For 120 years, the Canadian government operated a network of Indian Residential Schools that were meant to assimilate young indigenous students into western Canadian culture. Indian agents would take children from their homes as young as two or three and send them to church-run boarding schools where they were punished for speaking their native languages or observing any indigenous traditions,…
Fort Albany, traditionally known as Peetabeck, is a remote First Nation community in Northern Ontario — one of over 600 in Canada. The Cree community, accessible only by air, water and winter road, is located in Treaty 9 territory on the western coast of James Bay about 130 kilometres northwest of Moosonee. Peetabeck is home to many survivors of the notorious St. Anne’s…
Niagara Falls is a tale of two cities. The thriving tourism of the Canadian Niagara Falls lies in stark contrast to the withering American Niagara Falls across the river. On the American side, the median income is $30,000 — 40 percent below national average and one fifth live below the poverty line. The Canadian side sees 12-million visitors each year,…
Voix Maritimes is an homage to people who live along the section of the Saint Lawrence River that stretches through Quebec. The photos were captured during the shooting of a documentary series about aficionados of the river, while travelling from Montreal to Anticosti on a sail boat. This patchwork of portraits displays privileged encounters with fishermen, seamen, craftsmen, lighthouse keepers,…
“Soil made the farmer, the herd the rancher, and so what are we, or rather, who are we?” Often overshadowed, and sometimes visually conflated with its American neighbour to the south, we forget to turn our gaze to the Canadian West. For it was the Canadian West where the last great land rush took place at the turn of the…
“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…