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Fall 2024

A changing Chinatown

What do shifting demographics mean for the neighbourhood's long-term identity?

Michael Koy

In Toronto’s Chinatown, an average morning goes on as usual, with longtime business owners setting up shop and elderly residents chatting loudly in local bakeries. But underneath the mundanity lies change. When onlookers enter the Chinatown landmark, the famous Dragon City Mall, the sight of its empty shops and corridors with the occasional elderly passersby […] More »
Fall 2024

Night moves

Marginalized people are key to nocturnal scenes, but new Montreal policy misses the memo

Leina Gabra

The graffiti-covered Van Horne skatepark on the edge of Montreal’s Mile End is usually dotted with boys in beanies and sneakers, launching themselves into the rink with the cracking sound of skateboard wheels hitting concrete. But, every Thursday night for a brief stint during the summer of 2021, they were replaced with a different crowd: […] More »
Fall 2024

No place like home

How land trusts build community

Dominique Russell

In 2021, the Kensington Market Community Land Trust (KMCLT) did an astonishing thing. After a protracted renoviction battle over the Toronto neighbourhood’s iconic Mona Lisa building, the KMCLT bought it from the would-be evictors. The rumoured plan to turn it into a cannabis hotel was foiled and the tenants of the 12 residential and five […] More »
Fall 2024

Course correction

Indigenous professors are teaching journalism students to build better relationships through immersive learning with First Nations

Meral Jamal

Journalism students across Canada are learning to share stories that are rooted in reciprocity with Indigenous communities in new ways. Created by Indigenous faculty and designed in partnership with local communities, students in journalism programs at Carleton University, the University of King’s College and others are taking experiential learning courses that involve spending time with […] More »
Summer 2024

Breaking barriers

A landmark move to combat caste discrimination in Canadian academia

Shilpashree Jagannathan

In the heart of the city, while more than 385,000 South Asians go about their lives, the University of Toronto (U of T) has quietly set a precedent. Amid the clamour for social justice and equality, U of T’s teaching assistants have negotiated with their union to include caste as a discriminatory practice—a move that […] More »
Summer 2024

The birds and the UCPs

Youth see comprehensive sex education as a human right, and they're not giving up

Aubrianna Snow

Isabella Calahoo-Zeller was attending eighth grade in Alberta when she received sex education for the first time. It consisted of a YouTube video about consent, and not much else. “We didn’t really get much on what a penis looks like, or what a vulva looks like,” Calahoo-Zeller says. “We never got the birth video that […] More »
Spring 2025

An Offering

Sofia Osborne

The crab trap was neon orange. He whipped it like a frisbee, far out, and watched it sink below the dark blue of the sea. It was early and he was the only one on the pier, cold in his camping chair. The old chicken bones he used as bait were stuffed in a plastic […] More »
Spring 2025

Delilah

Bianca Bernstein

You wake up ready for some self care. You stretch, scrape your tongue. Sit still tracking your breath. You’ve been working hard. You need a dose of freshness. What you need is a haircut, and today’s the day you booked one. How timely. As you sip the froth off your oat milk latte, you imagine […] More »
Spring 2025

To all the books I’ve loved before

Millennials and Gen Zers hone the art of annotating

Rita Simonetta

Jordan Murray’s perfectly manicured hand displays an annotated title page of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. “From the library of Jordan Murray” is stamped in the centre; just below she’s written, “the cost of pride, love & marriage, social status.” And all around are illustrations of tiny flowers, hearts and envelopes along with a drawing […] More »
Spring 2025

On motherhood and activism through a genocide

A new mother reflects on connecting with Palestinians through faith

Zehra Kamani

On October 7, 2023, I was just about three months pregnant. As a genocide unfolded before our eyes in the weeks that followed, I reflected a lot on the parallel lives mothers live on both sides of this dystopian world. Like many others, my social media feed exposed me to countless images of the Israeli […] More »
Spring 2025

QTs unite

Queer and trans fat folks create community in New Brunswick

Ashleigh-Rae Thomas

In 2021, Aaron Beaumont decided it was time to create more queer connections in New Brunswick. While doing their undergrad at St. Thomas University in Fredericton, Beaumont’s work in fat studies led them to learn more about fat activism online. After realizing that most groups were based in the U.S., and the few Canadian groups […] More »