This Magazine

Progressive politics, ideas & culture

Menu

Arts

May-June 2019

Death of the Rom-Com

Has messy love on screen killed the rom-com? We sure hope so.

Lisa Whittington-Hill

I blame John Hughes for my great sleepover shutout of 1984. It was a Betamax copy of his teen romantic comedy Sixteen Candles that was my downfall. While my friends clapped their hands and cheered at the final scene that brings together Samantha Baker and Jake Ryan, I was silent. I just couldn’t buy it. […] More »

We’re hiring fiction and poetry editors!

Tara-Michelle Ziniuk

Do you love CanLit? Are you always on the lookout for emerging authors and poets? If so, we want you! This Magazine is looking for both a fiction editor and poetry editor! Our fiction editor is responsible for overseeing the magazine’s fiction section. This Magazine publishes six print issues a year, with each issue featuring a short story by a […] More »

State of the Art

Canadian art is about so much more than documenting our picturesque landscapes. Artists Lezli Rubin-Kunda, Sandra Rechico, and Susan Fiendel say home is where the mind is.

RM VaughanWebsite@rm_vaughan

One of the crumbliest of the many old chestnuts rotting away in Canadian art discourse is that all Canadian art is ultimately about the landscape that surrounds us. This is of course true (that’s how antique ideas last) and also very much not true, especially in an era when the digital presence of art and […] More »
November-December 2018

I grew up in the age of VCR recordings and pay-per-view. Now, I’m raising my son in the streaming era.

Anne Thériault on what she's learned from Netflix, iPads, and her seven-year-old

Anne Thériault

Now that my son is seven, our weekend mornings have gelled into a proper routine. He wakes up at some ungodly hour—earlier, by the way, than he gets up on weekdays—and plays for a while in his room. When he’s tired of that, he’ll grab a couple of granola bars from the kitchen and then […] More »
November-December 2018

Tout le monde en parle has gripped Quebec viewers for nearly 15 years. Why can’t it reach the rest of Canada?

Sara Black McCulloch unpacks the talk show Franco Quebecers can't stop watching

Sara Black McCulloch

Singer Grimes on Tout le monde en parle in 2015 When Canadian singer Grimes appeared on a segment of Tout le monde en parle in 2015, she was the only guest on the Franco-Canadian talk show answering questions in English. When co-host Dany Turcotte discovered she had lived in Montreal for six years, he asked […] More »
November-December 2018

I gave up television for 35 years. Why I started watching again

Writer Thelma Fayle jumps back into the world of TV and finds value in the medium that she never did before

Thelma Fayle

In the 1980s, Dan Hubbard and Richard Catinus were two brainy young guys trying to sell Apple computers when I was working in a government office that used IBMs. While outlining the advantages of using a Mac for my work, Dan mentioned in passing that, after reading Jerry Mander’s book, Four Arguments for the Elimination […] More »
September-October 2018

Indigenous arts are the real deal. How counterfeiting is destroying that

New campaign aims to protect Indigenous crafts from mass-produced knock-offs in Canada’s gift shops

Prajakta Dhopade

Think of the dreamcatcher and it evokes a familiar image. A hoop, a woven web, adorned with beads and feathers. The iconic talisman, said to have originated from the North American Ojibwe, is a common sight in most Canadian souvenir shops. But don’t believe its “Made in Canada” label. More likely, it’s been mass produced […] More »

Q&A: Paul Vermeersch talks self-fulfilling prophecies, science fiction, and his new poetry collection

RM Vaughan sits down with the poet to chat about Self Defence for the Brave and Happy

RM Vaughan

The great French novelist Andre Malraux once declared that “the 21st century will be spiritual or will not be,” a sentiment undoubtedly shared by many who lived under the shadow of the Cold War’s mushroom clouds. Paul Vermeersch’s beautiful new book of poems, Self Defence for the Brave and Happy posits that the 21st century […] More »
September-October 2018

Music criticism is changing its tune—and that’s a good thing

The music explainer is the new review, and it has the potential to improve our understanding of music criticism

Drew Crocker

Photo by Gavin Whitner “Music criticism is dead,” proclaimed Dan Kopf emphatically on culture website Quartzy this past spring. In the present streaming era, when you can easily discover music on your own, the “music explainer,” in the form of podcasts, is where it’s at, he argued. Why consider secondhand opinions when you can hear […] More »
September-October 2018

New Toronto film project aims to preserve the pasts of Indigenous and visible minority communities

A look inside the Home Made Visible project

Emily Macrae

A child playing in a snowbank. A woman cutting a cake. A man digging a car out of a snowdrift. At first glance, these are common Canadian moments. But look closer and they become celebrations in the daily life of any Canadian family. Whether they are new to the country, first- or fifth-generation Canadians, these […] More »
September-October 2018

This Vancouver teacher turned her master’s thesis into a comic book

She wanted to prove that graphic art can still be scholarly

Valérie Frappier

It’s been said that the medium is the message, but how much say do we have over which mediums shape our experiences—and how might they shape our education? Meghan Parker, an art teacher at a public high school in North Vancouver, considers this question in her recent thesis, “Art teacher in process: An illustrated exploration […] More »