After the closing of Healthsharing magazine, Women's Press selected an editorial collective to put together a collection of articles from the magazine that reflects the central feminist health issues as seen by the magazine over the past fifteen years.
"We refer to health in its broadest sense, to include a state of physical, mental, spiritual and social well-being. Thus, political, social and environmental conditions are all health issues. It is not enough to quit smoking, run five miles a day and eat only organic food if our environment remains polluted, and our living and working conditions oppressive. Discussion of individual involvement and responsibility can be an empty exercise for a person who is struggling just to feed her children."
That was the definition that was to guide Healthsharing: A Canadian Women's Health Quarterly throughout its fifteen-year history. On Women Healthsharing offers us a chance to reflect on the accomplishments of so many years of thinking debating and mobilizing. However, it also offers us the challenge of what remains to be done. The sad part is that we will have to go the next distance without Healthsharing.

Enakshi Dua is an assistant professor in the Department of Sociology, Queen’s University. She writes on race, class and gender as well as Third World development. She joined the editorial collective of On Women Healthsharing to help document the legacy of Healthsharing magazine. Healthsharing informed and challenged Ena and her friends as they struggled to experience their health and illness in a more progressive way.

Enakshi Dua's profile page

Maureen FitzGerald is an urban anthropologist and a Fellow of the Mark S. Bonham Centre for Sexual Diversity Studies at the University of Toronto. She is a co-editor of Queerly Canadian: An Introductory Reader in Sexuality Studies and Still Ain’t Satisfied: Canadian Feminism Today. In the 1980s, she was managing editor of Women’s Press and a member of Lesbians Making History, a collective that did oral history of ‘gay women’ in Toronto in the fifties and sixties. She is fascinated by all things Toronto.

Maureen FitzGerald's profile page

Linda Gardner is the HIV/STD Program Coordinator at the Bay Centre for Birth Control, Regional Women’s Health Centre, affiliated with Women’s College Hospital in Toronto. She is a longtime grassroots activist and has worked extensively with the Ontario Coalition for Abortion Clinics, March 8th Coalition and more recently with AIDS Action Now! Currently, she is the co-chair of the board of directors of the Community AIDS Treatment Information Exchange, and a member of the Gay Asian AIDS Project’s Advisory committee and the Hassle Free Clinic’s board of directors.

Linda Gardner's profile page

Darien Taylor is the co-author of the international anthology Positive Women: Voices of Women Living with AIDS (Second Story Press, 1992). She is one of the founders of Voices of Positive Women, a Toronto-based organization directed by and for women living with HIV/AIDS. She continues to be involved with issues of people living with HIV/AIDS in many ways, especially through the activist organization AIDS Action Now!

Darien Taylor's profile page

Lisa Wyndels is a mother and a lawyer. She is currently working as staff lawyer at Kensington Bellwoods Community Legal Services, where she does work principally in the areas of immigration and income security. She has been a member of the Social Issues Manuscript Group at Women’s Press for five years.

Lisa Wyndels' profile page