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.
Anson Ching on letting the facts form your privilege.
Patty Osborne
A Korean Friend
Patty Osborne on a North Korean novel from North Korea.
George Fetherling
The Daily Apocalypse
The newspaper wars aren’t what they used to be.
Ivan Coyote
Gender Failure
It didn’t feel like there was any possible way this could really be happening—nineteen years of binding my breasts, even more years trying not to hate them.
Thad McIlroy
Hernia Heaven
Thad McIlroy spends the night in hospital to get a hernia—possibly on his left side, possibly on his right—repaired.
Edith Iglauer
Perfect Bite
A warm spring night, a country club dance, a date with an attractive young man—and braces on my two front teeth.
C. E. COUGHLAN
Three Days in Toronto
A trip across the country, with didgeridoo and Trudeau too.
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.
Kris Rothstein
Pencil Pushers
Kris Rothstein on the current state of employment in Bullshit Jobs and Temp.
Anson Ching
The City in an Apartment
Anson Ching on a time and place, and the people who live there.
Hàn Fúsēn
Little Trouble in Chinatown
Limits of the language.
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?
Joe Bongiorno
Piledrivin’ Patriots
On parle français icitte!
David L. Chapman
Postcolonial Bodies
Mastery of the self
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.
RICHARD VAN CAMP
Look Out, Not In
Mary Schendlinger on "How the Girl Guides Won the War" by Janie Hampton.
Joe Bongiorno
Last Laughs
Justin Trudeau and Greta Thunberg attend the Montreal climate march.
CONNIE KUHNS
There is a Wind that Never Dies
"If you are still alive, you must have had the experience of surrendering."
Lenore Rowntree
Straight, No Chaser
Women in '50s chic, men in sports jackets, and all manner of musical instruments at a suburban home in Toronto.
Margaret Nowaczyk
Room for More
Narrative text, written and spoken, refines a doctor’s ability to hear a patients’ stories.
Patty Osborne
Canadian Dystopia
Patty Osborne on an engrossing world where nothing monumental happens.
Michael Hayward
Cycling the Himalayas
Michael Hayward on the elation and freedom of long-distance cycling.
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