Don Stewart, proprietor of MacLeod's Books, is an antiquarian hoarder of the highest order.
Stephen Henighan
Canada for Spartans
Stephen Henighan exposes the errors, omissions and problems with the Conservative party's study guide for Canadian citizenship.
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.
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.
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.
Alberto Manguel
Burning Mistry
Alberto Manguel examines a modern-day book burning and asks: how is this still happening?
Stephen Henighan
Language and Nation Now
Do shared languages form the natural boundaries of any nation in the world?
Jesmine Cham
Dear Patient
A woman, hoping to find peace, seeks her birth mother. A review of By Blood by Ellen Ullman.
Alberto Manguel
A Brief History of Tags
A reflection on the complex and often inexplicable process of bibliographic categorizations.
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.
RICHARD VAN CAMP
Squirmworthy
Mary Schendlinger reviews SayWha?!, a monthly evening of “readings of deliciously rotten writing”.
CARMINE STARNINO
Next Door Café: A Poet's Musings
Reflections on how a bar in Parc Extension, QC, influenced an eponymous poem about "unprogress, inertia, the failure to learn from mistakes."
Stephen Osborne
The Banff Protocols
Banff: a collection of scenic views and a setting for the Avant-Garde?
Stephen Osborne
Stories of a Lynching
On the night of the last Wednesday of February 1884, at about ten o’clock, a gang of armed men entered a farmhouse near Sumas Lake in southern B.C., woke the inhabitants at gunpoint and took away with them a teenage boy who was being held in the cust
Alberto Manguel
Imaginary Places
Alberto Manguel remembers a golden era in Canadian writing, comments on our current cultural climate and proposes a brighter future.
Susan Crean
Milton and Michel
Michel Lambeth's photo of Milton Acorn brings back memories of dancing, love poetry and a revolution.
Stephen Henighan
In Praise of Borders
I remembered past ordeals: a U.S. official who squeezed out my toothpaste tube on the train from Montreal to Philadelphia, another who hauled me off a bus for a lengthy interrogation.
Stephen Osborne
Virtual City
Onstage a group of writers and critics sat in a semicircle and spoke earnestly about whether or not a national literature could exist in two languages.
Alberto Manguel
Pictures and Conversations
"And what is the use of a book," thought Alice, "without pictures or conversation?" —Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
Margaret Malloch Zielinski
Boarding with Mrs. Higgins
Mrs. Higgins lived with her legless brother and her blind husband in a tall, narrow old house in Nottingham. The room I rented from her in the 1950s was just below her sitting room, where she kept a life-size portrait of Lenin.
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.
Christy Ann Conlin
Coming Ashore
The dog turns his butt to the stinging spray and wind but my boyfriend and I face the water, watching the massive waves crash on the shore. We are drenched in seconds and we have to shout over the wind. It’s exhilarating.
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.
"Scallions are eaten raw by self-assertive people": Why S.K. Grant was surprised to discover The Joy of Cooking as a literary work.
Clare Coughlan
The Love Crimes of Gillian Guess
Clare Coughlan reviews her experience seeing (and before that, waiting in line to see) The Love Crimes of Gillian Guess.
Michał Kozłowski
The Mole Chronicles
Michal Kozlowski reviews Andy Brown's debut novel The Mole Chronicles, which charts a sibling relationship involving moles, comic books, swimming pools, kidnapping, culture jamming and more.
Patty Osborne
Women of the World: Women Travelers and Explorers
Patty Osborne reviews Women of the World: Women Travelers and Explorers by Rebecca Stefoff, a book—complete with maps, drawings and photographs—that describes the travels of nine women.
Stephen Osborne
Shoot!
Despite high hopes, Stephen Osborne calls Shoot! by George Bowering his biggest disappointment.
Luanne Armstrong
Simple Recipes
Luanne Armstrong reviews "three of the better books of short stories to come out in 2001"—Kingdom of Monkeys, Simple Recipes and Sputnik Diner.
Michał Kozłowski
Stickboy: A Novel in Verse
In Stickboy, Shane Koyczan asks: what happens when the bullied begins to bully back? Reviewed by Michal Kozlowski.
Kris Rothstein
Souvenir of Canada
Kris Rothstein reviews Souvenir of Canada, which appeared at the 2005 Vancouver International Film Festival, and Douglas Coupland's role in it and appearance at the festival.
Neil MacDonald
Streeters
Neil MacDonald reviews Streeters, a compilation of Rick Mercer's solo rants and raves from 22 Minutes, covering everything from Mike Harris in a Speedo to "Canuba," a sovereignty association between Canada and Cuba.
Carra Noelle Simpson
Teacher Man
Carra Noelle Simpson reviews Teacher Man and Half Nelson, two works on life in the inner-city high schools of New York.
Michael Hayward
The Bottom of the Harbor
"Old New Yorker writers never die, they just keep being republished in shiny new editions." Michael Hayward reviews collections of New Yorker pieces.
Sewid-Smith Daisy
The Onion
Melissa Edwards finds three references to Sisyphus in three different publications—all in the same day.
Holly Doyle
Thirty-three Teeth
Holly Doyle reviews Colin Cotterill’s novel Thirty-three Teeth, featuring Dr. Siri Paiboun, the seventy-two-year-old coroner of Laos.
Patty Osborne
Through Black Spruce
Joseph Boyden shows a darker side of First Nations life—darker, but not dark enough to stop one from reading it. Reviewed by Patty Osborne.
KELSEA O'CONNOR
Truth is Stranger
Kelsea O'Connor reviews Let's Pretend This Never Happened by Jenny Lawson, a lighthearted look at the embarrassing moments in the author's life.
GILLIAN JEROME
What to Expect When You’re Expecting
As a mother-to-be, Gillian Jerome cynically reviewed eight books on child care to glean what it means to be a mother in the twenty-first century.
HAL NIEDZVIECKI
White Lung
Hal Niedzviecki says White Lung by Grant Buday is the comic novel that should have been given to delegates at the WTO in Seattle.
Rhonda Waterfall
Pharmacist's Mate
Rhonda Waterfall reviews The Pharmacist's Mate by Amy Fusselman, just under 100 pages of minimalist prose called "a brief miracle of a book."
Patty Osborne
Pioneer Justice
In The Lynching of Louie Sam, two teenage boys watched as another—an Aboriginal named Louie Sam—was hanged by a group of men who rode on horseback. Reviewed by Patty Osborne.
Lara Jenny
Please Don't Kill the Freshman
During a trip to Portland, Lara Jenny picks a few must-have zines and chapbooks from the city's huge collection of independent presses.
Daniel Francis
Killer Angels
Daniel Francis reviews the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel Killer Angels by Michael Shaara, a minute-by-minute reimagining of the Battle of Gettysburg.
Michael Hayward
Magpie Memoir
Jim Christy muses on 121 items accumulated over 40 years of travel in Sweet Assorted: 121 Takes From a Tin Box, reviewed by Michael Hayward.
Kris Rothstein
Miss Smithers
Susan Juby's teen novel Miss Smithers—the story of an eccentric but charming girl entering a beauty pageant in a small BC town—is reviewed by Kris Rothstein.
Vicki Jensen
Blood Sports
Vicki Jensen says Eden Robinson’s novel Blood Sports forces readers to confront exactly what we’d prefer to avoid—the raw world of junkies, crazies and twisted souls.
Joelle Hann
Breasting the Waves: On Writing and Healing
Joanne Arnott "writes with great effort, feeling her way toward expression and sense without giving her life away as if it were in the "miscellaneous" box at a garage sale." Review by Joelle Hann.