THE ISSUE: This summer Montreal Serai focuses on the environment through a variety of viewpoints. Jacqueline Fortson, who has moved to Canada from Mexico, gives us a contemporary photo-essay “Montreal – Nature and the City: What makes Montreal a […]
Bio: Sandra Levy, originally from Montreal, now resides in Victoria, B.C. She studied art at Concordia University, École des Beaux Arts de Montréal and Arizona State University. She also did graduate work in biology at Concordia University. She taught […]
Unpaved paths have been part of human activity for at least 12,000 years, and the histories of roads and cities are deeply linked. Together with waterways, rutways or tracked-roads ( ancient “railways”) were key arteries for commerce and social […]
With apologies to Bill Clinton and Jean Charest The word is in: we are now deep into the world’s Sixth Great Extinction. Over the 543 million years of the Phanerozoic Eon, that vast period in which life made […]
Note: At the bottom of this article you will find a powerful video version, best seen at full screen. When I was first offered to opportunity of moving to Montreal, I deeply questioned myself, not knowing whether I would […]
When I was a boy, my parents often reminded me of the reality of the working class. Its work, the big tasks it accomplished from day to day. Its trade-union action. And its yearning for dignity. For my […]
I – Every Piece of Green on Earth “Everything come up out of ground –language, people, emu, kangaroo, grass. That’s Law.” –Hobbles Danaiyarri, from Yarralin, Northern Territory, Australia* In September 2008, I was attending a conference on urban […]
One does not have to be a militant environmentalist. Neither does one have to be a duck, a penguin or a halibut to feel encrusted, choked and oxygen-less. One needs to be just an engineer and scientist here, in […]
It is perhaps inescapable, my being born and raised in a North American suburb in the latter half of the twentieth century, that my poetry should show some concern with the environmental crisis. However, being poetry, the four poems here […]
[First published in A. Rivista anarchica, anno 40, n.2 (352) aprile 2010, pp. 47-49, Milano, Italia. Translation by Maya Khankhoje] Imperialism is a phenomenon which dates back all the way to antiquity, its epicenter having changed throughout the […]
In 1996, legislation was passed in the state of California that deregulated the production and sale of electric power for the big three big power producers and retailers: San Diego Gas and Electric (SDG&E), Southern California Edison, and Pacific Gas […]
The British, ever adroit in matters related to furry-four footed creatures (except perhaps for the English beaver that disappeared in the 1500s), report that there are forty to sixty thousand urban foxes in England. They’re everywhere. Church lawns. Looking […]
Artist Statement: Singing and songwriting has become an extension of my dreamtime, a way to distil spirit and set free my pain, passions, confusion, solitude, vanity and love. Bio: Louise began singing in Chœur Maha in 1991 and […]
I have a relationship to traffic, similar to the kind of relationship a goldfish has to the water in its bowl. It’s never just about the fish and the water. Rather, it’s an ecology, and the ecology relates to […]
Exactly two decades ago I left the West Island to come and live in the United Kingdom. Like many expatriates, in recent years I have started looking back on the place where I grew up with a certain degree […]
From Rajahs and Yogis to Gandhi and Beyond. Images of India in International Films of the Twentieth Century, by Vijaya Mulay. Seagull Books, 2010, London, New York and Calcutta. [Vijaya Mulay, a.k.a. Akka, or Elder Sister, was born in […]
Soul Mountain, by Gao Xingjian. Harper Perennial, 2001. [NB: The reviewer has chosen to stay attuned to the Chinese style of the original to enable readers to better capture its flavour.] Although I had heard about the controversial Nobel […]
lines for qi baishi (1864-1957) dear qi baishi your neat little cottages worry me a lot are those just vacant places? aren’t folks sleeping inside or waiting for a son to get back with herbs from town? outside […]
FAR AWAY to the south bayous— ruptured oil well tar balls soiling protected wetlands sea sponges crabs, fish, algae and octopus —coral reefs RÍO LAGARTOS thatch-roofed hut with […]
