Hakapik: (Noun) From the Norwegian hakepigg (Hake : Hook / Pigg :Spike). An instrument used in seal hunting. Canada’s seal hunt has long received a bad rap from outsiders who are disconnected from the North and its culture. Between 2011 to 2016, I followed the lives of Canadian seal hunters in the Magdalen Islands, Quebec, where I reside – as well…
My paternal grandmother lived with diabetes, failing eyesight and decreasing mobility before passing away at the age of 84 in early 2018. In her final years, my parents opted to move her in and become full-time caregivers—an exemplary commitment that they did not hesitate to make. I carried my family’s story with me while on assignment for Photographers Without Borders…
In 2012 Canadian documentary photographer Donald Weber set out to find a new approach to visual storytelling that strayed from the traditional photojournalistic style of his work. What started out as a plan to make just a few images ended up turning into a sprawling work about the legacy of World War II, which was published as War Sand in…
Most days in Aamjiwnaang go by quietly. Workers head to their jobs while kids go to school. Teenagers record songs, letting their younger siblings rule the playground. Meals are cooked and shared. Football championships are lost, baseball games won. Stories are told. Lights go out and dreams takeover until the next day. Years pass. A grandfather turns fifty as his…
A twenty-minute subway trip out of Manhattan lies a neighborhood you won’t find circled on any tourist map. Abandoned buildings dot the landscape and the smog from idling industrial trucks choke out the sun. Floods are frequent here, as the area is thirty feet below sea level and is not connected to the New York sewage system. To its residents,…
At most Oilers’ home games, as people scurry into Rogers Place past chill winds in Edmonton’s downtown core, you can find Blair Gladue as “Mr. Magoo” sporting head to toe custom costumes, face-paint and, always, a drum. Singing, cheering, high-fiving, and posing for the occasional photo, he looks like he could be an employee but Gladue does it strictly for…
Snow collects on the brim of Mike Ranta’s birch bark hat as he watches a whiteout set in on the Chilcotin Highway in northern British Columbia. Built on a bold dream of past success, Ranta is attempting to cross the North American continent, alone, by canoe, one last time. In 2014 Mike Ranta became the first person in history to canoe…
My father died by suicide when I was 12. It had been a year since I’d last seen him, far longer since he’d been a regular presence in my life. A few years prior, when he started missing his weekly visits, my mother had tried to explain depression. By the time I was 11 and he was an in-patient at…
In a part of the world best known as the home of Sidney Crosby, at a narrow gym in an industrial park, a 31-year-old woman powers through a slew of improbable athletic feats. Lindsay Hilton, from Halifax, N.S. was born without hands or arms or legs. What she has, though, is ambition, a passion for CrossFit and rugby and the…