Illustration by Diana Bolton Family has always been complicated for me. My father left when I was three, and by the time I was 10 he had disappeared completely. I left home at 16 and struggled to obtain housing, briefly finding stability in a group home. I moved on to various households with my siblings, […] More »

Illustration by Jaden Tsan “It’s not like you even act that Asian”—these words were spoken to me by a white now-ex-boyfriend of mine during a casual conversation. At the time, I let it go because I was not sure how I felt about it, but the words have stuck with me. How exactly am I […] More »

Photo by INSTAR Images / Alamy Stock Photo When it first aired over two decades ago, Sex and the City’s fantasy lay in an idyllic New York City lifestyle of affordable rent, flowing cosmopolitans, closets full of expensive designer fashion, a revolving door of attractive men for one and all, and an endless string of […] More »

Illustration by Brintha Koneshachandra Dear Mom, The other day, I was making us breakfast and I reached into the fridge to grab the container of yogurt to eat with our puri. Now, you would think, having done essentially this every weekend of my entire life, I would not screech, “Ugh! Mom, where is the yogurt?! […] More »

Photo by Dimitri Nasrallah Dimitri Nasrallah’s Hotline (Véhicule Press) transports readers to mid-eighties Montreal when weight-loss centres were a burgeoning industry, and “body image” and “health consciousness” were terms just entering the vocabulary of self-care. Muna Heddad, a French teacher by trade, takes a job as a hotline phone operator at meal delivery company Nutri-Fort […] More »

Photos courtesy Jennifer David & Waubgeshig Rice When Jennifer David decided to start Storykeepers, a podcast that spotlights Indigenous literature, she knew Waubgeshig Rice was her only choice for a co-host. He was an experienced journalist with CBC, a published author—most recently of the bestseller Moon of the Crusted Snow (ECW Press, 2018)—and they were […] More »

Illustration by Julia Galotta I’m a young woman, who can, to my knowledge, get pregnant and has long-held dreams of being a mother. When I was a child, I spent my days dutifully caring for my dolls—who were named Baby and Popstar. When I turned 13, I started babysitting the two toddlers who lived next […] More »

Photo courtesy Natasha Kuperman In Hazelton, B.C., one organization is undertaking an ambitious project: to regenerate the public forests of Canada’s north. Seed the North, founded in 2020 by infrastructure developer and architect Natasha Kuperman, isn’t the first to tackle reforestation. However, it has set out to do so with a fresh approach that combines […] More »

Graphic by Valerie Thai Canada is in the midst of a housing crisis, and one perpetuating factor is the skyrocketing cost of rent. Rent control is a type of provincial rent regulation law that limits rent increases. While every province and territory restricts the frequency of rent increases, only four provinces have some sort of […] More »

Photo by iStock; Design by Valerie Thai In August 2021, the UN Secretary-General declared the findings of a recent global climate report “a code red for humanity.” In response, a team of journalists and researchers released the “Climate Coverage in Canada” report in November, which heard from 143 scientists, 148 journalists, and 1,006 members of […] More »

Photo by XURZON; Design by Valerie Thai At least 595 people died in B.C. from heat-related deaths during the summer of 2021. Most of these occurred during the province’s “heat dome” event, which took place from June 25 to July 1, and saw temperatures rise as high as 49.6 degrees Celsius. Many climate activists and […] More »