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November-December 2011

Great Canadian Literary Hunt 2011: “Rest Cure” by Frances Boyle

Frances Boyle

We’re posting the winners of the 2011 Great Canadian Literary Hunt all this week. Come back tomorrow and Friday for amazing new poetry, fiction, and graphic narrative, and follow or friend us to stay up to date on 2012’s contest! – i – Here’s Jack, lanky in a cut-down suit, narrow-chested but chippy as life […] More »
November-December 2011

Great Canadian Literary Hunt 2011: “I was born without a mouth” by Joanne Osborne-Paulson

Joanne Osborne Paulson

We’re posting the winners of the 2011 Great Canadian Literary Hunt all this week. Come back tomorrow and Friday for amazing new poetry, fiction, and graphic narrative, and follow or friend us to stay up to date on 2012’s contest! I was born without a mouth and the doctor shouted, “It’s a girl!” I was […] More »
November-December 2011

How Grassy Narrows’ lawsuit could change aboriginal-government relations across Canada

Carmelle Wolfson@TeamCarmelle

On a cold December day nine years ago, a group of young people from the Grassy Narrows First Nation lay down in front of a line of logging trucks on a snow-covered road. Chrissy Swain, now 32, recalls that day at Slant Lake, about an hour north of Kenora, Ontario, which set off what has […] More »
July-August 2011

Book review: Gillian Roberts’ Prizing Literature

Angelo MureddaWebsite@qwiggles

Literary prizes are often seen as either a barometer or an enforcer of national taste. Gillian Roberts’s Prizing Literature turns instead to how prizes like the Giller and Booker confer upon their Canadian recipients an unofficial certificate of citizenship. With clear prose and theoretical acumen, Roberts probes the vexed relationship between national culture and hospitality, […] More »
March-April 2011

Photo Essay: Fort Chipewyan lives in the shadow of Alberta’s oil sands

Ian WillmsWebsite

The residents of Fort Chipewyan, Alberta, live downstream from the most destructive industrial project on earth. A portrait of a community in peril Canada’s oil sands are the largest and most environmentally destructive industrial project in the world. So far, oil sands development has eliminated 602 square kilometers of Boreal forest and emits 29.5 million […] More »

Book Review: Hal Niedzviecki’s Look Down, This is Where It Must Have Happened

Bardia Sinaee

In his new book, Look Down, This is Where It Must Have Happened, Hal Niedzviecki at times assumes the malaise of his characters seamlessly: “I’m a mortgage broker who works from his basement home office. I can find a lender suitable to your needs. A lot of people go to the bank. Don’t go to […] More »
September-October 2011

Poem: “The Death Car Rides On” by Carolyn Smart

Carolyn Smart

with the gore and the glass and the reek it is towed to town, the wrecker breaking down before a schoolyard and the children all come running forth to see the dead within: Bonnie’s lip near severed from her mouth, Clyde with his head blown open, the hum of heat and the insects never yielding […] More »
September-October 2011

How a pioneering Globe reporter helped introduce Marshall McLuhan to the world

David HayesWebsite@TimesRoman

Kay Kritzwiser, a feature writer assigned to the Globe and Mail’s weekend supplement, The Globe Magazine, had never heard of Marshall McLuhan when, on a mid-November morning in 1963, her edior, Colin McCullough, asked her to write a profile of him. She visited the Globe’s library and took away a Who’s Who entry and a […] More »

Drew Nelson’s origami creations keep an ancient craft alive in a paperless world

Stephen Sharpe

A compact card unfolds into a three-dimensional paper scene: a polar bear atop an ice drift looking to the murky depths below, surrounded by the brilliant aurora borealis. Drew Nelson’s origami creations, like the man himself, are a harmonious, detailed and delicate reflection of his world and what he wants to contribute to it. Nelson […] More »
September-October 2011

How four of B.C.’s former company towns are reinventing themselves

Joe RaymentWebsite@Joerayment

British Columbia introduced its Instant Towns Act in 1965 during the height of an industrial boom. The policy’s purpose was exactly what the quirky name suggests: to allow the government to instantly grant municipal status to the many informal settlements surrounding its natural resources. The idea was that instant towns could prevent some of the […] More »

Book Review: Sam Cheuk’s Love Figures

Natalie Zina WalschotsWebsite@NatalieZed

There is a unicorn on the cover of this book. This book is like a book with a unicorn on the cover. This book is like a unicorn, like something mythical and beautiful that has to disappoint, either by its non-existence or the drab ordinariness it must assume in order to exist. This book is […] More »