Yes, it’s a blast from the past! Or if not a blast, maybe a small firecracker? Whose past? My past, obviously: I was Bart Gerrard, one of my noms de plume—the name of a then-forgotten and probably now more-forgotten Canadian newspaper caricaturist of the turn of the century. That’s the turn of the century before […] More »

A new advocacy group for a not-so-new cause (This has been discussed in federal government for at least ten years) has formed to push for gender neutral language in the current version of O Canada. Together, Margaret Atwood Kim Campbell, Vivienne Roy, Sally Goddard and Nancy Ruth have launched Restore Our Anthem.  The group got […] More »

Twice over the endless winter of 2007-08, I finished a pleasant-enough telephone conversation with my mother only to have her call me back a couple of minutes later. “I know what I wanted to tell you,” she said both times, “so-and-so died.” The first unfortunate object of forgotten conversation was a dear old great aunt […] More »

Long before communities existed on Facebook, there were tangible places in a city where people with common interests converged. In a place like Toronto, where communities of different cultural groups and ideas form in often isolated pockets, the struggle to define a common identity among them is as old as the city itself. But part […] More »

The ramshackle A-frame house Al Purdy built still stands by the lake in Ameliasburgh, Ontario. A place “so far from anywhere,” he wrote, “even homing pigeons lost their way.” Inside, it’s nearly as it was when he died 10 years ago. His drawers and cupboards still hold the flotsam and jetsam of a well lived […] More »

Alice Munro, one of the giants of Canada’s literary scene, has always been a tremendously sensitive and humane writer; in turning down yet another nomination for the prestigious Giller Prize, she’s proven to be an equally sensitive and humane cultivator of Canadian writing talent. Having already won the Giller twice—for The Love of a Good […] More »