We analyse the effects of constructions and mobilisations of childhood, generation and girl heroism in 30 Canadian editorials written in response to 2019 climate change protests. We discuss how the editorials strategically positionand sometimes dismiss-young activists through discourses of childhood innocence, becoming and social participation. Second, we focus on how the editorials mobilise generation to emphasise either generational division or cross-generational solidarity. Finally, we problematise the editorials' concentration on individualised girl heroism. We thus contextualise and deconstruct truth statements around age, generation and heroism, emphasising instead their effects and the potential for certain narratives to better recognise the diversity and solidarity in climate change activism.

Using a relational approach, we draw on repeated interviews with a group of 30 diverse children from Ontario to share and reflect on their knowledge, experiences and feelings early in the COVID‐19 pandemic. Prioritising relational interdependence and relational agency, this paper illustrates our participants' embedded engagements with the pandemic and their contribution to the co‐production of knowledge. We emphasise their thoughtful responses to the pandemic; their creative, self‐reflexive strategies for managing a difficult time; and their advice to others. We thus prioritise children's viewpoints and emphasise their relational interconnections with others during a time that was marked by social isolation.

We engage with poststructural feminism to examine how 32 young workers in Ontario and British Columbia perceived, replicated, navigated, and challenged gendered discourses. We discuss three related emerging themes. First, girls positioned themselves and other girls who work as “go-getters,” resonating with “can-do” girlhood narratives. Second, many participants engaged in and embraced gender-typical work, while others raised critical, feminist concerns. Third, some participants experienced diversions from gender-typical work, and their reflections both reproduced and challenged dominant gender norms. We demonstrate that contradictory discourses of gender, gender inequality, and growing up shape young people’s early work experiences in multiple ways.

This paper troubles seductive discourses of Canadian multiculturalism and the centrality of whiteness to national belonging, highlighting how migrant children understand and navigate assimilation. Evolving out of childhood migration stories shared by 12 interviewees in the documentary Twelve, the article addresses the ways ‘childist’ logics are used to separate childhood from the realities of race and racism. In working towards anti‐racist praxis, we address how storytelling challenges adult–child power hierarchies, exposing how childhood continues to be framed as a time of innocence, disconnected from the violence, danger and pain involved in migrating to Anglophone Canada.

Drawing on biweekly interviews with thirty children from Southern Ontario, Canada, from diverse backgrounds and most of whom were between 8 years old and 15 years old, our paper discusses children’s educational experiences when schooling shifted online during the first few months of the pandemic. We focus on the challenges and opportunities that were offered during that time, with a particular focus on how these were significantly shaped by inequality. We address the following key themes, all with attention to related inequalities: shifts in children’s engagement with space and time; differential availability of help when faced with challenges in online schooling; missing school friends, peers, and teachers and strategies to remain connected; and finally, how some on- and offline schooling activities, as well as independent, explorative learning, helped the children to enjoy their online schooling.