Dead Certainties, by Simon Schama (Vintage), contains two "experiments in historical narrative" that should be on the reading list of anyone interested in how we imagine the past, and how the past is imagined for us. The first piece, "The Many Deaths
CHRIS GILPIN
Dear Sasquatch
You're the kind of creature who comes to events like these and sits in the corner writing confessional poetry.
EVE JOSEPH
Death Matters
It is not uncommon for there to be periods of agitation shortly before death. People often try to rise from their beds as if they have to get somewhere.
Stephen Osborne
Death So Noble: Memory, Meaning, and the First World War
Only now, eighty years after the war, are we given the explanation of that process of transformation, in the pages of Death So Noble: Memory, Meaning, and the First World War, by Jonathan F. Vance (UBC Press). Vance tells the story of a tiny country
Jesmine Cham
Dear Patient
A woman, hoping to find peace, seeks her birth mother. A review of By Blood by Ellen Ullman.
Patty Osborne
Death by Degrees
Soon after reading Moodie's Tale I ran across Death by Degrees (Doubleday), which features Wright's Inspector Charlie Salter, a middle-aged detective just as perplexed by the ironies of life as the rest of us. Death by Degrees takes place at a commun
JACOB SCHEIER
Dear Office of Homeland Security
I began to run across 42nd Street, a trail of beer nuts behind me, making my way to TimesSquare, because I thought I should see The Lion King or smoke crack before I die, but could afford neither.
JOEY COMEAU
Dear Neopost
"The chance to put my Credit and Collections Management experience to work for your company is something I am willing to die for."
Jane Awde Goodwin
Dear Doctor
The Health Hotline can only do so much for the exotic animals swimming in a hole on your forehead.
Corrina Hodgson
Dead Girls
I finished Dead Girls (McClelland and Stewart) with a heavy feeling in my stomach. It’s not just that the stories are disturbing, it’s that I, the reader, have been made witness to this disturbance.
Patty Osborne
Dead White Males
David Dennings, the narrator of Ann Diamond’s new novel, Dead White Males (Livres DC Books), is a wacky hairdresser much like the one I visit every couple of months. But whereas my stylist is a filmmaker, Diamond’s is trying to be a hard-boiled priva
Holly Doyle
Dead Man in the Orchestra Pit
It’s a miracle that only two people die in Dead Man in the Orchestra Pit by Tom Osborne (Anvil Press), during a weekend in Vancouver when a hotel robbery goes terribly wrong and the thieves get tangled up with Grey Cup rabble-rousers and the backstag
Minna Schendlinger
Dead Reckoning: Confronting the Crisis in Pacific Fisheries
Until I cracked open Terry Glavin's Dead Reckoning: Confronting the Crisis in Pacific Fisheries (Greystone), I thought fish had no more significance to me than the wasabe and the soy sauce on the side. Now I know different.
Michael Hayward
Deactivated West 100
In Deactivated West 100 (Gaspereau Press), Don McKay continues to develop the poetics of place that he began with Vis à Vis (Gaspereau Press, 2001). In both books he tries “to think the relation between place and wilderness without going dizzy from a
David Thompson Beats the Devil on the Kisiskatchewan River
Thompson’s free-ranging narrative of the New World must be the only one in which the devil is defeated at checkers.
Kris Rothstein
Day Shift Werewolf
Supernatural beings seem to have it easy: their purpose in life (or life after death) is clear and their mission to frighten or eat humans should be simple enough. But the creatures in Day Shift Werewolf (3-Day Books) suffer from the same self-doubt,
JONNY DIAMOND
Dave Is Dead
For a man who’d once picked a shard of glass from his cheek while laughing, Dave sure could write a pretty melody.
HAL NIEDZVIECKI
Darker Country
I have never been a success at anything in particular.
Annabel Lyon
Dark Hearts
I first tried to read J. M. Coetzee in 1994, when I was twenty-three. I failed.
Michael Hayward
Dancing About Architecture
Review of "Utopia Avenue" by David Mitchell.
Alberto Manguel
Dante in Guantánamo
After fol
Michael Hayward
Cycling the Himalayas
Michael Hayward on the elation and freedom of long-distance cycling.
Sewid-Smith Daisy
Dancer in the Dark
While I was looking at a poster for Lars Von Trier's Dancer in the Dark, two women rushed up and begged me not to go in, crying "It's terrible, we couldn't sit through it!" I might have been swayed if a friend hadn't warned me that he almost left, ev
At the Jubilee Cinema, the manager carries an imitation pistol in the John Dillinger style.
Rhonda Waterfall
Les Joyeux Lémuriens
“Thank Christ,” says Dieter when I finally wake up. “I thought you were dead.”
Matt Snell
Laying on Hands
In Peterborough, Pastor Billy cures arthritis, back pain, bone spurs, lymphoma, stage four liver cancer, sleep apnea and atrial fibrillation
Stephen Osborne
Last Steve Standing
Stephen Osborne says goodbye to Stephen Harper.
Margaret Nowaczyk
Knitting Class
During World War II my grandmother ran contraband, hunted pigeons.
Jeff Shucard
King Zog and the Secret Heart of Albania
The secret heart of Albania is imbued with compassion and a desire to help those in need
Véronique Darwin
K to 7
Veronique Darwin revisits her childhood journal, from hearing ghosts in kindergarten to staring at hotties in grade seven.
Stephen Osborne
Julia’s World
I went to the babysitter’s to pick up Julia, who was two and a half years old, and she said that she had been “a little bit sad for a while” because her mother, who had a new part-time job and had dropped Julia off a few hours earlier, had gone away for “quite a long time.”
CB Campbell
Joe and Me
Playing against the fastest chess player in the world.
Luke MacLean
Je M'Appelle Raphael
Possum-style or straight up dirty.
Sara Cassidy
Flying the Coop
You can’t break eggs without making an omelette.
Michał Kozłowski
Pleasant Artistic Experience
An intrepid Geist correspondent narrowly avoids being stabbed by a moose-antler letter opener in Whitehorse.
Michał Kozłowski
Pillars of Salt
"The tour guide said: every hour you spend down in the mine adds three minutes to your life." Michal Kozlowski reports from 300 feet below ground.
Joe Bongiorno
Piledrivin’ Patriots
On parle français icitte!
Marko Sijan
Peace on Earth
"My father believes the world is coming to an end, yet he commits his life to curing the sick." Dispatch by Marko Sijan.
Stephen Osborne
Pathfinder Deluxe
A young man comes into possession of a 1957 Pontiac, modelled after one owned by a legendary pianist.
Stephen Osborne
Other City, Big City
On the last day of October in Toronto a man in an art gallery said: “Showers should be coming in around 4 pm. They don’t always get it down to the hour like that.”
Robert Everett-Green
Ordinary Weekly Deaths
If Toronto were like Baghdad, thirty-nine res
Katharine O'Flynn
On the Track
I started walking, seriously. It was the bone scan that got me going. The healthy solid green was spongy with rotting black holes.
Henny-B
Nobody's Girl
The main reason that I open up my doors to people on the street is so that they would have a place to sort of come home.
Linda Solomon
Nobody’s Fault
In multi-cultural Vancouver, strangers come together at a moment of crisis.
Véronique Darwin
New Normal Board Games
Use the board games you unearthed during isolation to reinventclassic games for our times.
Jane Silcott
Natty Man
His look is self-concious, but well done.
Chelsea Novak
National Boyfriend
At a taping of George Stroumboulopoulos Tonight, Chelsea Novak meets Canada's boyfriend.
On the curve of the contagion and on the measure of Montreality.
Stephen Osborne
This Postcard Life
Spiritual landscapes and unknowable people captured on film, used to convey a message.
Kristen den Hartog
The Insulin Soldiers
It was as though a magic potion had brought him back to life.
MARCELLO DI CINTIO
The Great Wall of Montreal
The chain-link fence along boulevard de l’Acadie— two metres high, with “appropriate hedge”—separates one of the wealthiest neighbourhoods in Montreal from one of the poorest.
Bill MacDonald
The Ghost of James Cawdor
A seance to contact a dead miner at Port Arthur, Ontario, in 1923—conducted by Conan Doyle himself.
Daniel Francis
The Artist as Coureur de Bois
Tom Thomson, godfather of the Group of Seven, drowned in an Ontario lake under mysterious circumstances, and ever since, his reputation has been the stuff of legend.
Carellin Brooks
Ripple Effect
I am the only woman in the water. The rest of the swimmers are men or boys. One of them bobs his head near me, a surprising vision in green goggles, like an undocumented sea creature. I imagine us having sex, briefly, him rocking over me like a wave.
Stephen Smith
Rinkside Intellectual
Stephen Smith investigates the hockey lives of Barthes, Faulkner, Hemingway, which were marked by dismissal, befuddlement and scorn.
J. Jill Robinson
Hot Pulse
I am sorry I caused you pain. But I thought it was okay.
HOWARD WHITE
How We Imagine Ourselves
When Geist first approached me with the idea of speaking here, I made it known that of all the things I ever wanted to be when I grew up, being an after-dinner speaker was very low on the list.
Mia + Eric
Future Perfect
New bylaws for civic spaces.
Ann Diamond
How I (Finally) Met Leonard Cohen
On a rainy night in October 1970, I crossed paths with Canada's most elusive poet.
JILL MANDRAKE
Elementary
On the merry-go-round, you just shouted out a destination and all the kids pushed until everyone agreed we’d arrived.
Gabrielle Marceau
Fact
Main Character
I always longed to be the falling woman—impelled by unruly passion, driven by beauty and desire, turned into stone, drowned in flowers.
Annabel Lyon
Eye for Detail
What is at the heart of this Edith Iglauer profile by Giller nominee Annabel Lyon? Hint: Ice Road Truckers.
Alberto Manguel
Cri de Coeur
Compared to today's vile heros, Ned Kelly-the Australian outlaw who wrote the angry, articulate Jerilderie letter in 1879-seems as innocent as an ogre-slaughtering hero of fairy tales.
Life in Language
For four decades, Jay Powell and Vickie Jensen helped to revive forgotten languages for many Aboriginal groups along the coast of the Pacific Northwest. Read their story here.
M.A.C. Farrant
Notes on the Wedding
The mother of the groom measures the distance between two weddings: twenty-six years, six thousand miles, and a donkey covered with flowers. It’s outtasight.
Ivan Coyote
Shouldn’t I Feel Pretty?
Somewhere in the sweat and ache and muscle I carved a new shape for myself that made more sense.
CONNIE KUHNS
There is a Wind that Never Dies
"If you are still alive, you must have had the experience of surrendering."
Ann Diamond
The Second Life of Kiril Kadiiski
He has been called the greatest Bulgarian poet of his generation. Can one literary scandal bury his whole career?
DAVID COLLIER
The Last Grain Elevator in Regina
When you live in Saskatoon, you find yourself caring more about the details of grain farming then you did when you lived in Toronto or Windsor.
Stephen Osborne
The Great Game
The British called it the Great Game. The Russians called it Bolshoya Igra. The playing field was, and still is, Afghanistan.
Ruskin's readers have the power to know that there is indeed room for Alice at the Mad Hatter's table.
Stephen Henighan
Residential Roots
"The hemispheric context reveals the roots of the residential school system...Destroying Indigenous cultures was a positivist policy from Patagonia to Dawson City."
Alberto Manguel
Reading the Commedia
An appreciation of Dante's "Commedia."
Alberto Manguel
Reach Out and Touch (Somebody's Hand)
There is no way to step back from the orgy of kisses without offending.
Rob Kovitz
Question Period
Rob Kovitz compiles the pressing questions of the day—"How are they gonna beat ISIS?" And, "On Twitter, who cares?"
Stephen Henighan
Becoming French
For an English-speaking Canadian who has been exposed to French from an early age, Paris is the most disorienting city in Europe. It is grandiose, but it is mundane.
Alberto Manguel
Art and Blasphemy
Faith seems to shiver when confronted by art.
Stephen Henighan
All in the Same CANO
For a brief period the band CANO gave shape to the dream of a bilingual Canadian culture.
Daniel Francis
Afghanistan
One thing Canadians have learned from our armed incursion into Afghanistan is that we do not have a vocabulary for discussing war or warlike events.
Daniel Francis
African Gulag
The atrocities were carried out in the name of some version of “civilization” that the Queen represented.
Daniel Francis
Acts of Resistance
"Resistance to wars is as much a Canadian tradition as fighting them." Daniel Francis discusses alternative histories, anti-draft demonstrations and the divisive nature of war.
Alberto Manguel
A Novel for All Times
Alberto Manguel's column from Geist 93 about how the most important Turkish novelist of modern times took over fifty years to reach English-speaking audiences.
Stephen Henighan
A Pen Too Far
On March 5, 2006, a group of people gathered in a small Ontario city in the expectation of having books signed by an author who was not present.
Alberto Manguel
A Fairy Tale for Our Time
What can the Brothers Grimm teach us about the state of our economic system? Everything.
Alberto Manguel
A Brief History of Tags
A reflection on the complex and often inexplicable process of bibliographic categorizations.
Alberto Manguel
Face in the Mirror
What does it mean to "be" yourself? The face reflected in the mirror is unrecognizable.
Annabel Lyon
Ethical Juices
Parables, cautionary tales, morality plays, allegories—the notion that we can study literary works as texts of ethics is as old as literature.
Stephen Henighan
Ethnic Babies
Stephen Henighan discusses the crude first steps to finding a new way to talk about racial reality.
Daniel Francis
Come to the Cabaret
The Penthouse, the notorious Vancouver night club, shares a history with several of the city's missing women cases.
Stephen Henighan
Chariots of China
A bibliophile's worst nightmare: being stuck on a plane with a terrible book. A book mistaken for a work of serious history.
Stephen Henighan
Caribbean Enigma
Unravelling the mysteries of Alejo Carpentier
Daniel Francis
Canada's Funnyman
A misogynist, a racist and an academic walk into a bar...
Stephen Henighan
Campus Confidential
"In the public eye, universities have never recovered from the antics of Donald Sutherland as Professor Jennings in the 1978 film Animal House."
Alberto Manguel
Burning Mistry
Alberto Manguel examines a modern-day book burning and asks: how is this still happening?