Ottawa Harm Reduction Collective

08/10/2026

Hi Folks! We now have a survey live for you to fill out if you're interested in VOLUNTEERING with us! Please check it out! Thank you!

CryptPad: end-to-end encrypted collaboration suite

08/10/2026

Introducing Bridget Tolley

Algonquin Elder, Kitigan Zibi Anishinabeg

The Ottawa Inuit circle stands on Algonquin territory. Before we speak of our own work, we owe respect to the people whose land this is, and to the leaders who have carried that responsibility long before we arrived.
Bridget Tolley is one of those leaders. She is an elder of the Kitigan Zibi Anishinabeg First Nation, born and raised on the land near the Gatineau and Désert rivers where her ancestors hunted. Her mother, Gladys Tolley, was struck and killed by a Sûreté du Québec police cruiser in 2001 near Maniwaki. When Bridget learned a year later that the investigation had been quietly closed without so much as a phone call to her family, she did not accept it. She began her own search for the truth — and in doing so, she uncovered a much wider pattern of institutions turning away from violence against Indigenous women.
Out of that grief, she built something lasting. She founded Families of Sisters in Spirit, and since 2006 she has led the annual October 4th vigil on Parliament Hill for Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls. In 2022, more than two decades after her mother's death, the Montreal Police formally apologized for how they handled the case. In 2025, she was awarded the King Charles III Coronation Medal for a lifetime of service to Indigenous families.
We invite Bridget Tolley to walk with us. As Inuit living and working on Algonquin land, we are guests here, and it is our responsibility to recognize the leaders of this territory — to listen, to learn, and to stand beside them the way we would ask them to stand beside us. Her strength, and the truth she has spent twenty years fighting for, belongs at the centre of this circle.

Photo: on the Kitchi Zibi

07/30/2026

We probably won't amplify your events anymore if you're using AI to generate your posters. Ottawa is FILLED with brilliant Inuit artists whose talents are going un-nurtured. Let's make a list. Would you make event poster art?
We could create a file (your work can be digitized) that artists here could contribute to and we'd make it available for community events.
AI drains the water tables and data centers make the surrounding environment uninhabitable. The risks aren't even conceived of yet.
Let's acknowledge the profound history of Inuit-made art and show it off. Hmmm... maybe even pay someone for it? It would be a beautiful way for Inuit organizations here to directly transfer wealth from their funders to urban Inuit who otherwise might not be able to access it.

07/30/2026

the first circle profile pic... life in the hood.