Episode Transcript

Women in Nova Scotia politics

Mark Coffin: A quick note before today’s show.

We’re back to our usual thing, telling the story of being a member of the Legislative Assembly in Nova Scotia, as told to us by former MLAs.

This show will be hosted by Sandra Hannebohm, who is going to be sharing the hosting duties with me here at Off Script from here on out.

Here’s this week’s show…

Eleanor Norrie: I remember going to visit the legislature when I was in highschool, it was just a room full of white, suited men. I was in grade 11 or 12 at that time and it was something that—a young woman would never dream of ever finding herself sitting down there. But I remember looking down and being in awe of it. It just never crossed my mind that I’d like to do that someday because it was just not a possibility.

Alexa McDonough: It was really pretty freaky because I was the only woman and there were 51 men! None of them New Democrat. There were taunts that would come from the backbenches on the other sides sometimes would be along the lines of, “Why don’t you stay home and look after your kids.”

Mark Coffin: And what was it that made you decide to run for the province yourself?

Marie Dechman: I thought that I had something to offer as a person, not only just as a woman, but as a person. There was a tremendous lack of participation by women.

Eleanor Norrie: I wish they wouldn’t talk about gender parity. I wish they wouldn’t say it that way. Why is it that women are making parity? Why don’t they do it the other way around?

Mark Coffin: More women than men?

Eleanor Norrie: No, we’re going to have just as many men as we have women.

Sandra Hannebohm: You’re listening to On the Record, Off Script. And I’m your host, Sandra Hannebohm.

Off Script is a journey through the career of Nova Scotia MLAs as told through the eyes of former lawmakers themselves. The main tool we used to connect with their experience was the exit interview. Exit interviews are used in workplaces to gain honest, and frank insight about the job, from departing and departed employees. We used them to learn what life is like for MLAs in Nova Scotia politics. All of our interviews were on the record, but what we heard didn’t sound like the usual script.

On the next several episodes of Off Script , you’ll hear stories about exclusion. Stories from MLAs who were made to feel they did not belong in the legislature. In some cases, that feeling of exclusion began on the campaign trail, through interaction with voters, and the party, and in other cases it was the legislature itself, or fellow MLAs that were unwelcoming.

This week on Off Script, we explore the unique experiences of the women who ran for and won seats in the Nova Scotia legislature, the challenges they faced in getting there, and the challenges awaiting them once they arrived.

I’ve always had a kind of alien curiosity about Nova Scotia. I grew up travelling between Ontario and the state of Maryland, and I probably spent 3 total years trying to convince my Mom to move here before we did. I wanted to go to where I felt I had some roots. My grandmother immigrated to Calgary after landing at Pier 21 on the waterfront. Because I can’t know where my Mom’s ancestors came from, I set my roots here in Nova Scotia. To me, having deep roots is a big privilege, and Nova Scotia is a place where quite a few of them intersect.

British settlers established the first Canadian responsible government in Nova Scotia, when men dominated politics exclusively. Today, the legislature is still mostly settler ancestors (and of course most of them are men), but I wasn’t fully aware of this when I moved to Halifax.

I became aware of it around the same time I started volunteering with Springtide a year and a half ago. When I began transcribing interviews for Off Script I was responsible for hanging on to every word the descendants of these settlers said, slowing down the track and replaying the same sentence in slow motion to type it out.

The transcribing process is usually 4x slower than the length of the recording, so an hour of tape takes a whole afternoon to transcribe.

For me, this was like touring a foreign city in slow motion. No matter how many times I listened to the words, no matter how slowly (or sometimes hilariously) they were expressed, I felt like everything that was said was something I had never heard before.

I’m a young mixed-race woman, raised by a single, immigrant mother. Statistically the chances of me (or her) walking into the legislature and seeing a plaque with our family name on it are pretty slim. That point really came home for me when I listened to the second of many interviews I later heard.

It was George Archibald describing a sense of delight at realizing he was the first in his family to sit in the legislature in 100 years. I thought that must be touching, walking into Province House and seeing that one of your ancestors sat there 100 years ago.

But then he revealed that more than 100 years before that, Truro had a strong history of Archibalds in the legislature.

When Sir Adams George Archibald helped bring confederation to Canada over 100 years ago, he was following six family members that held seats before him.

I came to think that this lineage was a big part of why he felt comfortable in the house even when he was being criticized or targeted. He had a lot of reasons to believe he did belong there, and fewer reasons to think he didn’t.

In the city of Nova Scotia politics, he was an Archibald. Archibalds before him paved the roads of the city I was touring, listening to stories from people who also lived there. George fell into politics because he was George: George-who-had-a-farm. George-with-political-lineage-dating-back-to-before-Confederation.

The history of George’s family made me interested in a particular question. How do people get to political power in Nova Scotia if they’re not an Archibald?

Francene Cosman: Well I’m lucky I was strong. I could never be a pushover and I was never intimidated by anybody so it was tough, but I was tough. That made it easier I guess. Certainly running, knocking on doors, and I knocked on every door in the riding. The first election, I walked off shoes like you wouldn’t believe!

So I can remember one day going to a door and a man saying, “I’ll never vote for a woman. You’re a skirt and you’re a nitpicker and you’ve got a reputation of this, that and the other thing.” I took him on and I said, you know, “Being a nitpicker means I pay attention to detail, and so what if I’m female? I’m an effective person that can get work done.” We had quite a debate, and he still wasn’t going to vote for me. But three days later he came and met me at my headquarters and said, “You’ve got my vote.”So, I thought good because yes, I’m a feminist and yes, I’m a nitpicker and you can turn negatives into positives.

Alexa McDonough: People said, “How can you stand going to all those doors where you feel stupid standing on doorsteps, on your own?” I just found it fascinating. I loved every bit of it. It’s always interesting, I wonder who’s going to answer the door.

You got a real sense of this being a microcosm of society, especially in your earlier years because there weren’t that many women that had run. So you’d knock on the door and, perhaps the woman in the household would answer the door and she’d say, “Oh, I don’t know anything about politics, I’ll get my husband” and I’d say, “Now wait a minute, I’m much more interested in talking to you.”

Sandra Hannebohm: That’s Alexa Mcdonough, who was the first woman to lead any political party in Nova Scotia, and she was an MLA for a Halifax riding.

Alexa McDonough: The first campaign I ran in there were two members who both knew they were going to lose their seats. They knew they were in trouble. You know the CCF/ NDP members, both from Cape Breton. And there had never been a member from the mainland sitting in the legislature. and they both persuaded me to run for the leadership. They said, “We’ll both run, but we want you to know that we want you to run, and you will win it. We will support you if you win it. So don’t be reluctant to run.”

They both turned their backs because they were both disappointed, defeated. So there goes our only base in Cape Breton, and then I’m left with the only—if I were lucky enough to win it—seat in Halifax. But as it turned out we all won our seats, all three of us.

Sandra Hannebohm: Alexa told us that having a supportive husband on the campaign trail complemented her work-life balance.

Alexa McDonough: So he’d go to the door with our two little kids in tow and he’d say, “Hi I’m Mr. Alexa McDonough and these are my kids.”

He used to participate in the press galleries, press clubs. Trivia contests. And the exact same era in which I got elected, Margaret Thatcher got elected as the Prime Minister of the UK. He was in a trivia contest and I just happened to walk into the room in the back because I’d been out canvassing or something, and the question to him was, “What is Margaret Thatcher’s husband’s name?” and he said, “I don’t remember his name but I sure feel sorry for the son of a bitch.” [laughing]

He’s always used his humour that way. It was kind of liberating for women because they realized they could do something different, politically, from their husbands without the whole world falling apart. I think that helped empower quite a lot of women.

I mean there weren’t any other women that were running, either. Muriel Duckworth, by the time she ran was a grandmother, so you weren’t really thinking about [family]. It made me think about the fact that for a lot of women one of the obstacles—once you get past thinking it’s a man’s world and who needs it— is just the domestic side of all of that. Because if a man runs, nobody’s expecting him to be home making the meals or going to home and school meetings. These days it’s a much more egalitarian society, so there just wasn’t the same degree of segmentation or role-model separation, but in those days there was. People would arrive with casseroles because they’d be thinking “who’s feeding the husband and the kids?”

Mark Coffin: Were you the first woman…

Alexa McDonough: No I wasn’t. The first woman in the legislature . . . I have to think about this . . .

Sandra Hannebohm: The first female MLA was Gladys Porter in 1961. But Alexa McDonough – she encouraged the woman who would become the second female MLA and the first female Cabinet Minister, Maxine Cochrane, to consider entering politics as a candidate.

Alexa McDonough: The second woman was a really lovely woman. A Progressive Conservative back when we had Progressive Conservatives, Maxine Cochrane. Her husband had been a very progressive conservative cabinet minister and he was a lovely man, and he was always very respectful of me, unlike a lot of the others.

I had it reported back to me by some of the other conservatives that he used to get really upset in caucus meetings saying, “we’re really looking pretty bad out there if you keep taunting her and making those kind of sexist comments so, please don’t do it.”

He died in office. A lovely man, Bruce Cochrane. His widow, at his funeral—I just spoke to her to express my condolences and she said they had a wonderful life, wonderful relationship. She said, “I don’t know who could fill his shoes.” And I said, “Nobody except you, Maxine.” She said, “Oh no, not me.” Well anyways, she did. She ran and won.

Sandra Hannebohm: We spoke with David Nantes, who was also at that funeral by chance, and he recalled the impact Maxine had on the tone of meetings when she was in office.

David Nantes: Maxine Cochrane was the first Cabinet Minister, while I was in cabinet. She improved the tone of our cabinet meetings dramatically. Just the style she brought. She was very experienced. She had worked in the communications business with her husband, public relations. It was all very polished. But, she also had a very kind of focus, people focus.

Sandra Hannebohm: When asked what he meant by improving the tone, he said…

David Nantes: [She] made it less of an old boys club. Which, when you’re in a tight group and spending many hours together, you tend to become that way.

Howard Epstein: I know that some of the female MLAs felt that it was a place that was strongly male in its tone and not necessarily on the floor of the house or in debate but sometimes in informal comments outside. I’m certainly prepared to believe that this is an accurate reflection.

Mark Coffin: Something that we’ve heard a lot when we’ve interviewed female MLA’s, is the sexism in Nova Scotia politics and in the House of Assembly in particular. Was that something that you had experienced as well?

Michele Raymond: I don’t know. I wouldn’t say specifically, but I would say that there’s a very masculine ethos.

Sandra Hannebohm: The xMLAs that we interviewed usually explained the life of an MLA in male terms, using “he” instead of “she” to refer to hypothetical persons, which is not exactly surprising inaccurate, considering that most MLAs are men. However…

Eleanor Norrie: I had several experiences of people, I don’t know how to say it exactly.

Sandra Hannebohm: Eleanor Norrie was invited to the opening of a new curling rink and she was running late. She called her daughter, who picked her up and drove her to the rink.

Eleanor Norrie: We pulled up and there was a parking place right by the door, and I said, “Oh good there’s a spot right there!” because the parking spaces were all filled. She was driving and she pulled in, and there was a man standing there, looking very important, and he came running over and said, “You can’t park there! That’s for the minister and he’s not here yet!” I am the minister. You’d run into that more, and more, and more. “You can’t start yet because the minister’s not here yet”—while I’m standing there. It happened more and more often than you can imagine. The people would expect me to be a man and then if I wasn’t, they didn’t know quite what to do with me.

Sandra Hannebohm: In the entire history of the Nova Scotia Legislature, there have been more MLAs named John than there have been women by any name.

When Mark was reviewing the script for this episode, he asked me what the total numbers of women MLAs vs. MLAs named John were. There have been 42 female MLAs and that’s including the 15 that are currently sitting. And I started counting with the first general assembly in Nova Scotia. Once I got to 50 guys named John and I hadn’t even gotten halfway through the total assemblies, I called it.

After women won the right to vote, 40 years passed before the first female MLA won her seat here. Today, women make up half of the population of Nova Scotia, but only a quarter of the legislature. Alexa McDonough was only the third woman to sit in Province House, but what she faced inside and outside of the legislature wasn’t new to women then; it hasn’t gone away.

Louise Cockram: What was the noise that you had to speak over? Was it heckling?

Ramona Jennex: It was definitely heckling. A lot of comments would be, “Oh sit down, shut up, you don’t know what you’re talking about.” It was quite derogatory. “Oh, sit down!” A lot of the time you would get that.

Mark Coffin: And would hear from men and women or just men?

Ramona Jennex: It was male voices, and it was particular. There was a group that it was continual.

Sandra Hannebohm: Ramona Jennex was the education minister for the NDP government. Like many people who enter local politics, it was the well-being of her children that motivated her to get involved.

Ramona Jennex: I became involved in partisan politics when my children were young. I ended up being involved in a situation with a co-operative—a nursery school that wasn’t being run properly—and didn’t have people that were operating it with the right qualifications, so I got very involved in that. I met a group of people during that time period and then I became political with the NDP; politically active partisan-wise with the NDP back when my children were little in the ‘80s.

Sandra Hannebohm: Ramona was no newbie when it came to politics, she had political street smarts. She was ready for comments and criticism that would result from tough decisions she would have to make. But there was another form of criticism that she wasn’t exactly ready for.

Ramona Jennex: In my case, my hair was commented on continually. if you go and read blogs or comments—my hair has nothing to do with politics— [but] people would make a comment about my hair. What women wear; people make comments. They make comments on womens’ size all the time. People feel quite justified, if you are a politician, to say right to your face, “you’ve put on weight.”

Or, I had just given a speech with the lieutenant governor and the woman came over to me, and I thought she was going to come and speak to me because I thought my speech was fantastic. People were like ‘Oh yeah we didn’t know that was going on.’ Because people had heard about what they perceived as nothing happening in the schools, and we’re saying “these are all the things happening in schools”; talked about options and opportunities and other things that are happening, and this woman was coming up [to me] and I thought she was going to say,”’this is so good that these are the opportunities for our children.” And she goes, “Your roots are showing.”

That’s what I got. I thought, would they have gone up to Sterling Belliveau if he talked about fisheries and say, “You need a haircut”? No, you don’t hear that kind of thing. But I got it all the time. I got it at the market; people say, ‘”You’re not as tall as I thought you were.” That one I can kind of live with, because I actually am a lot shorter than people think I am. On television you look so—and then they find out that I’m not even hitting five foot four. Lenore Zann gets comments about her appearance all the time.

Sandra Hannebohm: Back to the podcast in a moment…

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Ronald Crowther: I’m a first time candidate running in the riding of Northside Westmount for the next provincial election. And I chose to financially support this podcast because it gives people a real inside look into the mindset of former MLAs, which is a hugely valuable resource, especially for first time candidates like myself. Keep up the great work, guys.

Thank you Ronald. You can be like Ronald, by going to OffScript.ca/Donate and choosing to give three, five or eight bucks a month.

Okay. Back to the podcast.

Sandra Hanebohm: For Ramona, it wasn’t just teasing and backhanded remarks that made life in the legislature difficult. At one point, she was physically threatened.

Ramona Jennex: This one evening I recognized that I was getting played. So I started to talk about schools and the school that I visited in that person’s constituency, and I talked for 50 minutes. Each person has an hour, and I talked for 50 because I can use my words to protect myself. I knew if he asked another question, it was going to be something derogatory. I thought, no I’m just going to talk it out.  It was probably the longest I had talked without really answering the question in the whole time I was in politics.

The evening shut down. You know it was the end of the evening because you are on your feet for four hours. When I walked out of the chamber, that member was raging mad—raging—comes running around the turn, and pushes me against the wall and says, “You listen to me girly girl!” as he pushed me up against the wall. He had both hands on me, and pushed me.

It was seen, it was witnessed by a number of people. Someone stepped in and moved him away. I made a report about what happened but my report was [about’ what do I do when this happens? I mean, that person had both hands on me. They pushed me up against the wall and they called me “girly girl.” No apology. Nothing happened. Except for I will say that Stephen MacNeil knew about it. It was reported to him and he spoke to the member not to do it again. That’s assault!

Sandra Hannebohm: She expected an apology, and she reported it because she expected it to receive proper attention. All MLAs, men or women, have expectations when they start out in politics, and usually…

Eleanor Norrie: You expect your position to receive respect, because you know it’s not you it’s your position, and I think there has to be respect for that position. But, I think some ministers and some MLAs think that it’s a personal thing, and I tried not to make it a personal thing. I didn’t want people to treat me any different than Eleanor Norrie that I always was. But I did expect some respect from the point of view that I was a minister of the Crown, that I was in that position that deserves the respect.

Sandra Hannebohm: Eleanor Norrie was the MLA for Truro-Bible Hill in the late ‘90s. She told us about the condescending tone that she experienced as a woman during question period, and one moment when that condescension became an aggressive display.

Mark Coffin: In the community around the cabinet or around the caucus table or in the legislature, would you have been treated differently in that space as well?

Eleanor Norrie: A couple times, yeah. It was condescending, especially the experienced former cabinet ministers that were in opposition, who knew more than any of us did in our cabinet. You get that strictly from a “we know more than you do” point of view, and then [also] as a woman.

Sandra Hannebohm: As a woman, Eleanor quoted a former minister during question period and was promptly informed by him that she “had no right” to use his words.

Eleanor Norrie: I had a quote from a former minister that I used. I managed to get it through the department and sort of threw it back. That former cabinet minister was so mad at the end of question period, just as the speakers were changing to the deputy speakers, he came right around to my desk and pounded my desk and said I had no right to throw that at him. He would never of done that to a man.

But the speaker didn’t see it, or at least the deputy speaker claims he didn’t see it happening. When the house went into the committee, I stood up and mentioned it, and took exception to it and demanded an apology. None came, and the speaker didn’t see it, so they didn’t rule on it. But the next day I got an apology. So all the women in the house at the time wanted me to join forces with them and really make an issue out of it.

Sandra Hannebohm: Eleanor didn’t much like the idea of “joining forces” with – what I’ve been calling the “women party.”

Eleanor Norrie: Sandy Jolly was also in cabinet, and is a female, so the two of us, we tried not to join forces, at least I tried not to. I tried to be part of the whole. I had difficulty with that.

Sandra Hannebohm: Trying to be “part of the whole” was an important decision that women struggled to manage. Even before winning a seat in the legislature, Michele Raymond described her worry about being “an unmanageable candidate.”

Michele Raymond: One of the things that unnerved me at the beginning was the person who was my campaign manager. He arrived one day talking about somebody else as an “unmanageable candidate” and I thought, oh no, am I going to be an unmanageable candidate? I must not be an unmanageable candidate! I must be that person [who is] well behaved and compliant and all the rest of it! And I was!

Sandra Hannebohm: Fitting in wasn’t a concern we heard from male MLAs as often as we did from women.

Sometimes, the women we spoke to also told us about decisions they made to distance themselves from the women’s movement in order to fit in and present themselves as “part of the whole.” MLAs always have to choose between parties, but when there are more women MLAs than usual, being a woman in the legislature seems to mean choosing to side with your own party, or siding with women regardless of party. Those who carefully distanced themselves from seeming too feminist, participated in their parties more actively, and on various levels.

Marie Dechman: There weren’t a lot of woman involved in the party. But the ones who were involved, and the ones that I worked with, were very strong and devoted people to the party, and very talented and gave a lot in many different ways. We had the women’s associations at that time, which sort of fizzled out now into everybody being a member of the main party. But, even women at that part, they played a big part in the party, in support. And a lot of other women, who were highly educated women, were involved in the party at various levels.

Sandra Hannebohm: Yet on the other hand…

Yvonne Atwell: Some of the women would not talk, I mean they would just simply get upset.

Sandra Hannebohm: Eleanor Norrie had a name for the pressure of being categorized as part of “the woman party.” She called it “the she-they.”

Eleanor Norrie: I was part of the community, I was part of the we, over there the people are elected are the they. So it’s the we and the they, because you’ll hear people say, “They are doing this to us.” Who’s they? You hear that all the time—they and them.

The day after I was elected, the community doesn’t treat you as part of the “we” anymore, you’re the “they”. So you become they. You become somebody that either they want to be with, or attack. You’re separate apart from the community, it’s what happens. Then on top of that, when you’re a woman, I call it the she-they. Because you become “them.” Not only are you “they” in government, you’re a woman in government. People have a hard time—or people did have a hard time accepting that—especially in cabinet.

Sandra Hannebohm: Not all the women MLAs we spoke with agreed that gender was the reason for being treated unfairly. Some were aware of sexism in the house but hadn’t didn’t really seen themselves as targets.

Michele Raymond: Yes, I know there were some horrible, very unpleasantly sexist comments made about other members, women, which I only heard about. I knew that existed but, I don’t know. I think it’s a matter of the dynamic of the house at any given time. Part of that masculine thing would be the heckling and so on, which is much more of a tactic to put people off their “game.”

Alexa McDonough: I was early in the days of the women’s movement, too. There were taunts that would come from the backbenches on the other sides sometimes would be along the lines of, “Why don’t you stay home and look after your kids” things like that.

Sandra Hannebohm: Alexa wasn’t exactly at home, but she was a woman in the house. Not all women in the house felt thrown off their game by conflict. Francene Cosman clashed with people inside and outside the House of Assembly, but told us that she never thought it was because of her gender.

Francene Cosman: I think it depends on the personality and I don’t think many people run if they’re not strong enough to handle the job. So anybody who would’ve thought they could roll over me knew differently.

Mark Coffin: But you’re not making it sound like a welcoming place for women.

Francene Cosman: I didn’t feel it was a welcoming place because—not because I was a woman—it was because I was so strong on my viewpoint about Bedford not being amalgamated and I was fighting my fight. You don’t become popular when you fight your fight. I could never be a pushover and I was never intimidated by anybody so it was tough but I was tough. So, that made it easier I guess.

Sandra Hannebohm: Yvonne Atwell didn’t seem intimidated when she described life at Province House, but she did at times, have to play tough. She was the first female African Nova Scotian MLA. She represented the Preston area.

Yvonne Atwell: I ran when the new boundaries were selected in Preston. Of course, at that time, the NDP was virtually unknown, frankly. It was always Liberals and Tories out there, and that was very historical. I won that by about one vote. I won the nomination by about one vote, and so that was the beginning of building the profile of the NDP in that area.  I ran, and of course I lost by like 500 votes,  probably friends and family.

Then I ran for the leadership, and then I ran again, and that’s when I won the seat.

Sandra Hannebohm: It was 1998 when she finally won that seat, but when she got there, it wasn’t exactly what she had imagined.

Yvonne Atwell: People, when you got up to speak didn’t really listen. People would say, they wouldn’t hassle me a lot openly but you could see that they were talking to each other and you know, they did that with all of us basically but I just found it, you know that the staring at me, I didn’t know what that was about.

Mark Coffin: And was that just at you, or would they do it to other members?

Yvonne Atwell: Well, I noticed a few of them that would just do it to me.  I figured, you can’t stare me down, you’re the one that’s going to have to play chicken here.

I was a surprise to the legislature, because first black woman, in Atlantic Canada really, to hold a seat as an MLA in opposition. People would, in the House of Assembly, it was not a comfortable place to be, only with my colleagues, right? And there were more women there during that time, I think there was five of us or six of us.

Mark Coffin: In caucus?

Yvonne Atwell: Yeah, so it was great, the way we…sometimes we would just tease the opposition and all of the women would sit in the front row just for fun, stuff like that. Because the men could be pretty mean, actually. So for me, personally I didn’t like going into the cafeteria to eat, because no one would sit with me. The only person to ever come and sit with me from the opposition was John Hamm, he would come if I was there by myself. There was nobody else from my party, which is really kind of silly but he would come and sit and we’d chat and that sort of thing but the others wouldn’t. Sometimes they would make underhanded racist remarks.

Sandra Hannebohm: We’ll hear more about the underhanded, and in many cases overt racism that Yvonne and other African Nova Scotian MLAs experienced in the next episode of Off Script.

The challenges that underrepresented leaders face in electoral politics intersect at a crossroads between race and gender, so understanding inequities means understanding where race, gender, class, ability and other social factors push people into the positions in which they find (or don’t find) themselves.

The short version is that there haven’t been many female MLAs in Nova Scotia; but there’ve been even fewer African Nova Scotian MLAs; and there have been far fewer African Nova Scotian women MLAs.

Thanks for listening to this episode of the Off Script podcast. This episode was written by Louise Cockram and me, Sandra Hannebohm. It was edited and produced by Mark Coffin. The theme music is by Josh Spacek at Needledrop-dot-co and all of the other music came from Kevin MacLeod at Incompetech.

Tune in next week for a special episode, and in another two weeks for a standard full episode. Next week I’ll be speaking with the research lead for Off Script, Louise Cockram, about how (or whether) sexism in the Nova Scotia legislature compares to the rest of Canada.

Off Script is produced by Springtide, a registered charity working to make democracy better here in Nova Scotia.

If you liked what you heard and plan to keep listening, consider becoming a donor for as little as three dollars a month. You can do that at OffScript.ca/Donate.

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