Toronto Journal

If you were asked to name the most famous Canadian authors, who would come to mind? Margaret Attwood, surely. Alice Munro, Leonard Cohen. Mordecai Richler, L. M. Montgomery, Robertson Davies, . . . and probably a handful of others if you were given a moment to think about it. And yet, even if you were given a good hour to concentrate – to name every author you could – I suspect that there would be one name invariably missing from t...

In Thibeault Falls, the Chinese community is small – less than one hundred including newborns – and the circle of women even smaller. These mainly middle-aged wives get together, usually about once a month, to socialize and gossip about everything and nothing: their children, their husbands, their steadfast routines and their constant adjustments to gum san, the gold mountain. However, their conversation always drifts back to the h...

Half an hour. That’s how long Sammy had been seated in the waiting room of Dr. Schiller’s West Side office. Her chair puffed dust as she shifted her weight. The sign on the door reminded No cell phone use. Bored as she was, she didn’t dare touch the periodicals. She could only imagine what a microscope would display: the virulent layer of phlegm, the microbial spray of countless sneezes. Instead, she looked for shapes in the water ...

Twenty years I’d been friends with Bec, but it was Lois and how she’d changed that finally got me to go to Toronto. I’d meant to go see Bec, but life got busy and I kept forgetting to actually set up a visit. My hands were cold as I stepped through the door from airport customs at Pearson, backpack on my shoulder. The first thing I saw was Bec's bright face. Then she was hugging me, and I knew it didn't matter how long it h...

Paul watched Lucky curl up in the open suitcase. She was missing most of her tail. Lost it in a kitchen accident. She knocked a pot off the counter and it landed on her, despite her name. Lucky was now curling up on top of a folded blazer and Paul knew it would not go well for her. Perhaps, Jinx would have been a more apropos name. Lucky was one of three cats that Paul and Hannah owned. She was the only female. Her tortoise shell c...

I heard Lyydia’s laughter long before I saw her face. The morning I boarded the Arcturus, I was struck by the bubbling sound that rose fearlessly above the din of the crowd. I also have to say that it annoyed me to no end. After all the preparations, the tumult of emotions, and the strain of the journey already behind me, I had stumbled into the terminal, close to tears – relieved to have found the right place all by myself, and to...

Otis Jones was prophetic, kinetic, eclectic – one of the more fashionable madmen of the scene – and the only person in my acquaintance who’d published a book of poetry. He was from Bay Roberts, Newfoundland, a wake-and-bake pothead, a wavy-haired giant, a slapdash oddity, and the kind of dude who might be growing a beard or shaving his head or falling in love in a Yukon bookstore. I met him tree-planting in the sundry foughten fiel...

Wakefield Whiteoak ran on and on, faster and faster, till he could run no farther. He did not know why he had suddenly increased his speed. He did not even know why he ran. When, out of breath, he threw himself face down on the new spring sod of the meadow, he completely forgot that he had been running at all, and lay, his cheek pressed against the tender grass, his heart thudding against his ribs, without a thought in his head. He...