Growing up in a traditional first-generation Muslim-Canadian family, I constantly struggled to determine what career I wanted to pursue. For years, I faced the dilemma of whether to satisfy the vision my parents had created for me or to go out on a limb and pursue my own interests of joining the entertainment industry, ultimately […] More »

Ashwin Mehra’s mother had COVID-19 in Mumbai. In Toronto, he wasn’t sleeping well. Before the diagnosis, even the thought of Mehra’s parents falling sick in India with him stranded in Toronto would keep him up at night. If they died, he knew he wouldn’t be able to attend their funerals. And so, when his sister […] More »

In her book, How To Lose Everything, writer and musician Christa Couture tells a story of loss and resilience. She loses her leg to cancer at a young age; she loses two sons early in their lives, and a marriage; another health scare threatens her career. Yet, she overcomes. She writes, “I think of something […] More »

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 »

Simone Elizabeth Saunders’ work is remarkable. She uses tufting—a traditional rug-making technique—to bring fabric to life by mixing fibres, colour, and portraiture. The Calgary-based artist creates scaled-up artwork averaging 70 inches squared, equipped with what is called a tufting gun, which is an automatic hand-held device. “It is such a beautiful process to have this […] More »

In the opening letter of their debut poetry collection, knot body, Eli Tareq El Bechelany-Lynch writes: “The days get brighter but somehow I don’t. A dilemma, right? I thought I was swayed by the light, moods lifting as the clouds lift, yet this pain is fingers deep.” El Bechelany-Lynch’s writing is at once an intimate […] More »

There are bed bugs in my apartment building, so we have to flee, fucking posthaste. I pack my roommate’s cat up in her little crate and hop into my inheritance from old Auntie Doreen, a blue ‘98 Chevy Lumina. We barely make it out before they have the white and blue bubble wrap covering the […] More »

“When are they taking me away?” This was a question I frequently asked my mom throughout my childhood. The first time I wondered this aloud I was three years old. My foster brother and sister had lived with us on and off for two years by then and I didn’t remember life without them. The […] More »

Breonna Taylor. I’m tired of hearing her name, I’m tired of seeing her face everywhere. It seems like 2020 has been the year for everything and everyone to break down. The complete isolation that so many of us have been forced into has destroyed any semblance of the old selves that were left. With numerous […] More »

When George Floyd and Breonna Taylor were murdered by police in the United States, sparking protests across the world, Avnish Nanda, an Edmonton lawyer, approached Bashir Mohamed and Oumar Salifou with an idea for a podcast investigating anti-Black racism and policing in Edmonton. Within a week of launching in June, Is This For Real? had […] More »

Midwifery as a profession has been heavily dominated by women, and in Ontario, it’s the most exclusively woman-dominated profession in the province. Despite using similar skills and performing similar tasks to family physicians, since their official establishment as a health profession in Ontario, midwives have been fighting for pay equity. Here’s a look at the […] More »