After months of public sexual misconduct allegation at all levels of government (and other industries) across Canada, the federal government is crafting a new bill to improve the process for reporting sexual harassment—and avoiding it in the first place. Patty Hajdu, minister of employment, workforce development and labour, introduced Bill C-65 in November 2017, garnering […] More »

Half of the children in Canada’s foster system are Indigenous. For Inuit children, government care often means being relocated hundreds of kilometres south in total isolation from their family and culture. Siblings are separated, and contact to their communities and families in the north is limited. Allies in the south can help magnify Inuit voices, […] More »

The unpunished killing of 22-year-old Cree man Colten Boushie in Saskatchewan has raised serious questions about the legacy of colonialism in shaping settlerIndigenous relations. Gerald Stanley, the white farmer who faced murder charges after shooting Boushie on his land, was ultimately acquitted by an all-white jury in February. Stanley’s acquittal fits into a long pattern […] More »

In 2014, I stepped into a Yayoi Kusama infinity room at Copenhagen’s Louisiana Museum. There were only a few people in line and no formal time limit, and it was dope as hell. Surrounded by mirrors and pulsing lights, your reality becomes obliterated and it leaves you with a visceral feeling of foreverness. I took […] More »

THE GOOD NEWS: – Keep speaking truth to power, comrades. In 2016, Ontario nurse Sue McIntyre made off-the-cuff comments about workplace violence at a union conference. Unbeknownst to her, the union included those comments in a press release, which a local newspaper then picked up, and her hospital fired her. But in February, a labour […] More »

When Indigenous leader Jody Wilson-Raybould became Minister of Justice in 2015, the former lawyer and B.C. regional chief was noted as a promising figure for reconciliation in Canada. Personally recruited by Justin Trudeau to run for federal office, she breezed through tricky files, like marijuana legalization and physician-assisted death, with little criticism. But one tweet […] More »

  On February 4, members of Toronto’s LGBTQ communities gathered at the Metropolitan Community Church, in the city’s LGBTQ Village, in search of solace and comfort. Just a month prior, police made public their arrest of Bruce McArthur, the 66-year-old alleged serial killer who has been charged with eight counts of first-degree murder. The news came […] More »

On April 8, The Simpsons aired the episode “No Good Read Goes Unpunished.” The 15th episode of the series’ 29th season addressed the issue of the racist portrayal of Kwik-E-Mart owner Apu Nahasapeemapetilon. “Addressed” insofar as Lisa Simpson looked at the camera and said, “Something that started decades ago, and was applauded and inoffensive, is […] More »

Liminal By Jordan Tannahill House of Anansi Press, $22.95 Destabilizing from its opening pages, Liminal by Jordan Tannahill places readers firmly between life and death, fact and fiction, consciousness and unconsciousness. A quasi-fictional version of the author’s own life, the main character, Jordan, finds his mother in bed. Unsure if she is dead or asleep, […] More »

Floating City  By Kerri Sakamoto Knopf Canada, $29.95 Floating City by Kerri Sakamoto—who was nominated for a Governor General’s Literary Award for The Electrical Field—gives a voice to Japanese-Canadians during post-WWII. Loosely inspired by Richard Buckminster Fuller and Shoji Sadao’s plans for Project Toronto, Sakomoto takes readers on Frankie’s journey from the coasts of B.C. […] More »

Most of all, though, the girl in the photos made me long for beauty. All we think we know of Palestine is its ugliness. Palestine is a place of despairing grey broken only by the red of blood and flame. But the girl in Gaza was beautiful in the way all children are beautiful, and more […] More »