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.
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."
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.
Alberto Manguel
Hospital Reading
When you find yourself laid up in a sterile hospital room, which books do you want to have with you?
Stephen Osborne
The Tall Women of Toronto
In this city of tall buildings, the most imposing shadows are cast by women.
Stephen Henighan
Latinocanadá
Military coups, civil wars, and NAFTA are the cause of trilingual labels in Canadian big box stores.
Veronica Gaylie
Blue Cheese
A decadent feast of poetry; but what will it do to your heart?
Edith Iglauer
Aquafun
Plumb the depths of the Aquafit subculture with our embedded nonagenarian.
Alberto Manguel
Yehuda Elberg: In Memoriam
A writer whose work is among the most important contributions to the literature of the Holocaust is forgotten by almost all.
Jeff Shucard
Hurricane
Four days after Sandy, Shucard's parents are in good humour, very brave and very glad to see him—and unsure if he's taking them to Bolivia, Azerbaijan or Canada.
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.
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.
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.
Thad McIlroy
Hernia Heaven, Part 2
Thad McIlroy undergoes a hernia operation—and with Neil Diamond and the right kind of drugs, it might only take ten minutes.
Sheila Heti
Stakeout
Sheila Heti spends a day in a diner in Toronto observing the enormous EUCAN electrified garbage can at the corner of College and Bathurst.
Stephen Osborne
Women of Kali
A feminist writer/publisher sought out stories of the partition of India: atrocity and hardship, looting, rape and murder committed by and upon Hindu, Muslim and Sikh.
KELSEA O'CONNOR
Grief-in-Progress
Kelsea O'Connor reviews Nox by Anne Carson (New Directions).
Michael Hayward
Writing in Blue
Michael Hayward reviews Blue Nights by Joan Didion (Knopf).
Mandelbrot
Zero Drag and Genius
Mandelbrot reviews The Wage Slave's Glossary written by Joshua Glenn and Mark Kingwell and illustrated by Seth.
Chelsea Novak
National Boyfriend
At a taping of George Stroumboulopoulos Tonight, Chelsea Novak meets Canada's boyfriend.
Michael Turner
Oh, Canada
Michael Turner questions a US-curated exhibit of Canadian art that exoticizes Canadian artists while suggesting they are un-exotic.
Daniel Francis
Boob Tube
Richard Stursberg’s memoir of his years in CBC programming raises the question: How did someone with no sympathy for public broadcasting get the job in the first place?
Eve Corbel
Collier Cornucopia
Eve Corbel reviews Collier’s Popular Press: 30 Years on the Newsstand.
Stephen Osborne's broken cellphone leads him to Schopenhauer, the Titanic publishing industry and historical Phantom Rides.
Jan Feduck
Hurricane Diary
Jan Feduck faces Frenchish food, vomit and guys from Ontario when her ferry from the Magdalen Islands is caught in a hurricane.
Dylan Gyles
Floating
“Don’t try to make anything happen,” the calm voice said. Dylan Gyles visits a sensory deprivation float tank.
Stephen Osborne
A Bridge in Pangnirtung
Stephen Osborne attends a gallery opening for Elisapee Ishulutaq, an 89-year-old Inuit artist who has been making prints in Pangnirtung, Nunavut for 40 years.
Stephen Osborne
Secrets of the City
Stephen Osborne discovers that some of the most startling papers in the city archives are the letters and diaries of the first archivist himself.
Umar Saeed
Arguments
A young Canadian man visits family in Pakistan to settle a generational feud.
CONNIE KUHNS
Signs of Life
Does a house that has been home to four generations of one family still hold their electricity?
Norbert Ruebsaat
Caleb and Opa on Holiday
Opa, you know that sometimes people say things, well, indirectly? They don’t say everything that they mean?
Florence Grandview
Lights Out at the Jubilee
At the Jubilee Cinema, the manager carries an imitation pistol in the John Dillinger style.
David Wisdom
UJ3RK5
A Vancouver rock band made up of musicians, photographers and at one time, a prominent sci-fi writer.
Michelle Fost
Long Distance
Shared family memories of burnt baked goods.
Edith Iglauer
Mad About Harry
A new pet kitten becomes part of the family.
Jill Boettger
City Under Water
The Calgary floods left behind a stew of knee-deep mud, and waterlogged piles of couches, fridges, books, toys, artworks, chairs, carpet, drywall...
Stephen Osborne
The Coincidence Problem
That dreamlike quality causes rational minds to dismiss the moment as “only a coincidence.”
Stephen Osborne
Scandal Season
Headlines featuring crack-smoking mayors and election fraudsters.
Sheila Heti
Off the Pedestal
Rick laughed. I walked away. I was irritated at Henry, at Lee for getting stoned and being paranoid and leaving without saying goodbye, at Rick, at everyone.
Stephen Osborne
Road King
Two women on motorcycles: one in the dead zone of Chernobyl, and the other in the cactus country of Kamloops.
Stephen Osborne
First Time, Last Time
The first time losing a game of Scrabble and the last time taking a train cross-country.
Stephen Osborne
Writing Life
"One way or another we all write out of this place,” comments Patricia Young in Writing Life (McClelland & Stewart), edited by Constance Rooke, a collection of essays by fifty writers, most of them Canadian, about the process and perils of authorship
Devon Code
My Prizes: A Memoir
An account of the circumstances surrounding seven literary honours bestowed on a writer.
Stephen Osborne
Pathfinder Deluxe
A young man comes into possession of a 1957 Pontiac, modelled after one owned by a legendary pianist.
Veronica Gaylie
Melon Balls in Space
Shiny bras and worn-in sweaters—the clothes do make the woman.
Veronica Gaylie
Cowichan Sweater
You had to sleep in it and fall in love in it.
Ven Begamudre
Memory Game
A writer talks about personal health issues and their connection to his family history.
Stephen Osborne
Everything Is Perfect
In 1946, a young bride writes home about her month-long sea voyage to her new home on Baffin Island.
The postcard presents a series of absences—the nameless photographer,
the unknown writer and recipient; it is constituted by what is unknown
Gabrielle Marceau
Fact
Main Character
I always longed to be the falling woman—impelled by unruly passion, driven by beauty and desire, turned into stone, drowned in flowers.
Mia + Eric
Future Perfect
New bylaws for civic spaces.
JUDY LEBLANC
Walking in the Wound
It is racism, not race, that is a risk factor for dying of COVID-19.
SADIQA DE MEIJER
Do No Harm
Doing time is not a blank, suspended existence.
Kristen den Hartog
The Insulin Soldiers
It was as though a magic potion had brought him back to life.
Steven Heighton
Everything Turns Away
Going unnoticed must be the root sorrow for the broken.
DANIEL CANTY
The Sum of Lost Steps
On the curve of the contagion and on the measure of Montreality.
Brad Cran
Fact
Potluck Café
It took me a million miles to get here and half the time I was doing it in high heels.
Carellin Brooks
Ripple Effect
I am the only woman in the water. The rest of the swimmers are men or boys. One of them bobs his head near me, a surprising vision in green goggles, like an undocumented sea creature. I imagine us having sex, briefly, him rocking over me like a wave.
MARCELLO DI CINTIO
The Great Wall of Montreal
The chain-link fence along boulevard de l’Acadie— two metres high, with “appropriate hedge”—separates one of the wealthiest neighbourhoods in Montreal from one of the poorest.
Michał Kozłowski
New World Publisher
Randy Fred thought that life after residential school would be drinking, watching TV and dying. Instead, he became the "greatest blind Indian publisher in the world."
BRAD YUNG
Lessons I’m Going To Teach My Kids Too Late
"I want to buy a house. And build a secret room in it. And not tell the kids about it."
Paul Tough
City Still Breathing: Listening to the Weakerthans
I wasn’t certain whether I was in Winnipeg because of the Weakerthans, or whether I cared about the Weakerthans because I care about Winnipeg.
Stephen Osborne
This Postcard Life
Spiritual landscapes and unknowable people captured on film, used to convey a message.
Hilary M. V. Leathem
To Coronavirus, C: An Anthropological Abecedary
After Paul Muldoon and Raymond Williams.
Bill MacDonald
The Ghost of James Cawdor
A seance to contact a dead miner at Port Arthur, Ontario, in 1923—conducted by Conan Doyle himself.
Ann Diamond
The Second Life of Kiril Kadiiski
He has been called the greatest Bulgarian poet of his generation. Can one literary scandal bury his whole career?
Caroline Adderson
Lives of the House
A basement shrine in her 1920s home inspires Caroline Adderson to discover the past lives of her house and its inhabitants.
Ivan Coyote
Shouldn’t I Feel Pretty?
Somewhere in the sweat and ache and muscle I carved a new shape for myself that made more sense.
David L. Chapman
Postcolonial Bodies
Mastery of the self
CONNIE KUHNS
There is a Wind that Never Dies
"If you are still alive, you must have had the experience of surrendering."
Sarah Leavitt
Small Dogs
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
Symbiosis in Warsaw
Ola Szczecinska returns to Warsaw to visit her grandmother, and to keep from losing her memories.
Patty Osborne reviews Last Dance in Shediac by Anny Scoones.
roni-simunovic
Waking Up With the Rock
In the Rock Clock app, you can set your own wake-up time or choose the Rock Time option, which wakes you up whenever Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson is waking up, usually between four and six in the morning. There is no snooze option.
RICHARD VAN CAMP
Home and Heart
Mary Schendlinger sees The Babushkas of Chernobyl, Inaate/se and A Good American at the DOXA Festival.
Michael Hayward
The Library of Roguery
Jim Christy and the editors who worked on Rogues, Rascals, and Scalawags Too should be congratulated for their uncanny ability to squeeze every last euphemism out of their thesauri.
Thad McIlroy
Conditionally Paris
Thad McIlroy reviews Paris Nocturne by Patrick Modiano, a Nobel Prize-winning author.
Stephen Osborne
Frozen, Not Forgotten
"The miscellanist Rob Kovitz in his new book Dead and Cold has assembled, coordinated or otherwise summoned into being the best, the most spellbinding and the most chilblain-inducing account of death in the Arctic that you will ever read."
Kris Rothstein
Elixirs
Craft Distilling: Making Liquor Legally at Home by Victoria Redhed Miller is a no-nonsense how-to book, and a rational plea to lift laws that prevent small-batch not-for-profit distilling.
Norbert Ruebsaat
Golden Voice
Leonard Cohen pays a visit to the neighborhood in song.
Lily Gontard
Passage
Lily Gontard reviews Passage (2008), directed by John Walker.
Rebekah Chotem
Coming of Age Near Thunder Bay
Rebekah Chotem reviews Sleeping Giant, a critically-acclaimed coming-of-age film directed by Andrew Cividino.
Michael Hayward
Cycling in Cities
"To properly understand Mayor Gregor Robertson’s ongoing bicyclification of Vancouver, I think we need more books like Jon Day’s Cyclogeography: Journeys of a London Bicycle Courier, an extended essay about 'the bicycle in the cultural imagination.'"
KELSEA O'CONNOR
Martel’s Mountains
In The High Mountains of Portugal (Knopf), Yann Martel returns to magic realism in three interwoven stories about lost love and journeys taken to reclaim the past.
roni-simunovic
Teledildonics
"Sex for Dummies, the 'Fun and Easy Way to Have Great Sex in the ’90s,' sat in the window of my neighbourhood bookstore and I bought it because, as a twenty-three-year-old, I was curious about what sex was like before my time."
Michael Hayward
Following Wind, Following Water
Michael Hayward reviews a number of travelogues by Daniel Canty and Bill Porter.
RICHARD VAN CAMP
Time-Tested
Mary Schendlinger reviews M Train by Patti Smith and My Life on the Road by Gloria Steinem.
Rebekah Chotem
American Doppelgänger
"It’s well documented that Hollywood films use Canada to stand in for the US, including Brokeback Mountain, Good Will Hunting, the Twilight series, Rambo’s First Blood and many, many more blockbusters."
Annabel Lyon
The Life You Can Save
Hint: It’s not your own.
Norbert Ruebsaat
A History of Reading
Alberto Manguel’s A History of Reading taught me to read.
Michael Hayward
The Muskwa Assemblage
"Poetry is the most personal of the literary arts; laureates notwithstanding, few poets enjoy national stature nowadays, and fewer still are known beyond the boundaries of their native land."
Patty Osborne
A Cockney in China
At the age of 30, Gladys Aylward, a housemaid, bought a ticket from London, England, to Yangcheng, Shanxi Province, China, in order to work as a missionary.
Michał Kozłowski
Poets on Film
The Western Front, Canada’s longest running artist-run centre, recently hosted a public screening of two dozen or so films from their archive of readings by poets from the 1970s, 80s and 90s.
Patty Osborne
The Mere Future
Meet the new bosses of a futuristic New York. Same as the old boss?
Rebekah Chotem
Room for the Real
Rebekah Chotem reviews the film adaptation of Room by Emma Donoghue.
Stephen Osborne
National Poetry Daze
CBC Radio celebrated National Poetry Day by reading a poem written in 1916 by Bliss Carman, which raises the question: are there no living poets who cut the mustard?
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.
CHERYL THOMPSON
Dismantling the Myth of the Hero
In a world dominated by heroes, difference is not tolerated.
Stephen Henighan
Reheated Races
Dividing and conquering local populations confines them to manageable administrative units.
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.
LISA BIRD-WILSON
Occupation Anxiety
Lisa Bird-Wilson on UNDRIP, reconciliation, and the anxiety felt by Indigenous people in Canada.
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."
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
Plague
What we can—and can’t—learn from the plague
Alberto Manguel
Léon Bloy and His Monogamous Reader
Dogged dedication grants a reader vicarious immortality.
Stephen Henighan
Confidence Woman
The woman who called herself Tatiana Aarons gave me an address that led to a vacant lot.
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
A Fairy Tale for Our Time
What can the Brothers Grimm teach us about the state of our economic system? Everything.
Alberto Manguel
Art and Blasphemy
Faith seems to shiver when confronted by art.
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.