Michael Hayward on I Will Never See the World Again by Ahmet Altan
Michał Kozłowski
Familiar, But Better
Michał Kozłowski on the ineffable Beverly Glenn-Copeland.
Jesmine Cham
One for the Books
Jesmine Cham on the unknown story of two women who race around the world in eighty days.
Michael Hayward
One Book
Michael Hayward on one book you should read this year.
Michael Hayward
Nova Scotian Noir
Michael Hayward on the perfect setup for a classic “film noir.”
RICHARD VAN CAMP
Suffer the Children
Immigration questions 9 and 10: How do you like where you’re living now? Are you happy here?
Patty Osborne
Shtisel
Patty Osborne on Shtisel—an Israeli TV series about an ultra-religious Jewish family in Jerusalem.
KELSEA O'CONNOR
A Hockey Romance
Kelsea O'Connor on the self-published webcomic by Ngozi Ukazu.
Kristen den Hartog
The Two Lots
Theft, death and don't-mess-with-me expressions—unlocking the family portrait.
Michael Hayward
An Atlas of Noir
Michael Hayward on an anthology of noir fiction set in neighbourhoods around Vancouver.
Kris Rothstein
You've Been Warned
Kris Rothstein on a no-nonsense Irish heroine.
KELSEA O'CONNOR
Castles, Countesses, and Cat Women
Kelsea O'Connor on queer lovers, gothic horror and fairy tale themes.
RICHARD VAN CAMP
A Matter of DNA
Mary Schendlinger on Fay Weldon's 48th or 53rd book, After the Peace.
MICHEL HUNEAULT
Memory of Winter
Only after the waters recede do marks of the disaster appear.
Michael Hayward
No One Knows
Unreliable narrator, post-modernist self-reference and contemporary literary references—Michael Hayward on the nature of the autobiography.
Alberto Manguel
Reach Out and Touch (Somebody's Hand)
There is no way to step back from the orgy of kisses without offending.
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.”
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
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.
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.
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.
Francois-Marc Gagnon explores curiosity as the opposite of indifference.
Stephen Henighan
Against Efficiency
Stephen Henighan argues that efficiency has become a core value that heightens social divisions.
Patty Osborne
Absolute Centre
Patty Osborne reviews Dogs at the Perimeter by Madeleine Thien (McClelland & Stewart).
Jennesia Pedri
Dividing Lines
Jennesia Pedri reviews Walls: Travels Along the Barricades by Marcello di Cintio (Goose Lane).
KELSEA O'CONNOR
Cut-Out Lit
Kelsea O'Connor reviews Tree of Codes by Jonathan Safran Foer (Visual Editions).
Eve Corbel
Collier Cornucopia
Eve Corbel reviews Collier’s Popular Press: 30 Years on the Newsstand.
Daniel Francis
Boob Tube
Richard Stursberg’s memoir of his years in CBC programming raises the question: How did someone with no sympathy for public broadcasting get the job in the first place?
Michael Turner
Oh, Canada
Michael Turner questions a US-curated exhibit of Canadian art that exoticizes Canadian artists while suggesting they are un-exotic.
Chelsea Novak
National Boyfriend
At a taping of George Stroumboulopoulos Tonight, Chelsea Novak meets Canada's boyfriend.
Mandelbrot
Zero Drag and Genius
Mandelbrot reviews The Wage Slave's Glossary written by Joshua Glenn and Mark Kingwell and illustrated by Seth.
Michael Hayward
Writing in Blue
Michael Hayward reviews Blue Nights by Joan Didion (Knopf).
KELSEA O'CONNOR
Grief-in-Progress
Kelsea O'Connor reviews Nox by Anne Carson (New Directions).
Stephen Osborne
Women of Kali
A feminist writer/publisher sought out stories of the partition of India: atrocity and hardship, looting, rape and murder committed by and upon Hindu, Muslim and Sikh.
Sheila Heti
Stakeout
Sheila Heti spends a day in a diner in Toronto observing the enormous EUCAN electrified garbage can at the corner of College and Bathurst.
Thad McIlroy
Hernia Heaven, Part 2
Thad McIlroy undergoes a hernia operation—and with Neil Diamond and the right kind of drugs, it might only take ten minutes.
Stephen Henighan
A Table in Paris
Stephen Henighan remembers Mavis Gallant, the original nomad of Canadian literature, who wrote some of Canada's finest fiction at Pablo Picasso's café table in Paris.
Ted Bishop
Edith and Frank
Ted Bishop visits Edith Iglauer and her husband Frank in their seaside home, where he is treated to a fast drive on a winding road, conversation on good books, and a lesson on what it's like to grow old gracefully.
Stephen Osborne
1968
Stephen Osborne compares the "major problem" of loitering in 1968 Vancouver to the 2012 Occupy movement.
Alberto Manguel
Facing the Camera
How much does a photograph really capture the essence of a person?
Daniel Francis
Deviance on Display
Daniel Francis investigates the practice of visiting asylums and penitentiaries as entertainment in nineteenth-century Canada.
Jane Silcott
Mimesisa
Jane Silcott explores the ideas of beauty and mimicry both in theory and in the wilds of a motel complex.
Michael Turner
Vancouver Re-Remembered
Michael Turner reviews At the World's Edge: Curt Lang's Vancouver, 1937-1998, by Claudia Cornwall.
Stephen Henighan
Wheels
Stephen Henighan investigates bus travel as one of Canada's last surviving democratic spaces.
Alberto Manguel
Observer and Observed
Alberto Manguel reflects on art as a witness to the human desire to be infinite and eternal.
Daniel Francis
Noir
Daniel Francis explores the photographer as Vancouver's most interesting historian.