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September-October 2016

Hip-hop is colonizing Canada

Repeat after me: It’s all about bud, basketball, and hip-hop

Dalton Higgins@daltonhiggins5

For our special 50th anniversary issue, Canada’s brightest, boldest, and most rebellious thinkers, doers, and creators share their best big ideas. Through ideas macro and micro, radical and everyday, we present 50 essays, think pieces, and calls to action. Picture: plans for sustainable food systems, radical legislation, revolutionary health care, a greener planet, Indigenous self-government, […] More »
September-October 2016

Welcome to the future of Canada, where everything is fine

No danger, no risk, no fear, no need

Sky Gilbert

For our special 50th anniversary issue, Canada’s brightest, boldest, and most rebellious thinkers, doers, and creators share their best big ideas. Through ideas macro and micro, radical and everyday, we present 50 essays, think pieces, and calls to action. Picture: plans for sustainable food systems, radical legislation, revolutionary health care, a greener planet, Indigenous self-government, […] More »
September-October 2016

Activists think like artists

Reflections from an environmentalist at the AGO

Gideon Forman

For our special 50th anniversary issue, Canada’s brightest, boldest, and most rebellious thinkers, doers, and creators share their best big ideas. Through ideas macro and micro, radical and everyday, we present 50 essays, think pieces, and calls to action. Picture: plans for sustainable food systems, radical legislation, revolutionary health care, a greener planet, Indigenous self-government, […] More »
September-October 2016

Hey, Canada: Pay your artists fair wages

Artists deserve fair pay for their work, too.

Thomas Colford@TLColford

For our special 50th anniversary issue, Canada’s brightest, boldest, and most rebellious thinkers, doers, and creators share their best big ideas. Through ideas macro and micro, radical and everyday, we present 50 essays, think pieces, and calls to action. Picture: plans for sustainable food systems, radical legislation, revolutionary health care, a greener planet, Indigenous self-government, […] More »
November-December 2014

Peanut butter and chutney

Hana Shafi

A personal journey through food and assimilation My eighth grade classroom was in a portable with a faulty air conditioner. At lunch, the little tin can of a classroom would fill with the pungent smells of masala—a distinct whiff of bay leaf, turmeric-infused curry, and kabobs marinated in garlic paste. The class was predominantly South […] More »

How to save arts and culture in Canada: a Massey Commission 2.0

hilary beaumont

Their jobs sound like an oxymoron in Canada’s present political climate; arts professionals earn about half the average national income per year, a large chunk of which comes from grants. That public funding is in danger since Stephen Harper made it perfectly clear he doesn’t consider the arts a priority. Given that the main agenda […] More »
May-June 2011

This45: Myrna Kostash on Edmonton culture hub Arts on the Ave

Myrna KostashWebsite

When I meet Christy Morin, founder of Edmonton’s Arts on the Ave, in the community arts cafe The Carrot, volunteer baristas are working the bar and activists with Black History Month are collecting their posters. Nearby, two community liaison police constables are huddled with a by-law officer, talking about their “weed and seed” program that […] More »
March-April 2011

On the internet, you’re not a citizen—you’re a consumer

Graham F. Scott@navalang

The United States’ decision to invade Afghanistan soon after 9/11 was misguided for many reasons, but one was purely practical: Al Qaeda is a stateless, decentralized network scattered across the globe. The spectral, international scope of the problem was no secret—so why wage a conventional war on one country? It was as if an outmoded […] More »
January-February 2011

Always known for its commerce, Calgary’s got culture too

Allison McNeelyWebsite

Calgary is not a place to stay. A cultural wasteland with a boom-bust oil economy where hard workers can make their money before moving to a “real” city with “real” arts and culture—but not a place to stay. This is an all-too-common belief about Calgary. But skeptics should take a closer look at the Heart […] More »

Nairobi's Pamoja dancers defy disability with new "Koncrete City" performance

Siena AnstisWebsite

There’s a scene in the Kenyan dance company Pamoja‘s new ballet, Konkrete City, where all I could feel was the hectic beat of downtown Nairobi, or Vancouver, or Toronto. The dancers—most of them handicapped—depicted the Central Business District, Kenya’s core of business towers and banks, during the rainy season. Walking, running and jumping; swinging arms, […] More »

Why are video games so politically hollow?

Graham F. Scott

The current issue of This features Andrew Webster’s profile of Canada’s independent videogame scene, which came to mind recently when I stumbled across Lose/Lose, a video-game/conceptual-art-project that adds some real risk to the normally consequence-free world of blowing up aliens. When you play Lose/Lose, the alien attackers are stand-ins for actual files on your computer. […] More »