I saw my mom for the first time this summer. Sitting alone in the busy Toronto Pearson Airport, I waited for my flight to Edmonton to join my family on a trip. I was armed with a couple of pencil crayons, a sharpener, and an Above Ground sketchbook bought from[Read More…]
Tag: off the board
Against reducing, reusing, and recycling
As a full-time English Literature student and part-time movie-watcher, one of my greatest pleasures is building a mental web of intertextuality: The way texts are influenced by, adapted from, or allude to previous texts. Canonical works such as the Bible, Greek and Roman classics, and Shakespearean plays have long served[Read More…]
An ode to emails and the archival nature of the inbox
I have often felt as though the diction and formalities of texting culture—or lack thereof—should emulate that of email correspondence. Emails preserve a level of linguistic intentionality that contemporary messaging platforms have largely flattened. My affinity for emails began rather early. At the age of nine or ten, my school[Read More…]
A love letter to ‘Tribune’ haters
Content warning: Mention of The Tribune and its absolutely horrible takes I cannot count on one hand the number of times I’ve mentioned that I’m an editor at The Tribune, only to receive an eyeroll. In fact, there is a Reddit discussion post that affectionately calls our paper the “least[Read More…]
Pics or it didn’t happen
If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound? If I met Timothée Chalamet in Bushwick and didn’t post a selfie of us on Instagram, did I even meet him? Pics or it didn’t happen. At the heart of[Read More…]
The bittersweet reality of homesickness
You just arrived at the airport. It’s snowing white everywhere. Security agents shout at you to go to the right line, and police officers coldly ask your reasons for entering the country. An eternity passes before you are reunited with your suitcases. You just made it back to Montreal. And[Read More…]
When we dance, we make the world a little lighter
The room is already breathing before you are. Bass thunders through your ribs as neon lights beam across moving bodies. By the second song, you are no longer dancing in a crowd so much as being embraced by it. Sweat soaks through your shirt. Hair sticks to your face. Strangers[Read More…]
Love is a verb
Late on a Saturday night of St. Laurent bar-hopping, you walk into the dingy bathroom of Bar Bifteck to find a college-aged stranger kneeling over the toilet. They appear to be alone. You go over and ask if they are okay, offering to hold their hair back or to get[Read More…]
Self-care is the opposite of revolutionary
We’ve heard the lines and seen the videos probably more times than we can count—“Protect your peace,” “choose yourself”, “cut people off that don’t serve you,” and the one that gives me the most pause, “you don’t owe anyone anything.” The latest mental health trend: ‘Radical’ self-care. Originally coined by[Read More…]
My acoustic coup against the classical
I was six years old when I walked into my first violin lesson, and for the twelve years that followed, I stood—posture erect—at dutiful attention to the staid technicalities and smug rectitude of classical music. I was a happy cadet and a relatively successful one, for what it’s worth. For[Read More…]
