Theme: Non-Fiction

Non-Fiction

Q&A with Bill Rose

BY NQ

1.Can you tell us more about the Johnny Bower piece? And how did you arrange to meet with Mr Bower? What was that like? In 2011 I found an old…

Non-Fiction

Making Album Rock

BY Matthew Hollett

You can find such surprising and funny things while digging through archives. The Pilote de Terre-Neuve, published in 1869, is full of dollhouse-like illustrations of Newfoundland’s coastline, complete with tiny ships and houses. I also came across a sea captain’s letter to his daughter, in which he describes “seven little gulls recently hatched” that he is attempting to raise.

Non-Fiction

Paying Ode to Funambulists

BY Prajwala Dixit

“Do you remember everything I’ve told you?” I ask my fiancé for the millionth time. We are in the lobby of a Quality Inn near Pearson International. Four floors up, my parents await to meet their daughter and future son-in-law. This is the first time my Indian and Canadian realms will come face to face.

Non-Fiction

The Music Man

BY Christa Shelley

Emerging from the crowd, I see the accordion player sitting on a folding chair. It is planted in a spot of sun on the downtown sidewalk. Following the movement of passersby, his body swivels in his chair, arms flapping. He offers his music and eye contact to every passing pedestrian.

Non-Fiction

Roxanne

BY Ryan Clowe

A woman stands at a gas pump outside Circle K, fueling her black hatchback. I am drawn to her pink zip-up jacket, a bright fashion statement against the dreariness of…

Non-FictionShort

Joey the Carver

BY Renee Fancey

Joey sits in soft focus. Behind him, blue skies and bright murals paint a backdrop easily mistaken as exotic. Festival flags rally. Paving stones undulate drunkenly up the lane. Streetlamps, tagged out to the sun, sleep off their graveyard shifts. A canopy of shadows waves like a palm tree.

Non-FictionEssay

Costume Banks and Conjured Worlds

BY Eva Crocker

As we weave through the racks she tells me the history of specific pieces, like a donated Sherlock Holmes’ style cape and deerstalker hat that was worn during the Boer War. Each costume is a talisman for transformation and picking the right one can help summon a character, conjure a world.

Non-FictionCanada 150

RESURRECTING THE GREAT AUK

BY Drew Brown

The Great Auk got a raw deal. Setting its cloned Razorbill-hybrid progeny down on Funk Island as an act of atonement is a tempting proposition. Easing our collective guilt aside, a resurrected Auk could be an economic boon. Every cove and tickle would put in an ACOA grant to host a penguin hatchery.

Non-FictionCanada 150

The Blizzard Baby

BY Brad Vardy

“I think today’s going to be the day”, came the voice from the top of the stairs.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean that it’s started, and we should be getting ready to head to the hospital soon.”

Followed by, “No panic, it’s just starting.”

Non-FictionCanada 150

Yanksgiving in Newfoundland

BY Emily Deming

“No one insists on the crudité platter every year because they love raw vegetables. We are insisting on our place at the table; on being recognized for what we believe we are within our family, within our group of friends, within our community.”

Non-FictionEssay

Thirteen Ways of Looking at an Iceberg

BY Matthew Hollett

I’VE BEEN READING After Icebergs with a Painter, Rev. Louis L. Noble’s imaginative travelogue from a voyage around Newfoundland in 1859. It’s like following a jet-setting paparazzo’s Instagram – except instead of celebrity photos, it’s full of nineteenth-century prose portraits of icebergs.

Non-FictionHome is Where

The story of a photograph

BY Naomi Niyukuli

“It reminds me of many nights I slept in the forests and I was waiting to die. We had houses, beds, and sheets, but we were unable to have them around us. My family and I had to sleep outside in any weather. In the storm rain, cold, and wind without blankets.”

Non-FictionShort

Writing Wanda Jaynes

BY Bridget Canning

PREVENTATIVE CANCER surgery, Kathy Dunderdale’s twitter account, and mass shootings as regular news: these random happenings came together to shape the idea of The Greatest Hits of Wanda Jaynes. Wanda Janynes’ unlikely heroism and its personal fallout took shape only as I drew connections between those three things.

Non-FictionCanada 150

Seeing Through Glass, Plastic and Ice

BY Matthew Hollett

When I signed up for my first photography class in art school, my dad rummaged around in the basement and placed a heavy leather case in my hands. I unbuckled it to find his old 35mm camera, a Zenit EM. It had an enormous dent above the lens, as if it had deflected a bullet, and its selenium light meter, mysteriously, did not require batteries.