Becoming Canadian: “The Ends Of The Earth” Ten years ago, I emigrated to Canada from France. I took an oath. Immigration officers were there to check if we moved our lips. Then we all shook hands and I felt that we had shared something, beyond the administration, immigration quotas, and questionnaires. When I thought of queens, flags and hymns, I…
When I Fell: Victims of Syria’s War On Nov. 2015, 9-year-old Basil Al Riyabi was struck by a landmine that cost him both his legs, his left hand and left eye. “I didn’t know it was a mine, so I started playing with it and it exploded. All my friends died,” said Mohammed, as he sat on his bed at…
The first time I met Colt, he was shooting paper plates with a bow and arrow from horseback at a gallop. Most days after school and helping with chores, Colt takes a BB gun and goes trail riding on his pony, taking potshots at anything that moves. Other times he’ll head out on foot to his treehouse and wait patiently…
Ahmed is the owner of a passport from a country he’s barely visited. The sixth of eight children, he was born to Yemeni parents in Saudi Arabia. In 2015 he fled from Riyad to New York City as an asylum seeker to avoid being deported to Yemen, which is currently embroiled in a deadly civil war. In the summer of…
Janet Murie was just 3-weeks-old when her mom carried her onto a float plane destined for Norway House in Northern Manitoba in 1957. The family was moving north so that her father John Murie could work as an outpost doctor travelling the Eastern Arctic for Canada’s Department of Indian Affairs. Over the course of five years, Dr. Murie would visit…
Myanmar’s Muslim minority, the Rohingya have long been subject to discriminatory policies at the hands of the Buddhist ruling class. In the summer of 2017, Buddhist government forces launched a wave of violence and intimidation against Rohingya in the west of the country, which ultimately triggered an exodus of hundreds of thousands of people.The attacks against the Rohingya have been described…
Last year 4,000 Canadians died as a result of drug overdoses. Behind the staggering numbers are the people – sons, daughters, mothers, fathers, siblings, friends – who, for one reason or another, use drugs. Last fall my Dad died from an overdose. Over the past 10 years or so his alcoholism had become so bad that there wasn’t a time,…
Last summer I abandoned the comfort of clothing for 10 days to bare it all at the Bare Oaks Naturist Park, a naturist community in East Gwillimbury north of Toronto. Readers who are new to nude may benefit from a short history of naturism: the idea was first conceived in 18th century Germany, making its way to pre World War II…
Nicaragua’s popular uprising: Calls for president to resign mount following death of 28 people during anti-government protests Nicaragua’s embattled president is facing pressure to resign after 28 people were killed and more than 120 protestors were jailed in anti-government protests. The hostility began on April 18 when Nicaraguan President and former Sandinista revolutionary leader Daniel Ortega enacted reforms to the…