Wally, the orange tabby: Fell out of travel trailer going over Pavillion Mountain, may be living happily at farm on top of mountain.
Alberto Manguel
The Shy Man
“I think of my public speeches as the shy man’s revenge.”
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.
Stephen Osborne
A Dream of Bearded Ladies
Stephen Osborne talks about Bearded Ladies, a documentary about the works of renowned photographer Rosamond Norbury.
Levine Flexhaug
A Sublime Vernacular
A series of of speed paintings by Levine Flexhaug.
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.
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.
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.
Margaret Nowaczyk
Knitting Class
During World War II my grandmother ran contraband, hunted pigeons.
Alberto Manguel
Fist
Alberto Manguel examines the rich symbology of the fist, a primal symbol of rebellion and grief, across cultures and history.
Lindsay Diehl
Honolulu
Lindsay Diehl encounters choppy waves, a beautiful man in a hot tub and a pendant shaped like a curved tongue on a trip to Hawaii.
JILL MANDRAKE
Here Lies
Jill Mandrake reviews Local Customs by Audrey Thomas, a ghost story and murder mystery set in West Africa.
Michael Hayward
To the Moomins! (And Beyond)
Michael Hayward reviews Moomin: The Deluxe Anniversary Edition by Tove Jansson, a collection of comic strips that contain "the poetry of our world: sad, joyful, dangerous, enchanting."
roni-simunovic
Out and About
Roni Simunovic reviews Queer and Trans Artists of Color: Stories of Some of Our Lives by Nia King, a collection of interviews about gender and sexuality, and how to make art, make rent and survive.
Bruce Serafin
Leetle Bateese
"Since Drummond is spectacularly out of date, why not discuss him?" Bruce Serafin looks at William Henry Drummond's place in the history of corny yet unforgettable Canadian poetry.
Stephen Osborne
Marginal
Stephen Osborne finds a copy of Francoise Sagan's Those Without Shadows at the bus stop, complete with margin notes that create a new sort of text.
Patty Osborne
Buffalo Gal
Patty Osborne reviews The Perimeter Dog by Julie Vandervoort.
Michał Kozłowski
Bukowski Effect
Michal Kozlowski reviews Stardust, Bruce Serafin's essay collection: "punchy narrative, little exposition, unburdened by political correctness."
Stephen Osborne
Don't Look Back
Stephen Osborne reviews The Bourgeois: Between History and Literature by Franco Moretti.
Patty Osborne
Elizabeth Is Missing
"When your narrator has Alzheimer’s Disease, neither you nor she can be sure of the facts, which is what makes this such an intriguing story."
Patty Osborne
Aging: Not For the Faint of Heart
"We don’t often get clear and honest reflections out of hundred-year-old men, which is why Frank White’s new book is such a great read."
Michael Hayward
Artists Behaving Badly
Michael Hayward reviews the honest, outrageous and at times unflattering biographies of Lucian Freud and Rockwell Kent.
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.
Sylvia Tran on cheesy haunted houses, destiny's child and capitalism.
Anson Ching
In Search of Time and Place
Anson Ching on desecration ratcheted to new levels.
Shyla Seller
Wanting
Shyla Seller on the brilliance of the Vancouver poet Gladys Maria Hindmarch.
JILL MANDRAKE
Dirty Dirty Gets Down to the Nitty Gritty
Jill Mandrake on Mississippi Live & the Dirty Dirty, a Southern rock band in East Vancouver.
Patty Osborne
Ordinary Filipinos vs. The Normal Irish
Patty Osborne on teenage love, internet clicks and stolen babies.
Michael Hayward
Fine Art in Lockdown
Michael Hayward on Félix Fénéon and the exhibits unseen during COVID-19.
Kathleen Murdock
Everything on Earth
Kathleen Murdock on race, resilience, rage and joy.
Thad McIlroy
Life in the Valley
Thad McIlroy urges us to run from big tech before the death knell tolls.
JORDAN ABEL
Indigenous Poetry Without Borders
As a Nisga’a writer, I’m often deeply invested in not only how other poets are tackling issues through poetry but also how Indigenous writers are navigating that same terrain. Reading poetry is necessary. Reading Indigenous writing is essential.
Jennesia Pedri
Jamaica on Ice
Jennesia Pedri reviews A Brief History of Seven Killings by Marlon James.
Anson Ching
Voices From the Margins
Anson Ching on the strength of the narrator.
Jonathan Heggen
Mirror Image
Jonathan Heggen on staying on the periphery until the proverbial dust settles.
JILL MANDRAKE
Coach Has a Vehicle
Jill Mandrake on lyrics that make her shout out loud.
Michael Hayward
Ekphrastic Literature
Michael Hayward on plastic art and slow sonnets.
KELSEA O'CONNOR
Scratching the Print-Making Itch
Kelsea O’Connor on 48 printmakers and their unconventional studios.
JILL MANDRAKE
Life in the Tall Towers Lost
Jill Mandrake on living life on the edge—from Etobicoke to Iqaluit.
Anson Ching
An Apartment Block in Angola
Anson Ching on the opening and closing of catastrophes.
KELSEA O'CONNOR
Shocked and Discredited
Kelsea O'Connor on the bible, the Golden Girls and Captain Kirk's Lesbianism.
Patty Osborne
Forgetting the Question
Patty Osborne on licking fish, erotic hallucinations and the mystery of the missing anthropologist.
Michael Hayward
Bordering
Michael Hayward on an armchair travelogue of the troubled borders in the eastern Balkans.
Shyla Seller
Round the Clock Coverage
Shyla Seller on Marion Stokes and her collection of 71,716 videotapes.
roni-simunovic
King of Bicycles
Roni Simunovic on the joker playing card through the ages.
Michael Hayward
Give Us This Day Our Daily Bread
Michael Hayward on "The Baker's Wife" by Marcel Pagnol.
Michael Hayward
Glorious lists
Michael Hayward on "The Glorious Mountains of Vancouver’s North Shore: A Peakbagger’s Guide."
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.
The canoe as a fetish object, a misreading of Canadian history and a symbol of colonial oppression.
Umar Saeed
Arguments
A young Canadian man visits family in Pakistan to settle a generational feud.
CONNIE KUHNS
Signs of Life
Does a house that has been home to four generations of one family still hold their electricity?
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.
Norbert Ruebsaat
Caleb and Opa on Holiday
Opa, you know that sometimes people say things, well, indirectly? They don’t say everything that they mean?
Patty Osborne
A Little Distillery in Nowgong
A review of A Little Distillery in Nowgong by Ashok Mathur.
Alberto Manguel
Role Models and Readers
Ruskin's readers have the power to know that there is indeed room for Alice at the Mad Hatter's table.
Alberto Manguel
Imaginary Islands
In order to discharge ourselves of certain problems, why not simply erase from our maps the sites of such nuisance?
Florence Grandview
Lights Out at the Jubilee
At the Jubilee Cinema, the manager carries an imitation pistol in the John Dillinger style.
David Wisdom
UJ3RK5
A Vancouver rock band made up of musicians, photographers and at one time, a prominent sci-fi writer.
Alberto Manguel
Face in the Mirror
What does it mean to "be" yourself? The face reflected in the mirror is unrecognizable.
Stephen Henighan
The Market and the Mall
In the farmer’s market, a quintessentially Canadian setting, much of Canada is not visible.
Daniel Francis
Sex, Drugs, Rock ’n’ Roll and the National Identity
In this essay, Daniel Francis discusses how Gerda Munsinger—a woman with ties to the criminal underworld—shaped Canadian politics in the 1960s.
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.
Alberto Manguel
The Other Side of the Ice
Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner is a film about community and the north.
EVELYN LAU
Love Song to America
Reflections on John Updike's death.
Alberto Manguel
Geist’s Literary Precursors
The Geist map has a venerable ancestor that goes back four centuries and halfway around the world.
Michelle Fost
Long Distance
Shared family memories of burnt baked goods.
Sheila Heti
American Soul
Slot machines sing their astral music. The tape recorder turns off. “Do you talk to friends about sex?” he asks.
Annabel Lyon
Irony-Free Reality TV
There may be more to reality TV than meets the eye.
Edith Iglauer
Mad About Harry
A new pet kitten becomes part of the family.
Jill Boettger
City Under Water
The Calgary floods left behind a stew of knee-deep mud, and waterlogged piles of couches, fridges, books, toys, artworks, chairs, carpet, drywall...
Stephen Osborne
The Coincidence Problem
That dreamlike quality causes rational minds to dismiss the moment as “only a coincidence.”
Alberto Manguel
Cooking by the Book
I'm always looking for the moment in which a character must stop to eat because, for me, the very mention of food humanizes a story.
Stephen Osborne
Scandal Season
Headlines featuring crack-smoking mayors and election fraudsters.