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Supreme Court of Canada
Recognizes New Tort
of Intimate Partner Violence

Newsletter: Battered Women Support Services,
May 15th, 2026, Vancouver, BC, Canada

Dear Friends and Supporters,

Today marks a historic moment for survivors of intimate partner violence across Canada.

This morning, the Supreme Court of Canada recognized, for the first time in Canadian history, a new tort of intimate partner violence grounded in coercive control.

Today is also a testament to the extraordinary courage and determination of Kuldeep Ahluwalia, who stood in her power and used her voice to pursue justice through years of litigation beginning during the COVID lockdown period, much of it while self-represented. Today’s decision is the result of her persistence, courage, and refusal to allow her experiences to be minimized or erased. Today is her victory.

For decades, survivors and anti-violence organizations have tried to explain that intimate partner violence is not simply a collection of isolated incidents, but often an ongoing pattern of domination, surveillance, intimidation, humiliation, financial control, fear, entrapment, and post-separation abuse that strips away autonomy and freedom. Today, the country’s highest court recognized that reality in law.

At BWSS, we hear these realities every single day:

  • on our crisis line
  • in counselling sessions
  • in legal advocacy
  • in family court and protection order cases
  • in housing and safety planning
  • in the experiences of women navigating coercion, fear, isolation, surveillance, financial abuse, threats involving children, and post-separation violence

Long before courts had language for coercive control, survivors were already living it. [Read more…]

By

Government and
our Drug Issues in Canada
and America

 

In 2026, 22 people a day are dying in Canada from opioid-related overdoses, and an estimated 140 to over 200 people in America.

Time for change.

We can repulse the energy of the old systems and broken laws back to Source, invoking the Universal Law of Repulsion.

Sanat Kumara says this is the fastest way to change something.

Know that it may drive up what is not working in us, bring awareness of old systems still operating in us, but ultimately we want that!

The more of us, consciously in the purity and the clarity of Who We Are, we bring in the New Ways.

Below is disturbing information in Canada . . .

[Read more…]

By

Endangered Butterflies
Are Thriving Behind Bars

In the tender, methodical work of rescuing an imperiled butterfly species, incarcerated women are finding a sense of purpose.

By: Michaela Haas, Reasons To Be Cheerful, May 7, 2026

On a cool spring morning in Washington state, the work of saving an endangered species unfolds in an unlikely place: a greenhouse just outside the perimeter of a women’s prison. Inside, trays of host plants line long tables. Tiny eggs cling to plantain leaves. Black, yellow-dotted larvae inch forward in slow motion. A small group of women tends to them with the precision of lab technicians and the patience of gardeners.

This is where the Taylor’s checkerspot butterfly, once common across Pacific Northwest prairies, is being brought back from the brink. Its future depends on people like Margaret Taggart, who found something she did not expect to discover in prison: a sense of purpose. “I’ve always had a love for butterflies, for nature and plants,” she says. “But I didn’t even know butterflies are endangered. The education was eye-opening.”

Women in red shirts turn to look at someone.
“To be able to nurture something, to take care of a creature that emerges as this beautiful butterfly, that’s just so fulfilling,” says Margaret Taggart (right). Courtesy of the Sustainability in Prisons Project

Kelli Bush, who coordinates the program for the Sustainability in Prisons Project (SPP), describes captive rearing as a “last resort.” In this case, it’s a response to the fact that Taylor’s checkerspot has lost 97 percent of its native prairie-oak habitat, which has been fragmented by development, agriculture and invasive species. Without large-scale habitat restoration, the butterfly cannot sustain itself in the wild, and without the prison effort, it might already have gone extinct.

What happens inside the program is therefore both rescue and rehabilitation, an effort to restore a butterfly population while also restoring the people who care for it. [Read more…]

By

Torie Sepah M.D.,
Forensic Psychiatrist
in California Prisons

March 2025, An interview with Torie Sepah M.D., a forensic psychiatrist at several California prisons.

0:00 – What You’re Not Seeing in the Headlines
1:30 – The Most Disturbing Patient I Ever Saw
2:24 – How Did He Even Get Something to Cut With?
3:17 – A Room Designed to Prevent Suicide
4:08 – Watching Every 11 Minutes Isn’t Enough
5:02 – What Restraints Really Mean
6:03 – A Shocking Emergency That Changed Me
7:05 – The Feeling of Failing Someone

[Read more…]

By

Ride to Resilience

This documentary follows a professional mountain biker and firefighter through a challenging year.

The film explores themes of trauma and mental health, alongside the camaraderie of friendship and the restorative power of nature.

It’s a raw and honest portrayal of personal growth and healing.

52,310 views
Premiered Jul 8, 2025
#MentalHealthAwareness #GoFundMe #FirefighterStories

Ride to Resilience — a raw, real, and slightly reckless documentary that follows professional mountain biker and full-time firefighter, Steve Vanderhoek, through one of the most intense years of his life.

It’s a story of trauma, PTSD, and depression, but also of friendship, forest therapy, and the quiet power of simply staying in the fight.

Steve opens up like never before — about the weight of what first responders carry, the way adrenaline can mask pain, and how riding a bike through the woods can sometimes feel like the only way to breathe again.

The film is independently produced, self-funded, and still in progress.

Over the past year, this story has grown into something far bigger than we ever imagined.

The feedback we’ve received has shown us how deeply it resonates—and how much potential it has to create real impact in our community and beyond.

Despite that, securing additional funding—especially within the mountain bike industry—has been an ongoing challenge.
[Read more…]