She strolls softly through a deserted modern-day Montreal. Her outfit—and the way she seems to float through the streets—indicate her lack of connection to this modern scene. This is Marie-Josèphe Angélique, a slave “owned” by François Poulin of Montreal in the early 1730s. Canadian filmmaker Howard J. Davis uses his film C’est Moi as an […] More »

A photo posted by Jann Lavigne-Stevens (@ykwimm) on Feb 1, 2017 at 3:24am PST A photo in Beauce, Que. When I talk to the student in the English classes I teach in Saint-Georges, Que., I try to be as open and approachable as possible. I started the job in September 2016 as part of a program […] More »

The fifth entry in the Black Panther Party’s (BPP) 10-point platform reads, “We want education for our people that exposes the true nature of this decadent American society. We want education that teaches us our true history and our role in the present-day society.” The seventh is an all too familiar demand for “an immediate end […] More »

Bee Quammie’s social media feeds buzzed with chatter. Earlier that day the CBC had announced its decision to replace Shad with Tom Power as the host of its flagship radio show, q. It was less than 16 months after Shad took the position and the same day that, south of the border, Comedy Central cancelled […] More »

Gender Block breaks down and analyzes the latest in news about women, feminism, and gender in Canada. According to its mandate, the Body Confidence Canada Awards (BCCA) “advocate for equitable and inclusive images, messages, practices and policies supporting body diversity.” It’s pretty hard to argue with that mandate, unless you’re a jerk. And if the past […] More »

A CANOE AND A SHIP TRAVEL DOWN A STREAM. The vessels navigate parallel paths, moving side-by-side, synchronized, but separate. This image was at the heart of the Two Row Wampum treaty, the agreement made between representatives of the Dutch government and the Haudenosaunee people, on the shores of what is now called New York, in […] More »

“Having a message should be cool,” says Toronto hip-hop artist Rich Kidd on the power of rap. Kidd hosted First Out Here: Indigenous hip-hop, a documentary by Noisey, in which Kidd visited Winnipeg, Regina and Toronto to meet with Indigenous hip-hop artists. Kidd, born to Ghanian parents, says he drew a lot of parallels between […] More »

I was maybe, what, eight years old? There I was, standing in my literal cave of a stinky basement—a carved-out hollow of dark, dank stone under my rickety old house—scrounging through books piled high into mountains of dust. I whipped out one book. The cover stood out: A woman with flowing ebony braids is striking […] More »

TORONTO PLAYWRIGHT ANDREA SCOTT started to wonder about the secret lives of her neighbours after watching the U.K. television film I am Slave, based on the true story of a modern-day captive. In the film, Arab militia snatch Mende Nazar from her Sudanese village and sell her into slavery; she eventually lands in England, where […] More »

YOU DON’T EXPECT the word “amazing” to come out of someone’s mouth so often when they speak about difficult issues every day. Splitting her time between New York and Toronto, Kim Katrin Milan is an an educator, writer, artist, yoga instructor, and activist. She does so much that a casual viewer would be forgiven for […] More »

“WHY DO YOU HAVE TO WEAR THAT THING HERE?” “Why don’t you just go back to where you came from?” That these kinds of remarks are ever voiced might seem far-fetched, almost cartoonishly so, but they are actually common enough that many Muslim women in Canada who wear the hijab hear them at some point […] More »