How to perform a textual analysis of a Facebook message, while under the influence of red wine.
Stephen Osborne
The Future Is Uncertain Country
As men of high seriousness appear on television with their crystal balls, Stephen Osborne shares what he learned about the future from Ray the astrologer.
Phoebe Tsang
Be Careful What You Wish For
A tarot card reading for John Franklin, Arctic explorer and Lieutenant-Governor of Van Diemen's Land, by Phoebe Tsang.
David Mitchell
Imaginary City
Crack addicts, art critics and pregnant waitresses populate David Mitchell's uncanny vision of Vancouver.
Stephen Osborne
Snows of Yesteryear
A blizzard hits two days before Christmas, stirring up feelings of trepidation and excitement for the passengers of a bus.
Thad McIlroy
Trial by Water
Ebb and flow in Old San Juan, Puerto Rico.
Paul DeLorme
Escapist
A Canadian soldier captured at Dieppe in 1942 tells what happened next.
Sewid-Smith Daisy
Three Stories About Moving
The worst time for your pet to run away is when you are moving, and my family moved a lot.
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.
C. E. COUGHLAN
Three Days in Toronto
A trip across the country, with didgeridoo and Trudeau too.
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.
Hàn Fúsēn
Little Trouble in Chinatown
Limits of the language.
Joe Bongiorno
Piledrivin’ Patriots
On parle français icitte!
Joe Bongiorno
Last Laughs
Justin Trudeau and Greta Thunberg attend the Montreal climate march.
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.
Michał Kozłowski
Waiting for Trudeau
Pansy shoes and power suits on parliament hill.
Lorna MacKinnon
Weekend with Dorian
Storm prep for a category 2.
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.
Michał Kozłowski
Road Trip Supreme
Outlet Malls, Janis Joplin, The Godfather and Taco Bell—on the scent of Ameryka.
Jeff Shucard
Home Front
"My father began his shopping spree in the fashion department. He ordered jackets, sweaters, shirts, trousers and shoes. In his new wardrobe he looks like a mummy that has been dressed up for a big night of trick-or-treating."
Scott Andrew Christensen
n yer comin' wit me
"have ya been ev’ryweir?"
Hàn Fúsēn
Biking Around with Ondjaki
Just decide what happens and worry about the rest later.
Stephen Osborne
Wittgenstein Walks (Commercial Drive)
"8.21 Fur Bearers Defender"—the difficulty is to say no more than we know.
These stories and conversations took place in a Media and Communications Studies class at a Canadian college. Students come to the college from many countries, in the hope of enrolling eventually in a North American university.
CONNIE KUHNS
Fifty Years in Review
A new anthology of reviews, interviews and commentary on Joni Mitchell's music reveals the star-making machinery.
J. Jill Robinson
Hot Pulse
I am sorry I caused you pain. But I thought it was okay.
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.
CONNIE KUHNS
Last Day in Cheyenne
Remembering her father's last days in a hospital in Wyoming, Connie Kuhns struggles with questions of mortality, memory and how to fulfill her father's dying wish.
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.
M.A.C. Farrant
Strange Birds
We don’t know why the budgie did it. He must have been unhappy. It can’t have been easy for him—pecking the bell, hanging about on the pole.
D.M. FRASER
Surrounded by Ducks
D.M. Fraser on the myth of cultural identity.
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.
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.
Eve Corbel
Getting It Wrong
It's human nature to jump to the wrong conclusion–and stick with it.
Annabel Lyon
Eye for Detail
What is at the heart of this Edith Iglauer profile by Giller nominee Annabel Lyon? Hint: Ice Road Truckers.
Stephen Smith
Rinkside Intellectual
Stephen Smith investigates the hockey lives of Barthes, Faulkner, Hemingway, which were marked by dismissal, befuddlement and scorn.
Brad Cran
Fact
Empires of Film
Brad Cran
Fact
Leading Men
"Leading Men” is taken from a work-in-progress, Cinéma-Verité and the Collected Works of Ronald Reagan: A History of Propaganda in Motion Pictures.
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.
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.
Ivan Coyote
If I Was a Girl
Femme girls get free Slurpees, but boyish ladies get free cavity searches at the border.
HAL NIEDZVIECKI
The Life and Death of Zadie Avrohom Krolik
Hal Niedzviecki commemorates his Jewish grandfather—a heavy drinker, a bad driver and a Polish refugee.
Daniel Francis
War of Independence
World War I, Canada’s “war of independence,” marked a turning point for a young colony wanting to prove itself as a self-reliant nation, but at what cost.
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.
CONNIE KUHNS
Life After Virginity
A flower child looks back, to the time between Motown and acid rock.
Kathleen Winter
BoYs
Derek Matthews has to be the ugliest boy in the class but I like him. I’ve liked every boy except Barry Pumphrey now. Barry Pumphrey likes me.
Ann Diamond
How I (Finally) Met Leonard Cohen
On a rainy night in October 1970, I crossed paths with Canada's most elusive poet.
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.
CHERYL THOMPSON
Dismantling the Myth of the Hero
In a world dominated by heroes, difference is not tolerated.
Stephen Henighan
Reheated Races
Dividing and conquering local populations confines them to manageable administrative units.
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.
LISA BIRD-WILSON
Occupation Anxiety
Lisa Bird-Wilson on UNDRIP, reconciliation, and the anxiety felt by Indigenous people in Canada.
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."
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
Plague
What we can—and can’t—learn from the plague
Alberto Manguel
Léon Bloy and His Monogamous Reader
Dogged dedication grants a reader vicarious immortality.
Stephen Henighan
Confidence Woman
The woman who called herself Tatiana Aarons gave me an address that led to a vacant lot.
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
A Fairy Tale for Our Time
What can the Brothers Grimm teach us about the state of our economic system? Everything.
Alberto Manguel
Art and Blasphemy
Faith seems to shiver when confronted by art.
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 Mo Yan's ability to tell stories as if they were written memories.
BRADLEY PETERS
Mission
Salmon runs, voodoo juice and chewing the fat in Mission.
BRADLEY PETERS
Mission
Salmon runs, voodoo juice and chewing the fat in Mission.
Kristen Lawson
Anti-Apocalypse
Kristen Lawson on the hero's journey through "queer/feminist/Asian/West Coast/Rocky Mountain sensibilities."
KELSEA O'CONNOR
Castles, Countesses, and Cat Women
Kelsea O'Connor on queer lovers, gothic horror and fairy tale themes.
Kris Rothstein
You've Been Warned
Kris Rothstein on a no-nonsense Irish heroine.
Michael Hayward
An Atlas of Noir
Michael Hayward on an anthology of noir fiction set in neighbourhoods around Vancouver.
Michael Hayward
No One Knows
Unreliable narrator, post-modernist self-reference and contemporary literary references—Michael Hayward on the nature of the autobiography.
MICHEL HUNEAULT
Memory of Winter
Only after the waters recede do marks of the disaster appear.
RICHARD VAN CAMP
A Matter of DNA
Mary Schendlinger on Fay Weldon's 48th or 53rd book, After the Peace.
Finn Wylie
Road Trip with Cupid
“Want to marry me? My wife she burned me. She just burned me, you know. Now I’m going to court to burn her back.”
Alberto Manguel
Reach Out and Touch (Somebody's Hand)
There is no way to step back from the orgy of kisses without offending.
Daniel Francis
Acadia's Quiet Revolution
Revolutions need popular heroes, and unpopularvillains, and the Acadians of New Brunswick had both.
Stephen Henighan
Vanished Shore
To build a city on land flooded by the tides isn’t just a mistake—it’s utopic.
RICHARD VAN CAMP
In Memoriam: Edith Iglauer, 1917 - 2019
Respected journalist, Geist contributor and maker of olive sandwiches.
Edith Iglauer
The Prime Minister Accepts
Edith Iglauer invites Pierre Trudeau over for dinner and gets Barbra Streisand as a bonus.
JILL MANDRAKE
Ice Cream Dude
Compassionate, good truck driver, likes kids, likes ice cream—the makings of a no-fail ice cream dude.
Randy Fred
Six String Nation
Randy Fred lauds the success of Robbie Robertson, Candido "Lolly" Vegas and other influential Aboriginal musicians who rose to the top of the rock 'n' roll world.
Randy Fred
Religion or Culture?
Nuu-chah-nulth elder Randy Fred explores whether it is possible to introduce one culture to another without any hint of religious beliefs or practices.
LISA BIRD-WILSON
Distant Early Warning
We think of the Arctic as pristine and untouched—but nowhere on the planet is as harshly impacted by climate change.
Stephen Osborne
Exotic World
In 1989, when Harold and Barbara Morgan opened the Museum of Exotic World in the front rooms of Harold’s commercial painting business in Vancouver, they had been travelling the world every winter for forty-five years and had accumulated many souvenir
Randy Fred
Blind Man Dance
Randy Fred receives his first traditional Nuu-chah-nulth name.
Michael Hayward
Japanese Beatniks and Revised Boy Scouts
Michael Hayward on a selection of work from the writing collective known as "the Beats"
Thad McIlroy
The Smile Test
Thad McIlroy on Jan Morris's "Smile Test" throughout Canadian cities.
Patty Osborne
Queerspawn
Patty Osborne on twenty-four essays of "rants and reflections on growing up with LGBTQ+ parents."