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July-August 2021

Not so clear cut

Why we may never notice the increase in timber harvesting behind Quebec’s scenic roads

Catherine Lamoureux

Huge trucks loaded with wood climb the steep slopes at a slug’s pace before hurtling down at breakneck speed across the Gaspé Peninsula in southeastern Quebec. On weekdays, any driver who finds themselves ahead of these motorized ogres will vividly relive the nightmarish journey of salesman Dennis Weaver chased by a mad trucker in Steven […] More »
January-February 2019

We need to stop pretending there’s no Islamophobia crisis in Canada

How do Canadians view themselves through the lens of national massacres?

Brigitte Pawliw-Fry

  ON A COLD NIGHT IN DECEMBER 1989, Rachel, a first-year student at McGill University, was sitting in the emergency room with a friend suffering from a migraine. About an hour after they first arrived, paramedics began rushing women on stretchers through the ER. Rachel’s first response was confusion: She couldn’t understand why so many […] More »
November-December 2018

Tout le monde en parle has gripped Quebec viewers for nearly 15 years. Why can’t it reach the rest of Canada?

Sara Black McCulloch unpacks the talk show Franco Quebecers can't stop watching

Sara Black McCulloch

Singer Grimes on Tout le monde en parle in 2015 When Canadian singer Grimes appeared on a segment of Tout le monde en parle in 2015, she was the only guest on the Franco-Canadian talk show answering questions in English. When co-host Dany Turcotte discovered she had lived in Montreal for six years, he asked […] More »

On Maxime Bernier’s bold move

What the MP's departure from the Conservative Party of Canada means

Christo Aivalis

Maxime Bernier, the 2017 Conservative Party of Canada (CPC) leadership runner-up, has announced he’s leaving the party to form a truly conservative alternative to Andrew Scheer’s CPC, which Bernier categorized as “intellectually and morally corrupt.” While it’s been clear since the May leadership contest that conflicts between Bernier and Scheer persisted—with Bernier removed from the […] More »
January-February 2018

ACTION SHOT: Fighting racism in Quebec

Photo by Christopher Curtis

This Magazine@thismagazine

The past few months in Quebec have been tough for activists fighting against racism. In October, the government passed Bill 62, a highly controversial piece of legislation that aims to “neutralize” Quebecers’ religious garb while receiving public services. The bill appeared to target Muslim face coverings in particular, including the niqab and burka. The legislation […] More »

Reflections on Quebec’s Bill 62: This is not our song

Canadians must now struggle to find optimism and strength after the ban of religious face coverings—targeting mainly Muslim women—in Quebec

Amira Elghawaby@AmiraElghawaby

Jacques Cartier, right this way I’ll put your coat up on the bed Hey, man, you’ve got the real bum’s eye for clothes And come on in, sit right down No, you’re not the first to show We’ve all been here since, God, who knows? Gord Downie’s passing this week hurt many of us because […] More »
January-February 2017

What I’ve learned about diversity teaching in a small, rural Quebec town

Young, queer, and Tamil, Badri Nayaranan knew uprooting from Toronto to rural Quebec would be a challenge. What he didn’t expect was a complete re-evaluation of his identity

Badri Narayanan

A photo posted by Jann Lavigne-Stevens (@ykwimm) on Feb 1, 2017 at 3:24am PST A photo in Beauce, Que. When I talk to the student in the English classes I teach in Saint-Georges, Que., I try to be as open and approachable as possible. I started the job in September 2016 as part of a program […] More »
September-October 2011

Canada’s coming $50-billion hydro boom brings environmental perils, too

Will Braun

Canada is a nation of wild, legendary rivers. The Mackenzie, the Fraser, the Churchill, and dozens more all empty into our national identity. They flow through our landscape, history, and imagination. They are vital to any history textbook, Group of Seven exhibit, or gift-shop postcard rack. Canada is also a nation of river-tamers. We revere […] More »
July-August 2011

Four rookie “Orange Wave” NDP MPs to watch in the new Parliament

Herb Mathisen

By now, the media has turned Ruth Ellen Brosseau’s name into a punch line. Brosseau is, of course, the Ottawa-pub-managing, Las Vegas-visiting, limited-French-speaking 27-year-old single mom who rode the NDP’s wave through Quebec into an MP job in Ottawa, despite having never visited her primarily francophone riding. But Brosseau isn’t the only NDP rookie surprised […] More »
May-June 2011

This45: Hal Niedzviecki on Haitian-Canadian novelist Dany Laferrière

Graham F. Scott

It seems strange to be given the task of “introducing” a man who has written more than 10 books and recently won major literary prizes in France and Quebec, but there it is: I, and presumably many in English Canada, had forgotten about Dany Laferrière. I’d been a big fan of his a decade ago. […] More »
March-April 2011

Time to abolish separate Catholic school boards

Graham F. Scott

In Alberta, Ontario, and Saskatchewan, parallel education systems still exist: the secular public school boards, and separate Catholic school boards. It is time to abolish that system. The problem of separate school boards is not their Catholicism; it is their separateness. Public funding elevates one religious tradition above all others, and in secular, multicultural contemporary Canada, that […] More »