Issue 5: Winter 2025

  • Standing Firm

    “NONE OF MY RACE HAVE, PERHAPS, seen the different phases of one man’s history as I have.”[i] Thus wrote George Copway, near the beginning of his 1847 memoir. Both the book and its author were breaking new ground in the mid-nineteenth century. Copway’s autobiography was the first book published by a Canadian First Nations.[ii] It…

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  • Amália Aloud

    This is a work of creative non-fiction based on an incident that occurred in the early 1960s, shortly after my parents moved from downtown rooming houses (on Oxford Street market and Baldwin Street, respectively) to a flat on Oak Park Avenue in East York. The story is oft told by my mother, Maria do Ceu…

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  • Zeus is Getting Made

    BEFORE THEY KILL HIM, HE WANTS SOME CHICKEN. The entire conversation, thirty-minutes of hell with her mother, boils down to this. Charlotte is on the treadmill when the first call comes in; she ignores it. She is a quarter of the way to 20k and this run, about two hours of her day, is the…

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  • Stargazing

    THE OSTRICH DIED ON A COLD, CLEAR EVENING in late November. It died in the barn, sometime before dinner. My youngest nephew made the important announcement from the doorway of the kitchen, with all the solemnity of a small town crier. “Dead!” He flapped a wet woollen mitten off his left hand. It slid across…

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  • Owner’s Manual for Troubleshooting Love and Grief

    HE MET HER AT THE BUTCHER’S SHOP where she lined up behind him alongside the counter, waiting to pay. “That’s definitely a new one,” she said. “Buying pastry at the meat store?” Cradling his blueberry Danish, Joel wondered if he was being ridiculed. When he turned around, her glossy lips curved into a warm smile.…

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  • The Page Turner

    I WENT TO THE PIANIST’S DEBUT at Franklin Hall, the most prestigious hall in this town. He had recently moved to town, I read in the paper, as an artist-in-residency at the university’s music department which, while small, had a good reputation. Dressed in a tux with an open collar, he strode onto the stage…

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  • He Doesn’t Even Play Water Polo

    I’M SLIDING THE SCALE INTO MY BACKPACK and Kelly is looking at the bag of coke in her hand like it’s a crystal ball when I say, I guess there’s a snowstorm on the forecast, which isn’t remotely funny. I don’t even know why I said it. Kelly peeks at me over the baggie and…

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  • Time Trade

    WE’RE AT A NEAR-EMPTY WINE BAR at Fifty-Second and Tenth. She takes off her hat when she sees me. Her hair’s gotten longer, and the static electricity makes her stray strands fly in wild directions. When I ask how she’s doing, she says, “Beware the Ides of March,” which comes across as rehearsed and very…

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  • Paperweight

    THE WAX HAND ON FIONA’S DESK lies palm up across articles she’s ripped from magazines, leaflets for family days out, and to-do lists without everything ticked off. I’ve noticed that when the pile gets precariously untidy, Fiona bins the papers, and a new pile gradually grows. The fingers are slightly parted and cupped like they’re…

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  • Rimfire

    TOMMY COBBLEDICK GOT A PELLET GUN for his tenth birthday. Danny Robertson got a pellet gun for his tenth birthday. And Patrick Thorpe – whose father owned the biggest pig farm in the county and was elected every four years to a township council seat on those grounds alone – got an honest to god…

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