Illustration by Francois Vigneault I’m at a party trying to join in a conversation with some men who are older than me, around their mid-thirties to forties. The conversation topics are bachelor parties, home ownership, and sports. I contribute maybe 10 sentences the whole night. At the end of the evening, I figure this needs […] More »

Amidst a global pandemic that has disproportionately impacted LGBTQ2S+ (Lesbian, Gay, Bi, Trans, Queer and Two Spirit) people, whose communities already face high rates of poverty, homelessness, and health inequities, and in a country where people like me still face near-daily harassment for daring to exist in public spaces as out, proud, and visibly gender […] More »

I was 14 years old when I first kissed a girl—and there were more after that—but it took a global pandemic and months of self-reflection to get to a place where I felt comfortable calling myself bisexual. I’m far from alone. The pandemic presented an opportunity for many closeted queer people to look inwards and […] More »

Black lesbian poet Victoria Mbabazi’s poetry collection, chapbook, was published by Anstruther Press in January 2021 and is now in its third printing. Their poetry’s No Name Brand design and style was inspired by the advertisements they saw commuting to the University of Toronto’s Scarborough campus last summer, a time when they were also searching […] More »

Out of all the games made by queer designer Avery Alder, Dream Askew feels the most like 2021. Table-top roleplaying games like Dream Askew are a medium where game designers invent systems and worlds, and players inhabit them. Think of them like movies: Avery Alder creates the set, the costumes, and the basic outline of […] More »

One of the big changes in my life as I’ve gotten older has been becoming an insomniac. My brain has decided to forgo the signals that I am asleep and should remain so until an appropriate hour sometime in the waning hours of the dawn, and instead wakes me up around 1 a.m. This time […] More »

Picture me sitting on a couch in chartreuse satin pajamas with turquoise embroidery stitched on the seams. The satin feels cool and slippery when I shift to move my computer onto my crossed legs to begin writing. I’ve pinned a big pink button over the place on the body we associate with the heart. The […] More »

As a child born in the early 1980s and raised by 1990s media, TV taught me one thing: cops are not to be trusted. While we are sold the idea of a hard-working and noble institution of policing through the lens of NYPD Blue, Cops, or even Homicide: Life on the Street, the news taught […] More »

When you imagine international hubs for radical contemporary cinema and performance, Regina might not come to mind; but it should—and that’s thanks to Gary Varro. In 1995, Varro was an assistant curator at the Dunlop Art Gallery inside the Regina Public Library. Around that time, the space was displaying an exhibition on Indigenous representation in […] More »

After the break-up, I walked Yonge St. at night. I didn’t understand this compulsion, but the circuit remained the same: a few drinks at a village bar and I would wander the corridor between Bloor and Dundas, peering into closed stores or sleepy bars, stopping in at a late-night bookshop to peruse the dusty shelves […] More »

2019 marks 50 years since the Stonewall rebellion, now regarded as the watershed moment in American and even global (Euro-American-centric) queer liberation. A hot summer night at the mafia-run Stonewall Inn in New York City became a six-day-long riot after queers refused to submit to police violence, and its anniversary is now celebrated as the […] More »