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Mental health

January-February 2024

Viral load

What happens to people who become internet famous?

Ashleigh-Rae Thomas

Nathan Kanasawe was 23 when they first went viral. Early one September morning in their town of Sudbury, Ontario, they decided to go on a 2 a.m. drive with a friend. While driving, they saw someone testing a Boston Dynamics robot dog. “I did a U-turn because we’re like, ‘Well, what the fuck was that?’ […] More »
January-February 2024

Beat generation

Some people swear these auditory illusions can alter their moods

Tyler Hein

Sometime around 2005, in the halcyon days of the internet when it was still treading its path to ubiquity, I peaked. Hunkered down late at night in a small room exclusively dedicated to housing a family desktop computer, I used the free peer-to-peer file-sharing client LimeWire to pirate the less-free peer-to- peer file-sharing client LimeWire Pro. […] More »
September-October 2023

A long trip home

If I didn't experiment with psilocybin during therapy, I may not have seen my estranged mom again

Jacqueline Salomé

My mother’s house looks like my long-repressed childhood memories. The black floral wallpaper is veiled with dust, cloaking walls yellowed by years of chain- smoked cigarettes. Everything decorative is dangerous: swords hang in place of picture frames, flanked by ominous leather ropes of unknown origin. My mother’s house feels like a castle, but one where […] More »
November - December 2023

A sober thought

After I quit drinking, I set off to find a new community. I'm still looking

Conyer Clayton

The last time I drank I was surrounded by family. I’d just returned from a solo trip to Scotland where I drank heavily every day for several weeks. When I got home I put my foot down. Okay, only on special occasions now. Every alcoholic knows this little cha-cha. A few weeks later, my partner’s […] More »
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 »
March-April 2023

All the lonely people

The discourse has moved on since the lockdowns lifted, but Canada’s loneliness epidemic remains

Yasmin Afshar

“I’ve been worried about you.” I heard this phrase often in the spring of 2020, when my move into a place of my own coincided with Ontario’s first round of social distancing and lockdowns. My world shrunk to 500 square feet, bound by the drafty walls of a second-floor studio in Toronto’s Trinity-Bellwoods neighbourhood. I […] More »
September-October 2022

Counsellors, caretakers, and cops

They're barely older than the peers they support, and they’re always on the clock. Resident assistants in Canadian universities speak up about a crushing emotional toll

Carly Penrose

The phone rings. It’s the call Alanna Stewart has been waiting for. One of her residents passed out at a party across campus. Stewart saw them down six shots of absinthe earlier in the night, so she isn’t exactly surprised. She ventures out to find the student, who is dangerously drunk, and then escorts them […] More »