Any resemblances to persons living or dead are purely vindictive.
Robyn Ludwig
Black Velvet, If You Please
The secret is in the velvet.
Sara Cassidy
Flying the Coop
You can’t break eggs without making an omelette.
Véronique Darwin
New Normal Board Games
Use the board games you unearthed during isolation to reinventclassic games for our times.
Stephen Osborne
Hospitals of the Mind
A few years ago, someone left a pocket-sized photo album on my desk with an unsigned note stuck on the cover that said I “might know what to do with it.” Inside, glued one to a page, are twenty-four photographs of Essondale, the mental hospital in N
Tiffany Hsieh
Church on Queen
Here they are our people.
Celia Haig-Brown
Resistance and Relentlessness
The long road to decency and justice.
Randy Fred
Resistance and Renewal
After hearing survivors’ stories, nothing can ever surprise me.
Rick Maddocks
The Other 9/11
Chileans remember when their government was overthrown by Augusto Pinochet on September 11, 1973.
Carmen Tiampo
Wash With Like Colours
People have asked: What’s it like? How’s it been? Are you scared?
Stephen Osborne
Defining Moments
The Olympic Games left a trail of moments: a rare moment, a Canadian moment, a you moment, a me moment...
Myrna Garanis
World-Class Hotel
Poets trashed hotel rooms long before rock bands made it fashionable.
Patty Osborne
Underwire
"We got into Zellers through jewellery, purses and umbrellas, stockings and underwear and into brassieres, where our momentum deserted us. Now we were both in unfamiliar territory."
Sara Cassidy
Gravitass
A poetic tribute to men's rear-ends.
RICHARD VAN CAMP
Meanwhile, in 1666
Aboard a stuck SkyTrain, reading Samuel Pepys's account of the Great Fire of London.
Randy Fred
Seeing Things
When taking hallucinogenics, more is better, within limits.
Margaret Nowaczyk
Contact No Contact
Personal narratives by Indigenous and settler contributors describing significant first contacts that brought new insights.
Robert Everett-Green
Licorice Roots
A writer uncovers a family connection with a sweet English confection.
Stephen Osborne
Reading in Summer
Where in the used bookstore would mysteries by Raymond Chandler be shelved—in Novels or in Fiction? Stephen Osborne remembers the summer pleasures of reading outdoors and used bookstores.
Marko Sijan
Peace on Earth
"My father believes the world is coming to an end, yet he commits his life to curing the sick." Dispatch by Marko Sijan.
Lucianne Poole
Chainsaw Man
A man with a chainsaw boarded the number 7 bus at about 7:45 a.m., when I was on my way to work in downtown Ottawa.
Kristen den Hartog
Solace
Bud was one of the few who’d seen Stewart’s face as it was.
Review of "A Russian Sister" by Caroline Adderson.
Debby Reis
Fact
A not-totally-accurate introduction to the azores
Review of the Netflix series "Rabo de Peixe" (2023) created by Augusto de Fraga.
Kris Rothstein
Fact
The messy back of history
Review of "My Grandfather’s Knife: Hidden Stories from the Second World War" by Joseph Pearson
Peggy Thompson
Fact
Have Mercy
Review of "Mercy Gene" by JD Derbyshire.
Michael Hayward
Fact
subterranean mysteries
Review of "Underland" by Robert Macfarlane.
KELSEA O'CONNOR
Fact
Championing Trees
Review of "Tracking Giants: Big Trees, Tiny Triumphs, and Misadventures in the Forest" by Amanda Lewis.
Patty Osborne
Fact
Crossing Borders
Review of "Solito: A Memoir" by Javier Zamora
Michael Hayward
Fact
The Two Roberts
Review of "Turn Every Page" directed by Lizzie Gottlieb
Peggy Thompson
Fact
A moment with holden
Review of "Holden After & Before: Love Letter for a Son Lost to Overdose" by Tara McGuire.
JILL MANDRAKE
Fact
POINTS OF INFLECTION
Review of "Some of the Puzzles" by M.A.C. Farrant.
Michael Hayward
Fact
A HOLIDAY IN THE MOUNTAINS (WITH PIE)
Review of "Holiday, 1909" by Charles Chapman.
Anson Ching
Fact
THE BELL KEEPS TOLLING
Review of "For Whom the Bell Tolls" by Ernest Hemingway.
Kris Rothstein
Fact
DEFINED BY DUMPLINGS
Review of "What We Talk About When We Talk About Dumplings" edited by John Lorinc.
Jonathan Heggen
Fact
The Common Shaman
Review of "Shaman" by Kim Stanley Robinson.
Peggy Thompson
Fact
Walk Another Path
Review of "Landlines" by Raynor Winn.
Kris Rothstein
Fact
Dogs and the Writing Life
Review of "And a Dog Called Fig: Solitude, Connection, the Writing Life" by Helen Humphreys.
Patty Osborne
Fact
A Secret Well Kept
Review of "The Betrayal of Anne Frank: A Cold Case Investigation" by Rosemary Sullivan.
KELSEA O'CONNOR
Fact
The Human Side of Art Forgery
Review of "The Great Canadian Art Fraud Case: The Group of Seven and Tom Thomson Forgeries" by Jon S. Dellandrea.
JILL MANDRAKE
Fact
A Backward Glance or Two
Review of "Let the World Have You" by Mikko Harvey.
Michael Hayward
Fact
ADVENT (AND OTHERS) IN A BOX
Review of "Short Story Advent Calendar" by Hingston & Olsen Publishing.
Michael Hayward
Wanda x 3
Review of "Wanda" written and directed by Barbara Loden, "Suite for Barbara Loden" by Nathalie Léger, translated by Natasha Lehrer and Cécile Menon and "Wanda" by Barbara Lambert.
Patty Osborne
Teenaged Boys, Close Up
Review of "Sleeping Giant" directed by Andrew Cividino and written by Cividino, Blain Watters and Aaron Yeger.
Debby Reis
Dreaming of Androids
Review of "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? " by Philip K. Dick.
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.