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September-October 2023

A soft space to land

How a peer mentorship collective is helping early-career BIPOC artists

Alexa DiFrancesco

Three years ago, Kiona Callihoo Ligtvoet and Sanaa Humayun were both working as junior employees for art centres whose staff were predominately white. Callihoo Ligtvoet is Cree, Métis, Dutch and mixed European and Humayun is Pakistani; the two friends, who co-hosted a book club together, started to talk about the isolation they felt in their respective […] More »
July/August 2023

Zora

Leila Marshy

Maybe you remember Zora. I used to see her on St. Laurent selling jewellery and T-shirts and scraps of paper scribbled with art. In and out of bars and cafés, always alone, a storming shadow. Our eyes met once and I smiled. She stared, walked on. So, when I saw her on Sunday, sitting in […] More »
July/August 2023

Daily Double

Katia Lo Innes

  There are few things left that I can still derive joy from, the night bus being one of them. Whenever I can’t sleep and feel terrible about the state of all things—which is often—I remember that I can just walk out of my apartment in the middle of the night and wait at the […] More »
July/August 2023

Drawing a line

AI art can be fun to generate, but that doesn’t mean it’s ethical

Sarah Samuel

A picture may not be worth a thousand words anymore. Generative AI art tools like DALL-E, Midjourney and Stable Diffusion, which rely on artists’ existing work to generate images through textual prompts, became available to the public last year. Since then, conversations about how Artificial Intelligence (AI) will render creative jobs obsolete have gripped many […] More »
January-February 2023

What can fungi teach us about healing trauma?

What fungi taught me about connection and healing in community

Katarina Sabados

Illustration by Ashley Wong As I open the bag of mycelium, a pleasant creamy smell wafts through the air. I break off a piece and feel the smooth pores between my fingers. It’s like grazing the soft hand of a long-lost grandparent. Around 1.1 billion years ago, the animal and fungi kingdoms split from plants […] More »
November-December 2002

Seoul mates

A dearth of good rom-coms coming out of Hollywood is fuelling an appetite for K-drama

Zeahaa Rehman

Illustration by Koko Lee A diehard romantic, I routinely scroll through Netflix’s “New & Popular” tab looking for the next rom-com to swoon over—and often keep scrolling. This year alone, I’ve scrolled past The Royal Treatment; Love in the Villa; A Perfect Pairing; Hello, Goodbye, and Everything in Between; and Persuasion. The only films I […] More »
November-December 2002

Prairie queens

How the Bannock Babes are creating a space for Indigenous drag

Jacqueline Salomé

Photo by Cherilyn Brazeau What is colonially called Winnipeg, Manitoba, in Treaty 1 territory, might not be known for its drag scene. But as home to The Bannock Babes, one of the fiercest drag collectives in the country—and one of very few Indigenous drag troupes on this side of the border—perhaps it should be. The […] More »
November-December 2022

Raising the barre

How a New Brunswick ballet company helps newcomers build a life in Atlantic Canada

Grace Wells-Smith

November-December 2022

Child detectives have feelings too

The Bob’s Burgers Movie takes the baton from Nancy Drew—and it gets emotional

Jennifer Whiteford

Illustration by Paterson Hodgson At nine years old I was an under-the-covers reader. Even on nights when my parents were distracted by their cassette tapes and homemade wine, I wouldn’t risk turning on my bedside lamp after 8:30 p.m. Maybe my parents knew I was deep into the world of Nancy Drew or Encyclopedia Brown […] More »
September-October 2022

Teachable TV moments

Abbott Elementary shows us what solidarity looks like

Makda Mulatu

I have always found myself in close proximity to teachers, first as a student then later in my personal and professional circles. As a figure skating coach, I felt a kinship with teachers, even if I didn’t always understand the weight of what was being asked of them. This past year, I began watching Abbott […] More »
July-August 2022

Sex, lies, and the city

What And Just Like That… gets wrong about women’s friendships

Danita Steinberg

Photo by INSTAR Images / Alamy Stock Photo When it first aired over two decades ago, Sex and the City’s fantasy lay in an idyllic New York City lifestyle of affordable rent, flowing cosmopolitans, closets full of expensive designer fashion, a revolving door of attractive men for one and all, and an endless string of […] More »