On a cloudy February day in Edmonton, Alberta, a giant trans pride flag flies over Dr. Wilbert McIntyre Park, marking the meeting place for a rally in support of the trans community. It’s days after Premier Danielle Smith, in a seven-minute video posted online, announced the most restrictive gender policies in Canada under the guise […] More »

Bill S-210 has an arresting title compared to the majority of those passing through the various levels of government in order to become law: “Protecting Young Persons from Exposure to Pornography Act.” “The title of the legislation sends a fairly powerful message. There is absolutely no doubt about that,” said Kevin Lamoureux, parliamentary secretary to […] More »

The graffiti-covered Van Horne skatepark on the edge of Montreal’s Mile End is usually dotted with boys in beanies and sneakers, launching themselves into the rink with the cracking sound of skateboard wheels hitting concrete. But, every Thursday night for a brief stint during the summer of 2021, they were replaced with a different crowd: […] More »

Isabella Calahoo-Zeller was attending eighth grade in Alberta when she received sex education for the first time. It consisted of a YouTube video about consent, and not much else. “We didn’t really get much on what a penis looks like, or what a vulva looks like,” Calahoo-Zeller says. “We never got the birth video that […] More »

Driving back and forth along Wellesley Street in Toronto, Iris looks for a sign that she belongs. It’s late at night and raining, and she’s been blown off by a date. The woman she met on the dating website Plenty of Fish lives in Niagara Falls, and Iris rented a car for the weekend to […] More »

In a ballroom in Toronto’s LGBTQ Village, long-time drag queen Fay Slift smiles down at a young child dressed just like her. Both wear ice-blue wigs, bright patterned dresses, and long pink evening gloves. Around Fay’s look-alike sit more children, listening as she and Fluffy Soufflé, dressed in a navy muumuu and bracelets made out […] More »

I’ve always seen myself as a mother. As a child, I had dolls that I fed and bathed. I was one of the oldest of a dozen cousins, and often, there was a baby for me to hold and play with. I read parenting guides and magazines cover to cover—not required reading for a kid, […] More »

I: Cassandra Do On August 25, 2003, a transgender woman named Cassandra Do was found dead in her apartment on Gloucester Street in Toronto’s LGBTQ Village. I don’t know much about Cassandra aside from some essential facts: She was 32, she did sex work, she was once in nursing school, she was Vietnamese. In one of […] More »

In honour of Pride Month, we’ve compiled a brief list of LGBTQ artists from across the country who are changing Canada’s arts landscape. Know someone who should be on the list? Tweet us @thismagazine! DAYNA DANGER is a queer, Two-Spirit, Métis/Saulteaux/Polish visual artist based in Montreal. Danger’s medium shifts to capture her ideas, whether that […] More »

On stage, a group of classical musicians dressed in formal evening wear hold their string, brass, and woodwind instruments. Making their final preparations before playing, they check their tuning, adjust their seats, and arrange sheet music on the stands in front of them. A pianist sits to one side, and a drummer near the back. […] More »

Former politician Cheri DiNovo was raised an agnostic atheist and, from an early age, thought religion was silly. “I didn’t understand why people were religious,” she says. “I always wanted to have that conversation, but was embarrassed to ask because I saw that some of the Christians I knew were very smart people who did […] More »