Does a place matter?

by Sharmila Pokharel What I have realized so far is that a place matters, and yet somehow it does not. For me, Rupnagar, where I spent my childhood, was a village of beauty, but some people who live in Rupnagar may not feel the same way I do. During the day, people who had a …

Bike Mayor of Malmo

by Jaymie Heilman For the first four decades of my life, bikes meant nothing but trouble.   My very first bicycle was a bubblegum pink number with chopper handlebars, a glittering red banana seat, and foil streamers. (It was the early 1980s, when sparkles made everything better.) Inherited from my much older, much cooler cousin, …

Kaskatino Pisim

by Ambrose Cardinal Kaskatino Pisim visits her children cooling their beating red sun blisters with her frosty breath. She prepares us for the hardships of those winter months, when our four legged relations go off into the depths of the forest to slumber, only visiting us in the dreamworld. For me Kaskatino Pisim brings more …

The Buffalo at University Station

by Lauren Carter On the second landing of the stairwell at University LRT Station there is a buffalo. It’s part of a mural that extends up and down all seven landings of the stairs. The mural is called “The River” and it was installed in 2017 by four artists: Carla Rae Taylor, Aja Louden, Dana …

Horizons

by Violette St. Clair Inge came from rural Germany, post war rural Germany. Sauer macht lustig rural Germany; a country of dread and drudgery. Crossing the Atlantic, vomiting into buckets, grieving her parents, she had looked towards Canada. She was one of so many. I had seen the pictures as a child. They had entertained …

Of Microaggressions, Small Mercies and Big Miracles

by Muno Osman “Does this bus go to Saint George?” I ask the driver, breathless. “Can you not read the sign?” The driver retorts before closing the bus doors and driving off with me standing there. The busses did have bright orange letters at the front but I missed reading in my panic to make …

Two Worlds

by Sandra Mooney-Ellerbeck It was just after 9:00 p.m., Saturday, May 6, 1967—Nancy pedaled fast while I sat behind on the banana seat of her mustang bike. We were headed back to her house for a sleepover. We were already late. She had been distracted on the way to my house, tried to catch a …

English (Mutilated)

by Orekogbe Moyosoreoluwa I despise English yet it is the only thing I speak, at least a variation of it. In middle school, I learnt English and its silent h. “Repeat after me, honour,” my teacher said and like an offbeat tune in the middle of a chorus, a silent h screamed through my teeth. …

Borderlines, my Early Education

by Anna Mioduchowska A mess of walls, fences, hedges, and lines scratched in the dirt, or traced in air and water covers our planet to delineate property rights. To twist the opening line in Robert Frost’s poem Mending Wall, something there is that compels us to mark the space we’ve claimed for our own, no …

The Water Between

by Laura Manuel Water-faring ghosts lure me in dreams. When I wake, I find myself drawn to the river, that lumbar curve that divides my city into north and south, blending urban with wild. Is this because I sleep on a graveyard of rudders, gunnels, starboards and ports? A century earlier, on the same land …

Little Boys Shop For That Perfect Present

by Lori Kempf Bosko When my boys were young, they started to reach for independence long before I was ready. Kevin had just turned 8 years old when he announced that he wanted to buy Christmas presents for the family—all by himself. Derek, his six-year-old brother, thought that sounded like a great idea and clamored …

Birthmark

by Jennifer Bowering Delisle My father-in-law has a large stain on his forearm—“port-wine,” like a glass tipped over. Not wine but Appleton’s, diet Pepsi, no ice. We say birthmark, as if we are scarred by entering the world. Yet it is more like birth warned of bruises not yet felt—those that would be made by …

First Snows

by Dolly Cepeda Montufar Winter had taken its time making an entrance in Prince Albert, Saskatchewan, late in 2005. I had just moved to Canada that summer and even with my limited English comprehension, I understood my teacher as she conveyed winter in the prairies to be magical. Before moving to Canada, the only snow …

When Books Burn

by Dianne Harke In the early hours of Easter Monday 2007, someone set a fire that destroyed 46,000 books in the school where I had worked for seven years. Forty to fifty firefighters tried to save the books. The fire spread quickly across very flammable ceiling tiles, though, and by the time it was put …

Magic Mushrooms

by Carleen Marie The year was 1975 and I was five years old. We lived in a remote area of northern Saskatchewan near the Delaronde Lake, we simply called Big River. Our life was an immersion in the elements surrounded by the wonders of nature, and for young children and their parents, there was rarely …

True North?

by Angeles Espinaco-Virseda Try it sometime: tell a person from the south side that you live on the north side. After you say it, watch their face. Watch as their expression freezes and they mentally try to place you in the murky, unknown “over there” on the other side of the river. If you talk …

Gary, My Brother

by John Buhler My brother Gary died five years ago, two days before Christmas. He was just sixty years old, and left us a mere two months after receiving a cancer diagnosis. Although he had no spouse or children, he is remembered fondly by the large family that he grew up in. He had studied art; his only legacy …

Erased

by Ashlynn Chand “People have been trying to kill me since I was born, a man tells his son, trying to explain the wisdom of learning a second tongue.” ~ Immigrant Blues, Li-Young Lee Blinding fluorescent lights hung menacingly above the students as I walked in from the harsh cold. Wet snow mixed with dark …