When Rimah Jabr first applied to the Toronto Palestine Film Festival’s (TPFF) 2025 residency, she was so unsure about being able to accurately address anti-Palestinian racism that she withdrew her submission. Jabr wasn’t used to creating work for commissioned themes and worried about the compromises she’d have to make. “As an artist, I was like, […] More »

Photo by Chris Randle Two ghostly figures appear, moving across a vast field strewn with steel sculptures. The dancers—a man and woman, shaved bald and painted white—move with a languid fluidity, bending space and time. This is A Simple Way, performed this summer at The Jeffrey Rubinoff Sculpture Park on Hornby Island off the east […] More »

The wonderfully non-human retelling of a Canadian novella on stage IT’S A STORY that needs to be retold. “The Faustian bargain is a classic hook,” says Gil Garratt, referring to Derek McCormack’s 2008 novella The Show that Smells. Garratt is adapting the book for the stage via Clawhammer, the small company he founded in 2011 […] More »

From our education system to our literary community, why is CanLit so white? Nashwa Khan challenges the default narrative JUNOT DÍAZ UNLEASHED A BOMBSHELL on the writing world when he published his essay “MFA vs. PoC” in the New Yorker last spring. The Dominican American author is a creative writing professor, a fiction editor for […] More »

An in-depth review of Hollywood’s problem with women “You could try to hold your camera like this… but your breasts would probably get in the way.” “Women do not belong on set unless they are in hair and makeup.” “Your main job is basically to be my work wife. You need to anticipate my needs. […] More »

Lowell’s bold, new vision for a women- and girl-friendly pop future POP SINGER-SONGWRITER Lowell has recently been experiencing a recurring dream in which she’s robbing a bank, then driving away on a motorbike with her lesbian lover. Given the surreal imagery in the videos for her songs “The Bells” and “Cloud 69,” it’s easy to […] More »

Métis in Space is a hilariously smart take down of Indigenous stereotypes in popular science-fiction LAST SUMMER, friends Molly Swain and Chelsea Vowel were having a rough time, and looking for an excuse to spend more time together. Swain and Vowel, who are both Métis and live in Montreal, came up with a solution to […] More »

I decided I need to become better at public speaking so I’ve started subjecting myself to the horror of, well, public speaking. I started as a guest speaker at a Durham Rape Crisis Centre volunteer training session, my second and most recent attempt was a literary reading at Oshawa, Ont.’s The LivingRoom Community Art Studio. […] More »

Inside The Weakerthans’ bassist Greg Smith’s studio Beer in hand, Greg Smith sits in a chair wedged into a corner. A microphone stand, angled overhead, partially frames him. The room is full of instruments: four- and six-stringed guitars on stands, a mandolin hanging from a hook, a drum kit and keyboards facing one another. But […] More »

Montreal choreographer confronts street life, addiction, and the Canadian aboriginal experience As calls for a public inquiry into the many cases of missing and murdered aboriginal women in Canada go unheard by the federal government, Montreal choreographer Lara Kramer’s most recent piece, titled NGS (“Native Girl Syndrome”), could not be more timely. “Native Girl Syndrome” […] More »

Toronto author J.M. Frey gives sci-fi a jolt of much-needed diversity It’s not every day you read a science-fiction novel that features a polyamorous relationship, with one of its partners being a blue-skinned, bat-wing-eared, short- snouted alien, and a plot that involves time travel, a murder mystery and a near-future look at sexuality, bigotry, immigration […] More »