The year 2017 will be remembered as the year Canadian media finally got serious about reporting the deadly epidemic of opioid addiction in this country. The Globe and Mail, the CBC, the Toronto Star, Maclean’s, the Huffington Post, and many other outlets have devoted not just isolated stories but aggressive ongoing coverage of what is […] More »

This year, Canada celebrates its 150th birthday. Ours is a country of rich history—but not all Canadian stories are told equally. In this special report, This tackles 13 issues—one per province and territory—that have yet to be addressed and resolved by our country in a century and a half In early 2017, pro-abortion activists across Canada celebrated when […] More »

This year, Canada celebrates its 150th birthday. Ours is a country of rich history—but not all Canadian stories are told equally. In this special report, This tackles 13 issues—one per province and territory—that have yet to be addressed and resolved by our country in a century and a half New Brunswick has Canada’s oldest population, a near-20 percent […] More »

This year, Canada celebrates its 150th birthday. Ours is a country of rich history—but not all Canadian stories are told equally. In this special report, This tackles 13 issues—one per province and territory—that have yet to be addressed and resolved by our country in a century and a half High food prices in the Northwest Territories aren’t new, […] More »

Dr. Paul Caulford has had a busy and unusual year. Since November 2016, he’s seen an unprecedented volume of patients and treated a peculiarly high number of frostbite cases. Many of these visitors have travelled on foot from the United States, escaping the Trump administration’s anti-immigration agenda. As the co-founder of the Canadian Centre for Refugee […] More »

In 2014–15, Aaron Goodman documented three drug users participating in a study to assess longer-term opioid medication effectiveness—the first heroin-assisted treatment research of its kind in North America. The collected photos and reflections formed the Outcasts Project, which aims to humanize addiction. Goodman, a PhD candidate in communication studies at Concordia University, sought to amplify […] More »

Except for a long line at the barbecue, where hungry older folk wait for a free meal, most people have left Oppenheimer Park for the day. But not Jim McLeod, who’s clutching a hot dog wrinkled with the cold, so engrossed in telling me his story that he’s forgotten about his dinner. It’s late February […] More »

For 34-year-old Samantha Boshart, a practising physician at Hamilton, Ont.’s Aboriginal Health Centre and member of the Chippewas of the Thames First Nation, health care is about more than just prescribing medication. By combining her training as a Western physician with traditional Indigenous healing, she’s helping to tackle unique and particular health challenges facing Canada’s […] More »

On February 9, 2016, at 3:45 p.m., Gail Benshabat sent a text to her 27-year-old daughter, Lisa, asking if she wanted to catch an early movie. Benshabat was wrapping up her workday at a quiet special needs school in the north end of Toronto, about a 30-minute drive from the third-floor apartment where she lived […] More »

  The night bus to Toronto’s North York General Hospital was nearly empty at two o’clock in the morning in September 2014, and Dan McLaughlin was nervous. He was on his way to receive an MRI so that doctors could diagnose a painful back injury, the result of years of hard labour, previous drug abuse, […] More »

Current photo of the author. Trigger warning: self-injury, suicide When I was 18, a psychiatrist kicked me out of her office in my hometown of Montreal. A framed Sigmund Freud witnessed my humiliation. I’d raised my voice, confessing that I’d scratched up my arm again because I was “fucking sad.” My psychiatrist told me to […] More »