Vancouver’s Insite facility. Photo courtesy of Vancouver Coastal Health. Ottawa: The feds “I’ve made it very clear to my department that there should be no unnecessary barriers for communities who want to open supervised consumption sites.”—Jane Philpott, federal health minister Progress report Bill C-37 was tabled in December 2016 to simplify the process of opening […] More »
Photo by The Canadian Press Images/Lars Hagberg After decades of court battles that won chronically ill patients the right to use cannabis as medicine, many wonder whether the impending legalization of recreational pot will trample over the progress they’ve made. A government group tasked with creating a framework for legalizing and regulating cannabis published its […] More »
Writing Menopause By Jane Cawthorne and E.D. Morin Inanna Publications, $25.95 Writing Menopause is a revolutionary collection of work passionately and bravely confronting menopause, a topic society tends to avoid. Featuring several types of writing, editors Jane Cawthorne and E.D. Morin expertly assemble a meaningful collection written from a diverse cross-section of North Americans. Though […] More »
Universities offer students mental health care to deal with the challenges of post-secondary education. But what happens when they graduate? On the tricky navigation of counselling after school
Illustration by Matt Daley “Open or closed?” “Closed, please.” I click the wooden door shut. I walk past the poster-lined office, climb the stairs out of the building, and emerge onto the sunny Ryerson University campus in downtown Toronto. I trudge to the subway, shuffling onto a northbound train just as the door closes. I […] More »
Photo by Ailyn Malit Nikki Cajucom can pinpoint the exact moment her trajectory in life ricocheted. It happened when she first set foot in a basement in Toronto’s Kensington Market neighbourhood, reluctantly beginning her first day as an intern at Kapisanan Philippine Centre for Arts and Culture, a community organization that acts as a safe […] More »
Andrew Battershill and Stevie Howell join the This team as fiction and poetry editors
Erica Lenti
The This Magazine family is thrilled to welcome Andrew Battershill and Stevie Howell to our team as our new literary editors! Our new fiction editor, Andrew, is a writer and teacher currently based in Toronto. His novel, Pillow, was longlisted for the 2016 Giller Prize; another book is forthcoming in 2018. He was also the co-founder and editor of Dragnet magazine. And our new poetry editor, […] More »
There are many videos online of people hearing for the first time through a cochlear implant. The adult recipient typically cries tears of joy. This was not my experience. When the sound was turned on at age 24, it caused physical and emotional discomfort. It shook my world. I spent the next few days sleeping […] More »
Eileen Bona's Dreamcatcher Nature-Assisted Therapy Association uses animals to put Canadians back in touch with nature
Laura Eley
Photo by Stephanie Willis, Falling Leaves Photography Thirty minutes due east of Edmonton, where the traffic signals turn from streetlights to stop signs, is the town of Ardrossan. Here, you’ll find the Dreamcatcher Nature-Assisted Therapy Association, perched on 40 acres of lush, tree-lined, and trailed land. Founded in 2003 by psychologist Eileen Bona, Dreamcatcher has […] More »
Lake Jehovah By Jillian Fleck Conundrum Press, $25 Lake Jehovah is Calgary-based comic artist Jillian Fleck’s first graphic novel. The story revolves around Jay, a genderqueer character, and the oddities of life in a small town in northern Alberta facing a series of apocalypses. Jay goes by the pronoun “xe,” but just as xe’s character […] More »
Date with Destiny's stories evoke sadness, sympathy, hilarity, and even awkward discomfort
Samantha Sobolewski
Date with Destiny By Hélène Rioux, translated by Jonathan Kaplansky Guernica Editions, $20 Ten grisly but rich descriptive short stories, Date With Destiny by Hélène Rioux glimpses at the many ways death affects our lives at any given age. From a mother with a suicidal son, to an overzealous funeral sales telemarketer, each character experiences […] More »