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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 »
Summer 2024

The Gala Date

Michelle Poirier Brown

We met them first near the hot food. The catering staff were serving a dim sum shrimp dumpling on a bed of rice at the near end of the table. The caterers must have brought hundreds of ramekins to the venue that night, there was an endless stream of them, a new one for each […] More »
Summer 2024

Liar

Waseem Haja

When I was eight years old, my parents entrusted me with $16 in the form of eight $2 coins, an allowance for a school field trip to La Ronde, Montreal’s amusement park. Until 1996, the year during which the $2 tender in Canada was converted from a paper bill to a coin, my parents would […] More »
Spring 2024

Girl stuff

It’s silly that women get bullied just for liking things, but there’s a lot more to be said on the subject

Sam Nock

I am admittedly a formerly pretentious, insecure hater of all things popular, pastel, and mainstream. As a teenager I forced myself to sit down and read Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky, making long lists of Russian names, trying to keep complex plots straight that were honestly above my paygrade. Though I still think Anna Karenina is a […] More »
Spring 2024

The Eviction

Carmella Gray-Cosgrove

The guy who bought the house next to my apartment is the heir to a chain of hardware stores. I saw him teaching a young woman about the stock market at a local coffee shop. I watched him as he leaned over the young woman’s laptop, his chubby index finger pressed into the screen, making […] More »
January-February 2024

Hollywood’s mixed-race problem

Movies and TV try to get it right, but they’re missing the mark

Asha Swann

My mom told me that once, when I was a toddler, a stranger advised her to sign me up for modelling. My green eyes, medium-light skin, and curly dark brown hair gave me a certain look, they said, which was super in. My mom said no, despite the fact that mixed-race girls like myself were […] More »
January-February 2024

Next-gen gender

Parents and designers are taking kids' fashion to the next level

Isabel Harder

  Gender-neutral clothing is a growing trend in Canadian fashion, and one that is trickling down to the wardrobes of the youngest Canadians. From chains such as La Tuque, Quebec’s Aubainerie, to small businesses such as Vancouver’s Pley Clothes, options for parents looking to build their children a genderless closet are growing across the country. […] More »
January-February 2024

Bridget

Alana Dunlop

It’s actually pretty hard to construct a good lie. I learned this when I was sitting in a beige hospital chair, my skinny arm outstretched, purple at the spot where the wiry IV cord met my skin. I was in one of those Phase 0 studies for money, the kind where you have to stop […] More »
January-February 2024

Beat generation

Some people swear these auditory illusions can alter their moods

Tyler Hein

Sometime around 2005, in the halcyon days of the internet when it was still treading its path to ubiquity, I peaked. Hunkered down late at night in a small room exclusively dedicated to housing a family desktop computer, I used the free peer-to-peer file-sharing client LimeWire to pirate the less-free peer-to- peer file-sharing client LimeWire Pro. […] More »
November - December 2023

How TV podcasts helped me regain my memory after Long COVID

Nisa Malli

When my girlfriend of six years broke up with me by text, followed by a short call, I couldn’t comprehend it. It wasn’t grief, shock, or denial. My brain, damaged from 16 months of Long COVID, couldn’t read or write, splice voices from background noise, or parse words said fast enough to react. When our friends […] More »
November - December 2023

Drink tea, eat rice, go to sleep

Sophia Savva

I like working at the konbini because it convinces me I’m good and nice. Here, I’m a secondary character. I help people feed themselves and pay their bills and send mail. I don’t get into trouble. I never take off my uniform. I even wear it to bed. The armpits of the white blouse are […] More »