A eulogy delivered by email, from a woman living in Berlin to her lifelong friend in Vancouver.

An intrepid Geist correspondent narrowly avoids being stabbed by a moose-antler letter opener in Whitehorse.

A question of some concern among my friends when we were growing up in the fifties and sixties was how old you had to be to go to war.

I started walking, seriously. It was the bone scan that got me going. The healthy solid green was spongy with rotting black holes.

My god, I think as I wait my turn in the wash­room of the Hotel Vancouver, all of these peo­ple look just like Carol Shields.

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We did what we weren’t supposed to do. We paid a local man to take us horseback riding. He was walking up and down the beach, waving papers and shouting, “Horses!” We signalled for him to come over, and we negotiated a price.

Only when I settle down in the back seat of the cab do I notice that on the dashboard there are several stickers with the letter U, the sign of Ustashe. During the Second World War, Ustashe was the ruling party in the Independent State of Croatia.

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The main reason that I open up my doors to people on the street is so that they would have a place to sort of come home.

I haven’t been in Jerusalem for sixteen years and the first thing my friend shows me is the wall that separates them from the Palestinians.

At the end of the Electrolux era, a veteran salesman closes his store to start a new job at Future Shop.

We look back and so much of the past seems to portend what would come later. The man in the seat in front of me on the Greyhound bus was returning to Edmonton from his annual vacation in Las Vegas, where in the off-season you can get a cheap room wit

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The Borderland Foundation documents borderland culture from its headquarters in the Jewish ghost town of Sejny, Poland.

Reporting on the Michael Jackson trial from a Best Value Inn in Santa Maria, California.

How do you have a good time in Warsaw? Sing Neil Diamond songs in a karaoke bar.

Ayurveda massage will leave you feeling like the bones have been secretly extracted from your body.

It was at about this moment that I hit him in the face, which is something I’ve never done before. I don’t know what perfect form the punch took in my mind, but by the time the impulse had pushed its way through me, my hand had bent inward like an old person’s claw, or a doll’s hand—curved around but without a bottle to clutch.

This was the first pub I entered when I finally said goodbye to vomiting on local beaches because I could drink legally. And it’s the first pub I’ve come to since I’ve been home. Now it’s Tuesday night, Karaoke Night.

When I met you, one floor up from the acute psychosis ward, you were wearing a paper shower cap and green pyjamas just like mine. You glared at me through the crowd because you thought I had your hoodie on. But we just had very similar hoodies.

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It’s dark when I get off the bus by the corner store. Not the best area of town. The only other person in sight is lying on the sidewalk.

The next performer, Coco, a six-year-old Belgian shepherd, stood on his back legs and hopped alongside a woman wearing white go-go boots who jiggled her hips in time to “ymca.” Coco weaved between her legs, rolled across her feet, lay on his back and kicked his legs in the air. The woman’s brow was furrowed and sweat ran down her face. Coco bounded in front of her, then backed through her legs and sneezed twice. The judges looked at each other and one of them wrote somethingdown.

When I am dying, it would be comforting tobe told that I had been the human equivalent of a good dog. Loving,compassionate, faithful, understanding, dignified, but also goofy, curious,fun, protective, a friend. Let’s leave out obedience.

Mr. C.F. Keiss, awealthy American visitor from Bucyrus, Ohio, met death with “tragic suddenness”under the wheels of the new City auto ambulance at the corner of Pender andGranville Streets yesterday afternoon.

When we hitchhiked back to Castle­gar it was dark and the lights on the car dashboards flickered and their glass reflected the faces of the men who’d picked us up and who, I imagined, knew everything there was to know about electricity.

Not long ago on a sticky Saturday night at a comedy club in Madison, Wisconsin, the funeral director with whom I was having a drink told me how long it takes for the formaldehyde to replace the blood in a dead person’s arteries. He drank a light beer

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At the Tim Hortons on Young Street in Halifax, a man clears his throat, a rough-looking older guy in the back corner, staring out the window. One knee, angled out from the table, jigs up and down; the rest of him is quite still. A sheet of notepaper

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"If you are still alive, you must have had the experience of surrendering."

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 returns to Warsaw to visit her grandmother, and to keep from losing her memories.

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.

A new anthology of reviews, interviews and commentary on Joni Mitchell's music reveals the star-making machinery.

I am sorry I caused you pain. But I thought it was okay.

The British called it the Great Game. The Russians called it Bolshoya Igra. The playing field was, and still is, Afghanistan.

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' major profile of punk, politics and feminism in 1970s Canada: the Moral Lepers, the Dishrags and other revolutionary bands.

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 on the myth of cultural identity.

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.

What is at the heart of this Edith Iglauer profile by Giller nominee Annabel Lyon? Hint: Ice Road Truckers.

It's human nature to jump to the wrong conclusion–and stick with it.

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.

Stephen Smith investigates the hockey lives of Barthes, Faulkner, Hemingway, which were marked by dismissal, befuddlement and scorn.

"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.

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.

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.

Femme girls get free Slurpees, but boyish ladies get free cavity searches at the border.

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 com­mem­o­rates his Jewish grand­fa­ther—a heavy drinker, a bad driver and a Polish refugee.

A flower child looks back, to the time between Motown and acid rock.

Review of "Censorettes" by Elizabeth Bales Frank.

Review of "Memories: From Moscow to the Black Sea" by Teffi (trans. Robert Chandler).

Review of "Our Flag Means Death" created by David Jenkins on HBO Max.

Review of No Fun (the band) and reissued music by Atomic Werewolf Records.

Review of "Godzilla Minus One" directed by Takashi Yamazaki.

Review of "Canzone di Guerra: New Battle Songs" by Daša Drndić, trans. by Celia Hawkesworth.

Review of "The Midnight Bargain" by C.L. Polk

Review of "The Invention of the Other" directed by Bruno Jorge (2022).

Review of "A Primer for Forgetting: Getting Past the Past" by Lewis Hyde.

Review of "Orwell: The New Life" by D.J. Taylor.

Review of "Iron Curtain Journals," "South American Journals" and "Fall of America Journals" by Allen Ginsberg.

Review of "Antkind" by Charlie Kaufman.

Review of "A Guest in the House" by Emily Carroll.

Review of "The Last Grain Race" by Eric Newby.

Review of "The Man in the Red Coat" by Julian Barnes.

Review of "Rubymusic" by Connie Kuhns.

Review of "A Russian Sister" by Caroline Adderson.

Review of the Netflix series "Rabo de Peixe" (2023) created by Augusto de Fraga.

Review of "My Grandfather’s Knife: Hidden Stories from the Second World War" by Joseph Pearson

Review of "Mercy Gene" by JD Derbyshire.

Review of "Underland" by Robert Macfarlane.

Review of "Tracking Giants: Big Trees, Tiny Triumphs, and Misadventures in the Forest" by Amanda Lewis.

Review of "Solito: A Memoir" by Javier Zamora

Review of "Turn Every Page" directed by Lizzie Gottlieb

Phrase books are tools of cultural globalization—but they are also among its casualties.

When building a nation, cultural riches can be lost.

Coming to harbour in a new world.

Science and the arts fulfil their functions to help us survive through the imagination.

Dividing and conquering local populations confines them to manageable administrative units.

In a world dominated by heroes, difference is not tolerated.

“Have patience” and “Tomorrow” are two inseparable locutions in the Portuguese tongue.

For a brief period the band CANO gave shape to the dream of a bilingual Canadian culture.

"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 on UNDRIP, reconciliation, and the anxiety felt by Indigenous people in Canada.

What we do when we absorb words from a screen—and we haven’t yet evolved a verb for it—is not reading.

Libraries are not only essential in educating the soul, but in forming the identity of a society.

Our society is formed on the assumption of a healthy immune system.

The woman who called herself Tatiana Aarons gave me an address that led to a vacant lot.

Dogged dedication grants a reader vicarious immortality.

What we can—and can’t—learn from the plague

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.

The newspaper wars aren’t what they used to be.

A package-deal paradise reputation curtails gringo knowledge of Dominican life.

Faith seems to shiver when confronted by art.

What can the Brothers Grimm teach us about the state of our economic system? Everything.

Must artists declare their moral integrity?

Without air travel, family networks might have dissolved long ago.

There’s something not quite right about the grid on which the game is played.