Sitting up on the examination table, I can hear my sterile paper gown crinkling with every movement. The gynecologist sits a few feet away, looking up at me, and I feel like a stage performer as I explain the reason for my visit. “I’ve tried and hated almost every type of hormonal birth control,” I […] More »

After Patrick Furey, a heartbroken and bullied gay student, hangs himself in his bedroom, there is no minute of silence, no special assembly. Instead, his school’s closeted principal forbids staff to share any information, fearing a teen suicide would damage the school’s reputation and possibly spawn copycats. Furey’s death may happen in the first few […] More »

“We do not use statistics as an excuse not to get tough on criminals.” That was federal Justice Minister Rob Nicholson’s astonishing response to Statistics Canada’s finding in July that crime rates in Canada now stand at the same level they did in 1973. Don’t bother us with the facts, was Nicholson’s meaning, our minds […] More »

After the sheer surprise of Vancouver’s Stanley Cup riots had dissipated, Canadian commentators tried to figure out what it all meant. Most beat their usual political drums—months later we’re blaming the pinko anarchists, capitalist pigs, and beer companies for making their products so darn tasty and portable. But this being 2011, many who broke windows […] More »

Equal parts manifesto, thesis, coming-of-age tale, and love letter, Persistence: All Ways Butch and Femme, edited by Ivan E. Coyote and Zena Sharman, breaks the reductive, sanitized gender stereotypes of what it is to be a lesbian—especially ones who don’t look like Ellen DeGeneres, Rachel Maddow, or a cast member of The L Word. The contributors’ […] More »

The September-October 2011 issue of This Magazine (that’s it on the left there!) is now in subscribers’ mailboxes (subscribers always get the magazine early, and you can too), and will be for sale on better newsstands coast-to-coast this week. Remember that you can subscribe to our RSS feed to ensure you never miss a new article going […] More »

On the streets of Iqaluit, cheery Alana Kronstal is known as “the tobacco lady.” Young and old, everyone seems to know the 31-year-old, who is leading the charge against smoking in Nunavut, home of the highest smoking rates in Canada. “Nowhere in Canada has a campaign been launched starting with such a majority of smokers,” […] More »

Canada is a nation of wild, legendary rivers. The Mackenzie, the Fraser, the Churchill, and dozens more all empty into our national identity. They flow through our landscape, history, and imagination. They are vital to any history textbook, Group of Seven exhibit, or gift-shop postcard rack. Canada is also a nation of river-tamers. We revere […] More »

Canada’s public life has been diminished today by the death of Jack Layton, leader of Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition and of the New Democratic Party. Known to millions of Canadians simply as “Jack,” Layton embodied the kind of decent, energetic, principled, and optimistic political leadership that so many of us wish to see more of […] More »

The greenbelt saved 1.8 million acres of green space from urban sprawl. So why are the farmers who live and work there moving away? Photos by Ian Willms Robert Beynon’s dairy farm sits just north of the Toronto suburb of Richmond Hill, on one of the southernmost edges of Ontario’s greenbelt. It’s a small operation […] More »

Sitting cross-legged in a circle, a group of about 20 Israeli school children are chatting excitedly under the shade of tall pine trees one sunny afternoon in March. A few meters away, the names of hundreds of Canadians are prominently displayed on row upon row of beige, ceramic plaques. Montreal. Toronto. Winnipeg. Vancouver. Welcome to […] More »