Photo by Dimitri Nasrallah Dimitri Nasrallah’s Hotline (Véhicule Press) transports readers to mid-eighties Montreal when weight-loss centres were a burgeoning industry, and “body image” and “health consciousness” were terms just entering the vocabulary of self-care. Muna Heddad, a French teacher by trade, takes a job as a hotline phone operator at meal delivery company Nutri-Fort […] More »

Photos courtesy Jennifer David & Waubgeshig Rice When Jennifer David decided to start Storykeepers, a podcast that spotlights Indigenous literature, she knew Waubgeshig Rice was her only choice for a co-host. He was an experienced journalist with CBC, a published author—most recently of the bestseller Moon of the Crusted Snow (ECW Press, 2018)—and they were […] More »

Illustration by Julia Galotta I’m a young woman, who can, to my knowledge, get pregnant and has long-held dreams of being a mother. When I was a child, I spent my days dutifully caring for my dolls—who were named Baby and Popstar. When I turned 13, I started babysitting the two toddlers who lived next […] More »

Photo courtesy Natasha Kuperman In Hazelton, B.C., one organization is undertaking an ambitious project: to regenerate the public forests of Canada’s north. Seed the North, founded in 2020 by infrastructure developer and architect Natasha Kuperman, isn’t the first to tackle reforestation. However, it has set out to do so with a fresh approach that combines […] More »

Graphic by Valerie Thai Canada is in the midst of a housing crisis, and one perpetuating factor is the skyrocketing cost of rent. Rent control is a type of provincial rent regulation law that limits rent increases. While every province and territory restricts the frequency of rent increases, only four provinces have some sort of […] More »

Photo by iStock; Design by Valerie Thai In August 2021, the UN Secretary-General declared the findings of a recent global climate report “a code red for humanity.” In response, a team of journalists and researchers released the “Climate Coverage in Canada” report in November, which heard from 143 scientists, 148 journalists, and 1,006 members of […] More »

Photo by XURZON; Design by Valerie Thai At least 595 people died in B.C. from heat-related deaths during the summer of 2021. Most of these occurred during the province’s “heat dome” event, which took place from June 25 to July 1, and saw temperatures rise as high as 49.6 degrees Celsius. Many climate activists and […] More »

Photo by byNRQEMI; Design by Valerie Thai Over a century since their introduction, cars dominate the streets of cities and towns across Canada to such a degree that many people feel there is no real alternative. In January 2022, Turo Canada in partnership with Léger found that 83 percent of Canadians have their own or […] More »

Photo by Jim Feng; Design by Valerie Thai Severe and increasingly regular hurricanes, increased temperatures altering fishing grounds and crop development, drastic shoreline erosion, and the destruction of vulnerable ecosystems. These are all climate change impacts that are already happening on Prince Edward Island (P.E.I.) and will only get worse in the future without immediate […] More »

Photo by JLH3 Photograph The Hudson Bay Lowlands is the third largest wetland in the world, covering the uppermost part of Northern Ontario and spilling into Manitoba and Quebec. It is also one of the most productive places in Canada—and arguably, the world—harbouring a carbon storage system unmatched by anything man-made. In January 2021, a […] More »

In Scarborough, Ontario, in Cedarbrae Mall, down the escalator and across from the Dollarama, there’s Frugo, a store that feels very much like a flea market. There you’ll find an assortment of items that range from vintage to essential. A few years ago, I found a small orange faux leather handbag and modelled it in […] More »