A young man comes into possession of a 1957 Pontiac, modelled after one owned by a legendary pianist.
Daniel Francis
Identity in a Cup
Is it the icons of Canadian pop culture—hockey fights, Tim Hortons coffee, Don Cherry’s haberdashery, Rick Mercer’s rants—that reveal the deepest truths about us?
JILL MANDRAKE
The Skinny
The UK literary journal, Flash, features concise forms of microfiction: short-short stories also known as "flashes".
Veronica Gaylie
Cowichan Sweater
You had to sleep in it and fall in love in it.
Veronica Gaylie
Melon Balls in Space
Shiny bras and worn-in sweaters—the clothes do make the woman.
Alberto Manguel
Dante in Guantánamo
After fol
Daniel Francis
Come to the Cabaret
The Penthouse, the notorious Vancouver night club, shares a history with several of the city's missing women cases.
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.
Stephen Osborne
Everything Is Perfect
In 1946, a young bride writes home about her month-long sea voyage to her new home on Baffin Island.
Ven Begamudre
Memory Game
A writer talks about personal health issues and their connection to his family history.
JILL MANDRAKE
Pinspotting
"I hope you will agree that we more sensitive teenagers grew up surrounded by irony." Jill Mandrake calls George Bowering's memoir his most provocative work yet.
Stephen Henighan
Canada for Spartans
Stephen Henighan exposes the errors, omissions and problems with the Conservative party's study guide for Canadian citizenship.
George Fetherling
Man of a Hundred Thousand Books
Don Stewart, proprietor of MacLeod's Books, is an antiquarian hoarder of the highest order.
Alberto Manguel
Burning Mistry
Alberto Manguel examines a modern-day book burning and asks: how is this still happening?
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.
M.A.C. Farrant
The Outlook for Quirky
Space travel, world religions and quotes from Pascal are just a few of the topics covered in these little phone calls between friends.
Stephen Osborne
Mr. Tube Steak and the Schoolteacher
Former Iranian schoolteacher, Mehrar Arbab escaped execution, moved to Canada and now earns a living sellingAll Beef Smokies.
Alberto Manguel
A Brief History of Tags
A reflection on the complex and often inexplicable process of bibliographic categorizations.
Jesmine Cham
Dear Patient
A woman, hoping to find peace, seeks her birth mother. A review of By Blood by Ellen Ullman.
Stephen Henighan
Language and Nation Now
Do shared languages form the natural boundaries of any nation in the world?
David Albahari
My Father’s Hands
Walking along the streets of Paris, watching thousands of tourists using their digital cameras, I remember the way my father held his old Kodak when he took photographs.
David Albahari
My Father’s Hands
Walking along the streets of Paris, watching thousands of tourists using their digital cameras, I remember the way my father held his old Kodak when he took photographs.
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.
Lily Gontard reviews The Luminaries and The Douglas Notebooks, two award-winning novels you might not have heard of.
Daniel Francis
Park In Progress
Daniel Francis asks why a high-speed commuter route runs through Stanley Park, Vancouver's precious urban oasis.
JILL MANDRAKE
Sometimes the Review is Longer Than the Story
Jill Mandrake reviews There Can Never Be Enough by David Arnason, a combination of dreamscape and tragicomic monologue.
Stephen Smith
Rinkside Intellectual
Stephen Smith investigates the hockey lives of Barthes, Faulkner, Hemingway, which were marked by dismissal, befuddlement and scorn.
Stephen Smith
Clip Your Toenails and Other Advice from the Pros
Collected advice from hockey professionals, compiled by Stephen Smith.
Stephen Osborne
Phantom Ride with Schopenhauer
Stephen Osborne's broken cellphone leads him to Schopenhauer, the Titanic publishing industry and historical Phantom Rides.
Eve Corbel
Yes No Good Bye
Eve Corbel marks historic Ouija board milestones and talks to the spirit of a pirate queen and Ringo Starr's great great grandmother.
Moez Surani
Enduring Freedom
Selections from ةيلمع Operación Operation Opération 作业 Oперация (“operation” in each official United Nations language), a poem by Moez Surani consisting of the names of military operations carried out by UN member states.
Patty Osborne
Canada’s Dark Depths
Sex, suicide, Nelson and Cabbagetown—Patty Osborne reviews The Modern World and The Secret Life of Fission, two hard-hitting story collections.
KELSEA O'CONNOR
All My Little Words
Kelsea O'Connor reviews 101 Two-Letter Words, an illustrated Scrabble guide by Stephen Merritt with running themes of sloths, songwriting and vampire dogs.
Alberto Manguel
Not Finishing
"A library is never finished, only abandoned." Alberto Manguel on incompletion, voluntary interruption and the pleasure of the day before.
JANE RULE
Obsession
"Asked to write a character sketch, I wrote three pages on Ann’s hands. The paper was returned with every line crossed out and a question mark at the end."
Jan Feduck
Hurricane Diary
Jan Feduck faces Frenchish food, vomit and guys from Ontario when her ferry from the Magdalen Islands is caught in a hurricane.
JILL MANDRAKE
Still Stupefying
Jill Mandrake is blown away by South of Elfrida by Holley Rubinsky, a journey into "the land of guilt and sorrow."
roni-simunovic
Second Chances
Roni Simunovic reviews Seconds by Brian Lee O'Malley, a graphic novel about getting second chances whether you deserve them or not.
Jesmine Cham
Technology Creeps On
Jesmine Cham talks scaremongering, tinfoil hats and invasive technology in this review of Technocreep by Thomas P. Keenan.
Stephen Osborne
Harrowing
"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.
Stephen Henighan
Iberian Duet
The assumption of mutual comprehensibility between speakers of Spanish and Portuguese creates a culture of mutual ignorance.
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.
Dylan Gyles
Floating
“Don’t try to make anything happen,” the calm voice said. Dylan Gyles visits a sensory deprivation float tank.
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.