nancyforde.com

@nancyfjorde.bsky.social

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don't dream it's over • 🇨🇦🇮🇪 mamaí (she/they) • Writer. Photographer. Settler. Kjipuktuk | SSHRC CGRS M Winner • MFA Creative Writing (2026) • MA Photojournalism & Doc Photography (2021) | ✨noli timere✨ b.322ppm linktr.ee/nancyforde

My son around aged seven helping his mom by sweeping leaves from our porch when we lived in SW Ontario. Two Adirondack chairs face the street between which sits a small wooden table with a candle on it. Photo credit: Nancy Forde. All rights reserved. nancyforde.com.
Animated giphy of Matthew Macfayden as Mr. Darcy and Kiera Knightly as Elizabeth Bennet in 2005 film adaptation of Jane Austen's 'Pride and Prejudice' in which Darcy cannot peel his eyes from Elizabeth's lips even as they are midst argument. Gahhh. Sigh. Swoon.
Steam train outside Elmira, Ontario, with steam billowing across a rural field as the train heads toward waiting passengers. November 2015. Photo credit: Nancy Forde. All rights reserved. nancyforde.com.
Famous painting by Caspar David Friedrich painted in 1818 called Der Wanderer über dem Nebelmeer (English translation: Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog.) A masterpiece of Romanticism during the Age of Enlightenment.
A woman holds a sign that reads, "Respect the Treaties" at a night-time land protector gathering in solidarity with Wet'suwet'en First Nation fighting a Coastal GasLink pipeline on their unceded territory. I made the photo on January 9, 2018 in Waterloo, Ontario, traditional lands of Haudenosaunee, Anishinaabe, and Chonnonton Peoples. Photo credit: Nancy Forde. All rights reserved. nancyforde.com.
Sinking sun in summer reflects off Lake Huron down a tree-lined cottage road in Southampton, Ontario. 2021. Photo credit: Nancy Forde. All rights reserved. nancyforde.com.
My son at 11 years old (2020 birthday under pandemic.) He just turned 17 this year. Photo credit: Nancy Forde. All rights reserved. nancyforde.com.
Shadow of an older church and spire against newer brickwork in Old Montreal, Quebec. 2022. Photo credit: Nancy Forde. All rights reserved. nancyforde.com.
Sunset illuminates the limbs of trees within a shadowy forest scene. Photo credit: Nancy Forde. All rights reserved. nancyforde.com.
"Hope." Part of my series entitled, "Fallow." (nancyforde.com/fallow.) A white rural outbuilding is illuminated by sunlight when the sun breaks through storm clouds. I pulled the car over waiting for this scene exactly. Outside Waterloo, Ontario. Photo credit: Nancy Forde. All rights reserved. nancyforde.com.
Pre-dawn purple across a Halifax sky in the city's North End. October 2022. Photo credit: Nancy Forde. All rights reserved. nancyforde.com.
Sunrise en route to Perth County. July 2016. Photo credit: Nancy Forde. All rights reserved. nancyforde.com.
A figure enters through the doors of the National Gallery in Ottawa, Canada. October 2017. Photo credit: Nancy Forde. All rights reserved. nancyforde.com.
The morning sun illuminating a bulb hanging over my kitchen table in the home I lived in from October 2010 through August 2022. A window with a drape is to the left of the photo. Photo credit: Nancy Forde. All rights reserved. nancyforde.com.
Canon battery died so all I could do was grab my iPhone to try to document the way the setting sun was magnified by sheets of rain poring out of storm clouds, giving the effect of a sky raining blood. Two white farm buildings sit in the bottom left of the photo against green fields darkened by cumulonimbus. Just outside Elmira, Ontario. Photo credit: Nancy Forde. All rights reserved. nancyforde.com.
Midnight Sun cruise at close to midnight. Pink and peach strokes across the sky hover over icebergs and snow Ilulissat, Kalaallit Nunaat (Greenland). August 2016. Photo credit: Nancy Forde. All rights reserved. nancyforde.com.
My father and my kid. c. 2018. Photo credit: Nancy Forde. All rights reserved. nancyforde.com.
1980 Poster of blue and white panels in which a woman responds to a crying baby at 6am, feeds her family breakfast, cleans the kitch, strolls her children, does laundry, gets groceries, spoonfeeds her baby, sweeps, irons, takes her kids to the park, bakes, sings her baby to sleep, cooks, serves up dinner, washes dishes, and overall cares for her family. From the See Red Women's Workshop that now hangs in the Victoria & Albert Museum in London. One panel of the comics in the poster has a man speaking to another man who says, "My wife doesn't work." All the remaining panels are showing the unappreciated, invisibilized, unpaid work she does to keep her family going, clean, happy, and fed. Credit: See Red Women's Workshop Collective.
Black and white, grainy image of me with my kid on my lap in a diner booth. I'm smiling with dark short hair and bangs and he's got curly hair beneath a hat that says "Team Cute." My kid is now 17 so this was photographed about 13 years ago in Southampton, Ontario. Photo credit: Geoff Hays.
Black and white vintage photo with my Uncle Christy (RIP) squatting against the back door of a car, my father standing (right) outside it, my Uncle Dan in the Driver's seat and my Uncle Gerard (RIP) in the passenger seat pointing his finger at the person making the photograph (unknown). Inchicore (Inse Chór or Inse Chaoire) in Dublin. 1950.
People gather at dusk holding lighted candles in memory of Indigenous children forcibly removed from their parents and communities by the government of Canada to attend residential schools, often hundreds of kilometres away from their birthplaces. Photo shows a candlelight vigil during summer of 2021 for all the Indigenous children dead or missing, some being discovered that year through ground penetrating radar in unmarked graves at various residential 'school' sites across lands called 'Canada,' evidence of the nation's genocidal attempt to erase Indigenous Peoples, culture, language, and lives. To target a specific group and separate children from their parents is one definition of genocide codified in Article II of the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide after the United Nations first recognised it as a crime under international law in its 1946 General Assembly. You can read Article II here: https://www.un.org/sites/un2.un.org/files/doc.1_convention_on_the_prevention_and_punishment_of_the_crime_of_genocide_0.pdf Photo credit: Nancy Forde. nancyforde.com. All rights reserved.
Illustrated cartoon/meme of two people at a table. One is handing a piece of paper to the other saying, "The editor says we need to stop using the term 'anti-vax.' She says it's too negative." The person across the table holds a pen and replies, "How about pro-disease?" (Cartoon credit: unknown.)
Image of two men in the 1920s wearing suit jackets, ties, vests, hats, and knickerbocker pants. Credit: The Fashington Post.
Reflections of car headlights against glass during a rainstorm. Photo credit: Nancy Forde. All rights reserved. nancyforde.com.
A yew tree stretches itself upon 375-million year old granite stone deposited by glacial retreat some 12,000 years ago at Polly's Cove (near Peggy's Cove) in Nova Scotia. A Deep Time place. Photo credit: Nancy Forde. 2023. All rights reserved. nancyforde.com.
Portrait I made of my parents kissing in December 2021. My father on the right wraps his arm around my mother on the left. You cannot see their faces. Only their kids and the love they've shared for seven decades. Photo credit: Nancy Forde. nancyforde.com. All rights reserved.
Colour image of Tommie Smith winning gold and John Carlos winning silver in the 200 m run at the 1968 Olympic Games in Mexico who both raise their fists in salute and solidarity with Black Power and to protest discrimination, racism, and abuse of Black people in the United Stares during the 1960s Civil Rights Movement. Photo credit: John Dominis/Bettman Archives
Closeup selfie of my kid and I smiling. He has brown curly hair and wears a winter jacket over a Donegal Tweed vest and Tartan tie, And I am wearing a graduation cap over my silver hair and the strap of my faithful Canon camera on my shoulder. May 2026. Credit: Nancy Forde.
Illustrated cartoon of a brown haired man in a brown tie and blue shirt with a pen posed above paper and a woman with a brown ponytail sitting across from him extending another piece of paper to him. She asks him, "The editor says we need to stop using the term 'anti-vax.' She says it's too negative." Below her words, the man responds with, "How about 'pro-disease?'" Credit: unknown (regrettably.)
Me in my "Wonder Woman" red boots crouching beside holiday trees while my son at five years of age leans back against me in a snowsuit with a plaid coat. A friend we bumped into made this photo of us in December 2014. Credit: L. Hill-Ring.
Image by Ann Taintor of a 1950s illustrated housewife in front of a fridge with the words 'make your own damn dinner.' And the words of the title of my story: "It's Okay to Hate Mother's Day (on having been there myself) by Nancy Forde. nancyforde.substack.com.
Car headlights light up an overkill of orange warning signs against the black of night at a bridge in Waterloo-Wellington County on traditional lands of Haudenosaunee, Anishinaabe, and Chonnonton Peoples (near Elmira, Ontario.) I call the photograph "The Indian Act" because of all the rights the Act prevents and restrictions it outlines in being recognized as Indigenous on lands called 'Canada' (unceded and stolen lands.) The signs made me think of the Canadian Government's overkill in trying to control the lives and rights of Indigenous Peoples. The Act is hugely racist and sexist. Part of my documentary photography project, "Six Miles Deep" about growing up near the Grand River and my responsibilities as a white settler on unceded lands. Photo credit: Nancy Forde. All rights reserved. nancyforde.com/6milesdeep.
A red dress is lifted by the wind against a snowy landscape on the Wilfrid Laurier University campus in Waterloo, Ontario, to remind students, faculty, and staff about Missing and Murdered Indigenous, Women, Girls, and Two-Spirit Peoples. Photo credit: Nancy Forde. 2018. All rights reserved. nancyforde.com.
The living room in my former home in Ontario with a roaring fire in the woodstove. A lamp lights the room on the left and a green sofa with pillows faces a wooden coffee table and woodstove in spring. Photo credit: Nancy Forde.
Picture of cover of nonfiction book by author Lezlie Lowe, entitled "No Place to Go: How Public Toilets Fail Our Private Needs." The image on the book cover is a bathroom wall with two cardboard rolls toilet paper rolls, one empty and the other with a final tiny piece of toilet paper left hanging.
The ancient settlement area of Sermermiut, just outside Ilulissat, Kalaallit Nunaat (Greenland). White icebergs surround a cove near Disko Bay with ancient rocks stretching toward them in Greenland. August 2016. Photo credit: Nancy Forde. All rights reserved. nancyforde.com.
Photo of Icelandic musician Björk dressed in black wearing a black pointed knit hat - photograph by Inez van Lamsweerde and Vinoodh Matadin. Björk is behind twigs and a steel wire fence kneeling in forest with spider web issuing from her mouth. Credit: Inez & Vinoodh
My photo of a chalked poem called Bedtime by Seamus Heaney next to a candle and a vintage photograph of currachs. The poem reads: Take the lamp if you want it I'm waiting on the last turf to burn down so I can take them into the ash. There'll be a heart in the fire in the morning. ___ Photo credit: Nancy Forde. All rights reserved. September 2020. An Blascaod Mór. Great Blasket Island, County Kerry, Ireland.
White words on orange background (colour of Canadian New Democratic Party/NDP): "Love is better than anger. Hope is better than fear. Optimism is better than despair." Words by former NDP leader Jack Layton 1950-2011 (RIP)
Photo of International Women's Media Foundation's promo for "In Memory of Kim Wall" birthday celebration. Credit: IWMF.
Cover of Winter 2026 Issue (# 177) of Canadian literary journal, The New Quarterly (tnq.ca.) Image credit: Nancy Forde. Issue Design credit: Joe Martz. January 2026.
Photograph of my maroon-coloured Irish passport on a wooden table. Words on the passport say: "An tAontas Eorpavh European Union Éire Ireland an image of a golden harp Pas Passport" Image credit: Nancy Forde. March 2026.
Black and white photo of a woman marching and smiling as she holds a sign that says, "Dear Patriarchy, Your Time Is Up!" Women's March, 2018. Image credit: Nancy Forde. All rights reserved. nancyforde.com.
Image of hand-drawn cartoon of twenty frames called "My Wife Doesn't Work" created by See Red Women's Workshop Collective in 1976. Itnw hangs in the Victoria and Albert Museum. Frame 1: 6 AM woman approaching baby in crib. Frame 2: 7 AM woman feeding family breakfast. Frame 3: 8 AM toddler holding legs/dress of woman standing at sink washing dishes. Frame 4: 9 AM women pushing strollers waving to each other on street. Frame 5: 10 AM woman doing laundry in public laundromat. Frame 6: 11 AM woman exiting grocery store holding baby and groceries. Frame 7: Noon woman feeding baby in highchair at home. Frame 8: 1 PM two men chatting. One says to the other, "my wife doesn't work." Frame 9: 2 PM woman holding broom sweeping kitchen. Frame 10: 3 PM woman ironing while baby plays at couch. Frame 11: 4 PM woman sitting under tree watching children play outdoors. Frame 12: 5 PM toddler holding woman's legs while she stands cooking at stove. Frame 13: 6 PM woman feeding baby in highchair, again. Frame 14: 6:30 PM woman carrying baby to crib to put to bed. Frame 15: 7 PM woman cooking alone at stove. Frame 16: 8 PM woman feeding rest of family. Frame 17: 9 PM woman standing alone at sink washing dishes. Frame 18: 10 PM woman knitting while spouse watches TV with his feet up. Frame 19: 11 PM woman snuggling spouse in bed. Frame 20: 6 AM 6 AM woman approaching baby in crib. (The cycle begins again.)
A sepia-toned image of various faces in profile each praying in their own way and to their own God. This is a painting made by renowned American painter Norman Rockwell, one of a series of four paintings made in 1943 known as the Freedom paintings. This is "Freedom of Worship." Above the various faces, genders and races depicted in profile are the words "Each According to the Dictates of His Own Conscience." Credit: Norman Rockwell.
Black and white photo of my mother at 17 years of age. She has long, wavy curls, tilting her head, a bit of a sorrowful gaze. She's wearing pearls and a floral dress. Photo made in Dublin, Ireland in 1950, but no idea of the photographer so sadly cannot credit. I love this photograph.
A dark silhouette stands behind a polished, wooden casket adorned with flowers. The dark figure is backlit by stained glass. On this image float the words, "HBO Original" and "The Mortician," the title of a limited TV docuseries about the long-time, family-run funeral business of the Lamb family in Pasadena, California. Directed and produced by Joshua Rofé (2025.)
Black square with white text quoting writer Ta-Nehisi Coates: "We are at a moment right now where people are asking themselves why can't the Democratic Party defend this assault on democracy... and I would submit to you that if you can't draw the line at genocide, you probably can't draw the line at democracy. Ta-Nehisi Coates"
Screenshot of Matt Stickland @landofsticks.bsky.social writes a post that says, "I need to write but I don't wanna." And Sara F. L. Kirk @sflkirk.bsky.social responds, "But you gotta." Screenshot on February 12, 2026 at 8:16 AM Atlantic Time.
Dark peat-hued, preserved face of "Tollund Man," a bog body unearthed in the Tollund bog in the Danish Jutland area in 1950. He wears a cap made of sheepskin and appears to be sleeping. He rests on copper toned turf under enclosed glass at the Silkeborg Museum in Silkeborg, Denmark, where I visited him in July 2023 and made this photograph. Photo credit: Nancy Forde. All rights reserved. nancyforde.com.
Cover of Winter 2026, Issue 177 of The New Quarterly, Canadian Writers & Writing. With a dark slate blue border at the top over a black and white photograph (that I made) called "Big Smoke." Title of this issue is "Nuance is Required" and description says "in which we manifest a sinkhole, make ink from cigar ash, discover a painting cat, and realize the politics of a poetry class. Three bullet points describe the following: - New Dispatches essays by Aaron Kreiter and Niya Matuk - New Day Jobs essay by Ben von Jaqow - New Spirit Ink writing by Trina Roache and Raymond Sewell. The photograph shows an urban street in Toronto on which the windshield is splashed with rain, blurring the city street in Tkaronto (Toronto) and the tops of buildings and skyscrapers are engulfed by fog. Traffic lights and the headlights of oncoming cars stand out in the gloom. A car pulls up to a stop sign at a side street on the right. The buildings on opposite sides in the forefront of the photograph are old architecture. Photo credit: Nancy Forde. Cover Design of TNQ.ca is by Joe Martz.
The sky reflected in an angled arrow of water banked by peat bog plants and reeds and sphagnum moss with trees in the distance beneath a pastel blue sky with cumulus clouds sailing overhead. Abbeyleix Bog Project is a community bog restoration project that was initially dismissed as worthwhile by experts but has since won awards and is thriving. October 2024. County Laois, Ireland. Photo credit: Nancy Forde. All rights reserved. nancyforde.com.
Sepia toned film photo of me at around 3 years of age wearing a blue and white print dress with a collar and a pink knit cardigan. I am sitting on a wooden kind of bench somewhere in North Wales. Curly brown locks, giggling, and blowing a raspberry. I think this photo was made by my father in lates 60s.
My kid (at age 9) holding up a sign in solitary with Wet'suwet'en First Nation protecting their lands and waters. The sign says "We stand with Wet'suwet'en and their UNCEDED territory. #Unist'ot'en #NoJusticeNoPeace." Solidarity March. Waterloo, Ontario. January 8, 2019. Photo credit: Nancy Forde. All rights reserved. nancyforde.com.
A sign on the lonely single road from Dingle Town to Dun Chaoin in the Dingle Peninsula, County Kerry, Ireland, that says "Hold a Baby Lamb." I'm sure some tourists in the area driving the road in summer succumb, but if you're a woman driving alone on this remote road, it's the point at which, while driving, you ensure the automatic locks to your car are actually in lock mode and there's no way in hell you will, out of sheer curiosity, stop and wander up to a remote barn in West Kerry. Like the first scene you see while watching a detective show or police special on the vital importance of forensic science in solving murders. Photo credit: Nancy Forde. September 2020. All rights reserved. nancyforde.com.
Strange vintage monochrome photograph of shadowy figure standing in corner of room and you can only make out its eyes in photograph where sunlight streets through an urban window with buildings outside windows and books and lamp and corkboard in background of large white sheets lit by sun on a table. Photo credit: unknown- I saved it years ago. If anyone knows the photographer please kindly let me know! Thank you.
Mark Carney, the prime minister of Canada, wearing the fleece from the Canadian sensation TV series Heated Rivalry is hugged with a leg up by one of the show's leading stars, Hudson Williams. Carney is grasping Hudson's leg as they hug. They're both laughing and smiling. Hudson is wearing grey pants and a black leather jacket. Photo credit: unknown. (Possibly CTV news?)
Page one image of "Shoveling Snow with Buddha" by poet Billy Collins, published in 1998. ___ In the usual iconography of the temple of the local Wok you would never see him doing such a thing, tossing the dry snow over a mountain of his bare, round shoulder, his hair tied in a knot, a model of concentration. Sitting is more his speed, if that is the word for what he does, or does not do. Even the season is wrong for him in all his manifestations, is it not warm or slightly humid? Is this not implied by his severe expression, that smile so wide it wraps itself around the waist of the universe? But here we are, working our way down my driveay, one shovel at a time. We toss the light powder into the clear air. We feel the cold mist on our faces. And with every heave we disappear and become lost to each other in these sudden clouds of our own making, these fountain-bursts of snow. This is so much better than a sermon in church, I say out loud, but Buddha keeps on shoveling. This is the true religion, the religion of snow, and sunlight and winter geese barking in the sky, I say, but he is too busy to hear me. ____ (End of text for Page one image of this poem. See Page Two for the remainder of the poem.) Credit: American poet Billy Collins.
Image of statement on Minnesota Timberwolves letterhead with logo on upper left corner of a timberwolf howling in front of a basketball encircled by the words "Minnesota Tiberwolves." Title shows "Statement from Matt Moberg, Chaplain of the Minnesota Timberwolves." The following is text of the Moberg's statement: "If you're a church posting prayers for peace and unity today while my city bleeds in the street, miss me with that softness you only wear when it costs you nothing. Don't dress avoidance up as holiness. Don't call silence "peacemaking." Don't light a candle and think it substitutes for showing up. Tonight an ICE agent took a photo of me next to my car, looked me in the eye and told me, "We'll be seeing you soon." Not metaphor. Not hyperbole. A threat dressed up in a badge and a paycheck. Peace isnt what you ask for when the boot is already on someone's neck. Peace is what the powerful ask for when they don't want to be interrupted. Unity isn't neutral. Unity that refuses to name violence is just loyalty to the ones holding weapons. Stop using scripture like chloroform. Stop calling your fear "wisdom." Stop pretending Jesus was crucified because he preached good vibes and personal growth. You don't get to quote scripture like a lullaby while injustice stays wide awake. You don't get to ask God to "heal the land" if you won't even look at the wound. There is a kind of peace that only exists because it refuses to tell the truth. That peace is a lie. And lies dont grow anything worth saving. The scriptures you love weren't written to keep things calm. They were written to set things right. And sometimes the most faithful thing you can do is stop praying around the pain and start standing inside it. If that makes you uncomfortable-good. Growth always is. ___ (End of released statement.) Credit: Matt Moberg, Minnesota Timberwolves Chaplain. Statement released on January 25, 2026.
Three frames of a comic by Gary Larson from his series "The Far Side" created in 1984. First frame: Three white cows with black patches stand on their hind legs chatting in a green field. A fourth cow in the distance by a brown picket fence near a road yells, "CAR! Second frame: A red car drives over the hill on the road with two humans in it looking at four cows who are now on all four limbs eating grass. Third frame: The car no longer present, the three cows in a group chatting have stood again on their hind legs. The fourth cow in the distance continues to be a lookout standing on its hind legs, waiting to yell "CAR!" again to warn the group. Comic Credit: The genius cartoonist, Gary Larson. 1984.