Tima Miroshnichenko via Pexels In 2014, Lettia McNickle showed up for her shift at Madisons New York Grill & Bar in downtown Montreal wearing cornrows. She was sent home by her manager. Her hours were cut, and she was eventually fired. Four years later, the Quebec Human Rights Commission ruled that McNickle had been the […] More »

Wikimedia Commons / James Lee via Pexels / Corrie Maurik Like many, the first time I heard the term “Wasian” was through social media. The Gen Z term for East Asian–white mixed people was passed to me through a white friend who had come across it on TikTok in the summer of 2021. Recently, the […] More »

Photo by DONOT6 As Zhi Jia finished junior high, his father was diagnosed with cancer. The two had only recently moved to Canada from China—just father and son—and were still settling into their new life in Calgary. Jia’s father’s cancer was a rare and often aggressive form called a neuroendocrine carcinoma that occurs in the […] More »

As a half-Pakistani person, I often cozied up on the couch for Bollywood movie nights with my family growing up. These nights were more than a tradition—they were a rite of passage. I’m a fair-skinned South Asian, and this was a way for me to connect to my culture when I didn’t necessarily present as […] More »

The next morning, which is really just hours later, we arrive at Monte’s county hospital room which is located in the prison wing. He is being guarded by two members of the Los Angeles Police Department. Before we enter the room they nonchalantly tell me pieces of my brother’s story: We thought he was on […] More »

I went to church in August. I hadn’t been in 20 years. It was Monday and St. Paul’s Anglican in downtown Halifax was dead quiet. A young woman in burgundy sat at a table near the door. I looped around the pews before asking the question I had come here to ask: “Charles Lawrence is […] More »

When you love something,  you want to know it loves you back. It’s why we look for ourselves in art: We want to see reflections of our struggles acknowledged, and we long to hear stories where we can be heroes. As a Black and Indian child of the 1990s, I was starving to see myself […] More »

Canada, in the eyes of many of its citizens, as well as those living elsewhere, is imagined as a beacon of tolerance and diversity. Seen as an exemplar of human rights, Canada’s national and international reputation rests, in part, on its historical role as the safe haven for the enslaved Black Americans who had fled […] More »

This month, the NDP and Canada achieved a historical first. Jagmeet Singh, former Member of Provincial Parliament in the Ontario legislature was named the eighth leader of the federal NDP. The moment marked a dramatic shift for the party, which has struggled to connect with youth and racialized voters. But it also signifies new possibilities […] More »

James Michael Yeboah isn’t shy about his feelings. “I’m really sensitive. I cry all the time,” he says. That was the inspiration behind his first solo show, When Black Boys Cry. The Toronto-based painter says a lot of the subject matter within his project is about what he saw within himself. “Those ideas of me being […] More »

Margaret Wente is confused about racism. That is the most generous interpretation I can offer for her recent Globe and Mail article, “The good news about racism,” in which she argues that racism is vanishing from society. It is declining at such a rate, in fact, that the recent resurgence of white supremacy is a […] More »