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

POLITICS / JUNE 2024 Justin Trudeau’s Last Stand In an exclusive interview, a confident prime minister addresses his doubters BY JUSTIN LING Published 6:30, April 10, 2024 Justin Ling speaks to Justin Trudeau in Ottawa.(Photo courtesy of Adam Scotti) Inside the Queen Elizabeth Hotel in Montreal, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is hunkered down with his cabinet for three days of meetings. Built in the postwar boom by the Canadian National Railway as the capstone of the city’s rail station, the hotel has hosted heads of state and world leaders as well as John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s famous bed-in ..read more

As a parent of three children, I have spent nearly two decades reading children’s poetry. So I can say with some confidence that, by and large, the stuff is terrible. Marred by incompetent metre and bad rhymes (when it bothers to rhyme at all), most children’s poetry is disposable, written to fill the space next to an illustration. This is unfortunate. Children react to catchy rhythms, clapping their hands and stamping their feet even if they don’t yet understand the meaning of the words. A physical response to sound can ignite interest in poetry as an art form. It takes a special writer to u ..read more

Almost ten years ago, we were living in Jerusalem, where Jamie was working on a postdoc at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, continuing his PhD research into the role of weapons in civil conflicts, and Sarah was working as a freelance journalist. That’s when we first heard about Rawabi, the first new Palestinian city built in the Israeli-occupied West Bank since the founding of Israel in 1948. Then, it was little more than a big idea still under development. On a drive through the West Bank one morning, on our way to research a story we were writing together about the expansion of the settl ..read more

ARTS & CULTURE / JUNE 2024 The “Multi-Multi-Multi-Million-Dollar” Art Fraud That Shook the World Norval Morrisseau was one of the most famous Indigenous artists anywhere. Then the fakes of his works surfaced—and kept coming BY LUC RINALDI Published 6:30, April 5, 2024 Norval Morrisseau, Androgyny, acrylic on canvas, 1983Images courtesy of the Indigenous Art Collection, Crown–Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs Canada In the spring of 2005, Norval Morrisseau called a meeting to talk about “the fakes.” Picasso, Dalí, Van Gogh—many great artists have dealt with forgeries. Morrisseau ..read more

I’m not sure why I was allowed to see the movie as many times as I did—or at all, really. My parents had strict rules about what was unacceptable for a child of seven or eight to bear witness to: specifically, video games that involved violence, reality shows that involved sex, and MTV music videos that involved both. Despite these content restrictions, it was somehow permissible for me to sit on the living room floor, my mother curled up on the couch, and have Tyler Perry’s agonized, absurdist family dramas beamed directly into my developing prefrontal cortex. I was too young to walk to the ..read more