In Peterborough, Pastor Billy cures arthritis, back pain, bone spurs, lymphoma, stage four liver cancer, sleep apnea and atrial fibrillation
Susie Taylor
We Smoke Our Smokes
From morning to night, there's always someone coming in for smokes and a chat.
Marcus Youssef
Happy Shiny People
The Museum of Communism is easy to find thanks to the museum’s advertising slogan: We’re above McDonald’s.
Steven Heighton
Jogging with Joyce
Before I opened for Joyce Carol Oates at her reading at Harbourfront in Toronto, we had dinner: Oates and her husband, Raymond Smith; the organizer, Greg Gatenby; and me.
RICHARD VAN CAMP
World's Most Wanted
Who knew my dad's old pen was a famous Parker 51 Vacumatic?
Ann Diamond
An Awful Thing
“Never write a line you don’t mean,” said Carver. “And don’t ever imag
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
Preoccupied
Stephen Osborne reflects on the Vancouver Poetry Conference, the Occupy movement, and a brunch with NaNoWriMo novelists.
Andrea King
Great Historical Curiosity
The facts (and fictions) surrounding the tale of Quebec's most famous murderess, La Corriveau.
Joe Bongiorno
The Shī Fu
Joe Bongiorno goes in search of enlightenment and finds the Shī Fu.
Carmen Tiampo
What Survives
My great-grandfather exists now only in memory, unacknowledged even by his tombstone
KATHRYN MOCKLER
I Won’t Clean the Tub
He said he just wanted towels. There was no reason to be afraid.
BILLEH NICKERSON
V4G 1N4
A poem about a postal code.
Carolyne Montgomery
In the Pines
It is a Sunday in August. We drive from London, Ontario, to the Pinery Provincial Park in a new green 1964 Mercury Comet.
John Patterson
Devil’s Night
On Halloween in 1966, John Patterson's father burned down the Jones's house to give the neighbourhood kids a thrill.
GALE SMALLWOOD-JONES
Working Life for a Girl in the 1960s
We got paid once a week in cash - it made you feel special the first few times.
Jennesia Pedri
T-Bay Notes
Leaving Thunder Bay isn't one of the things that gets easier with practice
M.A.C. Farrant
Stories from a West Coast Town
Very quietly, very slowly, happiness can take over a person's life
Jocelyn Kuang
Candy Cap Magic
Forgotten cutlery, missing mushrooms and lingering doubt: a recipe for bewilderment.
Erin Soros
Carbon
"A folder full of awards proves to the psychiatrist I wasn't always this way."
Jocelyn Kuang
27,000 Cups of Tea
Battenbergs and Victoria sponge at Buckingham Palace.
Leanne Betasamosake Simpson
Treaties
A young Indigenous woman deals with hippy-artist-pothead boyfriends and car troubles.
Randy Fred
Borderless
Randy Fred reports on migrant workers, then and now.
Michał Kozłowski
Corpse Reviver
The restaurant had white concrete walls and chrome lights dangling from the ceiling that gave the place an operating theatre vibe.
Christine Novosel
Hived Off
Christine Novosel reports from Glasgow on art school, apiary management, Brexit and being a junkyard dog.
Violence could not reach them only when they were distant as the moon, not of this world
JEROME STUEART
Fact
The Dead Viking My Birthmother Gave Me
“The first time I met him, he caused me to float to the ceiling"
Joseph Pearson
Fact
No Names
Sebastian and I enjoy making fun of le mythomane. We compare him to characters in novels. Maybe he can’t return home because he’s wanted for a crime.
Minelle Mahtani
Fact
Looking for a Place to Happen
What does it mean to love a band? A friend? A nation?
Christine Lai
Fact
Now Must Say Goodbye
The postcard presents a series of absences—the nameless photographer,
the unknown writer and recipient; it is constituted by what is unknown
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.
Mia + Eric
Future Perfect
New bylaws for civic spaces.
JUDY LEBLANC
Walking in the Wound
It is racism, not race, that is a risk factor for dying of COVID-19.
SADIQA DE MEIJER
Do No Harm
Doing time is not a blank, suspended existence.
Kristen den Hartog
The Insulin Soldiers
It was as though a magic potion had brought him back to life.
Steven Heighton
Everything Turns Away
Going unnoticed must be the root sorrow for the broken.
DANIEL CANTY
The Sum of Lost Steps
On the curve of the contagion and on the measure of Montreality.
Brad Cran
Fact
Potluck Café
It took me a million miles to get here and half the time I was doing it in high heels.
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.
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.
Michał Kozłowski
New World Publisher
Randy Fred thought that life after residential school would be drinking, watching TV and dying. Instead, he became the "greatest blind Indian publisher in the world."
BRAD YUNG
Lessons I’m Going To Teach My Kids Too Late
"I want to buy a house. And build a secret room in it. And not tell the kids about it."
Paul Tough
City Still Breathing: Listening to the Weakerthans
I wasn’t certain whether I was in Winnipeg because of the Weakerthans, or whether I cared about the Weakerthans because I care about Winnipeg.
Stephen Osborne
This Postcard Life
Spiritual landscapes and unknowable people captured on film, used to convey a message.
Hilary M. V. Leathem
To Coronavirus, C: An Anthropological Abecedary
After Paul Muldoon and Raymond Williams.
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.
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?
Caroline Adderson
Lives of the House
A basement shrine in her 1920s home inspires Caroline Adderson to discover the past lives of her house and its inhabitants.
"This is not a documentary; it is, however, an overpowering aesthetic and emotional experience, a true happening"—Stephen Osborne reviews Susan Sontag's film Promised Lands.
Eve Corbel
Seized
Eve Corbel reviews Follow the Rabbit-Proof Fence by Doris Pilkington, in which two girls are taken from their family by Western Australia government officials in 1931.
Michael Hayward
All My Troubles Seemed So Far Away
Michael Hayward reviews Stefan Zweig's The World of Yesterday, a "a window into the vanished world of the Austro-Hungarian Empire."
Dylan Gyles
Philosophy and Chloroform
Dylan Gyles reviews Your Fathers, Where Are They? And the Prophets, Do They Live Forever? by Dave Eggers, the story of a disillusioned young man grappling with life, the universe and metaphysical truths.
Michael Hayward
Smoke and Mirrors
Michael Hayward reviews American Smoke by Iain Sinclair, an account of the author's road trip across North America in search of traces of the Beat Generation.
Roni Simunovic
Based Loosely
Roni Simunovic reviews Based on a True Story by Elizabeth Renzetti, the bizarrely fascinating tale of a washed-up soap star's struggles with unemployment and substance abuse.
Lily Gontard
Wild Woman
Lily Gontard reviews Cheryl Strayed's Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail, a memoir about crisis, redemption and hiking.
Roni Simunovic
Bird Metal
Roni Simunovic investigates Hatebeak, a death metal band with an African Grey parrot vocalist.
KELSEA O'CONNOR
Strange Things Come From The Woods
Kelsea O'Connor reviews Through the Woods by Emily Carroll, a collection of comics full of "ghosts, parasites, dead brothers, mysterious strangers and murderous husbands."
Stephen Osborne
The Saddest Place on Earth
“I walked into the garage, and found a teenage boy in a tank top and shorts." Kathryn Mockler's poems eschew meaningless metaphors for direct language.
Michael Hayward
Talking Ducks
Michael Hayward reviews The Old Castle’s Secret by Carl Barks.
Michael Hayward
Behind Closed Doors
Michael Hayward reviews My Struggle Book 1: A Death in the Family by Karl Ove Knausgård.
Lily Gontard
Matters of Life and Death
Lily Gontard reviews Nocturne: On the Life and Death of My Brother by Helen Humphreys.
Patty Osborne
Working with Wool
Patty Osborne reviews Working with Wool, A Coast Salish Legacy and the Cowichan Sweater by Sylvia Olsen.
Stephen Osborne
Praise Song for the Day
"Plain, non-pretentious, utterly mundane: It’snot clear what else an inaugural poem can be." Stephen Osborne reviews Elizabeth Alexander’s poem for Barack Obama’s inauguration.
Jennesia Pedri
Crossings
Jennesia Pedri reviews Crossings by Betty Lambert.
Patty Osborne
Closer to Memory Than Imagination
Patty Osborne reviews Air Carnation, a story by Guadalupe Muro that combines the author's personal memoirs with poetry, songwriting and fiction.
Michael Hayward
Famous Foods
Michael Hayward reviews Luke Barr's Provence, 1970, an investigation of the winter when six major culinary figures lived together in France.
Robert Everett-Green
The Best of Times
Robert Everett-Green reviews The Best of Times by Ludwig Bemelmans, author of the Madeline stories, consisting of illustrated articles that Bemelmans wrote about his travels through Europe.
JILL MANDRAKE
What Is America? A Short History of the New World Order
Ronald Wright explores the modern history of our southern neighbour in What Is America? A Short History of the New World Order, reviewed by Jill Mandrake.
Patty Osborne
Voices from the Sound: Chronicles of Clayoquot Sound and Tofino 1899-1929
Patty Osborne reviews Voices from the Sound: Chronicles of Clayoquot Sound and Tofino 1899–1929 by Margaret Horsfield, a peek into the lives of the early settlers of the West Coast of Vancouver Island.
Kris Rothstein
Anna’s Shadow
Kris Rothstein reviews Anna's Shadow by David Manicom, "much more than just another post-Cold War thriller."
Stephen Osborne
An American Story: The Speeches of Barack Obama
Stephen Osborne reviews a collection of Barack Obama's speeches that was surprisingly popular overseas.
Michael Hayward
Pie Tree Press: Memories from the Composing Room Floor
Michael Hayward reviews the autobiography of Jim Rimmer, a “high priest” of type design and private-press printing.
Phrase books are tools of cultural globalization—but they are also among its casualties.
Stephen Henighan
Collateral Damage
When building a nation, cultural riches can be lost.
Stephen Henighan
Transatlantic Fictions
Coming to harbour in a new world.
Alberto Manguel
Arms and Letters
Science and the arts fulfil their functions to help us survive through the imagination.
Stephen Henighan
Reheated Races
Dividing and conquering local populations confines them to manageable administrative units.
CHERYL THOMPSON
Dismantling the Myth of the Hero
In a world dominated by heroes, difference is not tolerated.
Alberto Manguel
Achilles and the Lusitan Tortoise
“Have patience” and “Tomorrow” are two inseparable locutions in the Portuguese tongue.
Stephen Henighan
All in the Same CANO
For a brief period the band CANO gave shape to the dream of a bilingual Canadian culture.
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."
LISA BIRD-WILSON
Occupation Anxiety
Lisa Bird-Wilson on UNDRIP, reconciliation, and the anxiety felt by Indigenous people in Canada.
Stephen Henighan
Not Reading
What we do when we absorb words from a screen—and we haven’t yet evolved a verb for it—is not reading.
Alberto Manguel
Library as Wishful Thinking
Libraries are not only essential in educating the soul, but in forming the identity of a society.
Stephen Henighan
Lethal Evolutions
Our society is formed on the assumption of a healthy immune system.
Stephen Henighan
Confidence Woman
The woman who called herself Tatiana Aarons gave me an address that led to a vacant lot.
Alberto Manguel
Léon Bloy and His Monogamous Reader
Dogged dedication grants a reader vicarious immortality.
Stephen Henighan
Plague
What we can—and can’t—learn from the plague
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.
George Fetherling
The Daily Apocalypse
The newspaper wars aren’t what they used to be.
Stephen Henighan
Taíno Tales
A package-deal paradise reputation curtails gringo knowledge of Dominican life.
Alberto Manguel
Art and Blasphemy
Faith seems to shiver when confronted by art.
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
Literature & Morality
Must artists declare their moral integrity?
Stephen Henighan
Flight Shame
Without air travel, family networks might have dissolved long ago.
Alberto Manguel
The Defeat of Sherlock Holmes
There’s something not quite right about the grid on which the game is played.
Patty Osborne reviews The Perimeter Dog by Julie Vandervoort.
Stephen Osborne
Marginal
Stephen Osborne finds a copy of Francoise Sagan's Those Without Shadows at the bus stop, complete with margin notes that create a new sort of text.
Bruce Serafin
Leetle Bateese
"Since Drummond is spectacularly out of date, why not discuss him?" Bruce Serafin looks at William Henry Drummond's place in the history of corny yet unforgettable Canadian poetry.
Roni Simunovic
Out and About
Roni Simunovic reviews Queer and Trans Artists of Color: Stories of Some of Our Lives by Nia King, a collection of interviews about gender and sexuality, and how to make art, make rent and survive.
Michael Hayward
To the Moomins! (And Beyond)
Michael Hayward reviews Moomin: The Deluxe Anniversary Edition by Tove Jansson, a collection of comic strips that contain "the poetry of our world: sad, joyful, dangerous, enchanting."
JILL MANDRAKE
Here Lies
Jill Mandrake reviews Local Customs by Audrey Thomas, a ghost story and murder mystery set in West Africa.
Lindsay Diehl
Honolulu
Lindsay Diehl encounters choppy waves, a beautiful man in a hot tub and a pendant shaped like a curved tongue on a trip to Hawaii.
Alberto Manguel
Fist
Alberto Manguel examines the rich symbology of the fist, a primal symbol of rebellion and grief, across cultures and history.
Patty Osborne
Saint Ralph
Patty Osborne reviews Saint Ralph, the uplifting but untrue story of a boy who sets out to win the 1954 Boston Marathon.
Derek Fairbridge
Rush: Beyond the Lighted Stage
Derek Fairbridge reviews a documentary on the Canadian rock band Rush.
ANDREA BENNETT
Rockin' Through Ontario
andrea bennett suggests that Road Rocks Ontario, a poorly proofread guide to our middle province’s geologic wonders, has a five-star rating on Goodreads because "people who like rocks like them a whole lot."
Michał Kozłowski
Publishing Life
The zine scene—comics, wrestling, skateboarding and music.
Wilson MacDonald
Author Tour, 1923
The poet Wilson MacDonald reluctantly reveals secrets of literary success.
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.
Annabel Lyon
Eye for Detail
What is at the heart of this Edith Iglauer profile by Giller nominee Annabel Lyon? Hint: Ice Road Truckers.
Elevator Will Not Fall
Ludwig Wittgenstein instructs you on how to comport yourself in a stuck elevator.
Drunk, Armed With Guitar
"RCMP are responding to Canadian Tire for a report that a male is threatening staff with an axe he was trying to return" and other tweets from @ScanBC.
Jill Boettger
Double Lives: Writing and Motherhood
Jill Boettger reviews Double Lives: Writing and Motherhood, a collection of 22 essays by women who are both mothers and writers.
Stephen Osborne
Dream Counsels
"The soiled side of the shirt is the great baggage of dreams"—Stephen Osborne dreams of Hemingway, Harper and profiteroles.
Stephen Osborne
Canadian ten-dollar bill
The dreadful effects of “computer-assisted publishing” can be observed in the new Canadian ten-dollar bill, a specimen of which I had been carrying around for days wondering where I could have picked up such a miserable-looking coupon.
CARIN MAKUZ
Bride of God
On her first communion, a young girl searches for peace of mind in a world of purgatory, UFOs and the Lennon Sisters.
VINCENT PAGÉ
Milton Acorn Googles His Own Work
"Could I forget: the look that tells me you want me"—Vincent Pagé creates Google autocomplete poetry.
Veronica Gaylie
London Double
Veronica Gaylie encounters invisible lamps, uncooperative clerks and a cushion with a bear and/or badger on it during a trip to London.
Eve Corbel
Jungle Out There
Eve Corbel reviews Lumberjanes, a "smart, cute-in-a-good-way" comic series that follows the supernatural hijinks of five girls at an extraordinary summer camp.
Daniel Francis
Folly of War
Daniel Francis reviews All Else Is Folly, a "useful antidote" to the patriotic narrative that hails World War I as Canada's "coming of age."