Photo by Dave Swiewicki Desiree Dorion was born to play country music. Growing up in rural Manitoba, Dorion’s love of music led her to riding her bike to the Dauphin’s Countryfest, the longest-running country music festival in Canada, as a little girl. By the time she was five, the Juno nominee and member of the […] More »

Illustration by Sal Scheibe They move in on the first day of August when the air feels like a panting dog’s breath. From our third-floor balcony, I watch the pickup truck pull up with a cat-shredded couch sticking up out of it like the half-sunk Titanic. Five of them get out. There are three guys […] More »

When Rimah Jabr first applied to the Toronto Palestine Film Festival’s (TPFF) 2025 residency, she was so unsure about being able to accurately address anti-Palestinian racism that she withdrew her submission. Jabr wasn’t used to creating work for commissioned themes and worried about the compromises she’d have to make. “As an artist, I was like, […] More »

Photo by Chris Randle Two ghostly figures appear, moving across a vast field strewn with steel sculptures. The dancers—a man and woman, shaved bald and painted white—move with a languid fluidity, bending space and time. This is A Simple Way, performed this summer at The Jeffrey Rubinoff Sculpture Park on Hornby Island off the east […] More »

Photo by Chris Wong/iStock In 2005, I was a 15-year-old trans queerdo who had no idea who I was. Living in a sleepy suburb in Ottawa, I didn’t know any trans people and only saw them portrayed in media as caricatures of monstrosity or madness. I was depressed, anxious, and felt like I didn’t belong […] More »

Illustration by Moe Pramanick I hate speaking Tamil. It’s one of the oldest languages still spoken today, dating back to at least 450 BCE, and I’m proud it’s part of my life. It’s the language of my parents, who fled Sri Lanka’s civil war (1983–2009), a conflict that left hundreds of thousands of Tamils killed […] More »

Maksim Goncharenok via Pexels In the summer of 2017, Allie woke up under the harsh fluorescent lights of an emergency room, aching from another fentanyl overdose. After years of living without a stable home, the chaos of addiction had become routine—until she heard about a pop-up tent in downtown Toronto’s Moss Park, with promises of […] More »

Photo by Christopher Jolly If you’ve skipped a meal recently or cut down on portion sizes, you’re not alone. According to 2023 Statistics Canada data, roughly one in four Canadians is food insecure—that amounts to about 10 million people. Despite this, about half of all food produced in Canada goes uneaten due to wasteful manufacturing […] More »

Illustration by Jenn Woodall It was day four of a week-long heat wave. The only place they could stand to be near each other was in the shower, where they took turns under the stream of cold water and tried to remember winter. Maggie had checked the bathroom lighting a week ago, standing in Sam’s […] More »

Photo Courtesy of Kelsey Savage & John Woods, Real Talk On paper, Alison Klein is a serious academic with a master’s in interdisciplinary studies focused on adult education and disability. Meet her at one of the Real Talk’s free public events (affectionately known as “pizza parties”), and she’ll be the first to greet you as […] More »

It’s the late 2010s and I’m a teenager carefully watching my mom out of my peripheral. She’s paying attention to the TV and the animated man on the screen in a hilarious combination of suit, tie, and yellow beanie. He’s eating ice cream in a diner with a friend: a girl who’s made it very […] More »