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March-April 2020

Halifax’s Books Beyond Bars

Supporting inmates through literature

Michal Stein

For 15 years, a group of volunteers has been lugging tote bags of books from their library in the north end of Halifax to the women’s side of the Central Nova Scotia Correctional Facility, or Burnside Jail, in Dartmouth’s Burnside Industrial Park. The group is Books Beyond Bars, an anti-capitalist, non-hierarchical collective that runs a […] More »
March-April 2020

Why you hate cops but love Brooklyn Nine-Nine

You have to admit, the show has an unlikely following

Niko Stratis

As a child born in the early 1980s and raised by 1990s media, TV taught me one thing: cops are not to be trusted. While we are sold the idea of a hard-working and noble institution of policing through the lens of NYPD Blue, Cops, or even Homicide: Life on the Street, the news taught […] More »
March-April 2020

Self-care is a sham

We need to place more value on community care

JP Larocque

Dearest Fellow Millennial, Self-care is a sham. There. I said it. Look, I get it. The modern world is an exhausting one. The workday is basically whenever you’re conscious, home ownership and retirement are but a fantasy, and the spectre of global warming lurks around every corner. We’re also everyone’s favourite bad joke: a pack […] More »
March-April 2020

Whose stories get archived?

Toronto's Little Jamaica neighbourhood deserves to be part of public memory

Sharine Taylor

Living in Toronto means I’m not too far from Jamaica. Not because geography affords proximity, but because the presence of the diaspora has made itself known. Over 200,330 people of Jamaican descent reside in Toronto alone, and that’s evident by the countless restaurants, small businesses, specialty shops, and grocery stores that populate the city. Though […] More »
March-April 2020

Canada is failing its Deaf artists

What we can learn from other countries about reducing barriers and improving access

Adam Pottle

Clin D’Oeil Village hosts the Deaf Party every night until 3 a.m., the air vibrating with purple and green lights and pounding bass. Mechanical bulls, vintage arcade games, Deaf musicians and DJs, and food vendors surround the enormous dance floor at the village’s centre. On that dance floor, and all throughout the village, thousands of […] More »
January-February 2020

Dear She-Ra: an ode to activist organizing across generations

Megan Kinch

Dear She-Ra (Princess of Power), Glimmer, and Bow, Hi, She-Ra. I’m a long-time fan of your work, but this is my first time writing to you and the Best Friend Squad. There’s been a reboot on Netflix which seems laser-focused on my child-of-the-1980s demographic (the fact that I have a six-year-old daughter who also loves […] More »
January-February 2020

Needles

Joelle Kidd

Sometimes Sam got words stuck in her head. Tonight she was repeating to herself the phrase, unwaxed thread—unwaxed thread—… The on-call room smelled like two decades of coffee breath. She slipped past its heavy door, her eyes protesting the quick adjustment from the bright fluorescent of the hospital corridor to the on-call room’s dim bulb, […] More »
January-February 2020

How horror helps us overcome our fears

And why it becomes popular during frightening times

Adam Pottle

Horror has always been a marginalized genre, a misunderstood, even reviled vehicle dismissed as a disgusting, juvenile playpen for amateur talents. When it does become popular—such as during the post-Hiroshima years, or Nixon’s tenure in the early seventies—it has a brief moment in the limelight before being relegated back to the shadows. So why has […] More »

The role of white media in perpetuating online racism

Redefining the “hot potato” of Yolanda Bonnell’s request

Sanchari Sur

On February 10, 2020, I was surprised to be tagged in a tweet that highlighted a Globe and Mail article titled, “The colour of criticism: How should media respond when an artist asks for only non-white critics to review them?” Rungh, an online space based in Vancouver, B.C., known for highlighting and amplifying IBPOC [Indigenous, […] More »

Regina’s Queer City Cinema

Film festival turns lens away from the mainstream

Chris Stoodley

When you imagine international hubs for radical contemporary cinema and performance, Regina might not come to mind; but it should—and that’s thanks to Gary Varro. In 1995, Varro was an assistant curator at the Dunlop Art Gallery inside the Regina Public Library. Around that time, the space was displaying an exhibition on Indigenous representation in […] More »
January-February 2020

The fare evasion blame game

How talking about skipping turnstiles keeps transit commissions unaccountable

Anna Bianca Roach

“Smile! You’re on fare evader camera.” Such is the message of the Toronto Transit Commission’s (TTC) ad campaign, which was rolled out in May 2019. The campaign follows a scandal that broke a few months earlier, when Toronto’s auditor general released a report estimating that the TTC had lost upwards of $60 million from fare […] More »