The worst cocktail you’ll ever taste: My life with ADHD and anxiety

What’s your favourite drink to have at the bar? Maybe you and your colleagues like a nice cold mug of lager or a stout after a hard day’s work in the summer sun. Maybe you prefer to unwind with a nice glass of wine and relax by yourself in a quiet section of the venue. […]

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The degree of separation

For a long time, the topics in the ethos of femininity or fields that women, for the most part, choose to study within have not been taken seriously. The social sciences and humanities are seen this way: dismissed under the assumption that they add less to societies, especially compared to subjects traditionally dominated by men. […]

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Hurricane Faith: Why we are lying, why we are believing

It hadn’t seemed so difficult to parse through the false narratives and fabricated realities before this moment. It hadn’t felt this frictionless, as it appears today, to slip into the fringes and remain deep below. Or we had been familiar enough with the propaganda and the media bias and corporate or political control over rhetoric […]

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The importance of being readers: Why we study literature

There’s something sacred about opening a book, entering a whole new world, and becoming entirely immersed in a story. English classes were always a favourite of mine for this very reason. Although my education is focused on a very different field of study, I think that everyone can benefit from the practice of literary analysis, […]

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Live from Victoria: A concert-reviewing odyssey

Music is filling the summer; the City of Victoria has opened their pop-up venues at Ship Point, Cameron Bandshell, and The Fort Commons, and the regular spots still are keeping busy with live music.  Victoria has so many live music events during the warmer season, most of which are free, that it was possible to […]

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Returning student: On starting over in mid-life

It’s the beginning of September and the leaves fall into a sleepy dance of ballerinas on opioids. Everything on campus looks like a movie set meant to capture the fleeting thrill of back-to-school commercials: instructors with satchels chatting with one another, overfed squirrels darting between golden leaf piles, and undergrads, breathless and excited, clutching their […]

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Shopping alone: On the death of the department store

On each floor of the Hudson’s Bay department store, luxury goods stale under fluorescent light. It prides itself on DKNY and Calvin Klein. It offers Levi’s and Breville and the Wonderbra. They stew in uninhabited air and have mildewed. They wait for buyers who never show. A scuffed white hue, presumably pampered many decades ago, […]

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No books allowed: What libraries face when challenges hit shelves

When it comes to distribution of books, there’s always a question of propriety and the follow-up of censorship. The subsequent challenging, shadow banning, or outright banning of books is most common in school libraries and curriculum-required books for students of high-school age and younger. This problem is most heavily documented south of the border in […]

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The funding desert: How Budget 2025 leaves post-secondary stranded

The provincial government’s Budget 2025 ignores what students are up against. A crisis of funding brought on by international student enrolment caps, increasing numbers of layoffs at post-secondary institutions across BC, and closing campuses have left students floundering in the midst of their education. The future workforce has been decidedly neglected. But this is nothing […]

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The Canadian women’s movement: Where we come from. Where we stand.

Why has society so viciously disadvantaged women? It shouldn’t be a skill-testing question: the answer is patriarchy. Patriarchy is a social system in which men hold primary power and authority in political, social, and economic spheres. It’s not limited to individual relationships—it extends to societal structures, cultural norms, and legal systems that perpetuate male dominance […]

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