The fish is a suspended phantom, its magenta skeleton an exquisite, vibrant exhibit of what lies beneath

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A wildland fighter witnesses an old burn's second act

Memories sneak up, tiptoe quiet as a cat. Boom like a slapshot

The unmistakable buzz of an approaching aircraft is enough to send my family onto the lawn

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This invertebrate does not go looking for prey

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For the sake of the large romantic gesture

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Hit everything dead on, even if it’s big

The names we learn in childhood smell the sweetest to us

Maybe my doctor has two patients named Ian Roy, and I’ve been sent the other Ian’s file

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No Skylab buzz in East Germany.

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Nature’s sanctity is the only portal to the future.

PRESS 1 IF YOU THINK YOU MAY HAVE HEARD THE BIG BANG.

Playing against the fastest chess player in the world.

"You have bruises / There was time / You spent trying to / Heal them. / As in, time wasted."

That’s one for the rice bag!

The maple leaf no longer feels like a symbol of national pride.

"my point that / i is but a : colon grown / too long"

If marriage was a television show, it might look something like this.

"The following resume / arrived by fax: One ex-military / man, 52, applying / for duty ..."

Scrape every last bit of English out of your throat.

Who puts those little stickers on the apples in the grocery store?

Destroying books for the greater good.

Remembering Norbert Ruebsaat.

Losers: you have a lifetime to hunt.

"I never went looking for them."

When I lived in Ottawa in the 1970s, I used to enjoy passing lazy afternoons at the National Gallery looking at the pictures. I remember how surprised I was when I first encountered the Group of Seven collection. These paintings were completely familiar—I’d seen them in schoolbooks and on calendars, posters, t-shirts, everywhere—yet at the same time they were completely unexpected.

A first-hand account of Greenpeace's first expedition to stop U.S. underwater nuclear testing on September 15, 1971.

Kristen Lawson on the hero's journey through "queer/feminist/Asian/West Coast/Rocky Mountain sensibilities."

Anson Ching on Mo Yan's ability to tell stories as if they were written memories.

Michael Hayward on I Will Never See the World Again by Ahmet Altan

Michał Kozłowski on the ineffable Beverly Glenn-Copeland.

Jesmine Cham on the unknown story of two women who race around the world in eighty days.

Michael Hayward on one book you should read this year.

Michael Hayward on the perfect setup for a classic “film noir.”

Immigration questions 9 and 10: How do you like where you’re living now? Are you happy here?

Patty Osborne on Shtisel—an Israeli TV series about an ultra-religious Jewish family in Jerusalem.

Kelsea O'Connor on the self-published webcomic by Ngozi Ukazu.

Michael Hayward on an anthology of noir fiction set in neighbourhoods around Vancouver.

Kris Rothstein on a no-nonsense Irish heroine.

Kelsea O'Connor on queer lovers, gothic horror and fairy tale themes.

Mary Schendlinger on Fay Weldon's 48th or 53rd book, After the Peace.

Unreliable narrator, post-modernist self-reference and contemporary literary references—Michael Hayward on the nature of the autobiography.

Michael Hayward on a selection of work from the writing collective known as "the Beats"

Patty Osborne on twenty-four essays of "rants and reflections on growing up with LGBTQ+ parents."

Thad McIlroy on Jan Morris's "Smile Test" throughout Canadian cities.

Roni Simunovic reviews the Yaletown Return-It Express Depot.

Kelsea O'Connor on Our Animal Hearts by Dania Tomlinson.

Michael Hayward on Packing My Library: An Elegy and Ten Digressions by Alberto Manguel.

Mary Schendlinger on Vox.com's podcast Today Explained.

Anson Ching on Anna, Like Thunder.

Patty Osborne on Slow Twisting by Anonymous.

Memories lie because they build on memories. I think that I remember something, but in fact I remember remembering it, and so on through countless layers of memory. Every memory is a mise en abyme.

Begging the question of what can be defined as “form.”

The crowds learned that they could not act effectively in the present without confronting the past, specifically the historical treatment of indigenous people.

On the screen, only the image—not the word—can become the world.

It all started with a zesty little book about getting old.

Donald Creighton was a bigot and a curmudgeon, a cranky Tory with a chip on his shoulder. He was also the country’s leading historian, who changed the way that Canadians told their own story.

The novelist can often better define reality than the historian.

"We know that life-altering and possibly cataclysmic change is coming, and we continue to live as we have always done."

"Since the beginning of time (the telling of which is also a story), we have known that words are dangerous creatures."

Lacking in drama and embarrassingly undemocratic, Canada’s origins owe a lot to old-fashioned politics and not much to European battles or transcontinental railways.

"Authenticity is the essential quality of all travel literature, imaginary or real."

Alberto Manguel examines the rich symbology of the fist, a primal symbol of rebellion and grief, across cultures and history.

"Resistance to wars is as much a Canadian tradition as fighting them." Daniel Francis discusses alternative histories, anti-draft demonstrations and the divisive nature of war.

The writer who is loved by all, by definition, neglects literature’s prime responsibility: to offend.

Daniel Francis discusses Canada's failing mental health care system and its long history of mistreatment.

Aboriginal people are creating a new version of Canada, and non-Aboriginals can lend a hand or get out of the way—Daniel Francis on the new Canadian narrative.

Stephen Henighan asks: what if you don't have a tidy answer to "Where are you from?"

"Cross-country skiing offered me the reassurance sought by the immigrant who is excluded from his locality’s history: a viable alternate route to belonging."

European Jewish artisans on horseback in Argentina.

"Sometimes, in politics or history, certain words, certain names are sufficient unto themselves: it is as if there were names that once pronounced require no further telling."

"In the public eye, universities have never recovered from the antics of Donald Sutherland as Professor Jennings in the 1978 film Animal House."

Daniel Francis asks why a high-speed commuter route runs through Stanley Park, Vancouver's precious urban oasis.

"A library is never finished, only abandoned." Alberto Manguel on incompletion, voluntary interruption and the pleasure of the day before.

The assumption of mutual comprehensibility between speakers of Spanish and Portuguese creates a culture of mutual ignorance.