A nervous kid from Canada becomes the king of the basketball courts in Venice Beach.
Saeko Usukawa
Gulf Island Sojourn
"Campbell River, best fishing in the world. They do everything for you. All you have to do is bring yourself and decide what you're going to drink."
Daniel Francis
Red Scare
The Bolshevists are coming! The Bolshevists are coming! Daniel Francis recounts Canada's close call with a revolution.
Life in Language
For four decades, Jay Powell and Vickie Jensen helped to revive forgotten languages for many Aboriginal groups along the coast of the Pacific Northwest. Read their story here.
J. Jill Robinson
One Night at the Oceanview
Did that really happen? J. Jill Robinson initiates a midnight stand-off between the police and two drunk brothers in an RV Park in White Rock, B.C.
Stephen Osborne
Banker Poet
Stephen Osborne recollects his encounter last summer with Robert Service outside a cafe in Vancouver. Service, who wrote the poem "The Cremation of Sam McGee," died in 1958.
Alberto Manguel
Metamorphoses
Alberto Manguel compares his life in the French countryside to that of Cain, whom God despised for being a settled crop farmer, and whom he punished by forcing him to wander.
Daniel Collins
Phallic Blessing
In Drukpa Kunley's monastery in Bhutan, Daniel Collins experiences a birthday blessing among phallic iconography.
Myrl Coulter
Room Ten
Was that a ghost?Why don't you have room service?We used up all your Kleenex. Sorry.Read more entries from a guest book found in room ten of a hotel in British Columbia's Okanagan Valley.
Stephen Henighan
Divergence
Stephen Henighan argues that audiences used to have different opinions on the news; now they cannot even agree on the terms of debate.
Thad McIlroy
Death and the Economist
The art of the obituary lives on: Obituaries of note from The Economist magazine, including those of the "gunrunner of CIA front companies" and "last interesting Marxist."
Michael Turner
Making Stuff Up
Author Michael Turner riffs on D.M. Fraser's short fiction Class Warfare, one of the ten classic Vancouver books reissued for Vancouver's 125th birthday.
Stephen Osborne
Life on Masterpiece Avenue
Stephen Osborne memorializes D.M. Fraser, a tiny ancient man at the age of twenty-six, who wrote sentences that made you want to take him (and them) home with you.
Stephen Henighan
Third World Canada
Stephen Henighan compares the chaotic sprawl of "Third World" societies to the degradation of Canada's political, social and physical landscape.
Daniel Francis
Double Life
The poet John Glassco lived in disguise, masquerading as a member of the gentry while writing pornography and reinventing his past.
HAL NIEDZVIECKI
The Secret Market
When Frank Warren began collecting the secret thoughts of strangers at PostSecret.com, he inadvertently created a new genre.
Edith Iglauer
Aquafun
Plumb the depths of the Aquafit subculture with our embedded nonagenarian.
Veronica Gaylie
Blue Cheese
A decadent feast of poetry; but what will it do to your heart?
Stephen Henighan
Latinocanadá
Military coups, civil wars, and NAFTA are the cause of trilingual labels in Canadian big box stores.
Stephen Osborne
The Tall Women of Toronto
In this city of tall buildings, the most imposing shadows are cast by women.
Alberto Manguel
Hospital Reading
When you find yourself laid up in a sterile hospital room, which books do you want to have with you?
RICHARD VAN CAMP
Rookie Yearbook One
The Senior Editor of Geist learns to "Wear Knee Socks with Everything" from an exceptional blog turned print book by Tavi Gevinson.
Daniel Francis
It's a Free Country, Isn't It?
During the 1950s the RCMP used a machine to identify federal employees who were homosexuals. The name of this bogus device? The "fruit machine," of course.
KELSEA O'CONNOR
Terribly Human
"Awkwardness comes with loving someone too much or not enough." A review of Other People We Married by Emma Straub.
How did the 99 B-Line bus route come to be the locus of the most heartless transit rides in Greater Vancouver?
Katie Addleman
Greyhound
The driver said, “Are you fit to travel, sir?” and the crack smoker said, “Are any of us fit to travel?"
Stephen Osborne
Insurgency
Stephen Osborne discusses the past, present and future of literary magazines in Canada.
Luke MacLean
Je M'Appelle Raphael
Possum-style or straight up dirty.
Michał Kozłowski
Centre of the Universe
Michal Kozlowski reports on the state of publishing: s'mores, Titantic metaphors, Celtic jigs, steak canapés and mechanical bull riding.
Stephen Osborne
Last Steve Standing
Stephen Osborne says goodbye to Stephen Harper.
David Albahari
Dangerous Times
David Albahari visits Canadian cities and remembers a slogan from the former Yugoslavia: Get to know your country in order to love her.
Rhonda Waterfall
Les Joyeux Lémuriens
“Thank Christ,” says Dieter when I finally wake up. “I thought you were dead.”
Mary Leah de Zwart
Eaten by Dog, Run Over by Train
Wally, the orange tabby: Fell out of travel trailer going over Pavillion Mountain, may be living happily at farm on top of mountain.
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.
Margaret Nowaczyk
Knitting Class
During World War II my grandmother ran contraband, hunted pigeons.
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.
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.
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.
Michał Kozłowski
Publishing Life
The zine scene—comics, wrestling, skateboarding and music.
Stephen Osborne
Dream Counsels
"The soiled side of the shirt is the great baggage of dreams"—Stephen Osborne dreams of Hemingway, Harper and profiteroles.
CARIN MAKUZ
Bride of God
On her first communion, a young girl searches for peace of mind in a world of purgatory, UFOs and the Lennon Sisters.
VINCENT PAGÉ
Milton Acorn Googles His Own Work
"Could I forget: the look that tells me you want me"—Vincent Pagé creates Google autocomplete poetry.
Veronica Gaylie
London Double
Veronica Gaylie encounters invisible lamps, uncooperative clerks and a cushion with a bear and/or badger on it during a trip to London.
David Albahari
Two Homes, One Wolf
If a house were a good thing, the wolf would have one.
Christopher Gudgeon
Waiting for Our Lord God Jesus Christ…
…in the Maple Leaf Lounge at the John G. Diefenbaker Airport in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan.
Eve Corbel
Old Women Cry at Weddings
Eve Corbel on marriage and what comes after the wedding: the monster mortgage, the dreary housework, the contemptuous in-laws and more.
roni-simunovic
Literary Festival Field Guide
Roni Simunovic catalogues types of literary festival attendees: the jaded art student, the CanLit socialite, the overworked publisher and more.
Susan Mockler
Hey, Sexy
"I glanced at Jack, his tattooed arms, his gloved hands resting on the wheels of his manual chair. If only I could get my arms back. I could live with anything else."
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.
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