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Back to nature
Personal essays on our relationship with nature, our paradoxes and our cravings for revolution.
When things took a turn for the worse in the summer of 2020, Toronto writer Tayo Bero decided to refresh her life with a new apartment full of plants. As it turned out, they taught her more than she could have anticipated.
To overcome reductive binaries, we need to slow down our thinking. But the world’s urgent problems require quick collective action. Can we learn to embrace nuance without falling into moral paralysis?
In this series of letters for the new year, we asked some of our collaborators to answer the question, “What’s the opposite of burnout for you?” Here, sustainability designer Maria Mariano reflects on finding ways to slow down and reconnect with the present moment.
In this series of letters for the new year, we asked some of our collaborators to answer the question, “What’s the opposite of burnout for you?” Here, Toronto-based radio/podcast producer and artist Aliya Pabani writes about the surprising power of performativity in everyday life.
How can we bring meaningful change to the world? Go to the land, writes Nii Gaani Aki Inini (Leading Earth Man) – Dave Courchene, of the Anishinabe Nation, in this story of the Seven Grandfather Teachings.
Convalescence is the body asserting its own tempo.
In his struggles with major depression, Sam had tried everything: therapy, healthy lifestyle habits, and medication. The only thing that worked was psilocybin — the hallucinogenic compound in magic mushrooms. One problem: except in a handful of cases, this breakthrough therapy is illegal in Canada.
Michel Lemelin tried for a long time to fit into a box that wouldn’t fit—that of the male gender. Fortunately, there was the darkness, the stars, and their infinite possibilities.
A poem by Jean-Christophe Réhel
The existence of “unidentified aerial phenomena” is now widely acknowledged, but few seem to care. For writer Tendisai Cromwell, however, the growing evidence for UFOs is subtly shifting her sense of her place in the world.
For Toronto-based writer Tendisai Cromwell, walking in nature is an act of care and a quiet resistance to the effects of racial trauma.
It’s a 100-year-old formula: the world of advertising exploits nature to sell us polluting cars, explains Guillaume Rivest. So why do we keep buying them?
“Breathing with others is something I miss deeply in a year where breath has become a threat vector.”
Shifting Baseline Syndrome is undermining our ability to recognize dramatic changes in biodiversity and the climate. The solution isn’t quick or easy, but it starts with paying attention.
On the solstice of what seems destined to be a difficult winter, the words of Valérie Lefebvre-Faucher come as a healing balm.
What we can learn from Inuttitut, a language shaped by humility, poetry, and the land.
Shabana Ali on the unequal barriers faced by climbers of colour.
Phillip Dwight Morgan, poet and author of Jamaican descent who lives in Toronto, tells us about his childhood fear of wilderness and his cross-Canada journey by bike.
Since 2016, our collaborator Juliette Leblanc is getting used to country life (and finding out what the little house on the prairie is really like).
“I might never have thought to try my hand if it weren’t for the global pandemic and the food security issues it has brought to the forefront.” ou “By the end of our second day I had finally learned to pick out the morels’ darkened honeycomb-like patterns from the forest floor.”
An essay by Jean-Martin Fortier
“Businesses should be thought of as social tools for people to make a living, build their dreams, and support their families. Not as tools to amass wealth for a select few.”
“Video chat apps seem to offer solace, but have you noticed how there’s really no eye contact on the internet?”
“On instagram I've been watching the spring surge through everyone's feeds, and perhaps like you, I am clinging to nature like a rock—an observable aspect of my world that remains unfazed by the numbers.”
Escaping a wilderness rehab and hitchhiking across a state, Simon fought hard against letting nature change him.
On life, death, and the secret language of houseplants.
Over decades, Silicon Valley tech companies have mastered how to grab our attention. Now they want to protect it.
Between photographer Alexi Hobbs and his grandfather, a bond forged out of stories, feathers, and wood.
A few leftover habits from when the internet was still a skill that could be learned.
When Eric Muszynski agreed to sail across the ocean with two other adventurers, he never anticipated that his biggest challenge would come from inside the boat.
You like these people. How do you talk to them about climate change when they don’t believe in it?
The climate doomers were right. Can we still hope? Author Christina Nichol searches for answers among India’s environmental activists and in her own family history.
Being 30, caught between the biological clock and the urgency of climate change.
Lessons on craftsmanship from a studio dropout
Redefining our traditional sense of self so it doesn’t imprison us.
How disconnecting from technology helped me connect with myself.
Returning to work not long after giving birth to her daughter, writer Erin Sroka reflects on her digitally augmented maternity against the dystopian backdrop of Seattle’s tech prosperity.
Valentine Thomas tells us about how she left her corporate life to live like a local spearfisher in Cape Verde.
Jad Haddad, who grew up in Lebanon during wartime, has long since been attracted to war zones. Today he is the head of an adventure tourism agency, fulfilling his quest for discovery and the unknown differently.
The disconnect between good intentions and useful action has been referred to as the Green Gap. It’s the place where most of us live.
Over chocolate fondue, Dominic and Mariepier take up a new challenge: converting an old delivery truck and living in it. The couple describe how vanlife, that unimpeachable Instagram trend, quickly leads to its own share of contradictions.
The BESIDE cofounder spent the first half of his life in Abitibi; the second, in Montreal. For the longest time, he thought he would eventually need to choose between city and country, but today he's finding ways to make this hybridity work.
Journalist and radio host Matthieu Dugal tells the story of how he became vegan, despite his visceral love for lamb chops.
At 29 years old, Marie-Élaine Guay abandoned the world of advertising to become a horticulturist. This change—from performance to passion—did not happen of a sudden. Gently, it came to infuse each area of her life.
Face à l’imminence d’un effondrement écologique, la solution commence avec les histoires que l’on se crée.
Professional snowboarder, filmmaker, and activist Tamo Campos reflects on recent life-changing events that have both awakened his deepest fears and brought him new perspectives.
Restoring our true ties to nature.
The fantasy and the reality of back-to-basics living.
It was easier to tell someone I was fishing than it was to explain the feeling of limitless, fantastic possibility that swelled inside me when tracing a likely-looking river on a map,
Qu’est-ce qui définit la nature? L’absence d’influence humaine? Ou quelque chose de plus subtil?
Release date: June 7, 2022