THE GOOD NEWS – After a strange and complicated two-month election, B.C.’s new NDP government was finally sworn in. With them came MLA Judy Darcy, the first minister of mental health and addictions, who is tasked with tackling the fentanyl crisis. The creation of the ministry has since been called “nothing short of a miracle.” […] More »

When night falls, the Bear Clan hits the streets in Thunder Bay, Ont. The volunteer group says its purpose is to protect the vulnerable—and after several Indigenous youth have been found dead in the city’s waterways over the years, many are thankful for the extra protection. Several children and teens who have died in Thunder Bay […] More »

The day before the 2017 March for Life, anti-abortion activists took over the hulking Renaissance Washington, D.C. Downtown Hotel. After lunch, I joined about fifty activists, lawyers, law students, and others for the adjacent Law of Life Summit, designed to advance the anti-abortion movement through putting forward more antiabortion legislation, attacking Planned Parenthood as a […] More »

Watching Glory Die By Judith Thompson Playwrights Canada Press, $17.95 In Watching Glory Die, two-time Governor General’s Literary Award–winner Judith Thompson tells the tragic story of Glory—a character inspired by 19-year-old Ashley Smith who died in 2007 of self-strangulation in Ontario’s Grand Valley Institution for Women after guards were instructed to not intervene while she […] More »

The Medicine of Peace: Indigenous Youth Decolonizing Healing and Resisting Violence By Jeffrey Paul Ansloos Fernwood Publishing, $28.00 A distilled theoretical work regarding oppositional views between Indigenous culture and Western social science, The Medicine of Peace: Indigenous Youth Decolonizing Healing and Resisting Violence, a debut by educator and counsellor Jeffrey Paul Ansloos, introduces critical-Indigenous peace […] More »

This Accident of Being Lost By Leanne Betasamosake Simpson House of Anansi, $19.95 This Accident of Being Lost is a powerful collection of short stories and songs by Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, a Michi Saagiig Nishnaabeg scholar, writer and artist, who is quickly becoming known as one of the country’s greatest storytellers. Unique in its fragmented […] More »

Any Other Way: How Toronto Got Queer Edited by Stephanie Chambers, Jane Farrow, Maureen FitzGerald, Ed Jackson, John Lorinc, Tim McCaskell, Rebecka Sheffield, Rahim Thawer, and Tatum Taylor Coach House Books, $25.95 Any Other Way: How Toronto Got Queer provides an illuminating look into the multi-faceted history of queerness in Toronto. From a peer into […] More »

There was a knock on the door. Mum didn’t answer it. Maybe she didn’t hear it. I heard it. But I’m not allowed to do more than look through the screen. I was only left alone twice or three times. One of those times someone knocked on the door and it was a big man. […] More »

Margaret Wente is confused about racism. That is the most generous interpretation I can offer for her recent Globe and Mail article, “The good news about racism,” in which she argues that racism is vanishing from society. It is declining at such a rate, in fact, that the recent resurgence of white supremacy is a […] More »

On a Thursday evening in May, about a dozen women gather around a large wooden table at L’Euguélionne, Canada’s only feminist bookstore. The Montreal shop is filled with chatter as the crew, participants in a zine-making workshop, sift through piles of paper. Since it opened in December 2016, L’Euguélionne has become a hub, hosting public events like […] More »

It’s August 7, 2016, the day after Jamaican Independence Day. I’m in Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ont., sitting on the back of a “jitney”—a truck with the top of the cab chopped off, used to haul crates of freshly picked peaches from the fields to the packing barns. A few men are sipping Labatt’s Blue, while others drink […] More »