Photo by Dimitri Nasrallah Dimitri Nasrallah’s Hotline (Véhicule Press) transports readers to mid-eighties Montreal when weight-loss centres were a burgeoning industry, and “body image” and “health consciousness” were terms just entering the vocabulary of self-care. Muna Heddad, a French teacher by trade, takes a job as a hotline phone operator at meal delivery company Nutri-Fort […] More »

No joy is more fulfilling for me than shattering the expectations someone has of me. To be unpredictable is to be individualistic. And in my skin, standing alone as an individual gives me the chance to take solace in myself. Because I am an unambiguous Black woman in a predominantly white community, escaping the stereotypes […] More »

Butterflies and flowers. Butterflies and flowers. Butterflies and flowers. I would repeat this phrase until I had forgotten that my skin was tingling for a scratch. My sister taught me this. She would tell me to think of lush green grass, with flowers too pretty to ignore and butterflies dancing with the wind. I stuck […] More »

I am a non-binary Black queer femme survivor of sexual violence who has never gone to the police or engaged in a court process in order to seek justice and accountability. Every time that I have disclosed that I am indeed a survivor, I am seldom believed. Why would anyone do that to someone who […] More »

Picture this: you’re ready for a good night’s rest. You crawl into bed around midnight, and just as you are about to fall asleep, thunderous juddering and whirring erupt above your house. You sit awake, startled as the Winnipeg Police helicopter circles around your neighbourhood, its bright spotlight creeping and surveying. This disruption is a […] More »

“Our goal was amplifying Black voices,” says Ado Nkemka, deputy editor of Calgary-based media collective Afros In Tha City. The media collective is the only one of its kind in Mohkínstsis/Calgary, exploring topics relevant to the Black experience and supporting the voices of Black journalists in a hegemonically white media landscape. Founded in 2016, it […] More »

A late summer day in 2008 changed everything for the community of Montréal-Nord, a multicultural suburban borough in the city’s north end. Fredy Villanueva, an 18-year-old Honduran refugee, was shot and killed by a police officer in a park. The shock of his death rippled through the tight-knit neighbourhood, sparking immediate outrage, rioting, and protests. […] More »

When Zawadi Bunzigiye was assigned to create a project with some sort of community impact as part of their creative writing program at OCAD University, they were stumped. It wasn’t until a conversation with a friend that Bunzigiye decided to start a podcast. What began as an academic assignment has blossomed into a “passion project” […] More »

I haven’t suffered loss nearly at the scale of many people since the pandemic started. But I have suffered loss. And I’ve been preoccupied with what to do with that feeling, during a time when touch and physical presence are treated on par with the deadly disease that they could spread. I’ve struggled to process […] More »

In the summer of 2008, I became obsessed with High School Musical. My family and I were “visiting” my paternal uncle in Canada at the time. I say “visit,” because it was more of a two-month trial for my parents to gauge whether or not they wanted to immigrate here from Lahore, Pakistan. During the […] More »

Growing up as a biracial child, Beige Blum longingly wished to see fictional characters and media personalities that resembled part of her identity. Being of German and Filipino descent, she grew up noticing that Asian characters hardly made an appearance on screen, and if they ever did, they were almost certainly not Southeast Asian. Instead, […] More »