Blogger, Artist, Social Media, Web Designer, Photographer- I blog about nouns-people, places and things, even when it's negative I try to put a positive spin on it. @tinawinterlikfb https://tinawinterlik.blogspot.com
🎨 Ireland Pays Its Artists a Basic Income — Why Can’t Canada? 🇨🇦
While Canada continues to spend billions propping up fossil fuels, another small country across the Atlantic has made a bold and inspiring choice: Ireland pays its artists a basic income. 🇮🇪✨
💚 A Radical Act of Respect for Creativity
In 2022, Ireland launched a groundbreaking pilot called the Basic Income for the Arts (BIA) — the first of its kind in the world.
Under this program, 2,000 artists and creative arts workers receive €325 per week — that’s roughly $2,070 CAD per month — no strings attached, for three years.
It’s not a luxury. It’s a recognition that art is real work — work that nurtures society, builds empathy, and keeps culture alive.
The program is not means-tested, meaning artists qualify based on creative practice, not poverty level. The goal is to measure how stable income affects creativity, mental health, and community wellbeing.
So far, it’s been an overwhelming success. Artists report better focus, confidence, and health. Ireland plans to make the program permanent in 2026.
💔 Meanwhile in Canada...
Here at home, countless artists — painters, musicians, writers, filmmakers, photographers, and designers — struggle to survive.
🎭 Many live below the poverty line.
🎨 Most work multiple jobs or unpaid gigs “for exposure.”
🏠 Rising rents force creative people out of cities like Vancouver and Toronto.
💸 Grants are temporary, competitive, and often bureaucratic.
Canada celebrates art — but too often refuses to fund the artist.
🌎 The Money Is There — It’s About Priorities
According to environmental reports, Canada spends billions each year subsidizing the fossil fuel industry — even as it pledges to fight climate change.
Imagine if even a fraction of that went into a Basic Income for Artists:
10,000 creators supported nationwide
Mental health and housing stability improved
Cultural innovation flourishing from coast to coast
Indigenous storytelling, language, and art protected for future generations
🎨 Artists don’t need charity — they need respect and stability.
💡 How Canada Could Do It
🇨🇦 Step 1: Pilot the program — Start with 1,000 artists across BC or Canada for three years.
🇨🇦 Step 2: Fund it fairly — Redirect a small part of fossil fuel subsidies and unused corporate tax credits.
🇨🇦 Step 3: Measure results — Track well-being, productivity, and cultural engagement.
🇨🇦 Step 4: Expand it — Just as Ireland is now doing.
This isn’t a dream — it’s a policy choice.
✨ Artists Are Essential Workers of Hope
Ireland recognized something simple and profound: when you support your artists, you support the soul of your nation.
Canada can do the same. It’s time to move beyond words, beyond token grants — and into real, sustainable support for those who shape our stories and inspire our future.
💬 Imagine a Canada where artists can live, create, and thrive — not just survive.
🌻 Reflective Questions
What would change in your community if local artists had a guaranteed income to create?
How do fossil fuel subsidies compare to investments in culture and creativity?
What does “art as work” mean to you — and how might it reshape how we value people?
🧠 Quick Quiz
1. How much do artists in Ireland’s pilot program receive per week?
A) €200
B) €325
C) €500
2. How long is the pilot program scheduled to last?
A) 1 year
B) 2 years
C) 3 years
3. What is one key difference between Canada’s current system and Ireland’s?
A) Canada offers a universal basic income
B) Ireland provides guaranteed income for working artists
C) Canada funds all artists equally
People often ask, “Why didn’t she leave?” as if walking away from abuse is simple. But the truth is: for many women and survivors, leaving can feel more dangerous than staying.
Especially when you're poor. Especially when you're alone. Especially when the system that’s supposed to help doesn’t show up.
🏚️ Nowhere to Go, No One to Help
In British Columbia—and across Canada—rents are through the roof. In many cities, $1,800 gets you a tiny studio. But what if you’re on social assistance and getting less than $1,000 a month?
Where do you go when there are no shelters?
What do you do when there's a waitlist for housing or your kids might be taken away?
Who do you trust when the police don’t believe you—or worse, blame you?
For many, staying with an abuser feels like the lesser of two evils. Because the alternative might be homelessness. Or losing your children. Or being stalked and hurt anyway. The truth is, many women leave—and are still killed.
💸 The Poverty Trap
📉 Abusers often control the money, phones, and transportation
🛑 Survivors may have no access to savings or income
📞 Legal help is expensive, and free resources are stretched thin
💊 Mental health and trauma support is often not covered or accessible
Meanwhile, if you do leave, you may be forced into unsafe housing, shelters with no privacy, or rooms shared with strangers. And the stress? It’s constant. Fear. Exhaustion. Paperwork. Re-traumatization.
🚫 When Systems Fail Survivors
The justice system is not always on our side. Survivors are often:
❌ Disbelieved or dismissed by police
🗓️ Told to wait months for court dates
📂 Expected to collect their own evidence while retraumatized
💥 Blamed for “provoking” violence or “staying too long”
These failures send a clear message: you’re on your own.
❤️ The Strength in Staying Alive
Some people stay not because they are weak, but because they are strong enough to survive day after day in a system stacked against them. They stay because they are protecting their children. Or because they’re planning their escape silently, carefully. Or because they simply don’t want to die.
“Why didn’t she leave?” is the wrong question. We should be asking:
“Why was he allowed to hurt her?”
“Why didn’t anyone help her?”
“Why are we okay with a system that traps people in danger?”
📣 Tomorrow: The Path Forward
In Part 5, I’ll share a vision for change—how we can raise boys to be kind, support survivors early, and build communities where violence isn’t the norm.
Until we make leaving safe, supported, and sustainable—we can’t blame anyone for staying.
Here is a little project https://thealchemyofivymae.blogspot.com/ I started and having a lot of fun. I get up really early and I need something to do before I can actually get up and move around so I decided to write a novella. And to post 256 blogposts and then at the end of a year , re organize it all and make it a book. I was going to get everyone to help but I was having so much fun I have already blogged up until end of Nov 2025. But I plan to go back and refine now so if you want to help, you can add weird plot twists and stuff but has to keep to the theme of the storyline. Anyways check it out. Going to be fun. Exciting, Scary, Adventure, Educational.
Do you ever feel really small and think what can I do. Are you tired?
I am. Sometimes I feel like I want to quit this blog but then I read something and I think...this needs a voice. I am small, right now I am poor and at the end of the month homeless, I am single mom of a beautiful 15 year old girl and this fentanyl crisis is freaking me out. I haven't personally lost any friends or family to this crisis but I do know many who have and it's devastating. Any loss of life is devastating. GRIEF! Been there.
I come up with all these cRaZy thoughts and my kids says "what are you on?" Nothing! I just have these ideas that pop into my head. Insights! Right now to me, it feels like this Fentanyl crisis is very similar to the small pox epidemic. Many people don't really know about it, we are just learning more as those enlightened enough delve into the muddy waters of so called "Reconciliation."
We are losing so many lives on the DTES (everywhere) but the stats are showing it's a high percentage of First Nation women. The matriarchs! These poor souls who have suffered so much already from the legacy of the Residential schools, from being in Foster Care, from being pushed aside and forgotten by society..these single moms, these children, homeless, preyed upon by other sick souls and the very government that is supposedly elected to protect used and abused them and just single parents in general. OUR SOCIETY IS REALLY F*KED UP!!
IT'S NOT SUPPOSED TO BE THIS WAY! I could go on a long rant about how we are supposed to be hunters and gatherers and 200 years ago, at this time of year huge amounts of salmon would be arriving and the men would be helping fishing and women would be cleaning, drying the salmon. The women would be harvesting berries, the women would be gathering roots and making cedar clothes. Everyone would be working and getting ready for winter. Everyone had a job, home, and love...NOT LIKE NOW!!
Am I making any sense? Women had women to rely on. They had children but they could find their own food and if you study anthropology- is they provided most of the diet. But in today's women, especially single moms are treated like shit. Either you work yourself to death and have someone else raise your child (i.e. lovely hard working Philipino nanny ) and your kid has her morals, not yours...because you weren't there...or you have to live in precarious oppressive situations or God forbid the government swoops in and steals your child.
Why do you think these women are using drugs. To numb the pain of all that I just mentioned.
Enter Fentanyl. BIG PHARMA!
This is going to be a long rant, you might want to get a coffee and some kind of treat because this is ugly shit and not nice to talk about but I need to vent here and if you want to stick around well, I hope I enlighten you or if you are already maybe you can share.
My arms are already sore from typing...I've got tendonitis, so I can't type to much for to long. It's why I can't take many labour jobs, it's why I should be on disability but disability is as evil and de-humanizing as welfare. It's not enough to live on, proving your poor is humility, proving you can't actually work is even more exhausting and depressing and I refuse to grovel to the government- unknown entities who see you as a number and can dismiss you with a keystroke. So many suffer from this useless system. And Christy Clark, thank god she's gone she help propel this shit to the level it is. And John Horgan, while I love what you have been doing so far, $100 extra month is NOTHING!! NOTHING!! NOTHING!! NOTHING!! NOTHING!! NOTHING!!
WE NEED BASIC INCOME NOW FOR ALL SINGLE PARENTS!!!
(and tiny houses on all the streets, close them, hook the houses up to street facilities, plant gardens everywhere, shut down all the shipping and shit, use local only, clean up the harbour, bring back OUR SALMON, teach our kids how to survive with no F*CKNG electricity, because WHEN THAT SOLAR STORM, earthquake, Tsunami, hurricane, flood, or god forbid MOON misses the U.S. and hits us...help our child have some sort of tools to survive.. even if it's just a few.. DO IT FOR OUR CHILDREN'S CHILDREN)
whew! breathe...1, 2, 3... That feels a little better. I needed to vomit that all up! BLAK!
Last night on the news this lady was saying about all these kids in OTTAWA starting back to school and they were afraid for them. One mom said that when she was young if you smoked a joint it wasn't the end of the world..now maybe it is.
I remember when I was little... 12 ...my sister she gave me this book called GO ASK ALICE, it was supposed to warn me about drugs, because people were doing LSD and jumping off roofs and shit..in honesty ...it made me want to do drugs. Go figure!
DRUGS... WHAT ARE THEY? Let's talk about that for a minute.
My mom had open heart surgery when I was 14, she had all sorts of health issues, she may have had Lupus we don't know, she hurt all the time. She was on meds up the ying yang. She took prenizone, you know that one, it's evil. After she had been on it 10 years we read it caused all sorts of evil things. She died 10 years ago. GRIEF- remember I mentioned it above...hit me really hard. My mom was grieving for years. My dad took his life when I was 11 years old. She had 3 teens to raise, she had 4 kids but the oldest was already married and all that pressure took it's toll on them ...I remember mom saying to me...that she had to get a job or the welfare would take us. When my dad took his life there life insurance was void. My mom was an incredibly strong beautiful loving woman and she survived, she raised us and she got me through school even though I encountered some awful teachers and wanted to quit so bad. She survived another heart attack later on when my child was just 5 months. She hurt all the time and BIG PHARMA was pumping her full of drugs.
I remember near the end. I was so scared. I had had a falling out with my family, I had no money. My kids dad is Mexican, he is lucky he make $20 a day so he can't help...and we are not together, so I get nothing. I am on my own...anyways, I had social assistance when my kid was born up until 3. Then they were kicking me off so I figured out how to get into a Co-op, some really lovely people helped an I managed to move but I didn't want some people to know...I was just scared...scared all the time...just like so many of these single moms/dad, aunties, caring for kids...that the welfare system will come steal our kids and force them into some evil situation where they will be abused, used and preyed upon..(a lovely legacy of the residential school-(sarcasm here...I hope you realize).
Anyways, my mom was in terrible pain, she couldn't take alot of pain killers and she called an asked me could I please get her some medical marijuana...she was ready to try anything...and I was living in Nelson- and green was BC underground ecomony and how we survived the recession if you are clueless to such things. But I told her no. I was scared. I was so scared someone would see me and then I would lose my kid.
Why am I telling you all this? If you are still with me...Hello! Thanks for listening.
Drugs. They are F*KING EVIL. but what kind of drugs. In the sixties parents were afraid of LSD, in the 80's is was cocaine, in the 90's it was crack, in 2000 we were back to heroin (thanks to 9/11) and now it's a FENTANYL CRISIS!
Where's it coming from? I heard it's coming from China, ...the heroin is coming from Iraq, Iran, Afganistan...I don't know...somewhere like that, because of the wars, and it's coming up from Mexico and South America...along with cocaine.. all thanks to the lovely WAR ON DRUGS. War makes wars...just in a different way. NEGATIVE ENERGY FEEDS IT!
So if you looked back in history and at true Indigenous- hunting gathering societies, they all have medicinal herbs that the shamans/medicine man/woman/two-spirits/peoples gave to people who were dealing with GRIEF or some other kind of troubling event.
Did you ever see IN THE HEART OF THE WORLD. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hRgTtrQOiR0 they warned us back in 1990's to take care, that we were screwing up the world and we better stop. They use the coca leaf to think well, to find answers to their problems, the shaman guides them.
So what's my point about all this. My point is where is the connection and disconnection.
Do you think that someone who has a home, food to eat, children to raise, is surrounded by loving people is going to turn to "drugs". Maybe is someone they love dies, or many and they are in grief the shaman would help them. But what is happening right now if you STEP BACK and LOOK at the big picture is that women are being thrown aside, their children must suffer the consquences and you have EVIL BIG PHARMA spewing forth it's vomit onto poor suffering souls.
The opiate crisis is at it's peak because doctors- (so called healers.. ya right) have been medicating people with DRUGS to stop chronic pain, to medicate (depression), to zombize (ADHD) our children...
Apparently dealers put a little bit of fentanyl in one packet so someone purposely od's leading users to thing that it's super high quality and they risk getting it because they want the best high. Doctors/BIG PHARMA created this issue by prescribing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxycodone
for pain. https://www.drugs.com/oxycontin.html
Is any of this making sense...it's what they did and our doing to our First Nations, especially our BEAUTIFUL STRONG MATRIARCHS, the women who fought so hard to raise strong young men and women to carry on. It's colonialism, yes, and the legacy of the residential schools and corporate greed, it's today's government and society using and abusing the most vulnerable..the women and children. They are wiping out the women, women who love the earth and wan to protect their mother. They are wiping out the mothers. https://tinawinterlik.blogspot.ca/2017/06/do-it-for-every-child-taken-june-is.html
HOW DO WE RISE? HOW DO WE CHANGE THIS? With art right? We resist, we share?
What else can I do at the moment. So this morning I came across the first article shared and thought what can I do, to give this man a voice, to give a voice to everyone who has lost someone they loved to this evilness. And that's why I made this post. So I am sharing. It's all I can do because I am having a hard time keeping my head above the water...I am trying not to drown...just as the mother, our beautiful mothers, and mother earth is drowning.
Use ART LIKE A DRUG!! Heal yourself, save your friends, RISE UP and let's take back the control. Let's save the mothers, grandmothers, children and let's SAVE MOTHER EARTH. She doesn't need us but I think she still loves us just like all your inhabitants, but if we keep hurting her, hurting each other, hurting ourselves..well she will hurt us..she won't mean to but she will just be protecting herself. Does that makes sense? Are you still here!! THANK YOU!
Thank you! If you have read even some of this page, thank you. I hope that teachers, parents, professors, doctors, everyone will read my page and share it and discuss what I am saying. We need to calm down, but we need to rise in a peace way. We need to reach out support and love one another.
In the video above Deepak Chopra says something about "we think we are outside of nature, we are not, we are part of nature, maybe if we calm down, nature will calm down" (not a direct quote, to tired to go get it)
BUT ISN'T IS OBVIOUS!
With all the awful energy, with the hate being spewed in the world, especially of late, no wonder the storms are getting bigger...yes our ignorance and disrespect of mother earth is causing climate change but you must get to a much higher level and step back and see it for what it is. Energy. We are all energy.. positive and negative energy...it has to go somewhere... how will we use that energy, our energy. One day our energy will go back into the earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust...let's call upon our ancestors, the positive energies of the universe to help us in this hour of need. Let's reach out and love one another, let's help each other. Do it for our children's children.
Sending love and light. I love you all. I love the water, the ocean, the dirt, the birds, the sacred cedar trees, the moon, the sun, I love everything and I ask you to think, eat and pray love like that book says. Be love today. Let's turn things around.
I will have a new auction start at the beginning of each month. I will add new ideas during the month so be sure to check back. All auctions will end at the end of each month and items will not be re-offered for a while, if at all, so if you want something be sure to get in there.
Right now I have 2 ballerina paintings that would look lovely in a dancer's room, studio, or store.
I am also working hard on sales and so I will have lot of cool things to buy.
Right now I have some super cute tiny little bird houses, not sure a bird could actually go in, it is more for fun.
Anyways if you are looking for super cool little gifts for grads, wedding, birthdays check it out and in a bit I am going to be tying them altogether with my favorite environmental causes such as the #SaveMyCoast, #StopSiteC #StopKM #FishFarmGetOut and try and help them out and myself. My hope is to raise enough funds that I can take my daughter traveling for 6 months and learn more about our roots. I want to immerse ourselves in culture. https://tinawinterlik.blogspot.ca/2017/05/will-you-help-us-immerse-ourselves-in.html
Stay tuned.
It's been year since the oil spill in Vancouver last year...
And EVERYONE KNOWS
WE WILL NEVER BE READY!
Save My Coast is a Art Project of Oil Paintings and Digital Images in a video and with music to help you visually remind of what we stand to lose if we do not take action and keep fossil fuels in the ground.
Okay here it is the finished product. Next time I will just make one video
per painting. I actually didn't enjoy making the video...well I liked
it when it was done but remembering to take the photos throughout the
process is difficult and throws me off my game a bit. The painting I loved. I think it turned out great!
I hope you like it. Please let me know if you did. See price and info below.
So I was out for a walk today, in between the rain I went out as the sun came out, and I was dressed too warm. I was walking along and I was just so in tune...the first thing that caught my eye was a wasp nest had fallen to the ground. As I went to check it out, my foot squished and slipped in slippery mud on the walk. Yikes...I squealed as I nearly fell. I'm awake now.
And I was, the moss in the grass was so vibrate and green and lush as the sun shone on it. In the roots of the big trees, it had rained so much there was actual puddles, I had never seen that before...and then as I was walking that's when the puddles...jumped out at me and I saw the clouds and had to take these photos.
I have lots of ideas...might paint some or just play with them digitally. Just sharing for now.
Have a nice evening.
