Kelsea O'Connor reviews Kitten Clone by Douglas Coupland, a "humanizing portrait" of Alcatel-Lucent, the company that developed the internet we know and love today.
Eve Corbel
Getting It Wrong
It's human nature to jump to the wrong conclusion–and stick with it.
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.
Christopher Gudgeon
Waiting for Our Lord God Jesus Christ…
…in the Maple Leaf Lounge at the John G. Diefenbaker Airport in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan.
Eve Corbel
Old Women Cry at Weddings
Eve Corbel on marriage and what comes after the wedding: the monster mortgage, the dreary housework, the contemptuous in-laws and more.
roni-simunovic
Literary Festival Field Guide
Roni Simunovic catalogues types of literary festival attendees: the jaded art student, the CanLit socialite, the overworked publisher and more.
Susan Mockler
Hey, Sexy
"I glanced at Jack, his tattooed arms, his gloved hands resting on the wheels of his manual chair. If only I could get my arms back. I could live with anything else."
Daniel Francis
When Treatment Becomes Torture
Daniel Francis discusses Canada's failing mental health care system and its long history of mistreatment.
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.
Stephen Henighan
Immigrants from Nowhere
Stephen Henighan asks: what if you don't have a tidy answer to "Where are you from?"
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."
Rob Kovitz
Certain Embarrassing Questions
Cyberslang, Robert's Rules of Order and The Forest of Rhetoric collide in a series of queries, inquiries and FAQ from Rob Kovitz.
Alberto Manguel
Jewish Gauchos
European Jewish artisans on horseback in Argentina.
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."
Lauren Ogston
Seeks Bee Nerd
The Bee Trading Card Series 1 includes twenty-four cards that feature facts about bee anatomy, physiology and classification.
KELSEA O'CONNOR
Beautiful Mess
A review of Love & the Mess We’re In by Stephen Marche.
Dan Post
Doing the Occupation
Théodora Armstrong makes her literary debut with a short-story collection, Clear Skies, No Wind, 100% Visibility.
Daniel Francis
Memoir Of A Time Traveller
A review of Voyage Through the Past Century by Rolf Knight.
Michael Hayward
Living by the Book
A review of David Mason's memoir The Pope’s Bookbinder.
Patty Osborne
Little Betrayals
Moments of misunderstandings and other drama are highlighted in the life of a Jewish family in Nazi-occupied Czechoslavia.
Michael Hayward
Life, Repeatedly
A woman is reborn on the same cold and snowy night over and over again, living a different life of disasters, in Life After Life by Kate Atkinson.
Peggy Thompson
Federal Follies
Linda Svendsen eviscerates the hypocritical nature of Canadian politics in Sussex Drive.
Michael Hayward
Plotto: A Plot Plotter
William Wallace Cook offers a literary guide to creating a unique plot.
Lily Gontard
Out Stealing Horses
Lily Gontard reviews Out Stealing Horses by Per Petterson.
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.
Norbert Ruebsaat
Media Studies
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.
Annabel Lyon
Eye for Detail
What is at the heart of this Edith Iglauer profile by Giller nominee Annabel Lyon? Hint: Ice Road Truckers.
Eve Corbel
Getting It Wrong
It's human nature to jump to the wrong conclusion–and stick with it.
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.
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
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.
Brad Cran
Fact
Empires of Film
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.
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.
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.
CONNIE KUHNS
Life After Virginity
A flower child looks back, to the time between Motown and acid rock.
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.
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.
Daniel Francis reviews Toronto: Biography of a City, a book bound to irritate readers who live outside Toronto—the "centre of the Canadian universe."
Stephen Osborne
Last Steve Standing
Stephen Osborne says goodbye to Stephen Harper.
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."
D.M. FRASER
Surrounded by Ducks
D.M. Fraser on the myth of cultural identity.
Stephen Osborne
Martin John and the Demon Mother
"In Martin John, Anakana Schofield’s new novel, the reader is beckoned, saluted, enticed and then drawn inexorably into the life of a demented young man."
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.
Anna Banana
45 Years of Fooling Around with A. Banana
An exploration of art and pop culture by Anna Banana.
David Albahari
Dangerous Times
David Albahari visits Canadian cities and remembers a slogan from the former Yugoslavia: Get to know your country in order to love her.
Eve Corbel
Gagster Movies
Eve Corbel reviews two short biographic documentaries: Seth's Dominion and I Thought I Told You to Shut Up.
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.
Rhonda Waterfall
Les Joyeux Lémuriens
“Thank Christ,” says Dieter when I finally wake up. “I thought you were dead.”
Alberto Manguel
In Praise of Ronald Wright
"Authenticity is the essential quality of all travel literature, imaginary or real."
roni-simunovic
Space-time Queertinuum
Beyond: The Queer Sci-Fi and Fantasy Comics Anthology is an action-packed, swashbuckling collection of short comics produced by twenty six writers and artists of diverse sexualities and genders.
Mary Leah de Zwart
Eaten by Dog, Run Over by Train
Wally, the orange tabby: Fell out of travel trailer going over Pavillion Mountain, may be living happily at farm on top of mountain.
Réal Godbout
Kafka in Clayton, OK
Are you an engineer? Are you sure?
Stephen Osborne
Unhappy
Stephen Osborne discusses the happiness level of Vancouver, the best place on earth.
Alberto Manguel
The Shy Man
“I think of my public speeches as the shy man’s revenge.”
Levine Flexhaug
A Sublime Vernacular
A series of of speed paintings by Levine Flexhaug.
Stephen Osborne
A Dream of Bearded Ladies
Stephen Osborne talks about Bearded Ladies, a documentary about the works of renowned photographer Rosamond Norbury.
ANNMARIE MACKINNON
Skip to the Obits
AnnMarie MacKinnon reviews Death and the Penguin, a novel that follows the life of a young Ukrainian writer and his penguin.
Evel Economakis
White Night Patrol
"The seven of us sat around a small, wobbly table in the living room and stared at each other between shots of rotgut vodka."
David Albahari
Voices
My friend, who writes poems and stories, tells me in the café that he finds it more and more difficult to deal with the writer inside him.
Margaret Nowaczyk
Knitting Class
During World War II my grandmother ran contraband, hunted pigeons.
Michał Kozłowski
Pillars of Salt
"The tour guide said: every hour you spend down in the mine adds three minutes to your life." Michal Kozlowski reports from 300 feet below ground.
Stephen Osborne
Sleight of Hand
Stephen Osborne plunges into the pedestrian flow and encounters panhandlers, magicians and a cyclist praying to a monument of Edward VII.