This Magazine

Progressive politics, ideas & culture

Menu

Health

July-August 2021

Overdose prevention sites come to New Brunswick

Advocates want to see more than Band-Aid solutions

Hannah Rudderham

New Brunswick’s Health Minister, Dorothy Shephard, announced in February 2021 that the provincial government plans to implement overdose prevention sites this year. But Debby Warren, executive director at Ensemble Greater Moncton, wants the government to work toward a robust set-up that allows people dealing with addiction to leave with more than just a surface-level solution. […] More »
May-June 2021

A little house to call home

This tiny home community in Whitehorse assists people experiencing homelessness

Karen Longwell

A 240-square-foot house may not seem like an ideal living situation, but for some people who are unhoused, tiny homes can be a creative solution tackling a small part of the issue. According to a 2018 Canadian government report, approximately 35,000 Canadians experience some form of homelessness on any given night, and the Territories face […] More »
May-June 2021

How New Brunswick has restricted out-of-hospital abortions for over 200 years

Inside the fight for safe, fully-funded abortions

Julia Mastroianni

In 2021, New Brunswick remains the only province in Canada that refuses to fund out-of-hospital abortions. Currently, only three hospitals in the province can perform abortions—one in Bathurst and two in Moncton. While the province is finally being taken to court by a civil liberties association for this lack of funding support, which violates the […] More »
March-April 2021

How to survive a dystopia

Lessons from the disability justice movement

Mari “Dev” Ramsawakh

For some, we are entering a dystopian-like era, with pandemic and zombie movies feeling uncannily familiar. In May 2020, the BBC noted that the public has had an increased interest in dystopian fiction as a way to cope or understand the pandemic. But, if we really want to learn about how to survive this newfound […] More »
January-February 2021

Good riddance, Canada Fitness Test

You are not missed

Julia Zarankin

Dear (thankfully defunct) Canada Fitness Test, It’s been exactly 30 years since since you last subjected me to evaluation, but your quartet of badges still populates my worst nightmares. In the name of promoting healthier attitudes toward personal fitness, you terrorized an entire generation from 1970 to 1992. Your arrival every May coincided with nothing […] More »
January-February 2021

In crisis

Canada’s sexual assault centres face chronic underfunding and cuts leading to long waitlists and staffing issues. How centres are dealing with a crisis of their own

Sohini Bhattacharya

Catherine was in her mid-forties when she began looking for sexual assault centres (SACs) in Oshawa, Ontario. (Her name has been changed to protect her identity.) She was in panic mode as she combed through search results on the web. “I felt like my reality was crashing around me,” she said. She was at a […] More »
May-June 2020

Travel reservations

On travelling with chronic illness

melannie monoceros

I have travelled to the U.K. twice in my life. The first time I went was with my then-partner in 2009 and the second was on my own, in the summer of 2019. We (my now ex-partner and I) went to Brighton, Cambridge, and London. We walked for hours on cobblestone. I ran up and […] More »

Invisible labour and tangible risk

On working through a pandemic

Nisa Malli

Lately, all of my labour—domestic, creative, and income-earning—has shrunk to the space of a studio apartment. My office now doubles as my kitchen table, my gym, and my sick bed. It is a home which felt small even when I had access to third spaces for work, leisure, and exercise (such as cafes, parks, libraries […] More »
March-April 2020

Self-care is a sham

We need to place more value on community care

JP Larocque

Dearest Fellow Millennial, Self-care is a sham. There. I said it. Look, I get it. The modern world is an exhausting one. The workday is basically whenever you’re conscious, home ownership and retirement are but a fantasy, and the spectre of global warming lurks around every corner. We’re also everyone’s favourite bad joke: a pack […] More »
January-February 2020

How vaping companies appeal to today’s teens

Social media, store displays, and youth-savvy flavours—behind the smoke screen on how young people are being marketed to

Amanda Lee

  “I had a flavour that was Fruit Loops in a gold and matte black carbon vape, and I was in Grade 9,” says Zach Samson (who asked that we use a pseudonym), a 19-year-old student at the University of Guelph. By Grade 10, Samson was a part of a group chat called “e-cigarettes” with […] More »
January-February 2020

When mental heath is not on the menu

People working in Canada's restaurant industry need more supports—and some are cropping up

Zakiya Kassam

  My first restaurant job was also my last. It was a three-month stint that passed by in a blur of cutlery roll ups, tedious small-talk, and barely-there tips. Like many jobs in the food service sector, my shifts were long and ran late, and my hourly pay was well below minimum wage. Breaks were […] More »