From 2020 to 2021, Rise Up undertook an oral history project, Women Unite. We conducted over twenty-five interviews with activists focusing on key moments in the women’s movement in Toronto from the 1970s to the 1990s. These videos feature a range of topics including Indigenous women’s status rights, anti-racist organizing for International Women’s Day, disability rights and activism, and immigrant women’s organizing, to name a few. 

The Canadian Women’s Movement Archives/Archives Canadiennes du Mouvement des Femmes (CWMA/ACMF) began when Pat Leslie, an editor of The Other Woman, moved the newspaper’s records into her apartment following the end of its publication in 1977. From these modest beginnings, the CWMA/ACMF Collective was born. Through the dedicated work of many, the CWMA/ACMF Collective preserved records related to the Canadian women’s movement, which are now held at the University of Ottawa Archives and Special Collections. Rise Up carries forward this tradition of feminist archiving set out by the CWMA/ACMF Collective.

This issue of Tiger Lily: Magazine by Women of Colour (Vol. 1, Issue 2), published in 1987, focuses on the histories, activism, and struggles of Black women in Canada. In the editorial “We Need History: Our Long and Rich Presence,” guest editor Adrienne Shadd writes that Black women and other women of colour are often erased from women’s history in favour of prominent white women. Shadd makes clear the importance of Black women writing their own histories. This feature article by Rachel Lobo discusses the Black Women’s Collective, and their publication Our Lives, which offers a window into the history of Black women’s activism in Canada.

The Lesbians Making History Collective was founded in the mid-1980s out of a desire to record and preserve the histories of older Toronto-based lesbians. Some of the nine interviews completed for the project were featured in the National Film Board documentary Forbidden Love: The Unashamed Stories of Lesbian Lives, which was re-released in 2014.

This undated button features Rosa Luxemburg, the Marxist and revolutionary socialist activist who co-founded the Spartacus League in Germany. Following World War I, she and fellow leader Karl Liebknecht were captured and executed during the Spartacist uprising of January 1919.

Produced by the National Film Board of Canada and directed by Karen Cho, Status Quo? The Unfinished Business of Feminism in Canada (2017) follows feminist activism from the development of the Royal Commission on the Status of Women (1967) up to the present day. It emphasizes the continuity of key feminist issues including violence against women, abortion access, universal childcare, and more.