Welcome To This Issue

In January of this year we lost a good soul. Alister Thomas was a friend, a board member of The New Quarterly, and later, its long-time chair, a writer, and a canoe enthusiast. My memories of Alister seem to coalesce around one word, that of kindness. This may be a much-underrated value these days but I think it’s important to honour what this trait represents: empathy, integrity, generosity of spirit. If we give it the weight it deserves, it allows us to wholly celebrate the true essence of Alister, someone who offered strength in times of uncertainty, comfort in times of stress, and constant encouragement. Last autumn I asked him to send me the piece he’d written about his brother with the intention of publishing it. “Missing and Presumed Drowned” appears here in this issue. We miss you, Alister.

To explore the lives of others is an act of curiosity, of admiration, a chance to understand the world through a complex lens. We can observe others in order to better know ourselves, or to discover something completely unforeseen, so that if done well it can be a philosophical pilgrimage. Such is the case of “After Etty,” where Sadiqa de Meijer has written an essay as an homage, as a celebration, as an inquiry, and all told through the voice of a poet. Here we learn that Etty, is Esther Hillesum, a Dutch Jewish writer of diaries and journals in which she was an observer of the Jewish experience during the Second World War, while considering her own spiritual awakening. “Hillesum was bright and moody and charming and she dreamt of practicing Jungian therapy, of seeing Russia, her mother’s birthplace, and of becoming a novelist—later, she wrote, when I will really write.” In the essay de Meijer explores her own relationship with Etty, beginning when she was a teenager and first read her journals, to the research for this essay which took her to Amsterdam, her own homeland along with that of Etty.

Why does one become enraptured by the lives of others? This is a question I’ve considered as I too have been curious about the ways of women from the past. Is there a mirroring in this process, or is it filling a gap? Or is it recognizing someone who we might have known if we’d ever crossed paths. Bringing to light women who did remarkable things need not be an exercise in our own fallibility, but more like meeting a mentor, someone we might learn from. There is wisdom in the past if we know where to look for it.

Elsewhere in nonfiction, Lorna Crozier writes about the struggle to both capture and protect the memory of her late husband Patrick Lane from being immortalized through poetry. “It is more his story to tell than mine” she writes.
In addition, Kitty Hoffman shares her experiences with the Argentine tango, finding connection between the paradoxes of the dance, sensuality, spiritual yearning and fulfilment.

That we can lose ourselves in the writing of others is also evident in our fiction for this issue. In Margaret McCutcheon’s “Messier Objects” a young woman learns about celestial marvels from an unlikely cabin mate, Mee-Ju Ro explores the modern workplace in “elita,” Lynda Williams considers grief and family relations in “Everything After,” and Laurence Lumsden takes us into the world of activism in Montreal in “Marcus of Montreal.” Ari Asho brings us an exploration of love in “Compliments to Change the Way You Feel About Me,” while Robyn Braun captures some universal truths about warfare in “God’s Kaleidoscope.” Jessica Westhead has a conversation with at a self-serve station in “Love Affair 2000,” Sarah Campbell takes us into the unsettling world of summer camp in “August,” and Rachel Top brings us a story of longing for a mother’s love in “The Baker’s Filia.” Morgan Dennis revisits the mood and preparation for the year 2000 in “A Lament for the End of the World” and David Halliday unravels a tale that starts with a cab ride in “I’m in a Cab.” Andrew Hood gives an account on modern home ownership in “Free, Works Fine,” Linda Clarke brings us an otherworldly nanny in “Wings,” and Odette Auger meshes creativity and abusive relationship in “Underpaint.”

In poetry, Robyn Sarah returns to our pages with an exquisite collection of five poems, “Nothing’s Happening Here,” “Four Cut Sunflowers, One Upside Down,” “Invocation,” “On Reading Hopkins’ My own heart let me have more pity on…,” and “world awaiting war.” In addition we have Bernadette Rule with “Old Boaz Chapel,” Sneha Madhaven-Reese with “Conjunctions,” Noah Cain with “First Melt” and “the same kid,” Devon Rae with “Conversation with her Bodies,” Norm Sibum with “The Oral Tradition,” Misha Solomon with “Yesterday Down at the Canal,” P.W. Jarungpiterah with “Phi Thuk Khun,” Jennifer Cassidy with “I Remember the Tent on the Shore” and “Saturday Is a Green Raccoon,” Chantel Lavoie with “BOB,” “The Frazzle,” and “Burning Bright” Amy Leblanc with “Letter to a Young Arachnid” and Sara Wilson with “Field Mice.”

Sometimes in knowing others, we begin to see ideas that we found hard to articulate, or discover thoughts we hadn’t yet explored. The distance allows us to look afresh. There is a certain curiosity needed to peek into someone else’s way of being. It can feel less isolating— the connections made in the string of humanity are random, yes, and the possibilities too, can be fortuitous.

—Pamela Mulloy