Illustration by Matthew Daley When taunts and threats about Canada becoming the 51st state flew last year, my mind spun like a hamster wheel. What would it look like? What would it mean for me? As I often do when processing difficult issues, I turned to books. I started by rereading Richard Rohmer’s 1973 novel […] More »

Photo courtesy of Robert Kuang Jenniah Minchin stumbled upon the “Failures Wanted” posters on a typical day of Vancouver downpour, at a bus stop near her home. Whether it was the art style or the words themselves, something intrigued her. She set down her groceries long enough to make out the email address at the […] More »

Photo courtesy of Jacquie Nicholson A chant swells as a ragtag marching band pounds out a familiar riff. These musicians didn’t just come to perform. They came to disrupt. It’s October 2018, and Jacquie Nicholson knows that anti-choice activists are staging an annual picket outside the Women’s Hospital near Winnipeg’s Health Sciences Centre and that […] More »

What does it mean to be Canadian? That’s the question Iranian Canadian filmmaker Ava Maria Safai was presented with while completing her application for Telefilm Canada’s Talent to Watch program—a funding initiative that supports emerging filmmakers in producing their first feature. As part of the process, she dug into the archives of previously funded projects […] More »

Photo courtesy of Black Theatre Workshop On stage, Jerk Pork Castle’s neon lights shine bright, inviting. Inside, Neisha and Andrea anxiously sweep the floor, waiting for hungry customers. It’s another day of checking in on each other, of discussing their citizenship status in the country, of hoping. In our place, set in a fictionalized Caribbean […] More »

Photo by Celia Mendez If Quique Escamilla could summarize his musical journey in one word, it would be “grateful.” Born and raised in the southern Mexican state of Chiapas, the Juno Award–winning musician grew up with a limited idea of how far music could take him. Now based in Toronto as an established and touring […] More »

Photo by Pavel Danilyuk via Pexels I was struggling in school: distracted, restless, and falling behind. I was an undiagnosed ADHDer and autistic kid, but it was the ’80s, so my fidgeting was treated as misbehaviour rather than a learning difference. I was rescued by the unstoppable hero known as creativity. My mom, a teacher […] More »

Illustration by Teddy Kang Ben wandered past the bedroom. Inside, he could hear, his mother was helping the boy get dressed. Snaking his ankle down through the cuff of the jeans she’d pooled on the floor, cajoling him to raise his arms and draping the sweater from his own closet over that other boy’s chest. […] More »

Photo by Alexander Arvelo McQuaig When Broken Pencil magazine abruptly shut down in 2024, it left a gap in the Canadian zine community. Broken Pencil launched in 1995 with a distinct focus on zines and independent culture. It also hosted Canzine, one of the country’s biggest zine fairs. Running for nearly 30 years, Canzine gave […] More »

Photos courtesy of Grilled Cheese Catherine Ouellet-Cummings was working from her old home’s dimly lit basement, scrolling on Facebook, when she saw her friend liked a Belgian kids’ magazine’s page. It was called Cuistax, which published in Dutch and French—two of Belgium’s official languages. She immediately informed her husband and work partner, Julien Boisseau, about […] More »

Image courtesy of the National Film Board of Canada, Lantern Films, and Experimental Forest Films. For the First Nations communities who coexist with the Nechako River, there’s a deep understanding that they will persist. Nechako: It Will Be a Big River Again, a documentary directed by Lyana Patrick and co-produced by the National Film Board […] More »