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A fighting chance

The Toronto Palestine Film Festival supports works in progress

Alexa Margorian

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 »

Partners in time

B.C. couple have been building Canada's dance industry together for nearly 50 years

Leslie Stark

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 »

Not quite a woman, not quite a man

How gender lessons from Neko Case helped me meet myself

Mieke De Vries

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 »

Butter

She bunched up the top of the bag and set it down between her feet. She would finish it later, alone

Katherine Abbass

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 »
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 »
Winter 2024

Archiving Palestine

How Palestinian women use embroidery to resist

Sarah Samuel

Razan Samara is a longtime Palestinian activist. She’s volunteered with the Toronto chapter of the Palestinian Youth Movement. She’s made banners and fundraised for Palestinians in the homelands. But in 2021, when Palestinians were expelled from their homes in Silwan and Sheikh Jarrah, she began to feel that she needed to do more for her […] More »
Winter 2024

Move us out and we’ll move on over you

Toronto needs housing for Black artists

Adebe DeRango-Adem

I am a professional writer and spoken word artist. I’ve been sharing my work—and making space for other artists to create and share their work—in Toronto for nearly 20 years. I am of East African descent, with a heritage and history rooted in oral traditions. Toronto is where I was born, and it’s where I […] More »
Winter 2024

Mort à Deux

Gabrielle Cole

During my second year of college, we killed our father. It was his own idea, but it was Charlie’s idea to do it the week before Christmas. Later, I would regret that we hadn’t waited until afterward. Charlie said that Christmas would have depressed the hell out of us regardless and anyway, it was too […] More »
Winter 2024

Star power

A case study on the paradox of privilege in pop

Sanna Wani

My friend Lou is visiting from Australia. We do silly things together, like watch Love Island and listen to music. Lou shows me the video for Chappell Roan’s “Casual,” which follows a girl and a mermaid in a situationship. I’m fascinated. The song is good, too: the slow pumping synth and zesty lyrics contrast with […] More »
Fall 2024

When we disappear

Emily Yu

For us acrobats, it was a circus rule to choose our primary apparatus at the age of thirteen. The doors opened to the Big Top and I entered alone. The leftover sawdust on the floor stuck between my toes, the air scented with rain, instead of the usual smells of animal dung and stale popcorn. […] More »