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The Peabody and International Emmy Award-winning host of Hip-Hop Evolution, Canadian rapper Shad is something of a hip-hop polymath. Born in Kenya to Rwandan parents and raised in London, Ontario, he holds a master’s degree in liberal studies from Simon Fraser University, is the former host of CBC Radio’s Q, and once beat Drake for … Continue reading Shad: “We really need each other”
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The founder and CEO of the Contentment Foundation, a global organization devoted to “bring[ing] indestructible wellbeing practices into every school around the world,” Daniel Cordaro has spent the last decade of his career studying what it means to “live a flourishing life.” A former faculty member at Yale University and the Director of Wellbeing at … Continue reading Daniel Cordaro: “The knowledge of enough”
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Raised “in the lush rainforest of southern Trinidad,” Antonio Michael Downing’s life was interrupted at age 11 when his caretaker grandmother passed. Uprooted and sent to live in Canada, Downing arrived in northern Ontario in a tiny, frostbitten community with no other Black people besides his Auntie Joan. In Saga Boy: My Life of Blackness … Continue reading Antonio Michael Downing: “The mask is how we unleash [our stories]”
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Cheri DiNovo is no stranger to revolution. At twenty, openly queer, DiNovo was the only woman to sign Canada’s first gay rights manifesto, “We Demand,” in 1971. Thirty years later, as a minister with the United Church of Canada, she would perform Canada’s first legalized same-sex marriage — risking her license in the process. As … Continue reading Cheri DiNovo: “Every revolution seemed impossible until it happened”
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In 2016, freshly laid off from his job, photographer Noah Asanias had a camera, a single lens, and $3,000 in his bank account. Just a few short years earlier, he’d arrived from the Philippines on a student visa and traded his work for studio time. Today, the acclaimed Vancouver-based portrait and fashion photographer has worked … Continue reading Noah Asanias: “Survive the first two years”
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An award-winning photographer based in Houston, TX, Todd Spoth has photographed U.S. presidents, Olympic athletes, and recording artists alike. Known as “Uncle Todd” to more than a few hip-hop artists’ families, Spoth has played golf with rapper Scarface and been doused in slime with NBA All-Star Chris Paul. Todd currently serves on the board of … Continue reading Todd Spoth: “[Photography is] the only class I’ve ever failed in my existence”
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A former travel and culture editor for CNN International, Frances Cha grew up between the United States, Hong Kong, and South Korea. She has written for The Atlantic, The Believer, and the Yonhap News Agency, among others. Her debut novel, If I Had Your Face, follows four young women in Seoul’s underclass, “making their way in a world … Continue reading Frances Cha: “Books were something that consumed my life”
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In 2015, writer and Outside magazine correspondent Eva Holland was forced to confront the question: what happens when the thing you fear the most comes true? The daughter of a mother who lost her own parents young, Holland long feared the same would happen to her. Then, on a camping trip in northwestern British Columbia, she got … Continue reading Eva Holland: “Fear is essential”
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A co-founder of UATÊ // STORIED LEARNING, a vehicle for community-led knowledge mobilization through film and storytelling, Erynne Gilpin is a Victoria-based educator, birth doula, bead worker, and activist. The creator of Indigenous Womxn Climb, she is interested in Indigenous resurgence through “embodied governance, insurgent healing, and land/water-based wellness.” “Knowledge is really interconnected with everything … Continue reading Dr. Erynne Gilpin: “Knowledge is relational”
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Eternity Martis found that as a Black student at a mostly-white university, she learned more about “what someone like me brought out in other people than who I was.” From blackface to racial slurs, she chronicled it all in her debut memoir, They Said This Would Be Fun. A blend of personal stories and in-depth reporting, … Continue reading Eternity Martis: “I had to survive”