When an unknown band called Shark Attack appeared as a headliner on the lineup for the 2011 edition of Sappyfest, Julie Doiron thought it was strange even for the little rock festival she helped found in Sackville, New Brunswick, in 2006. “I was looking at the program Thursday night—festival starts on Friday—and I was like… More »

The fate of JJ Levine’s unconventional hair salon, Lesbian Haircuts for Anyone was in jeopardy this past winter. Levine’s salon has operated out of Bikurious cycle shop in Montreal for the past six years. In 2008, Bikurious owner Danielle Flowers sold the shop, which was then called Révolution Montréal, to two of her employees, on… More »

Imagine 60,000 Band-Aids stuck together in small wagon-wheel patterns, draped over a mannequin in an art gallery. Now, imagine a person wearing this cloak in the middle of a downtown street, who if feeling confrontational, sticks Band-Aids on passersby. Hamilton-based artist Andrew McPhail’s installation and performance all my little failures explores obsession, humour and disease…. More »

In 1999, filmmaker Xstine Cook was living in Ramsay, an inner-city working class Calgary neighbourhood, when Gloria Black Plume, an aboriginal social worker, was murdered in an alleyway five houses away from her home. Cook now lives on the property where the murder took place. She felt the need to memorialize Black Plume’s life and… More »

Wayson Choy’s second memoir, Not Yet, is bookended by two brushes with the undiscovered country via ticker trouble. The first, an asthma attack and a handful of “cardiac events,” leave him in an induced coma. The second attack is recognized by doctors quickly enough to be reduced to an epilogue and concludes with a writer… More »

Even after all its Olympic-related world-class-city posturing, Vancouver remains very much at odds with itself. At once a bedroom community, a wannabe metropolis, and the centre of a long-running real-estate boom, the city is like a teenager who keeps changing her clothes, says visual artist Eric Deis. “Kids grow up, they push boundaries, they try… More »

Sure, it’s easy to be disenchanted with society: its corporate lies, political impotence, and information overload. The hunt for authenticity “has become the spiritual quest of our time,” Andrew Potter, famed co-author of The Rebel Sell, writes in his new book, The Authenticity Hoax. A way to escape all we believe to be fake and… More »

When Google, citing concerns over security and censorship, pulled their operations out of China in March this year, they were widely praised for taking a stand for democracy. But Google’s move wasn’t the first time a Western entity had taken the moral high road in regard to China. In fact, almost 200 years ago, the… More »

Like many of the contributors to Girls Who Bite Back, I grew up on a steady diet of Saturday morning cartoons, Smurfs and Strawberry Shortcake. When it came to biting back, the only superheroes and ass-kicking role models I had were Wonder Woman, The Bionic Woman and Charlie’s Angels (the small-screen version). Thankfully, things have… More »

When was the last time you read a work of fiction and every single word jumped off the page to slap and tickle you and you, well, liked it, and wanted more and more? Paul Dutton’s latest work, and first novel, Several Women Dancing (The Mercury Press) will do that to no end. I kid… More »