It was the first day of class. I was an eighteen-year-old Broadway geek entering Syracuse University’s (SU) acting program. I spent the morning seated on the floor of “movement” class with 29 other adolescents in front of our teacher, David, a loud and upbeat SU graduate, Broadway star and self-described “hotdog”—an actor who trained with […] More »

One brisk November 1938 afternoon in Basel, Switzerland, chemist Albert Hofmann successfully synthesized lysergic acid diethylamide for the first time. The compound was set aside and forgotten for five years until Hofmann resynthesized it, accidentally absorbed some, and took the world’s first acid trip. The discovery of acid, or LSD, changed the course of social […] More »

A pride flag flaps defiantly in the wind above a welcoming front porch. A basket of free naloxone kits hangs on the front door. On the wall upstairs, a poster reads “Activities to avoid dying sad/to make you happy” and lists acupuncture, bowling, and picnics. This is the home of Dopamine Montréal. Just like its […] More »

Hayley Atwell as Martha in Black Mirror James Vlahos can no longer sit across from his father, hold his hand or give him a hug. But he can ask him for advice when he’s feeling blue and let his children ask questions about his family’s life in Greece or listen to him sing “Me and […] More »

Illustration by CSA Images IN THE WINTER OF 2018, like millions of others across the world, I ordered a DNA test. For $99, Ancestry.com promised me a look into my family roots, using just my saliva. The kit arrived in Toronto late last winter from Utah, Ancestry’s home base. I took the collection tube out […] More »

It was freezing in Winnipeg, cold enough that frostbite threatened to set in minutes; the kind of cold that sets deep in the bones, down to the marrow. Unforgiving wind ripped through flat, icy streets, and snowdrifts piled along sidewalks. A frigid, stainless steel sky descended on the prairie capital. By the time Windy Sinclair, […] More »

It was the second day of the Calgary Stampede, a 10-day bonanza of cowboy-themed festivities in the Canadian province most stereotyped by its beef, oil, and country music. Nearly every local business had shut down for the week. “It’s our biggest holiday. You just don’t mess with the Stampede,” Calgary-born Mandy Alston tells me nearly […] More »

Hilary Black is tired. “Really fucking tired,” actually, she says. She’s been doing this—fighting prohibition, advocating for the rights of medical cannabis patients—for 21 years. And now she’s at the outset of an entirely new chapter: She is in charge of the social responsibility and patient advocacy arm of Canopy Growth Corporation, one of the […] More »

On a rainy Thursday in April, I arrive at a yellow brick, split-level house in London, Ont. People are doing word searches at a large dining table. Some help themselves to a container of freshly baked peanut butter cookies, and CBC News is playing on a television in the living room. This house, tucked away in […] More »

For more than half my life, someone has been trying to kill me. That someone is me. The first time I considered ending my life, I was eight or nine years old, living in a rented house with my father and brother in Owen Sound, Ont. My mother had moved out years earlier, after my […] More »

On June 15, 1983, Dr. Henry Morgentaler opened an illegal abortion clinic in Toronto. The Ontario Coalition for Abortion Clinics (OCAC) had chosen a spot on the second floor of a lovely Victorian house on Harbord Street, a quiet downtown thoroughfare lined with bookstores and cafés near the University of Toronto. With the Toronto Women’s […] More »