My mother stands at the top of the stairs, thin as a skeleton and reeking of booze. “Are you drunk?” I ask. “No,” she says. “Have you had anything to drink today?” “No,” she says. Lies, all lies. There are always more.
Robert Hunter
Launching Greenpeace
A first-hand account of Greenpeace's first expedition to stop U.S. underwater nuclear testing on September 15, 1971.
ANDREW BODEN
Shack Stories
Mr. Maillard scared me from the moment he stepped from his red Chevy pickup. He stood six inches shorter than me and weighed sixty pounds less, but exuded tough son-of-a-bitch like cologne.
GEORGE BOWERING
She Carries
She carries my chair,she carries my walker,she carries my commode,she drops my heart so hard it breaks into a hundred pieces
ANGELA MAIREAD COID
Show Business
A young girl gets a taste of show business by acting as Sleeping Beauty in a sideshow.
Stephen Smith
Sir John's Lost Diaries
The wind blows. The sun dwindles. The ice waits.
AMY DENNIS
Skin Graffiti
Use your grandmother’s knitting needles if they are steel and sharp, her crochet hooks. Hell, you could even use the split edge of this table. Slide your inner arm against the jagged grain, watch the splinters scrape you raw.
EMILY SCHULTZ
Soft Ice Cream
Sadness has no reasons. Sadness is a luxury of spare time, a piece of pie leftover, the blueberry’s skin caught between your teeth, the black blear of happiness.
The Posthuman Dada Guide: Tzara & Lenin Play Chess
TROY JOLLIMORE
Tom Thomson in Transit
His wallet’s stuffed with currency from allmanner of countries not in business now;his camera aches for discontinued film.
KATIE DAUBS
To Be Read by My Children in the Event of My Demise
In Katie Daubs' short fiction, a father writes a deathbed letter to his children, explaining the surprising way he really met their mother.
CRAIG SAVEL
Traversing Leonard
"He had white hair at every angle, a paunch, and he didn’t bathe much. Colleagues joked about the Leonard Condensate, one whiff of which reduced matter into muck."
MARY MEIGS
Tripwire
They felt comfortable in their resemblances, too comfortable to note that the resemblances contained differences like tripwires cunningly laid and hidden.
ERIC DUPONT
Trouble at the Henhouse
"I now know that every omelette, every angel cake, every soufflé, and every bucket of Colonel Sanders’ fried chicken brings us closer to a better, more intelligent world, where cruelty and pettiness do not exist."
CARY FAGAN
My Father's Picasso
"You know what I think it's worth?" Goldie said. "Fifteen bucks for the frame."
CARY FAGAN
My Father's Picasso
"You know what I think it's worth?" Goldie said. "Fifteen bucks for the frame."
Rhonda Waterfall
Night Kitchen
The phone rings at 11:30 at night and as soon as you hear your father’s voice you know something bad has happened.
No One Explains Things To Dogs
No one explains things to dogs. The voice that’s missing has left its aroma everywhere,along with the faint stale smells of those who used to be here:
ANTONINE MAILLET
Not Really French
So how can we be Québécois if we don’t live in Québec? Well, for the love of all that’s holy, where the hell do we live, then?
GORAN SIMIC
Old People and Snow
My beautiful old ones are disappearing slowly. They simply leave, without rules, without a farewell.
Veronica Gaylie
Old Timer Talkin’
Uncle Tom lies in St. Paul’s Emergency pacemaker jumping like a sockeye salmon while he teaches two nurses four verses of Danny Boy.
Pacific Meats & Frozen Foods, Inc.
Paul Martin & Companies: Sixty Theses on the Alegal Nature of Tax Havens
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.
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.
David L. Chapman
Postcolonial Bodies
Mastery of the self
CONNIE KUHNS
There is a Wind that Never Dies
"If you are still alive, you must have had the experience of surrendering."
Sarah Leavitt
Small Dogs
Emily’s mother had unusually large eyes that bulged slightly and often turned red, and she stared at people in restaurants and stores. Sometimes Emily’s mother commented on these people’s conversations, or laughed at their jokes, as if she were part
Ola Szczecinska
Symbiosis in Warsaw
Ola Szczecinska returns to Warsaw to visit her grandmother, and to keep from losing her memories.
Memories lie because they build on memories. I think that I remember something, but in fact I remember remembering it, and so on through countless layers of memory. Every memory is a mise en abyme.
Rob Kovitz
Because a Lot of Questions Are Complex
Begging the question of what can be defined as “form.”
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
Treason of the Librarians
On the screen, only the image—not the word—can become the world.
RICHARD VAN CAMP
Grey Matters
It all started with a zesty little book about getting old.
Daniel Francis
Umpire of the St. Lawrence
Donald Creighton was a bigot and a curmudgeon, a cranky Tory with a chip on his shoulder. He was also the country’s leading historian, who changed the way that Canadians told their own story.
Alberto Manguel
Pistol Shots at a Concert
The novelist can often better define reality than the historian.
Stephen Henighan
Phony War
"We know that life-altering and possibly cataclysmic change is coming, and we continue to live as we have always done."
Alberto Manguel
Power to the Reader
"Since the beginning of time (the telling of which is also a story), we have known that words are dangerous creatures."
Daniel Francis
Birth of a Nation
Lacking in drama and embarrassingly undemocratic, Canada’s origins owe a lot to old-fashioned politics and not much to European battles or transcontinental railways.
Alberto Manguel
In Praise of Ronald Wright
"Authenticity is the essential quality of all travel literature, imaginary or real."
Alberto Manguel
Fist
Alberto Manguel examines the rich symbology of the fist, a primal symbol of rebellion and grief, across cultures and history.
Stephen Henighan
Cross-Country Snow
"Cross-country skiing offered me the reassurance sought by the immigrant who is excluded from his locality’s history: a viable alternate route to belonging."
Stephen Henighan
Immigrants from Nowhere
Stephen Henighan asks: what if you don't have a tidy answer to "Where are you from?"
Daniel Francis
Time for a Rewrite
Aboriginal people are creating a new version of Canada, and non-Aboriginals can lend a hand or get out of the way—Daniel Francis on the new Canadian narrative.
Daniel Francis
When Treatment Becomes Torture
Daniel Francis discusses Canada's failing mental health care system and its long history of mistreatment.
Stephen Henighan
Offend
The writer who is loved by all, by definition, neglects literature’s prime responsibility: to offend.
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
The Armenian Question
"Sometimes, in politics or history, certain words, certain names are sufficient unto themselves: it is as if there were names that once pronounced require no further telling."
Alberto Manguel
Jewish Gauchos
European Jewish artisans on horseback in Argentina.
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."
Daniel Francis
Park In Progress
Daniel Francis asks why a high-speed commuter route runs through Stanley Park, Vancouver's precious urban oasis.
Alberto Manguel
Not Finishing
"A library is never finished, only abandoned." Alberto Manguel on incompletion, voluntary interruption and the pleasure of the day before.
Stephen Henighan
Iberian Duet
The assumption of mutual comprehensibility between speakers of Spanish and Portuguese creates a culture of mutual ignorance.
Somewhere in the sweat and ache and muscle I carved a new shape for myself that made more sense.
David L. Chapman
Postcolonial Bodies
Mastery of the self
Joe Bongiorno
Last Laughs
Justin Trudeau and Greta Thunberg attend the Montreal climate march.
RICHARD VAN CAMP
Look Out, Not In
Mary Schendlinger on "How the Girl Guides Won the War" by Janie Hampton.
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.
Stephen Henighan
Flight Shame
Without air travel, family networks might have dissolved long ago.
Michael Hayward
Cycling the Himalayas
Michael Hayward on the elation and freedom of long-distance cycling.
Alberto Manguel
The Defeat of Sherlock Holmes
There’s something not quite right about the grid on which the game is played.
Michael Hayward
Walking, with Writers
Michael Hayward on the journeys documented by writers.
Daniel Francis
Who Cares Who Ate John Franklin?
Daniel Francis on John Franklin, John Rae and the Globe and Mail's enthusiasm for cannibalism.
Anson Ching
Passing on the Sport
Anson Ching on the hardest board game to learn.
Michael Hayward
Pre-Potter Wizardry
Michael Hayward and 50 years of writing from Ursula K. Le Guin.
Michał Kozłowski
Waiting for Trudeau
Pansy shoes and power suits on parliament hill.
KELSEA O'CONNOR
Drool-worthy
Kelsea O'Connor on many aspects of food, from culinary extinctions to kombucha microbiomes.
Lorna MacKinnon
Weekend with Dorian
Storm prep for a category 2.
Kathleen Murdock
Text That Breaks
Kathleen Murdock on the physical and meaningful structure of text.
Beth Rowntree
7 lbs. 6 oz.
I looked in her purse and found nothing but scraps of paper so covered in writing there was hardly any white left on the pages.
Alberto Manguel
Marilla
Prince Edward Island gothic.
JILL MANDRAKE
One Ring Circus: Extreme Wrestling in the Minor Leagues
The question you have to ask yourself when you finish reading One Ring Circus: Extreme Wrestling in the Minor Leagues, by Brian Howell is this:do I want to become a minor league wrestler? The answer is yes.
Michał Kozłowski
Road Trip Supreme
Outlet Malls, Janis Joplin, The Godfather and Taco Bell—on the scent of Ameryka.