If you follow Peterborough author Erica Richmond online or know her in person, you have probably seen her wearing a T-shirt stating “You will have to go through me,” written in the colours of the transgender pride flag.

That’s because, as an ally and mother to a trans son, she believes that the onus shouldn’t be on individual communities to do their own advocating.

“I’m definitely trying to add a different voice to the mix,” Richmond says. “I know when I post things, depending on where I’m posting, I will get hate and it’s hard — no one wants to get a hate comment directed to them.”

“But if I can’t handle a hate comment as an ally, imagine what it would feel like if I was trans, posting it and getting that comment,” Richmond adds. “I can’t call myself an ally or an advocate if I’m not willing to get hit and take some of that off them.”

In an essay titled “Always Ash,” published in the HerStry Blog on October 15, Richmond tells her own stories as a mother and ally. The essay comprises small vignettes of memories exploring motherhood and grief — 15 of them, to align with the age of her son when he came out to her by sending her a meme.

Woven between relatable and touching family moments, Richmond describes the fear and anxieties she felt when navigating her son’s transition, while simultaneously living with the consuming grief following the death by suicide of the father of her two children.

“This is written as a list essay, which is definitely one of my favourite styles and forms of writing,” Richmond says. “It also helped, especially when I’m writing about heaviness and grief, because it comes out in these spurts.”

Though she has written many creative essays about heavy topics, Richmond says “Always Ash” was particularly challenging to write because she hadn’t written about her experience before. She was working with a writing coach, who had suggested writing about Ash when she was considering a new piece to submit to a creative writing contest.

“I’d purposefully not written about that (Ash and his coming out) because I thought that’s not my story — it’s Ash’s story,” she says. “But my writing coach said ‘You don’t have to write Ash’s story. You have your own story on this.'”

To write about Ash and those challenging years following his coming out, Richmond says she had to approach it safely.

Writing safely is something she talks about in workshops and speeches she leads through Open Sky Stories, a community for writers. It’s something she’s thought about regularly when writing pieces for Yelling at Dead People, the manuscript that will be comprised of creative essays about grief and parenting.

“I didn’t write this until things were really good with Ash, so that helped,” Richmond says. “Journaling in the throes of things is incredibly helpful, but writing a piece for publication and for others to consume, I think, is often best once you’ve had some breathing space.”

“Things are so, so good now and they were when I wrote it. It wasn’t while I was still feeling all the big feels, so that helped me feel really safe in it.”

Unlike many of her other pieces, there was also someone else’s safety she had to consider while writing. She was constantly checking in with Ash as she was writing and before she submitted the piece to be considered for publication.

Despite the personal revelations about her own anxieties, Richmond guesses the only thing that may have surprised Ash upon reading the final story was her admitting to having confronted their neighbour after he said he’s too “old-fashioned” to use Ash’s new name.

“He was quite happy with it,” she says of Ash’s reaction to the essay. “Ash is a big-time reader and writer himself, so I think he thinks the same ways.”

“The hardest part was really doing justice, and I wanted not to end with people feeling sorry for him. I wanted to showcase how much joy and beauty and love there is in all of this and the messiness in our family.”

It also helped, Richmond says, to balance the harder stuff with the moments of lightness and comedy throughout the anecdotes in the essay.

In contrast to her “old-fashioned” neighbour, Richmond shares that her own parents celebrated Ash’s new names with burst of rainbow flags across their home.

Then there’s the story of injecting “boy juice” (coined by Ash’s best friend), the text conversation Richmond had with her son about the most appropriate emoji to use in a pride post on social media and, of course, the stories of meeting Ash for the first time.

“As soon as he came out, the shift was almost immediate in his confidence, and that was so cool to be able to see that and to know that other people witnessed that as well,” Richmond says. “It really was this beautiful transition into who he really is, so to be able to celebrate that with him is really cool.”

“Always Ash” is one of three essays in Richmond’s full manuscript that have already been published. “The Reverberation of Sound” was published in Beyond Words Magazine in September, and “Parenting After Suicide,” a so-called little book comprised of her essays, was published by Give A Sheet Press at Take Cover Books this spring.

Richmond says that whenever she’s writing, she’s very conscious about only submitting it to publications that align with her own visions and beliefs for the piece.

Similarly, she’s also intentional about who she lets into Open Sky Stories, and makes it very clear through her website and social media posts that her business is always a welcoming and safe space.

“As a business owner, I want to be clear about where I stand and I want to make sure that the people who come into the groups that I lead know I’m not going to tolerate hate — you’re out if anything happens,” Richmond says. “It’s my business and I get to do what I want that way, which is so lovely.”

“Sometimes it’s going to fly over someone’s head or they’re just going to be angry no matter what, but as an ally, it’s important to do these things even though it’s uncomfortable — or maybe especially because it’s uncomfortable.”

For more information about Erica Richmond, visit www.openskystories.com.

One of the most acclaimed and frequently produced Canadian plays of recent years is making its Peterborough debut, featuring many of the artists who brought it to life during its 2023 world premiere at the Stratford Festival.

New Stages Theatre is presenting a staged reading of Nick Green’s Casey and Diana at 7 p.m. on Sunday, November 15 at Market Hall Performing Arts Centre in downtown Peterborough.

New Stages artistic director Mark Wallace tells kawarthaNOW there are “just a handful seats left for sale in the balcony,” so anyone hoping to attend should not delay in purchasing tickets.

“We really have an incredible cast for this one,” Wallace adds. “So many actors love this play.”

That cast includes four of the six actors from the Stratford production, reunited with the original production’s director Andrew Kushnir.

Sean Arbuckle returns as Thomas, Laura Condlln as Pauline, Davinder Malhi as Andre, and Peterborough’s own Linda Kash as Marjorie. They will be joined by Ordena Stephens-Thompson as Vera and Chloë Dirksen as Diana.

Sarah Lazzarino will stage manage the reading, with sound design by Debashis Sinha, who also designed sound for the original Stratford production.

Casey and Diana is based on the historic 1991 visit by Diana, Princess of Wales, to Casey House, a Toronto hospice caring for people with HIV/AIDS.

Set around the anticipation of Diana’s arrival, Green’s play focuses not only on the famous visitor but on the residents, caregivers, friends, and family members at Casey House during a period when people living with HIV/AIDS faced widespread fear, prejudice, and stigma.

The result is a play New Stages describes as dramatic, humorous, and deeply moving.

Originally commissioned by the Stratford Festival, Casey and Diana had its world premiere at the festival’s Studio Theatre in June 2023. Kushnir directed the production, which featured Arbuckle, Condlln, Kash, and Malhi along with Krystin Pellerin as Diana and Sophia Walker as Vera.

The production subsequently had a sold-out engagement with Soulpepper Theatre Company in Toronto in early 2024, with most of the actors from the Stratford production reprising their roles. The Soulpepper production received the 2024 Toronto Theatre Critics Award for Best New Canadian Play and the 2024 Heritage Toronto Public History Award, along with a Dora Mavor Moore Award nomination.

The play has since seen productions at theatres including Theatre Aquarius in Hamilton, Royal Manitoba Theatre Centre in Winnipeg, Neptune Theatre in Halifax, Arts Club Theatre Company in Vancouver, Alberta Theatre Projects in Calgary, Citadel Theatre in Edmonton, American Players Theatre in Wisconsin, and more.

Casey and Diana focuses on a day that became an important part of the history of Casey House and the response to HIV/AIDS in Canada.

Diana had already become internationally known for challenging the stigma surrounding HIV/AIDS — including shaking hands with those dying from the disease — when she visited the Toronto hospice in 1991.

Her visit brought considerable public attention to Casey House and the people receiving care there at a time when misinformation and fear about HIV remained widespread.

Green developed Casey and Diana after researching the visit and speaking with people connected to Casey House, using the historic event as the setting for a story about compassion, dignity, friendship, and loss.

“I won’t lie, it was a tough play to write,” Green said in a 2025 interview with J. Gordon Shillingford Publishing.

“I remember going on a little mini-retreat to a friend’s cottage in the middle of winter, and the enormity of the entire thing kind of landed on me like an avalanche. There I was setting out to write about a beloved figure and a hugely significant Canadian institution.”

The November 15 performance at the Market Hall is a staged reading rather than a fully mounted production, putting the focus on Green’s script and the performances of the six-member cast. The approximately two-hour performance includes an intermission. Due to strong language and mature themes, it is recommended for audiences aged 14 and older.

Tickets are $30 plus fees. New Stages also offers a $20 welcome rate for people who need a lower-priced option and a $40 pay-it-forward rate that helps support the welcome rate.

With the performance nearly sold out, tickets for Casey and Diana can be purchased at markethall.org/new-stages or by calling the Market Hall box office at 705-775-1503.

kawarthaNOW is proud to be media sponsor of New Stages Theatre Company’s 2025-26 season.

According to Peterborough photographer Heather Doughty, women’s stories are “undervalued.” That’s why she’ll never stop sharing them.

Doughty is seeking participants for her next project, titled “Stories of Cultural Ageism Experienced by Women in Canada.” Funded in part by the Ontario Arts Council and Government of Ontario, the project aims to raise awareness of the cultural phenomenon where women become increasingly invisible or marginalized as they age.

It will include photographs, audio recordings, and panels of personal experiences and discussions around ageism experienced by women 55 years of age and older.

“When we share our stories — when somebody’s brave and steps up and says ‘This is happening to me, this is my story’ — there are other women thinking, ‘I am not alone in that, I can breathe, I can take one step,'” Doughty says.

“Maybe it’s just sharing their story with their best friend or somebody else, but it’s taking that tiny little step, and those tiny little steps all come together and make change happen and that’s the biggest goal.”

Doughty is not new to using her artwork to change the narrative around how women are seen. Her projects have celebrated “mom bods,” explored the stigma around the menstrual cycle, retold the stories of “villainous” women in history and media, and otherwise challenged the way women — and their bodies — are seen in contemporary society.

Her latest work-in-progress jumps off from a 2024 exhibit titled “The Ghost in the Room,” sponsored by DJC Modern Apparel, which showed off female beauty in aging through a series of portraits of women aged 40 to over 80.

“There’s so few mature women represented in media, and if they are, they tend to be little old ladies, or grumpy, or it’s not complimentary,” Doughty says. “But older women are stunning, beautiful, so The Ghost in the Room presented older women in a new light.”

“The whole project resonated so much with so many people. I had people telling me ‘This has happened to me’ and I thought there’s more to explore here. As lovely as The Ghost in the Room was, I think it actually has legs and can maybe raise awareness, and try to affect some change, even locally.”

To get her new project rolling, Doughty put out a public survey, open to anybody, inviting them to share their stories and insights around how they feel about aging and if they’ve experienced ageism themselves.

Roughly 93 per cent of respondents believe that ageism occurs for women over the age of 55, while 95.7 per cent suggested that society judges older women differently from older men.

“I think that comes down in some ways to value. There’s still the wage gap, there are still all those other inherent inequalities,” Doughty says. “A guy who’s 75 or 65 is thought to have all this experience — he can mentor and he’s this grandfather that can do all this. I think the pressure that’s already there (for women) keeps building more and more and more. Whereas for older men, it’s almost like they win the race or, as they get older and they get grey, they’ve won some award.”

In her survey, Doughty also asked participants to mark some of the areas where they think women over the age of 55 experience the most ageism.

The top three included the workplace, in healthcare, and in media. As part of the project, Doughty will be videotaping small panels in her studio of people talking about their own experiences of ageism in those categories.

“I’m looking forward to the panel discussions,” she says. “If there is somebody who doesn’t believe it (ageism) exists, or has a different viewpoint, it’s going to be very interesting to hear that.”

Doughty is also seeking participation from female models over the age of 55 to join her in the studio to get their hair and make-up done and have portraits done in a similar style to those in “The Ghost in the Room.” A small compensation fee will be provided.

“Most of them were laughing,” Doughty recalls of the models who participated in the 2024 shoot. “They were saying it was a common thread that when women go to get their photos taken, it’s always ‘Can you make me look 20 years younger?’, and they said it was so cool and felt so good to be celebrating who they are.”

“They were not feeling any pressure to look younger. They were celebrating who they were right then and there, and that was really powerful and wonderful.”

Another component of the project will include audio recordings of women speaking about their experiences and how they have been impacted by ageism.

The recordings will be completely anonymous, either shared under a pseudonym or shared and re-recorded by someone else.

Doughty is aiming for the exhibit to be live for International Women’s Day on March 8, 2027, and she hopes it will inspire conversation and change — especially given the recent worldwide regression in women’s rights after decades of moving towards equality.

“Now that I have granddaughters, I actually have to be louder so that they still have the same basic rights that I have currently,” Doughty says.

“If we don’t share these stories, we run the risk — in the way the world is going today — of losing where we’ve come from. That’s our biggest goal right now in today’s world: keeping our voices loud and strong and saying ‘We’re still here, we are not perfect, and we are not expected to be perfect.'”

To be a participant in any of the segments, fill out the form at docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfjRyBwRtVcnysxdlgdMcPcruW1CeyWWbNSuNl3ekPbQwCiFw/viewform.