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 »

This Accident of Being Lost By Leanne Betasamosake Simpson House of Anansi, $19.95 This Accident of Being Lost is a powerful collection of short stories and songs by Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, a Michi Saagiig Nishnaabeg scholar, writer and artist, who is quickly becoming known as one of the country’s greatest storytellers. Unique in its fragmented […] More »

The Break By Katherena Vermette House of Anansi, $22.95 “In the end, all that matters is what is right here.” These words by Métis writer Katherena Vermette perfectly capture the heart of the stories within The Break. Vermette, who won the 2013 Governor General’s Literary Award for Poetry, offers alternative perspectives surrounding a brutal crime—each […] More »

What do you do when you’re an adult woman on a canoe trip in Alaska and a boy on the playground calls you fat? You take the ball tumbling toward you, which you’ve kindly picked up for him, and fling it back, pushing the insult as far from your flabby chest as you can, releasing […] More »

Like so many heroes of fiction, Wayne Blake is born different. Although he is intersex, he is raised as a boy, groomed for a rugged life of trapping and hunting by his gruff father, Treadway. Set on the icy Labrador coast, Kathleen Winter’s Annabel follows Wayne from birth to young adulthood as he struggles with […] More »