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 […]

For some, we are entering a dystopian-like era, with pandemic and zombie movies feeling uncannily familiar. In May 2020, the BBC noted that the public has had an increased interest in dystopian fiction as a way to cope or understand the pandemic. But, if we really want to learn about how to survive this newfound […]

To the people who have called me resilient: I know you think that you were giving me some big compliment. I get it, I do. The first time someone called me resilient, I was young and terrified that no one would ever see how hard I was fighting. Then, the phrase “you are resilient” filled […]

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 […]

Pop singer Halsey begins her 2020 album, Manic, with a quote from Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind: “I’m just a fucked up girl who’s looking for my own peace of mind.” It’s hard to imagine Katy Perry or even Lady Gaga starting a record the same way 10 years ago, but in today’s music […]

One of the big changes in my life as I’ve gotten older has been becoming an insomniac. My brain has decided to forgo the signals that I am asleep and should remain so until an appropriate hour sometime in the waning hours of the dawn, and instead wakes me up around 1 a.m. This time […]

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 […]

Body positivity can be a harrowing but joyful process. Shana Myara made it a life goal. “I gave myself a project where I could fully explore fat liberation with other queers,” says Myara, director of the documentary, Well Rounded. “Particularly from the lens of racialized queers who might also have a critique of how bodies […]

From an early age, Hanan Hazime remembers being immersed in the arts. As a young child, she loved painting, dressing up in costumes, and creating elaborate stories. Now, at the age of 30, Hazime is a multidisciplinary artist whose work ranges from politically charged paintings to nature poetry. As a Lebanese-Canadian, non-neurotypical, and invisibly disabled, […]

Why people love it Approximately 4.4 million Canadians (about one in eight households) experienced food insecurity in 2018, according to Statistics Canada. Token programs at various restaurants aim to fight hunger by encouraging patrons to buy low-priced tokens which can then be handed out to someone in need and redeemed for a meal or snack. […]