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July-August 2020

Deliberate degrowth

Have we arrived at the moment when we need to seriously consider deceleration?

Paul Gallant

In Margaret Atwood’s novel The Year of the Flood, an outcast religious group called God’s Gardeners prepares for a pandemic by following a belief system based on pared-down consumerism coupled with kindness toward both human and non-human life. “They view us as twisted fanatics who combine food extremism with bad fashion sense and a puritanical […] More »
July-August 2020

A letter to Audre Lorde

There's nothing wrong with being unoriginal

Hadiyyah Kuma

Dear Audre Lorde, My fingers ache. All I can do since this pandemic started locally is read and write. And not my assignments and essays; none of those thrill me. None get at what I really want to say; none encapsulate the expanse of human suffering we are seeing on our screens and streets. To […] More »
March-April 2020

Halifax’s Books Beyond Bars

Supporting inmates through literature

Michal Stein

For 15 years, a group of volunteers has been lugging tote bags of books from their library in the north end of Halifax to the women’s side of the Central Nova Scotia Correctional Facility, or Burnside Jail, in Dartmouth’s Burnside Industrial Park. The group is Books Beyond Bars, an anti-capitalist, non-hierarchical collective that runs a […] More »
March-April 2020

Canada is failing its Deaf artists

What we can learn from other countries about reducing barriers and improving access

Adam Pottle

Clin D’Oeil Village hosts the Deaf Party every night until 3 a.m., the air vibrating with purple and green lights and pounding bass. Mechanical bulls, vintage arcade games, Deaf musicians and DJs, and food vendors surround the enormous dance floor at the village’s centre. On that dance floor, and all throughout the village, thousands of […] More »
January-February 2020

Dear She-Ra: an ode to activist organizing across generations

Megan Kinch

Dear She-Ra (Princess of Power), Glimmer, and Bow, Hi, She-Ra. I’m a long-time fan of your work, but this is my first time writing to you and the Best Friend Squad. There’s been a reboot on Netflix which seems laser-focused on my child-of-the-1980s demographic (the fact that I have a six-year-old daughter who also loves […] More »
January-February 2020

Spotlight on The Alberta Advantage podcast

Podcast gives a left-wing perspective on local politics

Ben Cohen

The Premier of Alberta is a Conservative. Every single seat in the province bar one went blue in the last federal election. Despite the severe lack of representation in government, those with leftward ideologies still exist in Alberta. Where can they turn to hear friendly voices? The Alberta Advantage podcast. The bi-monthly podcast was born […] More »
September-October 2019

50 years after Stonewall & Bill C-150

We take a look at what what's being left out of the shiny rainbow picture

Dorian Fraser

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 »
September-October 2019

Why I don’t vote in colonial politics

Abstaining is both important and inherent to me; here's why

Andrea Landry

“Indigenous nations are their own sovereign nations.” It’s a rhetoric stated consistently in a variety of arenas, both political and non-political. It is a truthful rhetoric at that. Being Anishinaabe, and also raising an Anishinaabe/Nehiyaw/Nakoda daughter, has further affirmed the truth that we are, 100 percent, our own sovereign nations as Indigenous Peoples. It has […] More »
September-October 2019

Shake Up The Establishment

Helping voters become informed on climate change issues

Talia Wooldridge

What happens when two bio-medical science graduates, a philosophy PhD candidate, and an arts major commiserate over climate change in Canada? Positive activism is born. In April 2019, a group of University of Guelph students and recent graduates, Manvi Bhalla, Janaya Campbell, Taro Halfnight, and Cameron Fioret, were commiserating over Canada’s response to climate change. […] More »
November-December 2018

Dear Future Great-Grandchild… Forgive Us

The world we'll leave behind won't be a pretty one

Michael Polanyi

DEAR FUTURE GREAT-GRANDCHILD, I will likely never meet you. I will never know the mid-21st-century world in which you will live. I hope you will be blessed with the opportunities and joys that I have experienced: the magic of visiting a pristine lake, the friendliness and generosity of neighbours, an array of vocational opportunities, and […] More »
July-August 2018

This art series is a post-capitalist fantasy

Artist Dana Prieto seeks to hold Canadian mining executives accountable for extractivism in Argentina

Jillian Morgan

Glazed in black, the beauty of Dana Prieto’s hand-crafted ceramic vessels forces the viewer’s attention—but what they wouldn’t be able to tell at first glance is that the artwork may contain traces of arsenic, cadmium, and mercury. Prieto, an Argentine visual artist based in Toronto, describes the vessels as an “inhospitable gift,” made with soil from […] More »