My Decade at Old Sun, My Lifetime of Hell By Arthur Bear Chief Athabasca University Press, $19.95 My Decade at Old Sun, My Lifetime of Hell is a short read, but one that should be read slowly and deliberately. Author Arthur Bear Chief describes the first years of his life as full of love, family, […] More »

  The night bus to Toronto’s North York General Hospital was nearly empty at two o’clock in the morning in September 2014, and Dan McLaughlin was nervous. He was on his way to receive an MRI so that doctors could diagnose a painful back injury, the result of years of hard labour, previous drug abuse, […] More »

In the fall of 2016, an inmate spoke to Renu Mandhane through a small hole in the glass at a provincial jail in Thunder Bay, Ont. He told her he had been in segregation, or solitary confinement, awaiting trial for more than four years. The Ontario Human Rights Commission and Mandhane, the chief commissioner, brought […] More »

All of us word nerds know that books make excellent gifts. Aside from obvious last-minute coffee table tomes (“I remembered how much you love generic landscape photos!”), giving someone a book means you’re trying to think from their point of view, to imagine what they might like, or to share something you love with them. […] More »

Inside the Citizenship and Immigration Centre in Toronto, about 90 people from the various corners of the world chattered enthusiastically and clicked camera shutters. They knew that morning, June 20, 2016, was going to be a memorable one: they would start their new lives as Canadians. My spouse, Sid, was also there, flipping through his […] More »

Current photo of the author. Trigger warning: self-injury, suicide When I was 18, a psychiatrist kicked me out of her office in my hometown of Montreal. A framed Sigmund Freud witnessed my humiliation. I’d raised my voice, confessing that I’d scratched up my arm again because I was “fucking sad.” My psychiatrist told me to […] More »

She strolls softly through a deserted modern-day Montreal. Her outfit—and the way she seems to float through the streets—indicate her lack of connection to this modern scene. This is Marie-Josèphe Angélique, a slave “owned” by François Poulin of Montreal in the early 1730s. Canadian filmmaker Howard J. Davis uses his film C’est Moi as an […] More »

Sputnik’s Children By Terri Favro ECW, $19.95 Terri Favro follows up her award-winning novella The Proxy Bride with Sputnik’s Children, a full-length debut mixing comic book science fiction with reflections of growing up during the atomic age at the height of the Cold War. Comic book creator Debbie Reynolds Biondi finally decides to tell the […] More »

It’s been a year since I took my final police escorted ride to hear Judge William B. Horkins deliver the verdict for the Jian Ghomeshi trial. Lucy, Witness 3 (still under publication ban) and I gathered in the Victim/Witness Assistance Program (VWAP) room accompanied by lawyers and friends to hear the outcome of this much […] More »

Amanda Thompson remembers meeting the other participant in her months-long game of tap-tap. She would tap on her partner’s belly, and someone would tap back from inside. After an eventful day, the result of careful deliberations and a planned C-section, Thompson met her daughter, feeling instantly familiar. As soon as she was born, “it was […] More »

Thinking about @justinpjtrudeau and his plan to plunge #Canada into a $1.5 trillion bankruptcy. Wow I have to get rid of this this guy in 2019! A post shared by Kevin O’Leary (@kevinolearyshark) on Mar 3, 2017 at 2:13pm PST Kevin O’Leary, the Boston-based former CBC personality said that if he were ever elected, he […] More »