Better, not Breaking.

“I’ve been in communities where I open the refrigerator and it’s empty. There’s absolutely nothing”, says Aaju Peter, an Inuit activist. “And there are kids, families in the house going hungry until the hunter brings back the meat.” In the northernmost Canadian communities, children are starved of nutritious food. Costs continue to rise but the average Inuit family makes less…

The fentanyl crisis was responsible for 914 deaths in British Columbia in 2016, an increase of almost 80 per cent over the previous year (510). The deadly drug is 100 time more potent than heroin and is killing addicts and casual users indiscriminately. If not for the volunteers providing services in pop-up tents and trailers there would be bodies lying in the…

In august 2008 Freddy Villanueva, an eighteen-year-old immigrant from Honduras, was shot dead by the police in Montreal-Nord. The following night youth from the borough rioted, something Quebec had never experienced before. Last summer 46-year-old Jean-Pierre Bony died after he was shot with a rubber bullet by police during a drug raid in Montreal North. Today tensions between police and…

“When I think about leaving I feel like I’m walking out on a ceremony that’s not done. I don’t feel right about it.” –Wanbli Mani, Santee Sioux from Nebraska What’s happening at Standing Rock is not a protest. This is not a day-trip march, followed by an evening warm at home. It is not organized by lobby groups or about…

The title of the series “Backra Bluid”, draws from words of both West Indian and Scottish origins.  The term “Backra” is an archaic Caribbean slang of West African origin meaning white master or white person and “Bluid” is the Scotch word for the blood of men or animals as well as kin. As a black child attending a predominantly white…

True North: How did you come up with the concept for Interlove? Colin Boyd Shafer: When I was working on Cosmopolis Toronto, I found myself thinking about other aspects or expressions of diversity – not just what country someone comes from. While photographing Paul from South Africa, he decided to hold his sister’s hand – as she was what connects him…