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…
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…