From Stares to Stories: Life, Improv’d (August 27, 2025) by Teresa Camilleri
A journey of resilience where laughter becomes the spark that turns challenges into play.
Humour has always been a part of my life. In many ways, it has been my quiet superpower.
I was born a Little Person, and as a child I endured the stares, the comments, and the mocking. It wasn’t easy; neither for me nor for my family who witnessed it. At some point, though, I made a conscious choice. If people were going to gawk, I decided to give them something to talk about; something to laugh with, not at. As Bonnie Raitt sings, I gave them “something to talk about.”
That choice opened the door to improv. I studied at Second City, performed in community theatre, and joined an improv troupe. Those years filled me with joy. Improv taught me the beauty of saying “Yes,” the courage of stepping into the unknown, and the freedom of play.
Five years ago, another challenge arrived: spinal surgery that left me in a wheelchair. Seriously? Another hurdle? Again, I did what I always do: I laughed and I cried. And then I chose. I chose to remember that I am still me, just from a different perspective: slightly higher up, and moving much faster now.
Recently, I had the chance to solo-lead my first improv class. It was exhilarating. The feedback I received told me that others saw the joy I felt, and I hope I’ll be asked to return. More than that, I hope the participants return, too, so we can keep learning, keep laughing, and keep discovering together what happens when we say “Yes.”
Because improv isn’t just theatre. It’s a way of living. And for me, it has been the way of turning stares into stories, and stories into freedom.
Teresa Camilleri
Convoy, Courage and Canada (October 1, 2025) – Ray McGinnis & Donna Laframboise
“As the ‘pandemic’ moved into its second year, Vancouver resident Ray McGinnis was experiencing a growing disconnect between public health statements and what he was experiencing and discovering. Several friends and relatives were experiencing serious adverse reactions from the mRNA vaccines. He attended a rally in Vancouver on February 5, 2022, in support of the Freedom Convoy in Ottawa. He heard an Indo-Canadian woman who had been fired from Global TV over the mandates tell her audience that the what we were witnessing at our protest would not be reported on the news that night. He later witnessed distorted reporting about the Vancouver protest on the local news that night. In November 2022, he travelled to Ottawa to hear firsthand the testimony of witnesses at the Public Order Emergency Commission. He was astonished at the testimony given by fourteen witnesses he heard that undermined government and media depictions of protesters in Ottawa as violent and a posing a danger to our democracy. He would later read through all 76 transcripts of POEC testimony, and the 2,200-page inquiry Report. He was troubled by how weak the Report’s basis was for giving the Trudeau government cover for its invocation of the Emergencies Act and the freezing of bank accounts.
On October 1st, Ray McGinnis will highlight some of the testimony at the public inquiry, problems with its Report, and the federal ruling that the governments’ action was unconstitutional. He will discuss the importance of scrutiny as a skill we need to develop as citizens if we are to hold our government to account. He will comment on truth as a value, and the need to discuss how we come to discern what is true. If democracy is something we value, truth needs to be safeguarded. If we are to understand our story as a nation and pass it on to the next generation, we better get the story correct. Otherwise, we pass on a history that is made up of lies and half-truths.
A common document to Jewish, Christian and Muslim faiths is the Ten Commandments. The ninth commandment states “You shall not bear false witness against your neighbour.” When an individual or a group is smeared with false allegations by people in positions of power, many ordinary citizens will choose to believe the lies. The experience of the Freedom Convoy is a case study of the disconnect between public statements made by politicians and the media about peaceful protesters, what was being livestreamed from the protests, and intelligence assessments by police and intelligence agencies on the ground. McGinnis will discuss the historic significance of the Freedom Convoy and the rise of propaganda as a tool to distort and suppress public discussion about pandemic measures, and historic charter rights like freedom of assembly, the right to a livelihood, bodily autonomy, and freedom of mobility.
McGinnis will also speak about his firsthand impressions of courtroom dramas in the case of the Coutts Two in Alberta, the trial of Tamara Lich and Chris Barber; and his visits to the Universal Ostrich Farm in Edgewood, BC.”
BIO:
Ray McGinnis is author of Unjustified: The Freedom Convoy, the Emergencies Act and the Inquiry that Got It Wrong. He has previously published Writing the Sacred: A Psalm-inspired Path to Appreciating and Writing Sacred Poetry, and Unanswered Questions: What the September Eleventh Families Asked and the 9/11 Commission Ignored. Before his sudden retirement at the start of the ‘pandemic,’ Ray had been teaching writing workshops across North America for over two decades.
Links:
X: @RayMcGinnis7
Website page: https://unansweredquestions.ca/unjustified-the-freedom-convoy-the-emergencies-act-and-the-inquiry-that-got-it-wrong/
Online Amazon, including reader reviews: https://www.amazon.ca/Unjustified-Freedom-Convoy-Emergencies-Inquiry/dp/1998365026/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0
Donna Laframboise was part of the original National Post newsroom and has written for many newspapers and magazines. Now an independent journalist, in February 2022 she spent a week in Ottawa photographing the Freedom Convoy trucker protest. A few months later, she began interviewing people for a since-published book called Thank You, Truckers! Canada’s Heroes & Those Who Helped Them.
The trucker protest changed the trajectory of the pandemic. In January 2022, only one Canadian province had sent kids back to school on schedule after the Christmas break. Unions and doctors were calling for yet another lockdown. Life continued to worsen for the unvaccinated, as additional exclusions and penalties were implemented.
This book tells the stories of ordinary people who got behind the wheel of big rigs and drove to Ottawa from British Columbia, Nova Scotia, and many places in between. For a few weeks in the third winter of the pandemic, the eyes of the world were on Canada. Hope was rekindled in millions of hearts. Not because of something any politician did, but because working class Canadians were honking their horns and declaring: ‘Enough is enough.’ Only after the Convoy arrived in the nation’s capital did provincial governments begin backing away from vaccine passports; only then did get-back-to-normal gain momentum.
Police expected five Convoys to converge on Ottawa from different parts of the country. When thirteen showed up, their traffic plan collapsed. Public support was off-the-charts. Ordinary people quietly supplied cash, clothing, fuel, barbecues, generators, tents, and an ongoing banquet of food. Canadians from all walks of life stepped up: Manitoba Hutterites, mechanics, farmers, chefs, tradespeople, businessmen, nurses, police officers, military veterans, and retirees.
Some of the individuals in this book were eventually tear-gassed, pepper-sprayed, assaulted, and arrested. Some had their trucks vandalized and seized, their bank accounts frozen (along with the bank accounts of their teenaged offspring and elderly parents). Within the pages of this book, readers meet the young mother from Quebec who brought the bouncy castles. They meet the mega donor from New Brunswick who was later doxxed by the media. This tapestry of courage, commitment, and kindness deserves to be part of Canada’s official history.
The media is supposed to be a check on the powerful; it’s supposed to hold government accountable. During COVID and the Convoy, journalists did the opposite. They took the side of the government. Against peaceful protesters.
Donna Laframboise is a former vice-president of the Canadian Civil Liberties Association and the author of five books. Buy Thank You, Truckers! on Amazon here. Learn more at
ThankYouTruckers.substack.com