada.

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“The Kingston Community Legal Clinic is warning residents after a Landlord and Tenant Board adjudicator decided a landlord was wrongfully attempting to evict their tenant.

“The landlord seeks possession of the rental unit so his mother can live there,” adjudicator Laura Hartslief wrote in her June 28 decision on the fate of Jason Martin’s home in the basement unit of 151 Fraser St. “I am not satisfied that it is more likely than not that she genuinely intends to live there.”

Jordan Morelli, a physics professor at Queen’s University who owns the rental unit, said he is devastated by Hartslief’s decision.

“It’s a complete outrage that we’ve lost this thing because I’ve been trying to get my parents here for two years,” Morelli said. “I really want my parents to be living in there.”

John Done of the Kingston Community Legal Clinic represented Martin at the Landlord and Tenant Board hearing. He said his clinic has seen a significant increase in evictions for landlords to renovate units or to use for their own use — which is what Morelli applied for. In many of those cases, but not all, landlords evict a tenant who is paying a lower rent, renovate the unit, and rent it out again for sometimes double the cost.

Done said that, at first, Martin was resigned to moving out, but when Done saw Martin’s case, he urged him to push back against Morelli.

“These are situations we see all of the time in a Landlord’s Own Use application, and our view is (that) once we start putting these under the microscope, a lot of them don’t have merit,” Done said. “Once Mr. Martin said he would accept our help, then there were, indeed, some things that sort of leaped off the page. … There were the hallmarks of these (types of) landlords’ applications that I don’t think they could show good faith.”

Martin, who on Wednesday said he still couldn’t believe he was successful, said Done worked wonders. Martin said, the stress of the case, which was drawn out over two years due to a scheduling overflow caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, has caused Martin to lose five jobs over the two years.

“When I got that decision, I actually had to leave work,” Martin, who has been working steadily at a local fishing tackle manufacturing company since the end of May, said excitedly. “I couldn’t believe it, and I was overwhelmed. I was shaking, I couldn’t talk, my brain went to mush. I’m very happy with the decision.”

Morelli owns a total of 10 units within five properties in Kingston. He said he wanted to use Martin’s apartment as a new home for his mother, Henriette Morelli, who currently lives in a two-bedroom condominium with her husband, Edwin Morelli, in Saskatoon.”

- Steph Crosier, “Tenant wins at board hearing,” Kingston Whig-Standard. Jul 11, 2022. This was a front page story in the print edition.

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We are happy that this story is now out in the open for all to see. It won't be the last word on the matter, that's for sure. But it clearly demonstrates why Queen's University professor and faculty association president (as well as former president of the Kingston NDP riding association) Jordan Morelli's N12 eviction notice was thrown out at the LTB. In our opinion, what this stories reveals is that Morelli is willing to exploit the housing crisis for his own financial gain. 

Prior to this instance, there was two previous times where he claimed family members were moving in to units when they never did. He paid these tenants a meagre $3000, money which they quickly burned through with their rent prices hundreds of dollars a month higher. Meanwhile, he charged higher rents to the people moving in: one unit went from $409 to $1150 a month, while another went from $670 to $1200. He made that money back within months. 

Morelli wants to claim he is a victim in all this, and actually goes so far as saying that the landlord tenant laws works well for tenants. But the facts speak for themselves: The LTB rejected his case because they do not believe his story. Additionally, close to 90 percent of tenants at the LTB have no legal representation, and if it weren't for KUT and KCLC supporting Morelli's tenant, Morelli would most likely have someone living in Martin's unit's at double the rent. 

Tenants can win when they stand up and fight. Get to know your neighbours and organize with them! In Martin's case, former tenants stood with Martin to explain what had happened to them after moving out. This sort of solidarity led to Martin staying in his apartment at a rent price he can afford. KUT stands with tenants across the city and will do what we can to help.

- official statement of the Kingston / Katarokwi Union of Tenants, July 12, 2022 (Martin is a member)

/// The tenant union had helped several other tenants of Morelli, who had also been told they would have to move out of his own properties for the same reason of family need, and the communication between tenants allowed them to learn he was using the same line on several tenants - allowing the tenants to resist his efforts or negotiate for better accommodation to leave. Martin’s is the first official victory against this particular landlord, but likely won’t be the last. Of course, Morelli is a self-pitying landlord in all of this, being quoted in the article as saying: “Somehow I’m the bad guy in all of this; they’re trying to paint me as a villain.”  Morelli is hardly the worst landlord in Kingston, Ontario, and nowhere near as powerful as a rental company like Homestead. His tactics are typical of landlords everywhere. The reason why he acts the way he does, and can act the way he does, is at base a structural issue, in which housing is an investment and a means of accumulation rather than a basic right. But Kingston is a smallish town, with a proportionately smallish, vague, fragmented, and often dysfunctional ‘left’, so Morelli’s role has been controversial and increasingly divisive. Notably, it was discovered by the tenant union that his mother, who he has been claiming he was going to move into one of these vacated units, is a retired university professor who likely doesn’t want to live in a tiny basement apartment! 

As the press release from KUT notes, Morelli is a major player in the local political scene, as former riding president for the federal NDP, as secretary of the Kingston and District Labour Council (and had the temerity to send this article to other council members, even after the Council passed a pro-tenant motion!) and at Queen’s University, where he is a professor and head of the faculty association. In those roles, he is a bad faith opponent of tenant rights, student activism, grassroots unionism, and the left-wing of the NDP (as well as the small, overlapping and fractious autonomist, anarchist, communist and decolonial groups in the area). For instance, this was his response to the Ontario government, controlled by Conservatives, capping rent increases!

If there was any justice in the world or social democracy and labour unionism was not so pathetically degenerated, this kind of coverage should get him kicked out of the KDLC or NDP.

[theclaudecash]

Btw I made a youtube video!! It's more of a vlog, but I had fun doing it 😊

Weirdly enough, most of it wouldn't go through correctly so I'll probably re-do the astrology in another vid!

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Walk around Kingston, Ontario (September 2023)

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skeleton park voted most precious neighborhood by ME. everyday of my life.

[chemicalfemme]

this November a huge black dog appeared seemingly out of nowhere from behind a Celtic headstone I was taking a photo of. beautiful, looked bear like. didn’t have a collar, just quietly watched us from afar and disappeared again.

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Yahoo! Season 4 announcement released today.

With the early June date and Chicago taking place soon after, it looks like the Canadian date will be either in Montreal QC or Kingston ON.

If either of these venues, I will be there!

[ashtonderoy]

Why Giant Tiger sucks? An Autistic Concussion Story.

Why Giant Tiger sucks? An Autistic Concussion Story.

Written by Ashton Deroy What is an autistic Concussion like? Click this if you dare. Here is a small quotation “When this happens, they can become fixated on why it ended. They spend a lot of time trying to figure out what they did wrong, second-guessing themselves, and trying to figure out how they can fix it. They ruminate and get stuck in this loop. It becomes all they can think about, and…