Brotherhood, no rules
“Brotherhood, no rules” is an excerpt from an upcoming memoir about the author’s journey of gender awakening. By Lys Morton Illustration: Teigan Mudle Humans are inherently social creatures, seeking out groups that cause our mirror neurons to light up like a prairie lightning storm. We strive to see ourselves in others, and to understand our […]
Pandemiversity
by Erinn Sturgeon There is no downplaying the major effect that the Coronavirus pandemic is having on people around the globe, university students included. For those of us who thought we’d be in a classroom knocking off a final exam right about now, the complications have been innumerable: Courses cancelled or transferred online, roommates who […]
Top 10 weird and/or wonderful V.I. Airbnbs
By Sean Enns Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the last decade, you’ll have heard of Airbnb. For that matter, even if you have been living under a rock, you were probably charging people $200/night to share the experience. A pioneer in the sharing economy alongside Uber and Etsy, Airbnb was initially conceived […]
Thankful for wasps
By Margot Fedoruk Kat Shantikat of Gabriola Island lives with her black cat in a quaint house tucked along a network of forest trails. She enjoys daily hikes through the second-growth forest. On one of her walks, she found her first wasp nest. “I notice stuff and pick it up,” she says. Shantikat once saw another artist use wasp nest paper and it never left her. She […]
Wasting not
By Lys Morton Food banks in Canada find themselves playing a numbers game. In March 2019 alone, 2326 food banks across the nation recorded a total of 1,084,386 visits — down marginally from the previous year, but still a staggering statistic. Like other food banks, Nanaimo Loaves and Fishes has struggled to keep up with the demand. Founded in 1996, the organization initially used […]
Transition ambitions
By Patrick Wilson It’s 2020 and society is facing the reality of climate change. The effects can be felt daily around the world, including on Vancouver Island. Rising sea levels, heat waves, and other abnormal weather patterns are predicted by the B.C. government to continue. The outcomes feel closer than the 2050 date given. In […]
Run Maria, Run
By Maria Elsser My mother would get up every morning at 5 a.m. to run 10 kilometres along the sleepy streets of Salt Spring Island before the sun rose. It wasn’t enough that she was raising four wild children, or that she single-handedly ran a three-acre farm. It wasn’t like she had endless time at […]
Living Green on a Budget
By Kristen Bounds It’s no secret that the planet needs and deserves our immediate attention (“climate emergency” was Oxford Dictionary’s word of the year in 2019), but it’s easy to feel helpless with the abundance of depressing information about the environment we receive every day. Many people respond by trying to adopt more sustainable habits […]
Welcome to Utopia
By Kaleigh Studer A drop of water slithers down my spine and into the crevice of my lower back. The brain freeze has worn off from my icy dip. The sun is striking my porcelain skin. I’m riverside in Croatia with Selly, my best friend. I often get jealous of the way the sun’s rays turn her skin […]
V.I. Eyes
By Heather Froese I’ve always been inspired by photography. My earliest inspiration came from my older sister, Elizabeth, who was always taking sneaky candid photos of me before I could see the camera and pull my silliest face to annoy her. But I wasn’t her only subject. Growing up on Vancouver Island also provided her […]