This story was originally published as “From International Student to Popstar” by our friends at The Local. It has been reprinted here with permission. The drive from Hamilton to New York City takes about eight hours, depending on the traffic. Harkirat Sangha has travelled this stretch of highway numerous times, transporting produce and other freight across the Canada–US border in a semi-trailer truck. Always driving solo, he would spend the journey listening to music and observing the changing landscape. Often, he’d compose lyrics and toy with ideas for songs of his own. Music was somethin ..read more

The MacLellans can pinpoint the moment their farm in Kensington, Prince Edward Island, underwent a significant change: spring 2009. That’s when the family tractors were outfitted with GPS. “You can take someone with less experience, throw them in the tractor, and the tractor drives itself,” says Bevin MacLellan. At twenty-four, Bevin is the youngest son of the family and works on the property with his older brother, Rylan. Together, the men will eventually inherit the farm, the ninth generation of the MacLellans to do so. They farm potatoes, barley, and wheat on a three-year crop rotation and ..read more

A s the CEO of the Secwépemcúl’ecw Restoration and Stewardship Society (SRSS), Angela Kane has heard many stories from community members about living through south-central BC’s devastating 2017 Elephant Hill wildfire. But one in particular sticks with her. In the fire’s early days, a grandfather stood in his kitchen watching his granddaughter play in the pool outside; when a wall of fire appeared on the horizon, all he could do was throw his granddaughter in the car and drive away as his house burned. Although the pair were safe, the memory has kept him from returning home. “As a mother mysel ..read more

It’s rare that a week goes by without a new book finding its way onto my overcrowded shelves. This is partly an occupational hazard, as someone who reads and reviews books professionally; they often come to me unbidden, mailed by publicists and publishers. But I’ll admit that it’s also a personal vice. Plucking a book from a little free library or buying one (or two) at my neighbourhood bookstore is a reliable pick-me-up, and like everyone else enduring the present, I am in perpetual need of a little treat to get through the week. Books have always occupied a special status among my possessio ..read more

April 27, 2013. A team of Sherpas was fixing ropes between Camps 2 and 3 on Mount Everest for clients who planned to use them the following day. In a meeting at Camp 2 the previous evening, the clients and Sherpas agreed that nobody would climb near the fixing team. “Fixing ropes is a sensitive and huge task,” Tashi Sherpa, one of the fixers, later told journalist Deepak Adhikari. “So we strictly alerted everyone not to go high up.” At 6,700 metres, they noticed three people climbing toward them. They turned out to be Swiss alpinist Ueli Steck, Italian climber Simone Moro, and British climber ..read more

In the early ’70s, Leonard Cohen was in crisis. His life felt meaningless, although, in theory, it shouldn’t have. He’d spent the past decade doing all the things people were supposed to do in the ’60s. He’d joined shadowy religious orders and dabbled in Eastern mysticism. He’d written a sexy experimental novel that thrilled the young and enraged the establishment. He’d reinvented himself as a singer-songwriter and played to crowds of ecstatic flower children. He’d taken all the drugs, smoked all the cigarettes, slept in all the iconic hotels—the King Edward, the Chelsea, the Chateau Marmont ..read more

When Lateef Johar arrived in Canada nine years ago, he had only a basic command of English and spoke no French. Now thirty-five and based in Toronto, Johar has built up a small community of friends in whose company he can feel at ease. But his social media accounts are frequently subject to trolling. There have been periods over the past nine years when he hasn’t felt safe sleeping in his own bed. Johar grew up in the Pakistani province of Balochistan. His village, a few hours’ drive from Karachi, had a population of a few hundred, and most families engaged in subsistence farming. There was n ..read more

Am I a Canadian writer? One is tempted to say it doesn’t matter. Art is art; it needs no label or brand. You write because you must, not to raise a flag or beat a drum. Alone with yourself, you bare your soul, and that’s who you are. To which I answer: But that is simplistic; you need to be read, you need to be seen, or you don’t exist. You are an unseen star in an unseen galaxy, a hypothesis, a possibility. To elaborate my question, I ask myself: You are a Canadian citizen, a novelist living and recognized in Canada, but are you a Canadian novelist? To which I respond: But what is a Canadian ..read more

Hard Pill to Swallow In “It’s Time for a Birth Control Revolution” (January/February), Nicole Schmidt brings much-needed attention to the lack of options many face when it comes to finding a contraceptive method that doesn’t compromise their mental or physical health. We also can’t forget cost is often a barrier keeping people from accessing birth control, a situation that disproportionately affects lower-income people and recent immigrants. That might help explain why, in recent years, nearly half of all pregnancies in Canada were unplanned. If the federal government indeed moves forward wit ..read more

We’re at this party looking fish-eyed outside, bricked into each other like a neat little house. Someone shudders with news of their ruptured heartbreak. It’s either 2007 or 2012 and I’m carrying the weight of knowing how this feels. But I don’t want to pour myself into another glass only to be told my suffering tastes the same. And now it’s 2022 and we were 21 a long time ago, sucking in as much of the world’s cooked air as we could before it burnt us. I don’t speak to anyone I used to know. But in my mind, they linger, a twist of limbs and bummed smokes, those perfumed bookkeepers I met in ..read more