Week of October 5, 2026

Hiya! My name is Braden (they/them)—your new EDI officer! Feel free to reach out to me (braden.nowicki@mail.mcgill.ca) or other members of our lovely EDI committee for any EDI-related issues, concerns, or suggestions. In this lil’ section of the newsletter, I’ll be continuing the list of pertinent weekly cultural events which Jack initiated. I’m currently deciding what to include each week (Holidays & observances? Independence & national days? Remembrance days? Local Quebec & Montréal history? EDI History? STEM Spotlights? Poets?), so let me know what you’d like to see! In any case, I’ll maintain a thorough list of what I find (under construction—stay tuned), along with a general EDI resource list pointing you to…more resource lists!

• Quebec General Election (Monday, Oct. 5): Make sure to vote if you’re able!
• World Teachers’ Day (Monday, Oct. 5): UNESCO day honouring teachers! A good opportunity to thank your teaching staff.
• Nobel Prize Announcements are expected this week. As an astronomer concerned with the galactic centre, I’d love to highlight Andrea Ghez’s 2020 Nobel Physics Prize for precise tracking of stellar orbits in the galactic core, thereby confirming the presence of a supermassive black hole.
• Mental Illness Awareness Week and World Mental Health Day (Saturday, Oct. 10): A reminder to check in on your friends and colleagues, and to consider the systemic dimensions of mental health: for instance, the embodied effects of colonialism and national healthcare cuts, who has access to support, whose perspectives shape our health systems. Here are some McGill support resources: https://www.mcgill.ca/resources-services-students
• National Coming Out Day (Sunday, Oct. 11): A celebration of 2SLGBTQIA+ folks! Founded in 1988 on the first anniversary of the 1987 National March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights. There are many opportunities to get involved raising awareness—especially important with anti-2SLGBTQIA+ rhetoric on the rise globally.
• October is 2SLBGTQIA+ history month! McGill has several events (https://www.mcgill.ca/equity/initiatives/queer-history-month/qhm-2026), including a talk from influential trans studies scholar Susan Stryker (https://reporter.mcgill.ca/susan-stryker-pathbreaking-transgender-scholar-to-lecture-at-mcgill/) (I highly recommend her books!) today and a keynote by award-winning author francesca ekwuyasi on Oct. 15.
• Navratri, a Hindu festival honouring the Goddess Durga, starts Oct. 11.
• Frank Kameny, an incredibly influential activist for gay rights, died on Oct. 11, 2011. He was foundational to resisting federal employment discrimination on the basis of sexuality and depathologising homosexuality in the United States. Less well known is the fact that he completed an Astronomy PhD at Harvard under the supervision of Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin, whose work fundamentally changed our understanding of stars and elemental composition in the universe!

Week of October 12, 2026

• Canadian Thanksgiving, Indigenous Peoples’ Day (U.S.), Día de la Hispanidad (Spain), Día de la Resistencia Indígena (Venezuela), Día de la Respeto a la Diversidad Cultural (Argentina) (Monday, Oct. 12). Indigenous Peoples’ Day honours and celebrates Indigenous cultures, histories, and resilience/survivance in the face of ethnic cleansing, genocide, and erasure by settler colonial Europeans in Turtle Island and in the Americas more broadly.
• Ada Lovelace Day (Tuesday, Oct. 13): to celebrate and raise awareness of the contributions of women to STEM fields. Named after Ada Lovelace, whose foundational work highly influenced computer science and mathematics.
• Spirit Day (Thursday, Oct. 15): Wear purple to stand against bullying of 2SLGBTQIA+ youth!
• International White Cane Day (Thursday, Oct. 15): Celebrates the independence, mobility, and equal opportunity of people who are blind or visually impaired.
• World Food Day (Friday, Oct. 16), International Day for the Eradication of Poverty (Saturday, Oct. 17): UN Days to highlight the need for global efforts to eradicate hunger and poverty, which disproportionately affect minoritised communities in Canada. Consider helping out at a local food bank!
• Durga Puja (Oct. 16–20): Hindu festival celebrating the Goddess Durga’s victory over the demon Mahishasura.
• Chung Yeung Festival (Sunday, Oct. 18): Chinese Double Ninth Festival in which families visit and honour grave sites.
• Independence/National Days: Equatorial Guinea (Oct. 12), Spain (Oct. 12)
• The World March of Women was founded by the Fédération des femmes du Québec and culminated in a mass demonstration outside the NYC UN Headquarters on Oct. 17, 2000. Their list of demands made clear that combating patriarchy and ending systemic violence against women requires the eradication of poverty.
• The Black Panther Party was founded by Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale on Oct. 15, 1966 in Oakland, California. The influential group focused on self-defence and community survival programs for Black Americans, based on their comprehensive Ten-Point Program: https://blackpast.org/african-american-history/black-panther-party-ten-point-program-1966/.
• Mae Jemison, the first Black woman in space, was born Oct. 17, 1956. She served in the Peace Corps before joining NASA and flying on the Space Shuttle Endeavour (1992). She later founded The Jemison Group and the 100 Year Starship initiative, and often speaks about who is allowed to imagine the future. Her accomplishments heavily impacted the Afrofuturist cultural movement (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afrofuturism), which I highly recommend learning about!