On Nostalgia
What is nostalgia? Is it a growing phenomenon, an increasing trend in our accelerating world? Or has it always been with us, an essential part of the human condition? These are some of the [...]
Bruce Cinnamon
Bruce Cinnamon
Arborescent
Marc Herman Lynch’s debut novel, Arborescent, is a triptych—three distinct novellas connected by setting (a rundown apartment building) and a dark, magical atmosphere. In a wintery Moh’kíns’tsis [...]
The Subtweet
It’s easy to read the two main characters of Vivek Shraya’s The Subtweet as archetypes. On one hand, we have Neela, the capital-A artist who cares more about authenticity than popularity. On the [...]
Advice for Taxidermists and Amateur Beekeepers
Erin Emily Ann Vance’s first novel, Advice for Taxidermists and Amateur Beekeepers, reads like a Wes Anderson movie set in a Robert Kroetsch small town. Clocking in at a brisk 97 pages, the book [...]
Exhibit
Exhibit is a disorienting yet beautiful book. A collage of found poetry assembled from sources as diverse as child psychology textbooks, a Three Stooges autobiography and hours of research in the [...]
Food Was Her Country: The Memoir of a Queer Daughter
Filmmaker and scholar Marusya Bociurkiw’s Food Was Her Country condenses a lifetime into a few hours’ read—reflecting on her life as the queer daughter of immigrant parents, giving readers [...]
Jesus on the Dashboard
Gemma, the teenage anti-heroine of Lisa Murphy-Lamb’s debut novel, belongs in the pantheon of great YA protagonists. Part Holden Caulfield from Catcher in the Rye, part Margaret Simon from Are [...]
Breathe In
Her face adorns a thousand trinkets. Lockets and charms. Fine bone china and votive candles. Paper fans and one-size-fits-all T-shirts. All bear Her revered image—eyes closed, serene and smiling. [...]
MOST READ
MOST READ
The Lesson of Lougheed
For 100 years, between 1905 and 2005, Albertans changed their government only three times (1921, 1935, 1971). The last of these elections, the most portentous, happened 50 years ago this August. Alberta has now changed government twice in the past six years. The next election may see yet another new government—meaning ...
The Assault on Higher Education
The Kenney government proclaimed in fall 2019 that Alberta’s post-secondary institutions were “overly dependent” on government funding—which is an odd thing to say about a public good. Then it declared that the province’s grant to the schools should be reduced by 20 per cent by 2023. The rationale for this ...
Rediscovering a River
The Cree called it Kisiskâciwanisîpiy—the swiftly flowing river. For the Blackfoot, it was omaka-ty—the big river. It starts in the Columbia Icefield, at the toe of the Saskatchewan Glacier, and cuts the province in half as it flows through Banff and Jasper national parks, northeast to Edmonton, then east-by-southeast across the ...