In 2021, New Brunswick remains the only province in Canada that refuses to fund out-of-hospital abortions. Currently, only three hospitals in the province can perform abortions—one in Bathurst and two in Moncton. While the province is finally being taken to court by a civil liberties association for this lack of funding support, which violates the […] More »

“So, where is your apartment around?” she asked me. Even before answering, I know where this is going. She isn’t asking because of romantic interest, the subtle hint of inviting herself over. Perhaps she wants to size me up, or maybe it’s just one of those gold-standard small talk questions someone asks, similar to “what […] More »

When recent university graduate Michelle Martins returned to her hometown of Kitimat, a town in northern B.C. with a population reported to be about 9,000 people, she didn’t plan to stay for long. “I came back to Kitimat. I gave myself a year. And I feel like Kitimat is kind of like the Bermuda Triangle […] More »

Growing up in a traditional first-generation Muslim-Canadian family, I constantly struggled to determine what career I wanted to pursue. For years, I faced the dilemma of whether to satisfy the vision my parents had created for me or to go out on a limb and pursue my own interests of joining the entertainment industry, ultimately […] More »

For some, we are entering a dystopian-like era, with pandemic and zombie movies feeling uncannily familiar. In May 2020, the BBC noted that the public has had an increased interest in dystopian fiction as a way to cope or understand the pandemic. But, if we really want to learn about how to survive this newfound […] More »

To the people who have called me resilient: I know you think that you were giving me some big compliment. I get it, I do. The first time someone called me resilient, I was young and terrified that no one would ever see how hard I was fighting. Then, the phrase “you are resilient” filled […] More »

Ashwin Mehra’s mother had COVID-19 in Mumbai. In Toronto, he wasn’t sleeping well. Before the diagnosis, even the thought of Mehra’s parents falling sick in India with him stranded in Toronto would keep him up at night. If they died, he knew he wouldn’t be able to attend their funerals. And so, when his sister […] More »

Pop singer Halsey begins her 2020 album, Manic, with a quote from Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind: “I’m just a fucked up girl who’s looking for my own peace of mind.” It’s hard to imagine Katy Perry or even Lady Gaga starting a record the same way 10 years ago, but in today’s music […] More »

One of the big changes in my life as I’ve gotten older has been becoming an insomniac. My brain has decided to forgo the signals that I am asleep and should remain so until an appropriate hour sometime in the waning hours of the dawn, and instead wakes me up around 1 a.m. This time […] More »

In her book, How To Lose Everything, writer and musician Christa Couture tells a story of loss and resilience. She loses her leg to cancer at a young age; she loses two sons early in their lives, and a marriage; another health scare threatens her career. Yet, she overcomes. She writes, “I think of something […] More »

Body positivity can be a harrowing but joyful process. Shana Myara made it a life goal. “I gave myself a project where I could fully explore fat liberation with other queers,” says Myara, director of the documentary, Well Rounded. “Particularly from the lens of racialized queers who might also have a critique of how bodies […] More »