Photo by Vince LaConte

In Toronto’s Chinatown, an average morning goes on as usual, with longtime business owners setting up shop and elderly residents chatting loudly in local bakeries. But underneath the mundanity lies change. When onlookers enter the Chinatown landmark, the famous Dragon City Mall, the sight of its empty shops and corridors with the occasional elderly passersby may be a surprise. Dragon City Mall’s plight is representative of the larger trend that Chinatown is facing: one of demographic decline.

According to the 2021 Neighbourhood Profile, the number of ethnically Chinese people living in Chinatown was the lowest it had been in over a decade, dropping by almost 25 percent since 2011. This means that, after years of being a deeply entrenched and treasured enclave in the city’s downtown, the neighbourhood may be on the verge of a major shift. It wouldn’t be the first time.

Chinatown hasn’t always stood where it is today. It used to be located on York Street before growing larger and spreading north to Elizabeth Street. Later, two thirds of it were razed to make way for Nathan Phillips Square and a new City Hall. Chinese Canadian community leader and restaurateur Jean Lumb campaigned to preserve the remaining third of the neighborhood, which eventually moved to where it is today. Many of the old signs of the Chinatown on Elizabeth Street are still there if you look carefully. Lumb would go on to travel to Vancouver and Calgary to aid in efforts to save Chinatowns there too, the only woman organizer to do so.

And now, after surviving a forced relocation to its current home at Dundas Street and Spadina Avenue in the late 1950s and early 1960s, Chinatown’s Chinese population is not a majority in the neighbourhood. While there are a number of reasons for this, the trend is partially due to the decline of new immigrants moving to the area. When many Chinese immigrants moved to Canada in the late 19th century, most were poor workers from the southern Chinese province of Guangdong seeking new opportunities. The picture today is undoubtedly different. Many new immigrants are students or people coming from upper-class backgrounds. The change in demographic wealth also led to more Chinese immigrants favouring suburban towns over downtown enclaves. Although household income is on the rise in Chinatown, some residents see this as a bittersweet outcome.

Donna, the owner of a local salon called Hair Magic Cut located in the ageing Chinatown Centre mall, has operated her shop for 23 years, raising her kids in the neighbourhood. When asked about the statistical change in Chinatown, she said that while she welcomes any new arrivals to the neighbourhood, the hub of Asian culture that the neighbourhood represents is still deeply important to her.

In an herb shop right across from the salon, the owner, Ms. Zhou, gave another perspective on Chinatown’s past and future. “When I first started up shop in Chinatown 20 years ago, the leading population was the Vietnamese. Once they gained wealth they went north to the suburbs. Now it’s the Fujianese population’s turn. The supermarkets you see around here are all owned by them,” she says. The current demographic decline can be seen as a part of Chinatown’s larger story, one of immigration for opportunity before ultimately graduating to what’s often regarded as a higher status in Toronto society. The changing conditions in Chinatown are partially due to the success of the suburban Chinatowns that arose in the ’90s, namely the City of Markham. In contrast to Toronto’s Chinatown, the amount of Markham residents who identified as Chinese in a survey of visible minorities grew by roughly 40 percent throughout the 2010s, while the facilities and restaurants catering to this population are far newer and greater in number.

However, moving from Chinatown to the suburbs has gotten harder. Due to the rising cost of living, and with it, rising rent over the past decade, Ms. Zhou says fewer young people are inclined to run small businesses like hers.

Still, Chinatown is falling behind its suburban counterparts. Although this can be chalked up as the result of the declining Chinese population in the area, the issue runs deeper than a natural pattern of migration. The rising cost of living is making it harder for the neighbourhood to attract young families. Recent threats of gentrification to its long-standing businesses and restaurants worsen the situation.

Community members are still determined to preserve what’s left of Chinatown. Around the same time developers bought and razed the longstanding Chinatown dim sum restaurant Rol San in 2023, a group of organizers formed a land trust to protect the neighbourhood from further gentrification. To improve business and prioritize the neighbourhood’s culture, the Toronto Chinatown Business Improvement Area (CBIA), formed in 2007, hosts many events and festivals. The CBIA’s annual Toronto Chinatown Festival typically draws over 250,000 visitors, according to their website. (CBIA representatives did not respond to This Magazine’s requests for comment.)

It is clear that Chinatown may never return to its previous status as the city’s pre-eminent centre of Chinese culture. Many different groups have come and gone after successfully searching for opportunity and wealth. Still, Chinatown is losing its ability to sustain working-class people seeking opportunity. The decline of the Chinese population is not the cause of the neighbourhood’s decline; it’s a result of gentrification and the rising cost of living. These issues are causing the neighbourhood to lose its accessibility to newcomers.

A common sentiment organizers working to save Chinatown share is their pride and happiness in the neighbourhood; not only for its prime real estate, or convenience, but for its community. Even now, with the emptying malls and a gradual loss of traditional businesses, there is hope that a piece of Chinatown’s unique history and spirit can still be preserved through the change.

Photo Courtesy Studio ZX

The graffiti-covered Van Horne skatepark on the edge of Montreal’s Mile End is usually dotted with boys in beanies and sneakers, launching themselves into the rink with the cracking sound of skateboard wheels hitting concrete. But, every Thursday night for a brief stint during the summer of 2021, they were replaced with a different crowd: femme, queer, and trans people, speeding by on skateboards or rollerskates as their friends cheered them on.

As the sky darkened, more people arrived. They came dressed to impress and eager to be with others who understood queer joy. When Vicky B. Ouellette, a trans woman and community activist, looked down into the skatepark the first time she attended “Tran Horne Take-Over,” she couldn’t hold back tears. “I’d never seen something quite like [it]. It was so precious and so exclusively queer, and it was really important.”

“There’s a lack of understanding that we create these spaces out of necessity, not out of entertainment,” Ouellette explains as she recalls the weekly event, which was intended to unite femme, queer, and trans people during Montreal’s COVID-19 lockdown. However, with each passing week, Ouellette noticed a shift: slowly, more straight, cisgender people who seemed like observers rather than participants started to attend, recording videos and taking photos. By August, the event was shut down. She believes that the police discovered it as a result of these people broadcasting the event online.

Despite knowing that the events broke the city’s stringent rules against gathering at the time, Ouellette also knows they were deeply necessary. She cites this saga as an example of how there is a widespread absence of awareness around the importance of nightlife for queer Montrealers. For many, coming together with their community is more than just a hangout; it’s seeing their self-made family.

Ouellette is the founder of Studio ZX and the president of MTL 24/24’s advisory council, two organizations driving nightlife activism for marginalized communities. To her and many others, the act of nighttime entertainment and gathering is sacred. If an event or venue is expressly queer-friendly, it becomes a haven for people to let loose without the fear of being misgendered, harassed, or othered. However, as city officials place greater scrutiny on the nightlife sector, the underground scenes that the community has built may be pushed further to the fringes.

In April 2024, Montreal’s Commission on Economic and Urban Development and Housing presented its final nightlife policy recommendations in a public assembly meeting. It was a step toward the city’s intention to spend $2.1 million to create a 24-hour nightlife zone, likely in the Latin Quarter, as well as “nocturnal vitality zoning” throughout the city. The details of the latter are still vague, with a sense that this zoning would permit alcohol sales after 3 a.m. (the city’s current cutoff). These developments may pad the city’s bottom line, but the policy lacks clear details on how it will include or protect the main drivers of Montreal’s local nightlife scenes and its most vulnerable populations: queer and racialized artists, patrons, and workers.

For those who are not within these minority groups, it can be difficult to understand the constant feeling of unease and danger in nightlife. When asked if she feels unwelcome in nightlife spaces that are not expressly queer-friendly, Ouellette was quick to answer: “Absolutely. It’s just so easy to be objectified, or fetishized, or harassed, or screamed at, or [looked at] cross-eyed. Stuff like that is so common.”

Maintaining physical safety is also a factor. For racialized people and those who are both queer and racialized, some of the peril in nightlife is not overtly violent, but stems from a sense of otherness in some of the city’s scenes. “Being hit on by cishet men not knowing that I’m trans is a situation that is extremely uncomfortable, and can be dangerous,” Amai Doucet, Studio ZX’s media relations and communities manager, explains.

For too many people, discomfort, and sometimes violence, is the status quo in nightlife. Canada’s Survey of Safety in Public and Private Spaces found that sexual minorities are nearly three times more likely to experience violent victimization and more than twice as likely to experience inappropriate sexual behaviours than heterosexual people. Studies have also shown that racialized women who report violence are often taken less seriously than white women, leaving them at further risk.

The document outlining the city’s most recent recommendations for the nightlife policy includes a section titled Safety & Security, which emphasizes a need to increase funding for NGOs that work to decrease night-based sexual violence and collaboration between these groups, the city, and Quebec’s Ministry of Labour, Employment and Social Solidarity. Although these recommendations are a starting point, they are so general that it is difficult to glean any concrete plans.

Queer and racialized groups, and the threat of danger they face, are mentioned in the published recommendations, but the details are scant. One recommendation is to “support the creation and maintenance of inclusive nighttime community spaces for marginalized communities, such as LGBTQ2+ people, racialized communities, and people with disabilities.” Although marginalized communities and safety issues are both mentioned broadly, the document does not link the two. (This Magazine contacted several city officials who were part of the policy’s creation for comment, but none were willing to speak about the policy directly.)

As Montreal prepares to invest millions into nightlife, there is no better time for the city to improve its relationship with some of its more important players. Montreal cannot continue to undervalue the voices of marginalized groups as it enacts policies that directly affect these communities.

Last year, FANTOM, a non-profit that serves as a voice for queer and racialized people in Montreal nightlife, conducted a survey to assess its community’s needs. By far, the top concerns were safety and security, with 61 percent of queer and 58 percent of racialized surveyees mentioning it in their responses. FANTOM’s co-founder, Oliver Philbin-Briscoe, was pleasantly surprised to see that the new recommendations mentioned safety for marginalized groups at all—it’s the first time the city has done so in writing, as far as he remembers.

FANTOM envisions several projects that may help address queer and racialized people’s safety concerns, like an app to search for, review, and share venue information and the creation of more local, community-owned and operated event spaces. Still, many activists have more expansive ideas that require significant funding, resources, and collaboration with local officials.

For example, Philbin-Briscoe says it’s important to expand public transit hours to match the proposed 24-hour zones, ensuring that after-hours patrons and workers would have affordable and reliable methods to return home safely. This idea is proposed in the document, but Philbin-Briscoe is reluctant to celebrate it as a win before further steps are taken. Ouellette suggests a more qualitative path forward: a widespread education campaign illustrating the realities of marginalized communities.

Another key solution that activists emphasize is well-trained security personnel. Doucet believes that good security must hold a deep understanding of the needs of marginalized communities and be sensitive to the existing tensions between these groups and law enforcement. Several of FANTOM’s survey respondents felt that overly aggressive and poorly trained security are a central problem for marginalized communities in the underground and after-hours nightlife scene. Doucet suggests mandatory training that focuses on harm reduction and de-escalation rather than the use of violence.

Ouellette says that she believes the city’s lack of consideration for marginalized communities is not ill-intentioned, but rather, stems from a lack of knowledge and resources. However, Doucet thinks there is a relatively simple way to address this problem: to put more marginalized people in decision-making roles. “This would make sure we don’t get to a point where we’re asked our opinion after 95 percent of the work is done and most of it can’t even be changed,” she says.

Doucet suggests a council of queer and racialized people that can advocate for themselves in the city’s policymaking, in nightlife and beyond. Sometimes, she says, policymakers may not consider what Black and Brown folks, women, and queer people need because they don’t know their life experiences. That’s why Montreal needs these groups to be involved in making decisions about this city’s future.

Queer and racialized nightlife activists are cautiously optimistic, but wary of what is to come. To ensure that their hope is not misplaced, marginalized people’s concerns, solutions, and voices must be a central and meaningful part of Montreal’s nightlife policy.

Illustration by Olivia Thomson

In 2021, Aaron Beaumont decided it was time to create more queer connections in New Brunswick. While doing their undergrad at St. Thomas University in Fredericton, Beaumont’s work in fat studies led them to learn more about fat activism online. After realizing that most groups were based in the U.S., and the few Canadian groups that existed were decidedly not in New Brunswick, Beaumont took matters into their own hands.

They created QT Fatties, a mostly online, and sometimes in person, community for queer and trans fat folks living in New Brunswick. Four years later, it has transformed into a space Beaumont had been dreaming of: one where trans fat folks across the province can connect.

QT Fatties uses Discord to plan both virtual and physical events geared towards other fat, trans queers. They’ve hosted clothing swaps and art markets, and have had online monthly meetups. They’ve also run mutual aid fundraisers for people in need of gender-affirming care.

Sam Walsh, who does administrative work for the group, explains that their Discord channel is where most of the community gets together. “There’ll be messages in the Discord sometimes like, ‘I want to do this. Anyone available to meet up and we can just hang out?’ Which I think is really awesome. It’s changed from being all on Aaron organizing, to being a little bit more community based.”

Beaumont founded the group in the hopes that more queers could find and help each other navigate being fat and queer in a largely rural province. “There was no activism happening in the province, more specifically, [around] accessibility. By that I mean clothing, gender affirming items, access to healthcare. All of the things that are already hard to access in this province—but you add body size and fatness on and that makes it more challenging,” they explain. “So, I wanted to make some of those things free and supportive and more accessible for folks.”

Walsh also says it was important to have a group based in the Maritimes, since a lot of resources are based on the West Coast. “Having something that’s local, where you’re able to connect with people that are in the Maritimes is really nice because some of the experiences that we’re dealing with are a bit different. Particularly when it comes to the medical system or accessing gender-affirming care.”

Some of these needs, Beaumont explains, stem from much of New Brunswick being not only rural, but also conservative, and generally lower income, especially compared to other provinces. Because of that, they make sure QT Fatties events take place in the province’s three major cities as well as virtually to remain accessible to all who need it.

“Fat activism is really grounded in disability justice. When we think about accessibility, online platforms, chats, whatever it may be, is what’s most accessible to a lot of disabled folks. I’m disabled myself and sometimes, in-person events are just not possible for me. [Online meetings] help in terms of rurality, but also disability accessibility,” Beaumont says.

The feedback QT Fatties has received from those it serves has been positive—but not everyone understands why it needs to exist. Beaumont says that simply means there’s more work to be done.

“There has been general questioning around like, ‘Why do we need a group specifically for fat people?’ Also, people being uncomfortable with the word ‘fat.’ I don’t think that has been a barrier to our events, but that has been things that come up online. Even though we’ve been doing this for four years people are still uncomfortable with just the idea of using the word fat.”

Still, members and organizers of QT Fatties feel grateful for its existence, especially in a politically tense time where we need activism and community more than ever.

Photo Courtesy of Somia Sadiq

For Somia Sadiq, a registered professional planner and founder of Winnipeg-based impact assessment consulting firm Narratives Inc., we don’t tell ourselves stories in order to live. Rather, we live in order to carry them. To pass them along.

The government of Canada’s website defines impact assessment as a tool used by those spearheading major projects, such as mining or dam-building, to determine the effects of their proposed endeavour, whether positive or negative. Sadiq had been working in the field of impact assessment for private and government agencies for 20 years before she found herself jaded by their cold bureaucracy. “One of the key challenges that I was seeing was in how the world of planning approaches works with communities,” she says, talking about the people and lands potentially housing, or impacted by, the projects.

In Sadiq’s view, the traditional way of planning and consultation replicates the extractionary, perfunctory, and rigid currents of the overarching colonial and patriarchal systems within which consulting works. “Something as simple as offering an honorarium to an Elder who has spent time with you, sharing their knowledge, meant 10 hours of conversation with my VP of finance,” she says. She felt she could do things differently, and so eight years ago, she founded Narratives, a consulting firm that focuses on people, the land they live on, and their relationships to it.

Narratives privileges clients’ stories in its creation of psychosocial impact assessment plans, community plans, or land relations plans. They work with communities to establish for the courts that an organization’s project may harm that community’s wellbeing, or they help the community to undertake their own projects, providing them with the tools to represent themselves in court or move through colonial municipal, provincial, or federal systems in a way that empowers them.

Traditional impact assessments in Canada, Sadiq says, focus on a proposed project’s impact on the biophysical environment. Sometimes, it also considers the impact on the human environment, and “it may or may not consider the interface between those,” she explains. “We may not consider the health impacts. It all depends on which province you’re in, the nature of the project, and so on.”

Narratives, meanwhile, takes a holistic approach to impact assessments. The firm works primarily with Indigenous communities neglected by traditional planning by assisting with community planning, impact assessment, landscape design, and research and analysis, providing these as tools that people can implement and benefit from. The firm’s goal is to advance its clients’ goals, whether it be reestablishing identity, reclaiming identity, or reclaiming sovereignty.

Narratives’ work is built on the foundation of what it has learned from the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP), and, according to their site, “the principles of storywork,” which include respect, reciprocity, responsibility, synergy, and holism. This foundation guides how Narratives creates impact assessments. A key to their work is recognizing that identity is tied to the land. Ultimately, Narratives works to achieve its goals through listening, something Sadiq has been doing all her life.

“I’m Punjabi and Kashmiri by background and grew up in a world very rich in storywork,” she says. “We were taught through stories and allegories and folk songs and everything in between. That’s how our parents and grandparents taught us any lessons in life.”

Narratives creates something called an all-encompassing impact assessment plan, which, Sadiq says, is a fancy term for thinking about everything. “When we’re thinking about the impact on people, we need to think about the psychological and sociological impact of not just the project, but historically as well. So if you have a community that has significant layers of trauma that they’ve experienced and you’re adding yet another event to that scale that may amplify that, then it’s going to be a problem.”

Sadiq explains that it can even out the playing field when people are given space to share their stories. “It’s harder for someone to answer the question, how did something impact you? And easier for them to tell you a story about what happened.”

One of Narratives’ clients is the Niiwin Wendaanimok Partnership, a group of four Anishinaabe communities that provides construction contracting and environmental monitoring in Treaty 3 territory. The firm is working on a study compiling historic and current data on land and resource use to guide the Niiwin Wendaanimok’s project of twinning a highway through Manitoba and Ontario. Narratives has worked with the Niiwin Wendaanimok for many projects, both in the background with harmonized impact assessment or with community planning. The Elders of one of the four communities, the Wauzhushk Oniqum Nation, also initiated an investigation into a residential school that was on their reserve. Narratives provided support by offering trauma-informed planning support.

Cultural stories aren’t a tool for Sadiq; rather, they’re alive. “Really making sure that the work that we do is community led means that it’s inherently a really beautiful mechanism for the communities to uphold their ceremonies, do the work in a good way with us, essentially just in the background, facilitating the process and serving as technicians more than anything else,” she says. “Ideally by the end, they’ll feel the pride and they’ll be able to continue to do the work on their own.”

Photo by Timothy Vollmer

“This industry is corrupt,” Lisa Milne, owner of The Royal Theatre in Trail, B.C. (population 7,920), told me, referring to the film exhibition industry in Canada, before I’d even been able to start recording our interview. She was, seemingly, dying to say it.

“The studios don’t listen to us,” she continued. “In the 15 years I’ve been doing this, I’ve had many conversations with [the studios] as high up as I can go, and they basically say, ‘Well, Lisa, that’s the way it is.’ There’s no reason why. There’s no discussion about doing anything different.”

Independent movie theatres in Canada are struggling. It may seem like common sense given streaming convenience, but the problems go much deeper than competition from Netflix. It’s in the frustrating DNA of Canada’s unique, and uniquely constricting, film exhibition ecosystem.

In March, the Network of Independent Canadian Exhibitors (NICE), a new alliance of cinemas, festivals, programmers, and other advocates, released a stunning report on the state of film exhibition in the country. After surveying 67 NICE members across Canada, the report concluded that about 60 percent were operating at a loss at the end of their most recent fiscal year. At a moment when roughly 34 percent of the report’s respondents say their theatre is the only cultural option in their community, the threat of closures is stark. But the story runs deeper: from the domination of Cineplex to changing audience habits, small theatres across Canada are struggling to survive.

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Theatres book studios’ films through distributors, and bookers at those distributors let theatres know if the films are available. It’s at this stage that troubles for indie theatres can start. For owners like Milne, particularly those whose theatres have just a single screen, studio mandates called clean runs present serious problems. This means a theatre must dedicate their screen to only one film, to the exclusion of all others, every single showtime. For a large multiplex with 10 or more screens, dedicating a screen to a single film is no big deal. Theatres with one screen, though, “can’t serve their community the way that they would like to,” says NICE secretary Sonya William.

A recent example, Deadpool & Wolverine, took the problem to new heights for Milne. She says Disney demanded, as is typical, an exclusive run for three weeks, followed by a fourth week that would be determined according to metrics unknown to Milne but communicated via her booker—if it did “well enough,” she would be forced to show it another week. “Not only do they not tell you what [well enough] is, they block you from booking a movie on that held fourth week,” she says.

In a new twist, however, her booker told her that the same would now hold true for a fifth week. Essentially, Disney demanded all future weeks be held for them “until they determine if their film comes off my screen,” Milne says. “I’ve never had this happen.”

While it’s intensified lately, this is a long-standing practice that not only hurts single-screen cinemas, but, as William put it, Canadian culture as a whole, including opportunities for domestic artists. “If a cinema has to show the same film over and over and over again, most likely not a Canadian film, that means there’s not a single showtime that can go to this local filmmaker with a smaller title,” she says. These may not sell as many tickets, but would nevertheless bring out an audience and be able to build recognition and growth.

The other major obstacle for smaller theatres is zoning. In practical terms, Cineplex instructs distributors not to send films to nearby independent theatres until Cineplex is done showing them. Even if the closest Cineplex is several kilometres away, a small theatre may still be considered to be within a Cineplex zone. As a result, local independent theatres can’t show new releases until months later. What may seem like bad programming is, in fact, due to zoning policies, sometimes called the radius clause, that lack transparency but are nevertheless aggressively enforced. It’s not clear how far the radius extends. These are unwritten rules about unseen and always-shifting zone maps that get unilaterally imposed on these theatres by Cineplex and by distributors. The rules can change at any time, and theatre owners don’t have paper trails. Several small theatre owners who spoke to This Magazine drew attention to this problem, and so did NICE.

Cineplex’s role in Canada is, without a doubt, a monopoly. It runs 158 theatres with over 1,630 screens, and it controls approximately 75 percent of domestic box office. By contrast, no one company in the U.S., the UK, or Australia controls more than 30 percent, and they have all had organizations like NICE for many years. William says the length of time it took for NICE to be created signifies just how tough the Canadian indie film scene is. It began in a grassroots way in 2018 via an online discussion board, and the group intensified their efforts during the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. Once they started seriously organizing in 2020, though, Cineplex was squarely in their crosshairs, and zoning is a key reason—even though it’s no longer necessary.

Zones originated with the production of 35 millimetre film prints, which were expensive and resource-heavy, and were introduced as a way to control production and maintain competition between cinemas within a geographic region. Two things have happened: digital prints negate most of the practical challenges, and Cineplex came to completely dominate the theatrical landscape, which, William told me, “really means that the competition originally suggested with the zoning rule is now gone.” Kiana Reeves, manager at The Vic Theatre in Victoria, B.C., says that because of the radius clause, they would never know week-to-week what they’d be able to show. The uncertainty can cause distrust from customers, who are left unsure of what the theatre can or will offer. Instead, it’s always promising an amorphous “coming soon.” As a result, she says, “by the time we do get it, it might be six weeks later, and everyone that meant to see it already has.”

Fatima Allie Dobrowolski, owner of the Plaza Theatre in Calgary, has the same problem. To the confusion of many at the time, she purchased the Plaza in 2021 during lockdowns, after scrolling on Instagram while in London, England and seeing it was for sale. She became determined to make sure the space would continue to exist as intended, confident that theatres would reopen and thrive again. One first step, after admitting to some naïveté, was confronting the radius clause. She built a cafe in the theatre, so the establishment doesn’t have to rely on selling tickets. While the Plaza does have many loyal customers who prefer to watch movies in the historic and newly renovated space, it still bewilders Dobrowolski “why there isn’t room for Cineplex and this little independent with one screen to also show [a film].”

Dobrowolski’s sentiment is widespread. “You’re not going to find anyone who works on this level of cinema who has much of a kind word to say about how we are all waiting in line behind them and how we’re treated as a result,” Scott Hamilton, programmer at The Broadway Theatre in Saskatoon, says. Many referred to Cineplex as a “bully,” strong-arming audiences and smaller theatres alike just because they can. In early 2023, an episode of Canadaland “Commons” featured an executive from a movie distribution company who commented anonymously about how Cineplex exerts its power, stating, “because of Cineplex’s enormous market share, no independent film distribution company can afford to do anything that Cineplex might perceive as going against its interests” out of fear that Cineplex would decide to simply stop screening that distributor’s films, a risk these companies cannot take.

Cineplex refused This Magazine’s request for an interview, and did not speak to the zoning or exclusivity policies. In a statement to This Magazine, Cineplex’s vice president of communications Michelle Saba said: “Cineplex does not own the rights to the movies that appear on our screens – we license them from distributors to play in our theatres. It is up to film distributors to decide where they play their films.” According to NICE and theatre owners, this is the company’s typical line of defence: putting blame on the distributors, while obfuscating the reality that the company’s market dominance essentially means that the distributors have no choice but to play by their rules.

Some theatres have resolved to work around the issue by almost entirely avoiding new releases. Hamilton told me about their chaotic programming, as the space also regularly hosts music and other events, which means “I am never able to offer an entire week’s run unbroken to any title no matter what the title is.” Instead, they show all kinds of older or repertory films, and the diversity of options seems to be working. “Our film numbers are actually going up,” he says, “and we’re doing that with less screening time, and that’s from more dynamic programming.” This means selecting unexpected films and turning them into an event worth leaving the house for—just one way small theatres are getting creative to try to survive.

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It’s Friday night, and you want to relax after a tough week with a movie—are you going to the theatre, or staying in the comfort of your own living room? Debates about theatres have tended to centre on the threat posed by streaming. Surprisingly, every theatre owner I spoke to says this is hardly their main concern, and a problem somewhat straightforwardly answered through better programming.

For Hamilton, even keeping his loyal audience coming back is a challenge. Like others, he’s doing this by eventizing screenings like never before—coming up with added value to turn the movie into an event, as in the case of always-raucous The Rocky Horror Picture Show screenings. Other strategies programmers use include inviting filmmakers, creating a specialty cocktail inspired by the film, or in a recent example to accompany a screening of Napoleon Dynamite, selling fresh tater tots.

Corinne Lea, owner of the Rio Theatre in Vancouver, acknowledges that at the very least, “the one byproduct that’s been good is that Cineplex has kind of forced us to be really creative.”

Eventizing, alongside expanding how we think of theatre spaces, has come naturally to some and less so to others. “We’re a very busy rental hall: weddings, live events, we’ve done wakes,” Hamilton says. “Other people are [becoming] multi-use venues by way of trying to stay open, and we were doing this before we had to.” That scrappiness and community spirit is a common characteristic, though. “It’s the volunteers and the patrons who come through when we need them,” Reeves says about the Vic diehards, “helping me paint, giving us supplies. They feel a real ownership over the space.”

Still, it’s a struggle to make ends meet. So what’s the solution? NICE and theatre owners have advocated for increases in public funding for small theatres. But even this would be welcome if insufficient, many theatre owners say, a short term band-aid for a long-term problem. Instead, they argued, governments must get more aggressive. “The government is the one that needs to stop Cineplex,” Lea says. “You can’t expect a for-profit monopoly to police themselves; you need government regulations in place.”

Unfortunately, the government thus far seems unwilling. Lea says the Rio went to the Competition Bureau, who told her they “don’t see an issue here,” in her words, and dismissed the case. In a statement, Sarah Brown, the Bureau’s senior communications advisor, says: “As the Bureau is obligated by law to conduct its work confidentially, it would be inappropriate to comment on specific issues in the marketplace. I am also unable confirm [sic] whether or not we are or will be investigating this matter or to speculate whether the conduct you described contravenes the Competition Act.”

William points out that the impact of this apparent governmental passivity is especially harsh for rural communities, whose theatres are nevertheless beholden to the same rules as those in cities. “What really breaks my heart,” she says, “is we will probably see closures the most in the rural area cinemas and the communities who really need these places”— not only to see movies, but as multi-use community spaces and cultural hubs. Not having the ability to compete means indie theatres may start disappearing at an alarming rate, leaving cultural gaps in the places they used to call home.

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Smaller theatres, of course, will keep up the pressure, with a commitment to meet the moment. While the specifics vary somewhat according to region (Benjamin Pelletier, programmer at Cinéma Moderne in Montreal, laments that few distributors in North America provide French subtitles, limiting their offerings, while B.C. theatres have been battling for fewer restrictions on serving liquor), there is consensus that things must evolve. “I have to feel like we’re doing something that’s helping grow the community,” Hamilton says, “or else I wouldn’t be interested in doing this. It’s too much stress.”

“Imagine there’s no independent theatres left, and there’s only the monopolies, what does that look like? How is that going to change film?” Lea asks, noting how industrial norms impact the medium itself. Milne, the Royal owner, puts it even more bluntly. “What hurts me as a human and as a business is not being able to cater to everybody in my community, how I know that they deserve to be catered to,” she says. “We need help fixing this broken system.”

Photo courtesy Rana Abdulla

Razan Samara is a longtime Palestinian activist. She’s volunteered with the Toronto chapter of the Palestinian Youth Movement. She’s made banners and fundraised for Palestinians in the homelands. But in 2021, when Palestinians were expelled from their homes in Silwan and Sheikh Jarrah, she began to feel that she needed to do more for her community. As a way to cope with the expulsion of her people and reconnect with her ancestral land, Samara started holding tatreez, or embroidery, circles with her mom.

Their circles are held at a cafe in Mississauga and include 15 to 20 people, usually from Palestinian and Arab diaspora, as well as a few urban Indigenous people. Sometimes people bring their relatives, but often they are alone, sitting next to a stranger with the knowledge that they, too, have been displaced from their homeland.

“So suddenly we’re back to our villages,” Samara says. She opens each tatreez circle by tossing a thread ball while everyone in the circle names the places they hail from. As they do so, they hold onto a section of the thread and then toss the ball to the next person, which forms a web. By tossing the ball and speaking their truth, grief, and hopes, the thread connects everyone both physically and emotionally.

Samara says tatreez has always been a part of her household as an aesthetic article. But it was more recently that she learned about its historical significance. “The tatreez patterns are so rooted in the landscape and architecture of Palestine; and having been displaced from that, it was a way of being one with [the land].”

The 3,000-year-old art form and its current resurgence represents Palestinian women’s defiance of their oppressors. Palestinian women weaved tatreez to archive the story of Palestine through displacement dating back to the 1948 Nakba (the catastrophe) and 1967 Naksa (the setback), times when Israel forcibly took over Palestinian territories and expelled over 750,000 Palestinians from their lands. The tatreez thobes, or dresses, following that era, notably after the First Intifada, a six-year Palestinian uprising from 1987 to 1993, depict Palestinian flags, the Qubbat aṣ–Ṣaḵra (Dome of the Rock), doves, rifles, and other motifs. Embroidery artists also hide secrets in tiny stitches depicting trees and birds, at times appearing in clusters of fives and sevens to ward off the evil eye.

Palestinian embroiderers in the diaspora in Canada, in refugee camps in Lebanon, and under Israeli military occupation in Palestine are constantly adding to their motifs. The triangle, the cypress tree, and the kite are now common alongside the watermelon slice and the fishnet pattern.

Rana Abdulla, founder of the Canadian Palestinian Association of Manitoba, collects vintage tatreez dresses. Earlier this year, her collection was displayed at the Canadian Museum for Human Rights to commemorate the Palestinian lives lost during ongoing Israeli atrocities in Gaza. As of publication, that number stands at over 43,391. Abdulla says tatreez is nuanced, as it preserves the story of the artist. “It is a form of resistance and the story of each dress is a story of each woman. The colours of the embroidery express the national allegiance as Palestinians and are attributable to each village in Palestine,” she says. In Tulkarm, the town her family is from, the tatreez is rich with pomegranates and leaves embroidered on white fabric.

Tatreez, Samara says, is a living document that archives what the Palestinian people have endured and continue to withstand in their anticipation of a liberated Palestine.

“We’re sitting together and having very open and candid conversations about the occupation and exile. As we tatreez together, we are connecting with it as a practice, creating a pathway back and thinking about the future—in a liberated Palestine where we would invite our friends and allies to our houses for tea.”

With rampant censorship on the expression of Palestinian identity in North America, Samara said that there’s a sense of pride attached to wearing a Palestinian tatreez thobe in a very explicit way. “Every single stitch is in defiance to whatever false narratives that may exist.”

Photo courtesy Free Palestine Halifax

Yara Jamal rarely heard anyone mention Palestine in Halifax, and it made her feel lonely. “Being Palestinian is such a controversial thing,” she says. “I felt like there was genuinely no representation of Palestine or presence of Palestine in the Maritimes at all.”

Jamal was born and raised in Kuwait and is a first-generation Canadian who works as a journalist covering Palestine and the Middle East. She’s lived in Halifax since 2017, but years passed before she found a community who cared about her people.

But then, in 2020, Jamal met Katerina Nikas. Nikas had printed dozens of stickers featuring art by Montreal-based street artist Zola and Kevin Yuen Kit Lo, depicting a person wrapped in a keffiyeh with the words “Settlers Fuck Off” in bold print, and plastered them around town. The stickers quickly caught Jamal’s attention, and soon the two were covering the walls of the city together.

For Nikas, the story of Palestine was relatively new. Born in Canada to Greek immigrant parents, she was aware of what had been happening in Palestine but learned more about the history from a Palestinian friend. In 2018, Nikas joined her on a trip to the West Bank to visit her family. “I left feeling the most heavy hearted I had felt in my whole life,” she says, describing intimidation by soldiers and the constant need to stay vigilant. Upon her return, Nikas quickly found herself compelled to do something. “I think when you read about it, it’s very different. Sometimes you can become desensitized in a way. But when you see it, it’s much more real. When I got back home, I just couldn’t remain silent,” she explains.

The two were onto something, but couldn’t yet know how meaningful their actions would prove to be—or that they’d be able to provide a sense of belonging where one was sorely lacking.

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Anti-Palestinian racism is a problem in Canada, and likely a much bigger one than anyone realizes. In a (non-exhaustive) 2022 report trying to get a sense of the issue, Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East (CJPME) found over 500 examples of it in written online content alone, mostly from non-profit organizations and right-leaning media outlets. Yet anti-Palestinian racism is not recognized by the federal government, which the CJPME says is contributing to Palestinian erasure. The Arab Canadian Lawyers Association says institutions in Canada are either not acknowledging this form of racism, framing it as a political issue, or lumping it in with Islamophobia. Ignorance at the institutional level is contributing to daily experiences of racism and othering for Palestinian Canadians, leaving them feeling isolated, much like Jamal.

However, protesters for the Palestinian cause are working to make sure people feel supported. They’ve made themselves heard by taking over campuses to speak out against Canada’s complicity in the genocide; they flood the streets from coast to coast in regular weekend protests.

Part of what makes protests so effective has always been art. Right now, street art is one of what feels like few things validating Palestinians in large and small communities alike in a time when they may feel alone and threatened. It’s also morphing into bigger actions providing more tangible support.

For the past year, people in Saskatoon have shown unwavering commitment to Palestinian freedom through weekly rallies. Attendees bring posters and banners, and wear their prolific buttons. People of all ages and backgrounds come with their placards and signs calling for action. The Saskatoon chapter of the CJPME formed over two years ago, and they say they’ve seen a significant increase in community support as rally attendance grows. They’ve collaborated with other groups on high visibility banner drops over freeways, calling for solidarity with Palestine. Group members note that these banners usually only last a few hours at most before they are removed, but feel they still bring awareness to their city.

Said Abdelhadi is a member of the CJPME – Saskatoon Chapter and a Palestinian who has lived in Saskatoon for the last 11 years with his wife and son. He loves it there and explains that though the Palestinian community in Saskatoon is small, they appreciate the group’s work. “We’re trying to change things around the city…it’s all about education,” Abdelhadi explains.

Group members say support is growing each week. The chapter is inspiring its neighbours to speak out. A local mom and her children were writing messages of support for Palestine with chalk on the sidewalk in front of their house when an angry woman washed it away. She accused the homeowner of sharing messages of hate despite it being quite the opposite. The homeowner continued to chalk the sidewalks in front of her house and has even added a small basket of chalk for others to contribute.

The Saskatoon Chapter of the CJPME has also hosted film nights and a play about Rachel Corrie, a young American woman who was run over by an Israeli bulldozer as she protected Palestinian houses from demolition in 2003.They have not, however, received support from their local Members of Parliament, noting they have consistently denied their requests to meet. They addressed a petition with over 2,000 signatures to Premier Scott Moe, and did not receive any response or acknowledgment. (Moe did not respond to This Magazine’s request for comment.) Yet the group is not discouraged, and they don’t plan to slow down. Neither do others like them—and their actions are making powerful change.

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A mural reading Palestine Libre has stretched over Park Avenue in Montreal for a decade. In larger cities, street art blends into the background. But in smaller cities and towns, where political actions and diasporas are smaller, street art affirming Palestinian life and resistance can send an even more powerful message. These visual displays of solidarity are critical. Street art is a reflection of the pulse of a city. It communicates what’s important, what drives people, what’s just under the surface. Its messages confront us. Sometimes they force a reaction where we didn’t expect one. Street art is a form of empowerment; it conveys knowledge without discriminating. It’s also a form of protest.

In Halifax, what started with just two people stickering, postering, and chalking the streets is now a movement of over 10,000 Instagram followers and over 250 regular supporters attending rallies, marches, vigils, and webinars. Jamal and Nikas founded Free Palestine Halifax in 2020 and have been working tirelessly since. Jamal essentially created the community she, and so many others, have always needed. “We started our organization to create a safe space for the community and to start the conversation about Palestine and educate the public,” she says. Jamal recalls that not long ago, she and Nikas stood out wearing keffiyehs around town, but now it’s common. She says this movement has brought her a sense of peace and she no longer feels alone.

Free Palestine Halifax is a grassroots movement, using street art to bring awareness to the Palestinian genocide and what has been happening in the region since 1948, when Palestinians were first expelled from their lands. Nikas and Jamal have spent countless hours walking the city, often through the night, spray painting walls, postering, chalking sidewalks, and stickering posts. They’ve created banners to drop in high visibility areas and developed pamphlets to leave on cars and in mailboxes.

In a city like Halifax, street art can be jarring. And that is exactly the point. Without the marks they leave on the city, they wouldn’t have been able to make such a strong impact. “Art plays a huge role,” Jamal says. “That’s how we got our support.”

The group has encountered some resistance from local businesses and the odd resident. They say they’ve been physically assaulted and continue to receive death threats since October 7, 2023. This has not deterred them, though. Community support helps. So does collaborating with other communities, like the local Indigenous people who were some of the first to show their solidarity.

Palestinians, and the Middle Eastern community in general, have welcomed the art around the city and the movement as a whole. Nikas recalls a vigil they held for Shireen Abu Akleh, the beloved Palestinian American journalist who was killed in 2022 while on the job. “This Palestinian girl came up to us, and she’s like, ‘I just didn’t realize like how much I needed this.’”

Street art is special because of its impermanence. It reflects a specific moment in time, and then, like the moment, it vanishes. Street art about Palestine can offer a small comfort to Palestinians, and for the rest of us, it’s a wake-up call. It’s incumbent on us, the viewer, to take lasting action.

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Earlier this year in Vancouver, I was waiting for the bus when I noticed small blue printing on the plexiglass of the shelter that stated, “Free Palestine, Free Congo, Free Sudan.” Simple. Subtle. Visible. And I couldn’t just keep scrolling past. Instead, I was forced to stop and confront my own ideas about freedom and collective liberation. Street art is there whether you want to see it or not.

These installations offer viewers a moment to pause, reflect, and educate ourselves on the gravity of what’s been happening. They make me feel hopeful about the power of even the smallest action. Free Palestine Halifax started with a sticker. Now it’s thousands of people strong, and it’s helping people on a collective and individual scale. Street art about Palestine is more than a moment of resistance; it’s offering healing and ways supporters can take actionable steps, too.

In 2021, Jamal and Nikas were chalking some statistics in downtown Halifax about civilian casualties in Palestine. They caught the attention of a woman passing by who knew nothing about what was happening there. Curious, she asked more, and the two explained. Moved, she laid down a rose she was holding on the chalked statistics. “We will never forget that,” Jamal says.

It’s moments like this that drive Jamal and Nikas to continue to spread the word on Palestinian resistance in the Maritimes. “Being ignorant,” Jamal says, “is one of the most dangerous things a human being could be.”

I am a professional writer and spoken word artist. I’ve been sharing my work—and making space for other artists to create and share their work—in Toronto for nearly 20 years. I am of East African descent, with a heritage and history rooted in oral traditions. Toronto is where I was born, and it’s where I call home.

While I’ve written five poetry books, my greatest “publication” to date would have to be my poem, “Song of Sheba,” which was featured on Toronto Transit Commission vehicles alongside such poets as Toronto’s Poet Laureate, legend Lillian Allen. I am who I am because of Black creators who built pathways for the discovery and claiming of my voice. I asked Lillian earlier this year: What am I living for, but to see artists thrive in our city, be given the space to continue our demanding and necessary work? A poem is a verdict, a political act.

On the subway, I see my poem next to a life insurance ad. But no one is reading. I get it; we are all busy, bombarded with information overload. And poems are difficult to read, even when they’re short. “Song of Sheba” is about war and violence in the East African context. A hard-to-absorb poem, perhaps, when life is already hard, maybe even terrifying, and frankly you just need to get from point A to point B because you’re tired.

Meanwhile, artists like myself are being pushed to the margins, and don’t know where to go: how to get from A to B. Whether to flee the city or stay and fight. For Black artists specifically, the challenges of a fluctuating income and an always-worsening housing crisis are compounded by pervasive anti-Black racism, which makes it a struggle to find a place to call home both literally and in the art world. The city needs a strategy to ensure we can access housing—and keep making art.

I don’t see myself being able to live in Toronto securely or long term. Budgeting doesn’t help when nothing is affordable. I entertain the idea of living elsewhere every single day. Of saving money for travel. I fear where Toronto is going and that I will have to go, too, leaving the bulk of my kin behind. The crux is that staying and leaving both feel risky—and somewhat punishing.

Earlier this year, I applied to a housing initiative (a joint effort of Blackhurst Cultural Centre and Westbank Corporation) with 12 units reserved for artists of African and/ or Caribbean descent in Toronto. I felt I had another chance at making a life here. A few mentors read my application, complimenting me on my accolades. I felt the heavy cloud of the contradictory phrase Toronto housing lift.

My application didn’t even make it to the interview stage. Perhaps to be expected; there is so much Black talent in the city and not enough space. The question is, who gets to decide on the contours of that space? Who gets to choose the Black artists worthy of subsidized housing—and what would it mean to “strengthen” my application, should a similar opportunity later arise? I am hoping it does: a dozen housing units for Black artists in a city of three million is direly inadequate.

The lack of artist housing in Toronto is, of course, part of the larger housing crisis—the city ranked 11th on a recent global housing unaffordability list. I know several people, from artists to teachers to doctors, leaving the city for sanity’s sake. Some have been renovicted and left with no other choice.

More Torontonians need to admit that our rental rates amount to robbery. Prices are oppressive and the poor are being removed from belonging right before our eyes. Meanwhile, the city is full of empty condos—an injustice the mayor should be ashamed of.

In the U.S., Elaine Brown, former chair of the Black Panther Party and the only woman to hold that position, is one beacon of light. At age 81, she is on a mission to create affordable housing in West Oakland, California for low-income Black folks. Her 79-unit housing project is called The Black Panther. Her reason for building, she told The Guardian, is simple: “I want us, Black people, to have economic power.”

We need to demand that politicians move tangible resources into Black communities in a public and transparent way. Toronto could learn from Oakland, and the revolutionary tenets of the Panthers, which included affordable housing and breakfast programs for underserved kids. In other words, looking at the roots of the problem, and considering possible solutions rooted in the politics of who has a right to a roof. 

While artist grants, including some for Black artists, do exist in Canada, we can’t rely on them to make ends meet in a city like Toronto—let alone coordinate the time, space, and energy to make things of lasting artistic and cultural value. Grants should account for the reality of inflation, the fact that most artists can work and gig incessantly and still not have enough for a rainy day, let alone retirement. Grants should counteract the need to turn to other work to earn a living. But without family support, this is wishful thinking.

And without access to safe and affordable housing, creating is impossible. For this reason, we’ll likely see artists leaving the city in droves. A 2023 Toronto Arts Council report noted about 26 percent of artists the Council surveyed who hadn’t moved in the past three years were considering leaving their homes because of financial constraints. I can only imagine what this means for the city’s Black artists. Rather, I imagine what it removes. A lack of housing for Black artists results in erasure: nullification of our efforts to make art meant to change minds and even lives. A missed opportunity to create spaces for Black creators to feel safe, supported, and empowered to self-advocate. Our lives matter, and so does leaving behind an archive of works future Black artists can learn from. We need housing that can preserve, expand, and protect the Black arts community, and artists for whom the frequency of the city or their particular neighbourhood is central to their output. To prioritize us in the way that’s needed, and begin to correct the current situation, all levels of government need to work together to be sure we are all safely housed. Otherwise, our future in Toronto will be inevitably dim.

Ultimately, I refuse erasure the same way I refuse to leave the city. Because artists are the soul of this city. Perhaps all cities. But Toronto is home to some of the best artists in the world. To leave Toronto would be to leave behind my soul.

Staying here isn’t my final answer, but I’d like it to be. I wanted this to be a love (not goodbye) letter to artists. Now, I am deliberately trying to leave it incomplete. I don’t want to turn the page on this city just yet.

That said, if you’ve seen my poem on the Toronto subway, take its lines in memory of me. Of Toronto artists who tried to make their mark and move the culture, hoping to survive. Some of us will not. In the end, the artist exists diffusely, but ideas need a place to grow. Being able to thrive in Toronto as a creative is a dream I hope I don’t have to shelve away—nor my own future books, for lack of a room of my own in which to realize them.

Photo courtesy Levant (not) Pizza

When Samer Alghosain first immigrated to the U.S. with his family in 1999, a tradition was born that paved his way to becoming a restaurateur. Every Friday, he and his family would pile dishes on the table that smelled, tasted, and felt like home, crafted with love from recipes that were handed down generation after generation. Samer’s falafel and home-made hummus became family favourites—so much so that he and his wife now run the beloved Yaffa Cafe in Abbotsford, B.C.

It just opened a few years ago, but Yaffa Cafe was named People’s Choice of Abby at Abbotsford’s Food & Farm Awards in 2024. Although there are few Palestinians in the city, visitors come from Vancouver and across the border to try Yaffa Cafe’s specialties and to show their solidarity. “It’s actually really cute,” says Samer’s daughter Nada Samer Alghosain, who does marketing and social media for the cafe. “People will come by with their keffiyehs and let us know they’re in support.”

Samer’s parents fled Yaffa, a port city in the south of Palestine, on foot during the Nakba of 1948 when native Palestinians were first driven from their land. For Palestinians in the diaspora, food is more than just a means to fill the stomach. It is a ritual to keep traditions alive, to recall and reclaim narratives, and is simultaneously a means to resist. With Israeli settler colonialism uprooting historically significant olive groves and wrongly co-opting Arab delicacies, selling them for profit under Israeli brand names, food continues to be irrevocably tied to the Palestinian cultural revolution.

Like many Palestinian businesses, the call for liberation is at the forefront of Yaffa Cafe’s identity. They display posters each week about relevant protests happening in Abbotsford. They stay in touch with local organizers, especially with the Fraser Valley branch of Solidarity for Palestinian Human Rights (SPHR), and host protesters for meals.

Across the country in Toronto’s west end is Levant (not) Pizza, a restaurant that infuses Italian flavours into Palestinian and Lebanese classics. Owned by Nader Qawasmi, whose parents hail from Nablus and Hebron in the West Bank, the restaurant opened three years ago and has been a hotspot ever since.

“It’s always rich flavours, a lot of stews and spices, that resonate with me when it comes to Palestinian foods—things like mulukhiya, bamia that I grew up eating,” Qawasmi says. “My dad owned a restaurant, so I took after him.”

With its goal to amplify and highlight the diversity of their cuisine, Levant (not) Pizza is advocating for and supporting Palestinian justice initiatives through food. They’ve hosted two charity dinners, the second of which raised $12,000, with funds going to Islamic Relief Canada, Defense for Children International – Palestine, and locals’ efforts to bring their family from Gaza to Canada. They’ve also donated to student encampments. When Uber Eats wrongly listed Palestinian restaurants as “Israeli” cuisine in December 2023, Levant was one of the foremost establishments to call for a boycott of the delivery provider.

For both families, words are also a crucial part of reclaiming Palestinian identity. The “not” in Levant Pizza signifies its departure from a conventional understanding of pizza, and challenges assumptions about both Levantine and Italian cuisine. And for the owners of Yaffa Cafe, invoking the name of their historic homeland is a means of bringing it alive several continents over in Canada.

“I think that’s the boldest move we could’ve done, is to represent where we come from,” Nada says. “I wanted to let people know we were Palestinian, one way or another.”

Art by Valerie Thai

Aaron Campbell was 37 when he walked away from his world. For 27 years he had been told that leaving would jeopardize the chance of eternal salvation for him, his wife, and their four children. Yet salvation was just what he needed, and immediately. “Ultimately, I said, ‘If I don’t [leave], my mental health is going to continue to suffer to a degree where I don’t know what I’ll do,’” he recalls. “That was very scary for me.”

Campbell grew up in 1980s Wainwright, Alberta, a farming town of about 5,000 southeast of Edmonton. Until age 10 his community consisted of his mother, his brother and sister, and a handful of neighbours. Then, his single mom’s search for social support and spiritual direction led her to the Mormon Church (officially called the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints since 2018, after God urged a “correction” to the abbreviated LDS in a revelation received by church president Russell M. Nelson).

In many ways Campbell, whose name has been changed to protect his privacy, was raised by the Wainwright branch of the LDS, amid tight community and tighter programming. Monday was Family Home Evening: a religious lesson and activity for family completion. A weekly schedule of age-specific meetups, seminary sessions, and miscellaneous social gatherings followed, culminating with a three-hour church service on the Sunday Sabbath.

The church provided friends and support, but prescriptions and proscriptions cast a shadow. “The messaging was subtle: that if you do these things it will enrich your family, it will bring you blessings,” says Campbell. “But the implication was: if you don’t do these things, bad stuff will happen to you.” Family reputation was paramount, and meant prioritizing the programme. “It required me to basically put my authentic self to the side,” Campbell recalls. “To be accepted into the community, in order to be accepted into my family, I felt I needed to perform and have a mask on.” There was, he says, “very consistent, daily reinforcement of: the person you are is not acceptable.”

Rural, pre-internet life meant that Campbell knew no different, and his mental health suffered. At 15 he was put on SSRIs, and enrolled in a national health system with scant appreciation for therapy or supplementary practices. Only after 20 years of futile treatment did he identify his relationship with the church, invisible in its ubiquity, as the root of his suffering. “When I left, it was like putting a tourniquet on a wound,” he says. “The wound had stopped bleeding, but I’ve still got a wound. Now I got to deal with this.”

Angry and confused, disillusionment with the medical system led him elsewhere in search of remedies. He went “all in” on exercise, cannabis, and keto dieting to little avail. Then, in 2017, he came across Johns Hopkins University research documenting the alleviating effect of psilocybin on end-of-life anxiety and depression in terminal cancer patients—an early harbinger of the so-called psychedelic renaissance, which started to go mainstream with Michael Pollan’s 2018 book How to Change Your Mind. Inspired, Campbell contacted a fledgling psychedelic group in Calgary. Little did he know, he was initiating a journey into a community that would change, and possibly even save, his life.

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Mormonism was founded by Joseph Smith in New York State, amidst the fervent Protestant revivalism of the Second Great Awakening. On April 6, 1830, 11 days after the Book of Mormon was published, about 55 people gathered on Whitmer Farm near Fayette for the first Mormon congregation.

At first glance, tripping on psychedelics seems a sinful departure from Mormon tenets. The Word of Wisdom, a revelation Smith said he received from God in 1833, commands Mormons to refrain from alcohol, tobacco, tea, and coffee. Church prophets have since added substances that “impair judgement or are harmful or highly addictive.” But did the first prophet do as later prophets have preached? Convincing evidence suggests that psychedelics were in fact integral to Mormonism’s visionary beginnings.

In 1820 or 1821, a teenaged Smith experienced his First Vision after entering a grove of trees near Manchester, New York, seeking wisdom. “I saw a pillar of light exactly over my head, above the brightness of the sun, which descended gradually until it fell upon me,” he later reported. Heavenly “personages” then told him of the imminent Second Coming, and condemned all existing Christian churches for teaching incorrect doctrine. Smith experienced a string of such visions, from which several cardinal Mormon doctrines emerged.

A 2019 paper by Robert Beckstead, Bryce Blankenagel, Cody Noconi, and Michael Winkelman presents compelling evidence that these visions came from entheogens (chemical substances that produce altered states of consciousness when ingested). During his First Vision, Smith experienced mouth dryness, paranoia, and vivid hallucinations: symptoms consistent with entheogens—including two psychedelic mushrooms, psilocybe ovoideocystidiata and amanita muscaria—either scientifically documented to have grown in every area Smith lived, or almost certainly available through established trade networks.

It’s highly likely that Smith was familiar with these substances. His mentors, including his father, were enmeshed in folk magic, the occult, and esoteric Christian practices, some with entheogen links. His family possessed a panoply of magic-adjacent artifacts, from astrological charts to an alchemical amulet. His visions echoed those experienced by both of his parents and foreshadowed those of many early Mormon converts. Multiple eyewitness accounts describe the unusually intense visionary nature of early Mormon congregations, with symptoms seemingly manifesting on demand after drinking Smith’s wine sacrament. There was widespread suspicion that the wine was spiked.

Smith was shot dead by a mob in 1844 while awaiting trial in Carthage Jail, Illinois, after causing uproar by destroying a Mormon-critical press and, according to some reports, imposing martial law while mayor of the city of Nauvoo. Brigham Young became the new Mormon prophet. He shepherded the church to Utah and away from its probable, or at least possible, psychedelic genesis, which for nearly two centuries has been forgotten or denied.

But modern Mormons and ex-Mormons are returning to these visionary roots. The “Mormons on Mushrooms” podcast is dedicated to “alternative methods for healing from trauma” and “exploring higher consciousness while healing from toxic religious shame.” Since launching in 2020 it has grown a monthly listenership of over 10,000. Divine Assembly, a Utah-based “magic mushroom church,” was founded in the same year by ex-Mormon and former Republican state Senator Steve Urquhart and his wife Sara. Though not all of its roughly 5,000 members are ex-Mormons, the church was founded in large part to help people leaving religious environments find healing through psychedelics. These congregations contain clues about the power of collective psychedelic practice to help people find new ways forward and process past pain.

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Campbell’s first psychedelic journey came courtesy of five grams of psilocybin mushrooms. Sitting in a circle of 15 fellow trippers and six sober space holders, he became the universe. He recalls creating stars and planets and music as scattered parts of himself. He felt giggly and joyous. “It was just a magical experience,” he says.

Campbell emerged from his trip feeling more connected to everything around him. He had felt a radically new sense of perception, free from hierarchy and suppression—a mode he still feels able to slip into to view situations differently, even though no experience since has recaptured that first sense of interconnection.

The decision to contact that Calgary psychedelic community started a chain of small events that, Campbell says, have “fundamentally changed the course of my life and, frankly, probably saved me from a trajectory that was going to end up in suicide.” Much of this stemmed from feeling like he was spending time with people who understood him, who saw him for who he was rather than how well he followed the rules. The Mormon church doesn’t exactly encourage experimentation and self-exploration.

On the “Mormons on Mushrooms” podcast, two ex-Mormon friends, Mike and Doug, have languid conversations about psychedelics and related matters. It sounds like Seth Rogen and his best pals running a The Kardashians-style show. In a June, 2024 episode, they talk about basic milestones in their lives their religious loved ones may not necessarily condone, like the times when they each had their first drink.

Mike and his wife were travelling, and one day he just looked at her and asked if they should share a drink. “Then we were like, ‘fuck it! Let’s just each order one drink! Let’s order our own drink!’” Doug laughs uproariously. “What a decision-making process that was, though, right? Like so scary, so terrifying to wade into those waters, right.”

“Yeah…” and the conversation sobers.

*

From 2001 to 2021, the number of people in Canada reporting no religious affiliation doubled. In the U.S., church membership dipped below 50 percent for the first time in 2020. Canadian census data contains 87,725 self-identifying Mormons in 2021, down from 105,365 in 2011. Even official LDS data, which includes inactive former members, shows Canadian membership growing slowly in absolute terms, but shrinking as a proportion of the population.

The ex-Mormon community, on the other hand, is growing—and connecting. The r/ExMormon subreddit, with 302,000 members, is the headline example, but Campbell says there are countless other ex-Mormon pockets of society. “There is something about the Mormon experience that teaches people to organize really well,” he says. The internet fundamentally changed things, and those who leave the church are now better able to connect again outside of it. Campbell says this means the church no longer controls their narrative.

Meanwhile, the psychedelic renaissance has bloomed. Psychedelic practice has a long history, from ayahuasca use across the Amazon Basin to iboga ceremonies among West African Bwiti communities and peyote usage among North American Indigenous peoples. But prohibition has reigned in the contemporary West, with promising medical research suppressed through the war on drugs. Until recently.

Research increasingly points to the potential of psychedelics in treating mental-health issues (despite serious methodological challenges, like ensuring double-blind trials with mind-altering substances and navigating the complex knot of possible mechanisms). Tectonic legal shifts are nudging countries, including Canada, toward clinical trials, medical use, and decriminalization debates. Stores selling psychedelics are semi-tolerated across Canada. Investment has boomed with the hype. And facilitated psychedelic experiences are accessible through an underground network of practitioners.

This renaissance holds growing appeal for religious communities, as evidenced by an emerging network of psychedelic chaplains integrating psychedelics into spiritual thought systems, as well as people processing the psychological challenges of leaving totalizing religions like Mormonism. Campbell is careful to stress that every experience of apostasy is unique, but there are patterns. Abandoning Mormonism generally means relinquishing a moral and spiritual worldview, which often creates a deep need for sensemaking. “You just need something to matter again,” an ex-Mormon Divine Assembly member and psychedelics user told Rolling Stone. Leaving can mean losing a tight-knit community of friends and family, plus the navigational framework of a familiar culture. This, in turn, can trigger the task of discovering your authentic self, which may contain characteristics long repressed through shame, like sexual desire or identity. For many, it can feel like being fully alive for the first time.

Powerful psychedelic experiences are inspiring some ex- Mormons to facilitate those experiences for others. Campbell now guides people through psychedelic journeys, from pre-trip preparation to in-trip support and post-trip integration. He isn’t formally trained or licensed, and doesn’t stick to a particular modality, but adapts his approach to individual clients. He works underground, mostly with ex-Mormons new to psychedelics and looking to make sense of life after leaving. They are typically middle-aged, well resourced, and curious.

Psychedelics are pattern disruptors, Campbell says. He believes the reason there’s so much research into how they can help people trying to break addictions is that they make people question their reasons for doing what they do. He helps people deconstruct these patterns as a precursor to long-term change. He typically works with somebody once, either recommending practical next steps or referring them to a medical professional with relevant expertise.

Campbell’s understanding of his work highlights what seems obvious, but is often effaced by psychedelic discourse focused on individual treatments and miracle trips: that our psychology is shaped by the systems we live within. “Any system that is well established basically tricks people into thinking that it’s not alive,” Campbell says. “It hides, and the more it can hide, the longer it will last.” This can lead ex-Mormons and others to mistake mental-health challenges for personal failings, or scapegoat leaders without recognizing how systems also enclose those scapegoats.

Community is a powerful vehicle for identifying and understanding systemic patterns. Psychedelics are often most effective as deconstructive tools when used with others who understand and can help process that deconstruction.

Later in the “Mormons on Mushrooms” podcast, Doug talks about a recent trip he took that felt different. He was contemplating what makes him feel fear and anxiety, and thinking about how, once the thing he thought was causing those feelings dissipates, something else comes and takes its spot. He and Mike agree that being afraid of death is the same as being afraid to live. They talk about overcoming shame in the way we can only do with someone who really gets us. Doug talks about this moment he always has when he’s high and feels super dirty, but says it’s the grounding part of the trip for him. It reminds him, “Ya popped up from the earth, big dog! And yer going back down.” Mike murmurs understanding.

Campbell experiences similar seamless conversations now, too. “I don’t have to explain the acronyms, I don’t have to explain the backstory of any of this stuff,” he says of his experiences in ex-Mormon psychedelic circles. “People are like, ‘Yep, I get it,’ right away. That feeling of being understood, being heard, being validated, is huge —huge.” Psychedelics alone didn’t save Campbell; psychedelics plus finding community did.

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This insistence on collective psychedelic practice resonates beyond the ex-Mormon community, and represents a broader call for a different psychedelic renaissance. Writing in Jacobin, Benjamin Fong identifies two possible renaissances. The “psychiatric paradigm” sees government institutions and psychedelic companies administering psychedelics in tightly regulated medical settings to alleviate specific mental-health symptoms. Critical psychedelics podcast “Psymposia” dubs this corporadelia: psychedelics as commercial service and psychological adaptation.

The collective paradigm envisions an alternative renaissance, rooted in a systemic understanding of psychedelic possibilities and what conditions our mental health. This paradigm proposes supplementing psychiatric services with decentralized, community-centred psychedelic practices, and connects individual healing with the need to acknowledge and even reimagine the social, economic, and political systems that shape mental health. Whereas the psychiatric paradigm reduces psychedelics to “just another little pill for skull-bound ailments,” in the words of Ross Ellenhorn and Dimitri Mugianis, co-founders of psychedelic-assisted therapy organization Cardea, the collective paradigm is more radical. “When used correctly, these substances are not quick-fix cures for illness but consciousness raisers,” they write. “And raised consciousnesses tend to find the public causes for personal pain.”

The collective paradigm heeds what we know about how psychedelics work. One of the few concrete research findings is that the context around a psychedelic experience— set and setting—affects its outcomes. The systems that shape us are the bedrock of that context. Proponents also cite the array of Indigenous psychedelic practices—encompassing religious, social, medicinal, creative, and warfaring rituals—as evidence of collective psychedelic possibility. Another touchstone is Mark Fisher’s “acid communism,” which holds that the psychedelia of postwar New Left counterculture helped people transgress boundaries, generate new artistic forms, and bolster new social relations capable of undermining “capitalist realism:” the seeming impossibility of imagining beyond capitalism.

What the collective paradigm should look like in practice is a complex, contested question. But experimental answers are sprouting in Canada and beyond, like mushrooms after rain. Motivated by the exclusion of racialized communities and issues from existing research, professor and clinical psychologist Monnica Williams is pioneering research exploring psychedelics as a tool for processing intergenerational racial trauma. “When people are traumatized, usually it’s of an interpersonal nature,” she recently told The Conversation Canada. “But also we find that people heal through connecting with other people.”

Williams has been involved in research documenting the impact of naturalistic (non-experimental) psychedelic use on racial-discrimination symptoms among Indigenous, Asian, and non-white people in North America. Her ketamine-assisted psychotherapy work has alleviated PTSD associated with racial trauma. Through both individual therapy and group sessions for specific communities, like Black women, she applies psychedelics to historic, cultural forces impacting mental health at systemic scales. Her work gestures toward the possibility of improving mental-health outcomes and raising consciousness around collective issues in therapeutic settings.

There is growing experimentation around collective psychedelic care. Daan Keiman is a psychedelic practitioner and Buddhist psychedelic chaplain. Formerly through The Synthesis Institute, and now through The Communitas Collective, he is at the forefront of work to develop holistic models of psychedelic care, including training for potential psychedelic practitioners, that integrate systemic, spiritual, somatic, and relational dimensions. Keiman sees systemic issues and collective experiences as integral to healthy, transformative psychedelic practices. “Psychedelics can offer us these experiences in which we feel part of something bigger again,” he says, because they help dissolve boundaries. “It becomes so incredibly important to make sure that the model of offering psychedelic care to someone can address both these experiences: of communitas, and underlying problems of alienation and belonging.” Research shows that systems shape mental-health outcomes like alienation and loneliness, he continues. Who and how we are changes with social setting, and a sense of belonging guards our mental health. Collective psychedelic practices can not only demonstrate these findings and cultivate empathy, but can also prove more accessible and cost-effective than individual services.

Another example of collective psychedelic activity is the patchwork of Canadian associations offering psychedelic advocacy, education, and experiences, from the Psychedelic Association of Canada down to local communities like Vancouver’s The Flying Sage. Empowered by creeping psychedelic permissibility, Michael Oliver started The Flying Sage after working for the Multidisciplinary Association of Psychedelic Studies Canada, which has been instrumental in enabling psychedelic medical research. While he recognizes the health benefits and trojan-horse strategic value of medical trials, Oliver imagines broader cultural possibilities. So The Flying Sage aims to destigmatize psychedelics by pairing them with activities like cold plunges, breath work, and dance.

“Psychedelics are really great at tapping into this collective unconscious,” Oliver says. “It’s a very powerful aspect of psychedelics which at the moment isn’t really being talked about at all in the mainstream narrative.” As a meeting space for underground and overground practitioners to connect, The Flying Sage is one example of how hidden collective-paradigm psychedelic communities are underpinning the ostensibly individualistic psychiatric paradigm.

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Campbell has learned that people are finding value not only in psychedelic trials or miraculous doses, but by combining psychedelic experiences and time spent with others. His ultimate goal is for psychedelic practice to be integrated into communities. The point isn’t that all communities must use psychedelics, but that normalizing safe, connected psychedelic experiences can help more people.

Campbell says he is struck by “just how not unique the work is that I do,” meaning it isn’t so different from the many forms of care that sustain healthy people and communities. He cites American spiritual leader Ram Dass’s culturally integrated conception of care, and his notion that “we’re all just walking each other home.” Thanks to finding both psychedelics and deep connections, Campbell has made it back to a home in which he knows himself better than ever before. He’s more present; a better parent. Regardless of faith, he hopes and thinks more people will soon be served by collective psychedelic guidance.