OPINIONS

The Power of Oral Tradition in Kenya’s Gikuyu Tribe This month’s issue had me reflect on the value of stories, lessons, and practices passed down within families and cultures, particularly through women’s conversations. These “wives’ tales” can transcend the passage of time and nurture a legacy of profound, and at ...

How the Internet is lying to you about making your life better. Oftentimes, when misinformation enters the public conversation, it’s on a systemic or platformed scale, be it from the government, fake news sources, or fudged medical or academic resources. We see it in niche communities’ claims about vaccines and ...

My Grandmother, or Why I write My grandmother is at once a beloved and mysterious figure in my life. She’s the sort of person who can keep a secret for a lifetime or share it at the right moment, to everyone’s surprise. Given that she is a Métis woman and ...

Scatter-brained thoughts on our capacity to adore the mundane As someone who has always been pretty sentimental and defensive against change, intense feelings of nostalgia are well known to me. When transitioning into new stages of life, I tend to glance back forlornly at the seemingly perfect bygone things. Nostalgia ...

Remembering, letting go, and moving forward As the leaves on campus gently start to fade into orange, we are reminded of a brand new school year ahead and the end of another summer season. Many of us may feel that time is fleeting, our degree and our youth passing us ...

Exploring popularity, waste, and consumer culture Meet the Labubu. These ultra-trendy monster character keychains created by Kasing Lung are both cute and disturbing. As the hottest item on social media, these blind-box items have been spotted on the bags of Dua Lipa and Rihanna. However, since consumers never know which ...

Who gets a spot in the collective unconscious? /Content Warning: Discussions of racism and homophobia./  Thanks to a series of events involving a broken button maker and my coworker being late, I managed to score myself a free ticket to Vancouver’s outdoor Shakespeare festival, Bard on the Beach. As I ...

Lessons in Guilt from MacKinnon and Foucault Content Warnings:  Mentions of Sexual Assault. Before I begin, I must confess to a handful of biases because to  do otherwise would be irresponsible. I am a survivor of a sexual  assault perpetrated by a young hockey-playing man from  southwestern Ontario and am ...

Reclaiming the culture of cowboyism and revolutionising buckaroos, cowpokes, and Canucks Everybody wants to be a cowboy. The culture of cowboys has become an overwhelmingly prominent trend in popular media over the past decade, with stereotypical western faux prints and cowboy boots dominating the masses. This upper-class phenomenon of ‘playing ...

What are the consequences of what we know? “Can rocks die?” This is the question proposed in the title of an essay by anthropologist Dr. Elizabeth Povinelli of Columbia University. More than one person will have snickered in reading that sentence. If you can conclusively prove otherwise, five Canadian dollars ...