Father tells story of meeting wife at protest against OSAP cuts

By Lyba Mansoor

Dear kids,

I think it’s time I tell you an incredible story: The story of how I met your socialist mother at an OSAP cuts protest.

It was way back in the spring of 2019. I had just turned 21, and after years of rejection and failure on the dating front, I had pretty much given up on love. That was until, I locked eyes with your mother.

This was a tumultuous time kids. Doug Ford of the Conservatives had just been elected premiere, and he seemed pretty much against all basic human rights, and looked to have a particular vendetta against learning.

University kids were worried about affording education, and your mother was at the forefront of this fight. Sure, I maybe should have been focused on the whole protesting against the OSAP funding cuts/general attack on student services, but all that felt like nonsense once I saw her.

With the wind blowing her wispy, poorly dyed purple bangs, a megaphone to her mouth screaming “Doug Ford is a power hungry asshole,” standing on a milk crate, fighting for her rights, like a modern day Emmeline Pankhurst, I knew I had met the future mother of my children.

I plucked up the courage to ask her out following the protest. Albeit reluctant, she said yes, mumbling something about the current provincial Conservative government being a sign of the impending apocalypse, and that she may as well not be too picky.

To this day I remember dancing to her favourite song, Notorious B.I.G’s Mo Money Mo Problems, on our wedding day.

I am eternally indebted to Doug Ford for challenging all our rights as Canadians at every turn. If he hadn’t, who knows, you kids wouldn’t be here today. Sure, maybe your mother would have still been around if he hadn’t privatized health care, but I don’t want to live in a world whose future wasn’t bleak enough to have made your mother so quick to settle down.