Jennesia Pedri reviews Walls: Travels Along the Barricades by Marcello di Cintio (Goose Lane).
Patty Osborne
Absolute Centre
Patty Osborne reviews Dogs at the Perimeter by Madeleine Thien (McClelland & Stewart).
Stephen Henighan
Against Efficiency
Stephen Henighan argues that efficiency has become a core value that heightens social divisions.
Francois-Marc Gagnon
Among the Curious
Francois-Marc Gagnon explores curiosity as the opposite of indifference.
Alberto Manguel
Being Here
In the world between here and there, what place does one call home?
Ted Bishop
Edith and Frank
Ted Bishop visits Edith Iglauer and her husband Frank in their seaside home, where he is treated to a fast drive on a winding road, conversation on good books, and a lesson on what it's like to grow old gracefully.
Stephen Henighan
A Table in Paris
Stephen Henighan remembers Mavis Gallant, the original nomad of Canadian literature, who wrote some of Canada's finest fiction at Pablo Picasso's café table in Paris.
Stephen Henighan
Wheels
Stephen Henighan investigates bus travel as one of Canada's last surviving democratic spaces.
Michael Turner
Vancouver Re-Remembered
Michael Turner reviews At the World's Edge: Curt Lang's Vancouver, 1937-1998, by Claudia Cornwall.
Jane Silcott
Mimesisa
Jane Silcott explores the ideas of beauty and mimicry both in theory and in the wilds of a motel complex.
Daniel Francis
Deviance on Display
Daniel Francis investigates the practice of visiting asylums and penitentiaries as entertainment in nineteenth-century Canada.
Alberto Manguel
Facing the Camera
How much does a photograph really capture the essence of a person?
Stephen Osborne
1968
Stephen Osborne compares the "major problem" of loitering in 1968 Vancouver to the 2012 Occupy movement.
Michał Kozłowski
Boomtown
L.B. Foote fled Newfoundland to avoid life as a cod fisherman and became Winnipeg's best-known photographer, chronicling Boomtown's growth, energy and struggles.
Daniel Francis
Noir
Daniel Francis explores the photographer as Vancouver's most interesting historian.
Alberto Manguel
Observer and Observed
Alberto Manguel reflects on art as a witness to the human desire to be infinite and eternal.
Stephen Osborne
The Man Who Stole Christmas
On a dark day in January in Toronto, when the sky was much too close to the ground, I went to see the grave of Timothy Eaton with my friend Tom Walmsley.
Stephen Henighan
Tigers' Anatomy
As Canadian leaders look to emulate Asian nations, our government fails to see that the tigers' fatal flaw is the absence of democracy. Or, maybe they do see.
Daniel Francis
Warrior Nation
The Great White North gets rebranded and gains some military muscle: goodbye peacenik, hello soldier.
Alberto Manguel
How to Talk About Books We Haven’t Read, Part Two
I’ve now read Comment parler des livres que l’on n’a pas lus? and I’m happy to say that I was right.
Alberto Manguel
How to Talk About Books We Haven’t Read
A French writer whose name I hadn’t heard before, Pierre Bayard, has written a book called Comment parler des livres que l’on n’a pas lus? published by Éditions de Minuit in a collection aptly titled Paradoxe. A number of critics in France have writt
David Campion
Memory and the Valley: An Interview with Sandra Shields and David Campion
Ross Merriam
Ann Diamond on Memory and Forgetting
Most of our lives probably disappear from our memories, although some people remember much more than others.
Stephen Henighan
Nations Without Publishers
In 2002, when my essay collection When Words Deny the World was published, people started behaving strangely. Ambitious young writers scurried out of sight when I entered a room, as though afraid that irate authors might banish them from Toronto for having spoken to me.
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.
Review of "Mushrooms of British Columbia" by Andy MacKinnon and Kem Luther.
Anson Ching
The Geist of Turkey
Review of "Ethos" directed by Berkun Oya.
Michael Hayward
Seventy-Two Hours to Animal
Review of "Bunker: Building for the End Times" by Bradley Garrett.
Kathleen Murdock
Juice Worth the Squeeze
Review of "Shadow of Doubt: The Trials of Dennis Oland, Revised and Expanded Edition" by Bobbi-Jean MacKinnon.
Kris Rothstein
Decolonizing Canada
Review of "Before I Was a Critic I Was a Human Being" Amy Fung.
Kathleen Murdock
Doing It Special
Review of "nedi nezu (Good Medicine)" by Tenille K. Campbell.
Anson Ching
Recipe for a Harlequin Romance
Review of "Ring" by André Alexis.
CONNIE KUHNS
Rise Up
Review of "Rise Up: Songs of the Women's Movement" Co-Produced by Jim Brown, Heather A. Smith, and Donna Korones.
Patty Osborne
Middle Sister
Review of "Milkman" by Anna Burns.
Michael Hayward
Purveyors of Electric Fans
Review of "Clyde Fans" by Seth.
Michael Hayward
Tree Lit
Review of "The Overstory" by Richard Powers.
Anson Ching
Voyeur Galore
Review of "Captains of the Sands" by Jorge Amado.
Patty Osborne
Why White People Are Funny
Review of "Qallunaat! Why White People Are Funny" Zebedee Nungak and Mark Sandiford.
Jonathan Heggen
Korean Supper
Review of "Crying in H Mart: A Memoir " by Michelle Zauner.
Michael Hayward
Dancing About Architecture
Review of "Utopia Avenue" by David Mitchell.
KELSEA O'CONNOR
Eaten to Extinction
Review of "Lost Feast: Culinary Extinction and the Future of Food" by Lenore Newman.
Michael Hayward
A Longing to Be Far Away
Review of "Fernweh" by Teju Cole.
Shyla Seller
Postal Lit
Review of "Long Live the Post Horn!" by Vigdis Hjorth.
SYLVIA TRAN
Poutine Pilgrimage
Review of poutine at Robson Fries in Tokyo.
JILL MANDRAKE
Older and Better
Review of "The Old Man in the Mirror Isn’t Me" by Ray Robertson.
Stephen Osborne
The Becoming of Vancouver
Review of "Becoming Vancouver: A History" by Daniel Francis.
Michael Hayward
Known to be Strange
Known and Strange Things (Random House) is a collection of Teju Cole’s essays and other short pieces, many of which have previously appeared in The New Yorker and elsewhere online.
Michael Hayward
A Blindness at the Centre of Seeing
Cole’s most recent book, Blind Spot (Random House), a generous hardcover printed on glossy stock, presents Cole’s photographs on recto pages, with brief, allusive essays on the facing verso page.
Patty Osborne
B for Beatrice
Patty Osborne on wacky kid tales and the joy of animated storytelling.
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.
Rob Kovitz
Because a Lot of Questions Are Complex
Begging the question of what can be defined as “form.”
Stephen Henighan
Power of Denial
The crowds learned that they could not act effectively in the present without confronting the past, specifically the historical treatment of indigenous people.
Stephen Henighan
Treason of the Librarians
On the screen, only the image—not the word—can become the world.
RICHARD VAN CAMP
Grey Matters
It all started with a zesty little book about getting old.
Daniel Francis
Umpire of the St. Lawrence
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.
Alberto Manguel
Pistol Shots at a Concert
The novelist can often better define reality than the historian.
Stephen Henighan
Phony War
"We know that life-altering and possibly cataclysmic change is coming, and we continue to live as we have always done."
Alberto Manguel
Power to the Reader
"Since the beginning of time (the telling of which is also a story), we have known that words are dangerous creatures."
Daniel Francis
Birth of a Nation
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.
Alberto Manguel
In Praise of Ronald Wright
"Authenticity is the essential quality of all travel literature, imaginary or real."
Alberto Manguel
Fist
Alberto Manguel examines the rich symbology of the fist, a primal symbol of rebellion and grief, across cultures and history.
Stephen Henighan
Cross-Country Snow
"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."
Stephen Henighan
Immigrants from Nowhere
Stephen Henighan asks: what if you don't have a tidy answer to "Where are you from?"
Daniel Francis
Time for a Rewrite
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.
Daniel Francis
When Treatment Becomes Torture
Daniel Francis discusses Canada's failing mental health care system and its long history of mistreatment.
Stephen Henighan
Offend
The writer who is loved by all, by definition, neglects literature’s prime responsibility: to offend.
Daniel Francis
Acts of Resistance
"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.
Alberto Manguel
The Armenian Question
"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."
Alberto Manguel
Jewish Gauchos
European Jewish artisans on horseback in Argentina.
Stephen Henighan
Campus Confidential
"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
Park In Progress
Daniel Francis asks why a high-speed commuter route runs through Stanley Park, Vancouver's precious urban oasis.
Alberto Manguel
Not Finishing
"A library is never finished, only abandoned." Alberto Manguel on incompletion, voluntary interruption and the pleasure of the day before.
Stephen Henighan
Iberian Duet
The assumption of mutual comprehensibility between speakers of Spanish and Portuguese creates a culture of mutual ignorance.