"Erase history if you dare. She returns on furious wings." It seems an all-too-apt maxim for our times, given the havoc and outright atrocities being committed by leaders around the world - some of them directly beyond our borders. In this collection of vivid, intensely personal poems, Ulrich Wendt distills a lifetime of activism and [...]
Having written several obituaries for family members over the years, I’m not interested in writing my own. I would, though, like to share the following for anyone who takes on the task of writing mine when the day comes. Here, dear family and friends, is what not to say when I die. First and [...]
Movers and Mavericks of Thunder Bay Volume 2 Published by Northern Scribes Collective 2026 Contributors: Elle Andra-Warner, Ross Brewitt, Ron Chepesiuk, Peter Fergus-Moore, William Hryb, Maureen Nadin, Albert Nuttall, Lorna Olson, Margie Taylor and Devon Teeple Softcover 127 pages $26.00 A Review by Michael Sobota When this book launch was announced, I was unaware there [...]
GO FISH They are going in two and three at a time, taking turns, speaking softly and dabbing their eyes with handkerchiefs as they come out. They go together so they won’t have to be alone with her, that’s what Molly thinks. They’ve taken out the bed that was in there and brought in [...]
In August of 1972, President Idi Amin ordered the expulsion of Uganada's Indian minority, giving them 90 days to get out of the country. Many of these were UK citizens, and some 27,000 emigrated to Britain. Of the other refugees who were accounted for, 6,000 came to Canada. Mallee Stanley's debut novel, You Can't Clap [...]
Geography was one of my favourite subjects when I was in high school. I loved poring over maps, thinking about all the strange and exotic places that existed in the world, and wondering about the people who lived there. I never got further than Western Europe, but my forays into Greece, France, Italy and the [...]
Kintsugi, a work of auto-fiction by first-generation Chinese Canadian Ming Louie Stein, takes its title from the Japanese art of repairing broken pottery by mending the cracks with lacquer mixed with gold. It is an apt metaphor for the story of a so-called "worthless" daughter who reclaims her broken self and succeeds in finding new [...]
It Can be Tough to Make, and to Keep, Life-long Friends A few years ago I messaged a long-time friend to say I hadn’t heard from her in a while and that we should have a phone chat sometime. She wrote back that she no longer wanted to be friends: “Like the others you’ve fallen [...]
Just when you think you know pretty much all there is to know about getting old, or older, out comes a book that knocks you on the head with a few more facts about the aging process and gives you hope that maybe you’ll still be able to walk and chew gum well into your sunset [...]
In any collection of short stories there will always be one, maybe two, that will stand out. In Joan Baril’s recent book, The Art of Burglary, she hits it out of the park at least fifty percent of the time, maybe more. Similar to the early Alice Munro collections, these stories follow a particular character, [...]
