What would happen if housing were enshrined in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms? One activist’s inside account of the radical new fight to end homelessness In 1996, fresh out of high school, I co-founded the Calgary chapter of the anti-poverty activist group Food Not Bombs, together with a group of youth active in […] More »

1. What on earth did she want from him? From them? Approval? She was embarrassed by how little she knew, or would own, of her own motivations. She was also too hot in her heavy wool coat, and damp, wet really, hair like feathers stuck to her brow. Add frustrated to the list. After a […] More »

screams the advent of written history at those of us who think we’ve never said a word before. At all. When no one listens he curls into a basketball. His bee-loud glade’s a sling of mud, he digs for clues, unlucky grubs. He digs, and digs, and reads the soil conditions for paraphrases of the […] More »

In the dark blue future I will quiet. I have no idea about anything. I suppose I’ll know what I know or I can wait— and be really & sunnishly in the knowledge (being whole limber accomplished jazzy “didn’t/did” “come around” “wish list” “look hard” here I am— You wanted so you walked. You walked, […] More »

If I should stay, I would only be in your way. So I’ll go, but I know I’ll think of you every step of the way. —Whitney Houston There is a family that lives horizontally under the front lip of a karaoke stage in the Philippines. On the stage the great performer—sings “I will always […] More »

What’s more summery than the smell of sunscreen, eating outdoors, nonstop construction, or a magazine’s summer reading issue?! This summer, This Magazine is publishing a special literary issue with poems and fiction selected by lit editor and acclaimed (and Trillium-shortlisted) author Dani Couture (YAW, Algoma). To celebrate, we’re throwing a literary bash on Wednesday, July […] More »

Inside the First Nations’ fight for a piece of north Ontario’s $60 billion mega mines Deep in Ontario’s north sits the Ring of Fire, an as-yet undeveloped cluster of mineral claims worth an estimated $60 billion—but only if you’re being conservative. Some industry experts, including James Franklin, former chief geologist with the Geological Survey of […] More »

How Ontario’s failed police accountability system lets our authorities get away with systemic abuse of society’s most vulnerable populations When Greg Spoon accepted a beer from a friend on Monday, May 3, 2010, he can’t have imagined what would happen. The 40-year-old Lakota Sioux man, known as “Iggy,” is soft-spoken, personable, and articulate according to […] More »

Inside the silence behind sex, dating, and disability It took less than 30 seconds for the date to go from promising to very bad. After some online chatting, Steve* was excited to meet Kayla, the 24-year-old law clerk he connected with on Plentyoffish. They’d decided on Toronto’s Bull and Firkin Pub, one early evening in […] More »

For decades, advocates have touted nudism’s ability to combat sexism, objectification, and bad body image. Can it now be an antidote to our over-twerked culture? Rhiannon Russell goes bare to find out It’s no secret what lies behind the shroud of trees at the end of the long driveway in a rural area of East […] More »

The anti-abortion movement has newly latched onto Post-Abortion Syndrome, a controversial diagnosis that it claims mimics PTSD. The pro-choice response: the syndrome doesn’t exist. How women’s grief became the latest abortion battleground Outside the walls of Toronto’s Mount Sinai Hospital, a light snow falls quietly on the streets. Inside, the waiting room is not much […] More »