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.
LISA BIRD-WILSON
Distant Early Warning
We think of the Arctic as pristine and untouched—but nowhere on the planet is as harshly impacted by climate change.
Stephen Osborne
Exotic World
In 1989, when Harold and Barbara Morgan opened the Museum of Exotic World in the front rooms of Harold’s commercial painting business in Vancouver, they had been travelling the world every winter for forty-five years and had accumulated many souvenir
Randy Fred
Blind Man Dance
Randy Fred receives his first traditional Nuu-chah-nulth name.
Michael Hayward
Japanese Beatniks and Revised Boy Scouts
Michael Hayward on a selection of work from the writing collective known as "the Beats"
Patty Osborne
Queerspawn
Patty Osborne on twenty-four essays of "rants and reflections on growing up with LGBTQ+ parents."
Thad McIlroy
The Smile Test
Thad McIlroy on Jan Morris's "Smile Test" throughout Canadian cities.
Michał Kozłowski
After the Money
Notes from the Governor General’s Literary Awards.
roni-simunovic
Express Recycling Depot
Roni Simunovic reviews the Yaletown Return-It Express Depot.
KELSEA O'CONNOR
Coming of Age in Winteridge
Kelsea O'Connor on Our Animal Hearts by Dania Tomlinson.
Michael Hayward
Cast Out of Eden
Michael Hayward on Packing My Library: An Elegy and Ten Digressions by Alberto Manguel.
RICHARD VAN CAMP
News in a Nutshell
Mary Schendlinger on Vox.com's podcast Today Explained.
Anson Ching
Transpacific Trade, circa 1800
Anson Ching on Anna, Like Thunder.
Patty Osborne
With An Albanian Twist
Patty Osborne on Slow Twisting by Anonymous.
Stephen Osborne
White Wampum
Stephen Osborne on Tekahionwake: E. Pauline Johnson's Writings on Native North America.
Michael Hayward
Brion Gysin: Honorary Canadian
Michael Hayward on a collection of conversations with Brion Gysin—writer and counterculture legend.
JILL MANDRAKE
peanut brittle
Jill Mandrake on the surprising effect of peanut brittle.
Hàn Fúsēn
Till Talk
Han Fusen navigates multiculturalism and kookoo sabzi from inside a Persian grocery store.
Jocelyn Kuang
49 Days to the Afterlife
Rice, tea and a trillion dollars of spirit money.
Jeff Shucard
King Zog and the Secret Heart of Albania
The secret heart of Albania is imbued with compassion and a desire to help those in need
Patty Osborne
Perfectly Adequate Expectations
Patty Osborne on the mixed review of Crazy Rich Asians.
Alberto Manguel
Libraries without Borders
Reading is a subversive activity and does not believe in the convention of borders.
RICHARD VAN CAMP
What They Say
Mary Schendlinger on Natalia Ginzburg's narrative of her family during the rise of Hitler and Mussolini.
Ola Szczecinska
Symbiosis in Warsaw
Ola Szczecinska returns to Warsaw to visit her grandmother, and to keep from losing her memories.
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.
Use your grandmother’s knitting needles if they are steel and sharp, her crochet hooks. Hell, you could even use the split edge of this table. Slide your inner arm against the jagged grain, watch the splinters scrape you raw.
Stephen Smith
Sir John's Lost Diaries
The wind blows. The sun dwindles. The ice waits.
ANGELA MAIREAD COID
Show Business
A young girl gets a taste of show business by acting as Sleeping Beauty in a sideshow.
GEORGE BOWERING
She Carries
She carries my chair,she carries my walker,she carries my commode,she drops my heart so hard it breaks into a hundred pieces
ANDREW BODEN
Shack Stories
Mr. Maillard scared me from the moment he stepped from his red Chevy pickup. He stood six inches shorter than me and weighed sixty pounds less, but exuded tough son-of-a-bitch like cologne.