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July-August 2017

aries [the ram]

Poetry by Doyali Islam

Doyali Islam

REVIEW: Play unveils tragic story of death and imprisonment based on real-world events

Inside Judith Thompson's Watching Glory Die

Nadya Sarah Domingo

Watching Glory Die By Judith Thompson Playwrights Canada Press, $17.95 In Watching Glory Die, two-time Governor General’s Literary Award–winner Judith Thompson tells the tragic story of Glory—a character inspired by 19-year-old Ashley Smith who died in 2007 of self-strangulation in Ontario’s Grand Valley Institution for Women after guards were instructed to not intervene while she […]

REVIEW: New book explores the complex world of Indigenous healing

Inside The Medicine of Peace by Jeffrey Paul Ansloos

Allyson Aritcheta

The Medicine of Peace: Indigenous Youth Decolonizing Healing and Resisting Violence By Jeffrey Paul Ansloos Fernwood Publishing, $28.00 A distilled theoretical work regarding oppositional views between Indigenous culture and Western social science, The Medicine of Peace: Indigenous Youth Decolonizing Healing and Resisting Violence, a debut by educator and counsellor Jeffrey Paul Ansloos, introduces critical-Indigenous peace […]

REVIEW: Leanne Betasamosake Simpson’s powerful new poetry collection

Inside This Accident of Being Lost

Jessica Rose

This Accident of Being Lost By Leanne Betasamosake Simpson House of Anansi, $19.95 This Accident of Being Lost is a powerful collection of short stories and songs by Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, a Michi Saagiig Nishnaabeg scholar, writer and artist, who is quickly becoming known as one of the country’s greatest storytellers. Unique in its fragmented […]

REVIEW: New anthology explores Toronto’s queer origins

Inside Coach House's Any Other Way

Samantha Sobolewski

Any Other Way: How Toronto Got Queer Edited by Stephanie Chambers, Jane Farrow, Maureen FitzGerald, Ed Jackson, John Lorinc, Tim McCaskell, Rebecka Sheffield, Rahim Thawer, and Tatum Taylor Coach House Books, $25.95 Any Other Way: How Toronto Got Queer provides an illuminating look into the multi-faceted history of queerness in Toronto. From a peer into […]

We See Things with our Eyes and We Want Them

Short fiction by Ann Ward

Ann Ward

There was a knock on the door. Mum didn’t answer it. Maybe she didn’t hear it. I heard it. But I’m not allowed to do more than look through the screen. I was only left alone twice or three times. One of those times someone knocked on the door and it was a big man. […]

Peek inside Canada’s only feminist bookstore

Montreal's L’Euguélionne carries 4,000 titles

Megan Jones@MegJonesA

On a Thursday evening in May, about a dozen women gather around a large wooden table at L’Euguélionne, Canada’s only feminist bookstore. The Montreal shop is filled with chatter as the crew, participants in a zine-making workshop, sift through piles of paper. Since it opened in December 2016, L’Euguélionne has become a hub, hosting public events like […]

Inside Toronto’s new communal space where creativity flourishes

Site 3 has a mission: to teach, create, display, and inspire

Brian Capitao

Tucked away in an alley off the corner of Bloor and Ossington is what looks like a two-storey garage with only a small purple neon sign acting as a beacon to passersby. This is home for a collection of hackers and hobbyists known as Site 3—a communal space that rewards curiosity of the trades. Many are […]

Nunavut community sees largest high-school graduating class to date

The success story of eight students in Kugaaruk, Nunavut

Sarah Rogers

Eight students graduated from high school in Kugaaruk, Nunavut, this year. That might sound like a tough year for education, but the graduating class of 2017 was the biggest on record for this Inuit hamlet of about 900 people. The milestone is all the more exceptional when you consider Kugaardjuq School’s secondary students finished the year […]

Desperada

Excerpt of short fiction by Sofia Mostaghimi

Sofia Mostaghimi@sofiamosta

After Shanghai, I caught a cheap flight to Bangkok. In the sky, I met a group of Australians who joked about North Korea and Kim Jong-il the whole time and who said “g’day mate” for my pleasure. We parted ways at the airport then I travelled to Ko Phangan, where I think I was roofied at […]

New ecological project takes stock of Calgary’s amphibian life

The project will provide insight into the health of the city's wetlands

Allyson Aritcheta@ariCheddar

A woman in a coral windbreaker peeks through cattails on the periphery of a marsh, her rubber boots camouflaged by vegetation and mud as she strains, clipboard in hand, to detect signs of amphibian life. A frog hops into a beam of sunlight through the dense flora and she marks a tick on her clipboard. […]