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dispatches
essays
reviews
columns
Jennifer Gossoo
Things Discovered and Un-

To prove my wolfishness, I shucked my skate shoes and went barefoot on the pine needles

Lascia Tagen
Found in A Little Free Library

Review of "The Mayfair Bookshop" by Eliza Knight

KELSEA O'CONNOR
Building A Fibreshed

Review of "Fleece and Fibre: Textile Producers of Vancouver Island and the Gulf Islands" by Francine McCabe

Courtney Buder
Revenant

It might be time to find a new cemetery

Stephen Henighan
Power of Denial

The crowds learned that they could not act effectively in the present without confronting the past, specifically the historical treatment of indigenous people.

Stephen Henighan
Against Efficiency

Stephen Henighan argues that efficiency has become a core value that heightens social divisions.

Michał Kozłowski
New World

How do you have a good time in Warsaw? Sing Neil Diamond songs in a karaoke bar.

Soraya Roberts
Silver & Blue

Did you hear that the railway built Canada? That’s probably all you heard


Ginger Ngo
Strathcona

That is how one shows true love

Angela Runnals
Food for Thought

Review of "The Land of Milk and Honey" by C. Pam Zhang

Michael Hayward
Praise the Lairds

Review of "More Richly in Earth: A Poet’s Search for Mary MacLeod" by Marilyn Bowering

Patty Osborne
Inside A Tiny Tornado

Review of "Rebel Girl: My Life as a Feminist Punk" by Kathleen Hanna

Kris Rothstein
Surviving Hungary

Review of "No Jews Live Here" by John Lorinc

Helen Humphreys
Botany

I want to see what it means, on a deep level, to stay put

Michael Hayward
Schrödinger’s Books

Michael Hayward on anticipating the arrival of Fitzcarraldo Editions

Randy Fred
Truth Walking

Randy Fred on the Indigenous Speakers Series at Vancouver Island University

Dayna Mahannah
The Truth Shall Send You Down Eight Alternate Routes

Review of "How It Works Out" by Myriam Lacroix

D. G. Shewell
Found in a Cave

Review of "The Cave" by José Saramago

Annabel Lyon
Eye for Detail

What is at the heart of this Edith Iglauer profile by Giller nominee Annabel Lyon? Hint: Ice Road Truckers.

Mary Schendlinger
In Memoriam: Edith Iglauer, 1917 - 2019
Michael Hayward
We'll Always Have Paris

Review of "Paris: A Poem" by Hope Mirrlees

Sadie McCarney
Christmas in Lothlórien

It was a gruesome war, Santa added in Papyrus font, but the forces of Good eventually emerged victorious

Sarah Leavitt
3 Girls

Sarah Leavitt is more than just a clever cartoonist; she also paints pictures with her colourful prose.

Sarah Leavitt
English Passengers

A fast-paced seafaring adventure from my father’s bookshelf, in which a wealthy Londoner on a religious mission to Tasmania falls in with a crew of Manxmen smuggling tobacco, liquor and French porn.

Jennifer Gossoo
Fact
Things Discovered and Un-

To prove my wolfishness, I shucked my skate shoes and went barefoot on the pine needles

Courtney Buder
Fact
Revenant

It might be time to find a new cemetery

Michał Kozłowski
New World

How do you have a good time in Warsaw? Sing Neil Diamond songs in a karaoke bar.

Ginger Ngo
Fact
Strathcona

That is how one shows true love

Helen Humphreys
Fact
Botany

I want to see what it means, on a deep level, to stay put

Mary Schendlinger
In Memoriam: Edith Iglauer, 1917 - 2019
Sadie McCarney
Fact
Christmas in Lothlórien

It was a gruesome war, Santa added in Papyrus font, but the forces of Good eventually emerged victorious

Madeleine Pelletier
Fact
Dummies Raising Goats

Time to call a professional

Rose Divecha
Fact
Clearing Out My Mother's House

The large supply of nine-volt batteries suddenly made sense

S.I. Hassan
Fact
Becoming Canadian

I traffic deep time in a great storm, guilty of ignorance and omission

Adrian Rain
Fact
Schrödinger’s Kids

The log jam is tall and wide and choosing wrong means we don’t make it home

Dayna Mahannah
Fact
The Academy of Profound Oddities

The fish is a suspended phantom, its magenta skeleton an exquisite, vibrant exhibit of what lies beneath

Kelly Bouchard
Fact
After the Flames

A wildland fighter witnesses an old burn's second act

ERNIE KROEGER
Fact
Acoustic Memory

Memories sneak up, tiptoe quiet as a cat. Boom like a slapshot

J.R. Patterson
Fact
True at First Flight

The unmistakable buzz of an approaching aircraft is enough to send my family onto the lawn

Eimear Laffan
Fact
The Trap Door

This invertebrate does not go looking for prey

rob mclennan
Fact
Elizabeth Smart’s Rockcliffe Park

For the sake of the large romantic gesture

Sara de Waal
Fact
Little Women, Two Raccoons

Hit everything dead on, even if it’s big

Margaret Nowaczyk
Fact
Metanoias

The names we learn in childhood smell the sweetest to us

Ian Roy
Fact
My Body Is a Wonderland

Maybe my doctor has two patients named Ian Roy, and I’ve been sent the other Ian’s file

Sara Graefe
Fact
My Summer Behind the Iron Curtain

No Skylab buzz in East Germany.

Sara Cassidy
Fact
The Lowest Tide

Nature’s sanctity is the only portal to the future.

Kathy Page
Fact
The Exquisite Cyclops

A writer roams her sleepscape in search of the extraordinary subconscious

Hollie Adams
Fact
A Partial List of Inconvenient Truths

In search of a big picture at the end of the singular world

David Sheskin
Fact
PRESS 1 IF

PRESS 1 IF YOU THINK YOU MAY HAVE HEARD THE BIG BANG.

CONNIE KUHNS
Strange Women

Connie Kuhns' major profile of punk, politics and feminism in 1970s Canada: the Moral Lepers, the Dishrags and other revolutionary bands.

DAVID COLLIER
Happy Hearts

A series of lucky events seemed to conspire to bring me to Stettler, Alberta, one day in June 1998. Jennifer, the woman who was in between being my roommate and my girlfriend, was at the Banff Centre and I was on my way there from Saskatoon, where we lived. She had left me fifty dollars for gas so I could pick her up after her workshop, and I had accepted, hoping that when the time came I wouldn’t need it and I could give it back. I did need it, of course. I had been waiting for a cheque to come from the Globe and Mail for one of a series of drawings I was doing for them, and when it was time to leave, the cheque still hadn’t arrived. So I set out from Saskatoon with just a tank of gas and the fifty dollars.

Eve Corbel
Getting It Wrong

It's human nature to jump to the wrong conclusion–and stick with it.

MARY MEIGS
Freewriting

Mary Meigs and her friend Lise Weil, editor of Beyond Recall, met regularly to do freewriting together. For each exercise they chose a line or phrase from the work of a poet they both admired; then, inspired by that "prompt," both women wrote for five or ten minutes, recording whatever came to mind (and hand).

Michał Kozłowski
Boomtown

L.B. Foote fled Newfoundland to avoid life as a cod fisherman and became Winnipeg's best-known photographer, chronicling Boomtown's growth, energy and struggles.

Daniel Francis
Known It All

Review of "Know It All: Finding the Impossible Country" by James H. Marsh.

JILL MANDRAKE
Part of the Crowd

Review of "Crowded Mirror" by Sheila Delany.

Michael Hayward
No Regrets

Review of "Stories I Might Regret Telling You" by Martha Wainwright.

Peggy Thompson
What It Means To Be Human

Review of "All the Broken Things" by Geoff Inverarity.

Michael Hayward
Wanda x 3

Review of "Wanda" written and directed by Barbara Loden, "Suite for Barbara Loden" by Nathalie Léger, translated by Natasha Lehrer and Cécile Menon and "Wanda" by Barbara Lambert.

Patty Osborne
Teenaged Boys, Close Up

Review of "Sleeping Giant" directed by Andrew Cividino and written by Cividino, Blain Watters and Aaron Yeger.

Michael Hayward
Sitting Ducks

Review of "Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands" by Kate Beaton.

Michael Hayward
Vanishing Career Paths

Review of "The Last Bookseller: A Life in the Rare Book Trade" by Gary Goodman, and "A Factotum in the Book Trade" by Marius Kociejowski.

JILL MANDRAKE
The Doors of Perception Had to Close

Review of "The Acid Room: The Psychedelic Trials and Tribulations of Hollywood Hospital" by Jesse Donaldson and Erika Dyck.

Anson Ching
Further Years of Solitude

Review of "Black Sugar" by Miguel Bonnefoy.

Daniel Francis
Future Imperfect

Review of "The Premonitions Bureau " by Sam Knight.

Peggy Thompson
Fact
A moment with holden

Review of "Holden After & Before: Love Letter for a Son Lost to Overdose" by Tara McGuire.

JILL MANDRAKE
Fact
POINTS OF INFLECTION

Review of "Some of the Puzzles" by M.A.C. Farrant.

Michael Hayward
Fact
A HOLIDAY IN THE MOUNTAINS (WITH PIE)

Review of "Holiday, 1909" by Charles Chapman.

KELSEA O'CONNOR
Fact
A Hockey Romance

Kelsea O'Connor on the self-published webcomic by Ngozi Ukazu.

JILL MANDRAKE
Clouds of Intrigue, Rays of Hope

"Like most people who have seen the stand-up comedy and other stage-work of Charles Demers, I sure couldn’t pass up a book of his personal essays."

KELSEA O'CONNOR
Castles, Countesses, and Cat Women

Kelsea O'Connor on queer lovers, gothic horror and fairy tale themes.

Anson Ching
Fact
THE BELL KEEPS TOLLING

Review of "For Whom the Bell Tolls" by Ernest Hemingway.

Kris Rothstein
Fact
DEFINED BY DUMPLINGS

Review of "What We Talk About When We Talk About Dumplings" edited by John Lorinc.

Jonathan Heggen
Fact
The Common Shaman

Review of "Shaman" by Kim Stanley Robinson.

JILL MANDRAKE
My Typewriter’s So Old, It Uses A Pencil

A review of a book of variations by bpNichol.

Peggy Thompson
Fact
Walk Another Path

Review of "Landlines" by Raynor Winn.

Patty Osborne
Fact
A Secret Well Kept

Review of "The Betrayal of Anne Frank: A Cold Case Investigation" by Rosemary Sullivan.

KELSEA O'CONNOR
Fact
The Human Side of Art Forgery

Review of "The Great Canadian Art Fraud Case: The Group of Seven and Tom Thomson Forgeries" by Jon S. Dellandrea.

Stephen Henighan
Power of Denial

The crowds learned that they could not act effectively in the present without confronting the past, specifically the historical treatment of indigenous people.

Stephen Henighan
Against Efficiency

Stephen Henighan argues that efficiency has become a core value that heightens social divisions.

Alberto Manguel
Role Models and Readers

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...

Jennifer Gossoo
Things Discovered and Un-

To prove my wolfishness, I shucked my skate shoes and went barefoot on the pine needles

Lascia Tagen
Found in A Little Free Library

Review of "The Mayfair Bookshop" by Eliza Knight

KELSEA O'CONNOR
Building A Fibreshed

Review of "Fleece and Fibre: Textile Producers of Vancouver Island and the Gulf Islands" by Francine McCabe

Courtney Buder
Revenant

It might be time to find a new cemetery

Angela Runnals
Food for Thought

Review of "The Land of Milk and Honey" by C. Pam Zhang

Michael Hayward
Praise the Lairds

Review of "More Richly in Earth: A Poet’s Search for Mary MacLeod" by Marilyn Bowering

Patty Osborne
Inside A Tiny Tornado

Review of "Rebel Girl: My Life as a Feminist Punk" by Kathleen Hanna

Soraya Roberts
Silver & Blue

Did you hear that the railway built Canada? That’s probably all you heard


Kris Rothstein
Surviving Hungary

Review of "No Jews Live Here" by John Lorinc

Ginger Ngo
Strathcona

That is how one shows true love

Michael Hayward
Schrödinger’s Books

Michael Hayward on anticipating the arrival of Fitzcarraldo Editions

Randy Fred
Truth Walking

Randy Fred on the Indigenous Speakers Series at Vancouver Island University

Helen Humphreys
Botany

I want to see what it means, on a deep level, to stay put

Dayna Mahannah
The Truth Shall Send You Down Eight Alternate Routes

Review of "How It Works Out" by Myriam Lacroix

D. G. Shewell
Found in a Cave

Review of "The Cave" by José Saramago

Michael Hayward
We'll Always Have Paris

Review of "Paris: A Poem" by Hope Mirrlees

H.R. Straw
Living La Vie Française

Review of "Happening", "The Years", and "A Girl's Story" by Annie Ernaux

Geoff Inverarity
A Familiar Grief

Review of "Bridestones" by Miranda Pearson

Liam MacPhail
Memories of Two Boyhoods

Review of "Memories Look at Me" by Tomas Tranströmer

Sadie McCarney
Christmas in Lothlórien

It was a gruesome war, Santa added in Papyrus font, but the forces of Good eventually emerged victorious

Peggy Thompson
Opioids and Other Demons

Review of "Demon Copperhead" by Barbara Kingsolver

Madeleine Pelletier
Dummies Raising Goats

Time to call a professional

Kris Rothstein
An Ordinary Life?

Review of "There Was a Time for Everything" by Judith Friedland

Peggy Thompson
Grab Your Feather Boas

Review of "Stories from My Gay Grandparents" directed by J Stevens

Anik See
The Crush and the Rush and the Roar

And a sort of current ran through you when you saw it, a visceral, uncontrollable response. A physical resistance to the silence