Monday evenings at FreshCo always carry an air of anxiety, but one particular evening was accented by a white couple with Apple watches. They were behind my mother and I in the checkout line, leaning against the conveyor belt and communicating through grimaces. Every time the woman sighed, my stomach tensed. The tension was […] More »

In 2015 Canadians broke a record: 88 women were elected to the Canadian House of Commons. Fifty women were among the 184 Liberal MPs elected. Trudeau went on to appoint his cabinet with gender parity. Because it was 2015. But a male appointing an equal cabinet with representation based on the binary does not a […] More »

At three-thirty, when local high schools let out, I regularly caught the Dufferin bus near my place in downtown Toronto and used the long ride northbound to Yorkdale Mall to snoop on teens’ conversations, Shazam songs they were playing too loudly on earbuds, and read flirty chat messages over their shoulders. While I kept a […] More »

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 »

When Krista Dale was 11 years old, she awoke from a sleepwalking episode to find her stepfather on the couch next to her. “He was trying to have sex with me,” she remembers, 18 years after the incident. “I freaked out.” She ran to the bathroom, locked herself in, and began yelling for her mother, […] More »

I take improv on Wednesday nights in a basement dance studio with floors so sensitive we’re not allowed to wear outdoor shoes on them. The ratio of men to women in the class is about five to one, which is pretty normal. It’s my turn to play. On stage my scene partner stations himself at […] More »

On January 7, 2018, Aziz Ansari won a Golden Globe in a black suit adorned with a Time’s Up pin, a symbol of solidarity with women in the industry. Six days later, he was accused of sexual misconduct. Ansari has spent his career displaying his understanding of nuances—of the dating world, of gender inequality, of […] More »

At this month’s American Music Awards, host and Black-ish actress Tracee Ellis Ross said the 45th annual show would focus on “women who take up space.” The awards featured numerous female performers, including Pink hanging off the side of a building, a 25th anniversary salute to The Bodyguard soundtrack (fun fact: the best-selling soundtrack of […] More »

When Vancouver-based artist Sandeep Johal read Shauna Singh Baldwin’s novel, The Selector of Souls, she was deeply moved. The story of two Indian women tackles difficult gender-based issues Johal often finds herself considering: female foeticide, infanticide, femicide, domestic abuse, dowry, and rape. Soon after reading it, Johal was bringing a fictional goddess from the novel to […] More »

After my Vancouver book launch in October 2013, I headed right for the snack table. My travel schedule had brought me from Winnipeg to Vancouver early that morning: I had slept on a friend’s floor in Winnipeg and arrived before sunrise in Vancouver. By the end of my talk, the sun was back down and […] More »

The day before the 2017 March for Life, anti-abortion activists took over the hulking Renaissance Washington, D.C. Downtown Hotel. After lunch, I joined about fifty activists, lawyers, law students, and others for the adjacent Law of Life Summit, designed to advance the anti-abortion movement through putting forward more antiabortion legislation, attacking Planned Parenthood as a […] More »