Photo by IMAGINIMA

“It was just something to do…like getting your hair braided,” says Kayowe Mune, describing the mindset held by many communities about female genital mutilation/cutting (FGM/C).

Mune, now 42, is a content creator based in Toronto and was cut when she was six years old, as part of what’s known as vacation cutting, which often happens during the summer when school is out. Mune was born in Somalia and was living in Saudi Arabia with her parents at the time. While spending the summer at her grandmother’s house back in Somalia, Mune was taken to a hospital to be cut. Since her cousins were already going, her grandmother added Mune to the group, accompanied by her aunt.

“It wasn’t like the village lady…shrouded in scars came with a…razor,” says Mune. She explains that she was taken to a “really nice” hospital, where a lineup of other girls also sat waiting for their turn. While the hospital may have been welcoming, the procedure was done without anesthesia.

“I remember sitting outside waiting for [my] turn, and that part was pretty scary because you can hear them screaming,” Mune says. In the days that followed, all that Mune recalls is feeling dissociated from her body.

A tradition in many African cultures, FGM/C is viewed as a way to protect a girl’s chastity and ensure that she gets a good husband, explains Mune. Older generations often don’t see anything wrong with the practice and it’s frequently equated to male circumcision, which isn’t comparable at all, according to Giselle Portenier, co-chair of the End FGM Canada Network. Portenier, who is also a journalist, learned about the abuse of women’s human rights through her documentary work. She co-founded the End FGM Canada Network after realizing how big and under-reported an issue this is in Canada. Portenier explains that the equivalent of this kind of genital mutilation/cutting performed on males would consist of cutting off the head of their penis.

“There is no comparison,” she says.

*

Female genital mutilation/cutting is classified into four types, per the World Health Organization. Type I, also known as a clitoredectomy, involves the partial or total removal of the visible part of the clitoris and/or the prepuce/ clitoral hood, which is a fold of skin surrounding the clitoris. Type II, also known as an excision, is the partial or total removal of the visible part of the clitoris and the labia minora, the inner folds of the vulva, with or without the removal of the labia majora, the outer folds of the skin of the vulva. Type III, also known as infibulation, involves the narrowing of the vaginal opening through the creation of a covering seal. The seal is formed by cutting and repositioning the labia minora, or labia majora, sometimes through stitching, with or without removal of the clitoral prepuce/clitoral hood and glans. Type IV includes all other harmful procedures to the female genitalia for non-medical purposes, such as pricking, piercing, incising, scraping and cauterizing the genital area.

FGM/C is not something that affects only those in African countries. While there’s no official study detailing the prevalence of FGM/C in Canada, vacation cutting affects survivors living in Western countries, too. It is practiced and/or affects those living in 92 countries across every continent but Antarctica, and this number is only growing as more survivors are discovered.

Often, girls who are born in Canada are taken to their parents’ home country, usually in African nations such as Somalia or Egypt, to be cut and then brought back home to Canada. In other cases, such as Mune’s, girls immigrate to Canada with their families having already experienced FGM/C. This happens despite the fact that female genital mutilation has been identified as a form of aggravated assault in Canada’s Criminal Code since 1997, a move the Department of Justice says was made in keeping with Canada’s commitment to support the 1993 United Nations Declaration on the Elimination of Violence against Women, the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, and the 1995 Platform for Action of the Fourth World Conference on Women. These recognized that violence against women, including FGM/C, violates their human rights and fundamental freedoms.

Still, according to Portenier, there are over 100,000 survivors of FGM/C in Canada and thousands of girls at risk. This figure is based on End FGM Canada’s analysis of immigration from 29 FGM/C practicing countries in the Middle East and Africa as reported in the 2011 Canadian Census. Yet, “there [is little support] for them in Canada, largely because there is a culture of silence and silencing about this issue here,” says Portenier.

The silence is often due to a fear of causing offence around other people’s traditions. In May 2023, a daycare worker alleged that a two-year-old child’s genitals had been mutilated and alerted Quebec’s youth protection services, which reportedly replied that the case was too delicate for the agency to handle. (The child was later examined by a doctor, and the case has since been declared unfounded.) In response to This Magazine, Quebec’s Human Rights Commission refused to comment as this case involved a minor.

Canada is also the only Western country, besides New Zealand, lacking in official statistics on FGM/C, according to a 2020 report by Equality Now, a human rights association dedicated to the welfare of women and girls. “Efforts to get statistics and be [funded] by the Canadian government on statistical analyses have failed on several occasions,” says Portenier. While the government has attempted to calculate estimates, their most recent September 2023 report still states that “the results should not be interpreted as official estimates of FGM/C in Canada.”

Despite the failure of the federal government, last year Alberta was the first and only province to date to pass a bill strengthening existing laws that ban female genital mutilation in the province. The bill states that health professionals who practice or facilitate FGM/C in the province will be removed from practice if convicted. Additionally, those convicted in other jurisdictions will not be permitted to practice in Alberta.

When asked how things can be improved for survivors in Canada and those who are sent for vacation cutting, Women and Gender Equality Canada stated that they strongly condemn FGM/C and under the federal Gender- Based Violence Strategy they “provide funding to various community-based initiatives that address FGM/C nationally” and will “continue to work together with [their] provincial and territorial counterparts as well as with academics and service providers to ensure a multidisciplinary approach so that impacted women and girls have access to culturally safe services.”

While there are federal as well as provincial plans in place to address FGM/C, not a single prosecution has occurred since the 1997 criminalization of FGM/C in Canada. According to Global News, a leaked border services report in 2017 also showed that FGM/C practitioners were entering Canada to carry out the procedure. The lack of prosecutions in Canada come as a shock when in comparison, the U.S., the U.K., France, and Australia have all prosecuted cases of FGM/C.

*

Since FGM/C is generally performed without anesthesia, the first immediate side effect is the intense pain. Bleeding occurs and scar tissue forms over time in most cases of cutting. Depending on the type, menstruating and urinating can be difficult and cause pain, as can childbirth and intercourse. Female sexual pleasure is hardly taken into consideration, but this is also compromised.

Depression, PTSD, and anxiety are just a few of the psychological effects of FGM/C. Others include not being able to do things a child normally does, recalls Mune. “When you’re cut, they don’t want you to learn how to ride a bike because you can open up your stitches.” Sports were out of the question for girls, but Mune was able to rebel when she moved to Toronto and signed up for her school’s athletics program.

While immigrating to Canada helped Mune escape some of the cultural restrictions imposed on girls, she and many other survivors faced, and continue to face, a whole other set of challenges here.

“I would say white Canadian doctors are not educated, and a lot of them don’t care, especially the males,” says Mune, speaking about her experience with the Canadian health-care system. Mune has found compassionate care with doctors who are primarily women of colour, but other challenges persist. With staff shortages, difficulty in getting appointments, and medical professionals’ generally busy schedules, awareness and empathy have been hard to come by for Mune.

Over time Mune has gotten better at advocating for herself, but she wishes there was a way for doctors and gynecologists to know that they are seeing a survivor of FGM before they enter the examination room. “I think… it should be highlighted, like every [appointment] that this person is a survivor of genital mutilation…before [the healthcare provider] sees [the patient],” says Mune.

Organizations like End FGM Canada are working to create more awareness around the practice in Canada. Initiatives include educational modules designed for health-care professionals and child-protection workers. A special module for teachers is set to release in November 2023. They also created “Miss Klitty,” a campaign that promotes education about the clitoris. In the vast majority of cases of FGM/C, the clitoris is harmed. This is often due to the belief held by many practicing cultures that the clitoris is evil, explains Portenier. Thus, “Miss Klitty” was created as a way to demystify the clitoris and get people talking.

One option for those who have experienced FGM/C is reconstructive surgery. Dr. Angela Deane, an obstetrician/gynecologist at North York General Hospital and the University of Toronto, focuses on clitoral reconstruction. Deane sees up to five patients per month for consultations regarding potential treatments. She explains that in some types of cutting the clitoral glans is removed, which is the very visible tip on the vulva.

“What we can do is release more clitoral tissue from beneath all that and bring that forward to the outside. And having that new clitoral tissue on the outside is like a creation of a new gland,” says Deane. This new gland can then offer more sensation. Surgery can also include removal of a cyst or scar tissue, as well as defibulation. Depending on the impacts of FGM/C, an individualized care plan is recommended which can be non-surgical and include medications or therapy to address pain or scar tissue. Often, recommendations also include seeking mental health support, sex therapy, and physiotherapy.

Mune says one step forward is to make therapy or counselling free of cost for survivors. “It used to be hard for me… when I was younger to afford [therapy]… and I knew I needed it,” she says.

Mune also emphasizes the importance of education and a present father in a young girl’s life. Her parents were unaware of her being cut and they never would have supported it had they known. Even today, she knows Somalian families where daughters with present fathers have never heard of FGM/C, while other families send their daughters to be cut without the father’s knowledge. That’s not to say the women and other men of the families are deliberately trying to hurt their daughters, Mune underlines. “They’re not monsters…they’re doing this out of love…It’s just an old, very ancient procedure that needs to go away, and it just won’t go away.”

Anecdotal statements from Mune, other survivors and wider diaspora communities suggest that FGM/C is still a problem and while global efforts from the United Nations have been helpful, change has been slow due to its secretive nature. What sets Canada apart from other Western countries is the lack of statistics on FGM/C and its implications here.

In order to prevent vacation cutting in Canada, a first step would be to fund a project on obtaining proper statistics. Efforts at all levels of government also need to be placed on genuinely communicating with members of communities and working together to eradicate this practice from Canada rather than being afraid of offending people.

Providing coverage for reconstructive surgery under provincial health policies would also help. In Ontario, for example, coverage varies depending on a person’s needs, and clitoral reconstruction is not fully funded. Finally, law enforcement and the legal system also need to work on prosecuting cases of FGM/C, as done by most other Western countries. Canada’s culture of silence can no longer afford to continue to perpetuate this abuse.

Illustration by Tobias Diuk

When my girlfriend of six years broke up with me by text, followed by a short call, I couldn’t comprehend it. It wasn’t grief, shock, or denial. My brain, damaged from 16 months of Long COVID, couldn’t read or write, splice voices from background noise, or parse words said fast enough to react. When our friends asked what happened, I couldn’t explain the literally, not just emotionally, incomprehensible.

Early media coverage of the virus’s neurocognitive impacts focused on smell and taste, driven by viral videos of patients unable to tell pickle juice from lemonade. But SARS-CoV-2 can affect every sense and most aspects of cognition. My experience was severe but not rare: impaired word recall and object recognition; executive functioning, such as following steps to do laundry; and spatial memory, even in my own apartment. Conversations were dream-like, disorienting, and difficult; technology use triggered sudden naps. The pandemic’s collective TV-watching, live-streaming era passed me by. My life became as quiet as I could make it, and all the more isolating.

Louise Cummings, a professor in the Department of English and Communication at Hong Kong Polytechnic University, says that “language is breaking down” in adults with Long COVID. “Even a short, slow-paced conversation can induce a severe flare-up of symptoms,” she says, “necessitating many days of rest in some cases.” In her 2023 study, participants reported difficulty finding words (93 percent), losing concentration when talking (89.6 percent), recalling what was said (65.4 percent), or understanding speech (38 percent). Conservative estimates of Long COVID incidence are at least 10 percent of infections, and neurocognitive symptoms are among the most common and longest lasting. But while other types of brain injury (e.g., from a stroke) may show on a static scan, Cummings says “the disruption to brain physiology in Long COVID is likely…more subtle.”

Studies that do show this disruption use specialized testing not available to most patients. A University of Waterloo study found reduced oxygen saturation in the prefrontal cortex during cognitive tasks. Oxygen is fundamental to brain functioning, implicated in fuel metabolism and neuron communication. Numerous studies, including two from the University of California, San Francisco and CAMH in Toronto, found inflammatory markers in the brain and cerebrospinal fluid, known to impact memory and mood.

When my hospital network opened a Long COVID clinic and I was seen virtually, 20 months post-infection, the cognitive rehab specialist recommended a maximum of 20 minutes per day of cognitive or screen activity. She said I’d likely never work again: my brain was irreparably damaged. Like most clinics, there were no neurologists, cardiologists, or infectious disease specialists, no diagnostics or prescriptions; only virtual patient education on adjusting to illness, social workers and dieticians, and a PDF handout on attention and memory I couldn’t read. To get treatment, I had to find my own specialists, including in private practice.

Desperate for distraction while bedridden, I could only handle instrumental music: nigunim (Jewish songs in lilting rounds of nonsense syllables) or small classical ensembles. Slowly, I added podcasts, listening for short stints without multitasking. My favourite hosts were always two intimates whose conversations felt like lounging after a dinner party. I’d let the social ambiance wash over me, an experience that violated public health policy. Even when I couldn’t handle watching closed-captioned TV, I listened to backlogs of “Witch, Please” (“a fortnightly podcast about the Harry Potter world”); official cast and crew pods for The Good Place and Hacks; recap shows like “Out on the Lanai;” and “Race Chaser” (“dedicated to the discussion, dissection and dissemination of every single episode of RuPaul’s Drag Race”). It helped to hear familiar voices describing familiar things without pressure to contribute, to practice comprehension and memory in a low-stakes environment.

Some formats felt more accessible, even rehabilitating. Hannah McGregor, program director of Simon Fraser University’s publishing program and co-host of “Witch, Please” with Marcelle Kosman, suggests this could be due to pedagogical principles built into good podcasting. “Core to teaching is repetition,” McGregor says. “You need to articulate things multiple times for them to resonate with people, and ideally, you will articulate them in multiple different ways.” Podcasts, like all serialized media, are “a balance of repetition and change,” she says, a structurally predictable format with cues like segment intros or musical transitions. “Witch, Please” revisits every book and movie through different theoretical frameworks, glancing deftly sideways from critical theory back into fiction like the best undergrad class you never took. It uses the explainer format, in which one host presents research to the other, which McGregor says models “the actual process of listening” through active listening noises and follow-up questions, making it easier to stay engaged, especially for my overloaded brain.

Big Dipper, executive producer at the Moguls of Media (MOM) Network, says that “Race Chaser’s” comforting balance of structure and improv is intentional, supported by guiding outlines and a timed four-segment format. “All the character, uniqueness, and what stands out…comes organically from [hosts, drag queens Willam and Alaska Thunderfuck] in conversation, but I give them a strong structure to hold onto so that they can really have freedom…to improv and talk shit.” The hosts riff on a vast pastiche repertoire of Drag Race, queer canon, and cult classics, both reverential and sardonic, vividly describing the action on screen and outfits from hair to heel.

Big Dipper says the format made queens “far more accessible to their fanbase….long-form, true personalities, no facade.” The podcast is a love letter to other media and mediums, not just in content but in style. The leisurely intros and outros come from Big Dipper’s theatrical background. “I structure the majority of our shows [like this]: the cold open, theme song, intro, and an outro to let the audience down gently.” Cummings says frameworks like these can be helpful. “If an interview has a set structure, you are able to use a mental template of how it will proceed, to facilitate comprehension,” she says, compensating for the lack of visual cues. The format is comforting, says Big Dipper, because “nothing is expected of the listener” and you can “let it wash over you.” Listening helped me rebuild memory retrieval pathways for sound and images.

For me, podcasts were patient companions who didn’t mind repeating themselves, and a descriptive medium when I couldn’t comprehend multimedia. They kept me company when I was too sick to leave the house, when in-person events were banned, and my community fell apart post-breakup.

Even now, three years into this, large Zoom meetings and dinner parties are still challenging and nightclubs are inconceivably inaccessible. But I can listen in on other people’s friendships while they “improv and talk shit,” and doing so has helped immensely as I relearn how to comprehend, remember, and connect with the world.

Illustration by Kristen Huang

I like working at the konbini because it convinces me I’m good and nice.

Here, I’m a secondary character. I help people feed themselves and pay their bills and send mail. I don’t get into trouble.

I never take off my uniform. I even wear it to bed. The armpits of the white blouse are yellow and perpetually damp with sweat and the knees of the black dress pants are worn from scrubbing the floor and the stench of grease and burnt karaage clings to the blue apron, but I don’t mind. If I change into my old clothes, I’ll become who I used to be.

The regular customers all know me, even though I’ve only been here for a month. There’s a nurse who comes by after her shifts who calls me her angel for being so kind and quick when I scan and bag her bentō and warm green tea.

When the store is empty, I scrub the floors and counters and refrigerators so hard my palms blister and bleed. I go for the stains that have been there for years, the ones that won’t come out.

I count and recount the inventory in case I missed something. If someone works a shift with me on weekends, I trail after them like a second shadow, making sure they stock the shelves perfectly.

When a customer enters the store, I say “irasshaimase” so loudly it rumbles in my heart. Even if there’s a group of people, I still say it to each person like they are a god. If I accidentally leave someone out, I feel rotten. I never think about myself, only how they feel. This is my salvation.

I only do graveyard shifts because I like the peace and quiet. Or maybe a part of me savours how the konbini becomes suspended between comfort and unease, like a church after midnight mass, and I still crave the chaos. Strange things happen after midnight, especially in Wakayama.

At 3 a.m., a woman enters the konbini, wearing a black raincoat slick with rain. It’s the middle of tsuyu, Japan’s fifth season, when the thunderstorms are relentless and the air is plump with humidity and the cicadas and frogs compete to see who can scream the loudest.

“Irasshaimase!” I say, bowing deeply.

She ignores me. When a customer doesn’t acknowledge me, I wonder what I did wrong. Maybe my smile didn’t reach my eyes or my voice wasn’t warm enough or I said it too quietly. The woman’s hood hides her face, so I can’t analyze her expressions.

The automatic doors slide open and another woman enters the konbini wearing a wrinkled business suit and a name tag that says “Kaoru.” She fusses with her umbrella, soaking the floor of the konbini with water.

“Irasshaimase!” I say. I bow. Kaoru gives a tired smile, her face worn from working overtime, I assume.

Kaoru fills her basket with a mix of household items and groceries and then grabs an omurice bentō on the way to the register. The woman in the raincoat floats through the aisles.

I greet Kaoru and start scanning her items. I ask her if she wants the bentō warmed up. She nods, and I put it into the microwave.

The automatic doors slide open again, and a karasu flies into the konbini. It wails and crashes into the walls and the shelves, trying to find its way out.

Crows follow me everywhere. My best friend, Hinata, used to say it sounds like they’re crying my name: “Kaya, Kaya, Kaya.” Maybe that’s why they like me so much, she said. When we were kids, the crows would circle around us while we played and drop shiny bits of trash in our laps. When we walked around campus or went drinking after work, they’d hop along the street and peck at our feet. Now, it feels more like they’re haunting me.

I apologize to Kaoru and then rush to the back room to grab a broom. I chase the bird around, but it keeps cawing and crashing into the walls and shitting everywhere.

It starts ramming itself into one of the curved security mirrors in the corner, perhaps believing its reflection is a rescuer who will help it escape.

I’m reflected behind the karasu, my head distorted like an alien’s from an old sci-fi movie. I don’t recognize the face covered in red boils with swirls of yellow pus in their centres, or the nest of matted black hair brittle with grease and dandruff and scabs. I haven’t looked at myself in months. I keep blankets over the mirrors.

The microwave beeps. The woman with the hood has lined up behind Kaoru. I feel horrible, making them wait. Chunky vomit prickles my throat.

I wave the broom around, trying to free the bird from its morbid fixation with itself, but that agitates the karasu more and it rams itself too hard into the mirror, shattering it. Its neck snaps from the force and it falls to the ground with a wet thump.

I reacted too quickly—I should have known better—and now I’ve really messed everything up. The customers are probably mad at me and they’re going to complain about my unprofessionalism and I’m going to get fired.

I rush back to the register and warm up the bentō again. I repeatedly bow and apologize to the customers.

I continue scanning Kaoru’s items as fast as I can. I keep glancing over at the karasu and the shards of broken mirror on the ground. It’s starting to bleed out.

Now I’m worried about the death of the karasu. What if I actually hit it with the broom, and that’s what broke its neck and shattered the mirror? I keep replaying it over and over again, trying to figure out my precise role and what level of guilt I should feel.

“You put the bread in the wrong bag,” Kaoru says.

The loaf of white bread is squished between the laundry detergent and the lint roller. I apologize profusely and throw the squished bread in the garbage.

The microwave beeps. I grab a new loaf of bread and retrieve the bentō from the microwave and bag them separately.

Kaoru sighs and points at the bag with the bentō. “ It’s leaking.”

I’m so stupid. I always triple-check that the bentō doesn’t leak. I was too busy thinking about the karasu. Not that that’s an excuse.

“Can I speak to your manager?” Kaoru asks.

“She’s not working tonight.”

Kaoru’s smiles tightly. “This is the worst service I’ve ever received. I’m never coming here again. And it smells terrible.” Kaoru pulls out her umbrella and walks out of the konbini and back into the storm.

I can’t do anything right. She’ll probably come back tomorrow and complain to my manager, or give the store a one-star rating online. I’m wearing my nametag, she knows who I am. I take a deep breath and call the next woman forward. I smile so wide my eyes water and my cheeks burn.

I still can’t see her face from under her hood, but I can smell her. She smells like fish that’s been baking in the sun for days.

“You reek. It fills the whole store. It spills out into the streets,” the woman says. She grabs onto my apron with a bony blue hand and pulls me close, her fish breath on my cheek.

“It didn’t happen here, did it?”

I’m not sure which “it” she’s talking about. I think about all the bad things I’ve done all the time: When I spilled milk on the tatami and the smell never really went away. When I cheated on my boyfriend with a blur of faces. When I forgot my wallet and held up the line at the grocery store. When I said something carelessly cruel to Hinata in kindergarten and hurt her feelings. When I stole money from my college roommate. When I accidentally broke the printer at my old office job. When I drank too much and passed out in my own vomit on the side of the street. When I forgot about a package of strawberries in the fridge and had to throw it out. When I convinced Hinata to go cliff jumping at the gorge even though she had a job interview the next morning.

The woman coughs, a death rattle. It’s a horrible sound. I’ve heard it before. “No, it happened by the water, far away. But the smell is strong on you.”

There’s a crack of thunder and the doors slide open and, this time, a group of crows frantically fly in, screaming and toppling the shelves of magazines and chips and pastries.

“You do bad things,” she says. “And no one loves you.”

The fluorescent lights burn my eyes. I stumble out from behind the counter and fall to my knees in the middle of the store.

The woman stands over me. I breathe through my mouth to avoid smelling her, but the odour still stings my throat. I look up at her. Her face is long and pale and blue, so wrinkled and weathered that it looks like a knot of tree roots. Her eyes glow red from under her hood. I’ve read stories about creatures like her—shinigami.

“I smell a girl, facedown in the water,” she hisses.

Everyone secretly wants to be found out, has a deep primal instinct to confess—perhaps in order to be told with certainty whether they are good or evil, a bad person who does good things or a good person who did a bad thing, and then either be justly punished or met with reassurance.

“I go over it—over and over again—in my head.”

“You wanted to hurt her,” the shinigami says.

“I keep trying to figure it out,” I say. Was it a manifestation of something pathological repressed inside my unconscious mind—irritation that Hinata didn’t want to do what I wanted that day, jealousy that she wasn’t blacking out every weekend like I still was, panic that I couldn’t control the trajectory of our friendship? Or was it a random act of violence—the way an animal may attack another because of zaps and pulses in its reptilian brain? Or was it an accident—did I lose my balance and try to hold on to her to steady myself? How hard did I really push her? I need to know for sure. It’s not safe to forget.

It’s always on my mind: My hands on Hinata’s back. Those 20 seconds before she hits the water, face-first. Her body bobbing up from under the water after getting knocked around by the rocks, her limbs contorted. Her gasps for air, her retches as she pukes up river water. Those desperate heaves, unable to get the water out of her lungs.

While she was in the hospital, I texted her until she eventually messaged me: “It’s best if we stop corresponding. I can’t forgive you.”

I wonder if she sent that with eye movements, or speech to text. There were no emojis or exclamation marks, maybe her mother sent it for her.

The shinigami wraps her hands around my neck and squeezes. I am like a branch, and I bend however she wants me to. I can’t smell her anymore. All I hear are the drones of the birds: Kaya, Kaya, Kaya.

The room spins over and over again until all of it is sucked into a spiral, a wheel of fluorescence. I slip outside of myself and float up to the ceiling.

I imagine my soul drifting out of the konbini, into the storm, across the country, and into a newborn with different parents in a different city. I can take it all back and become the purest version of myself. Everything that came before this was just the practice round. I will do it right this time.

And then I hear the doors slide open. The rumble of thunder. A flapping sound, loud like a helicopter.

The shinigami lets go of my neck. I return to my body, my vision straightens.

A giant karasu swoops into the konbini and shakes the rain off its feathers.

“It isn’t time,” it squawks. The karasu isn’t speaking in any human language, but I can understand it.

The animal waves its wing and a candle appears in front of it, its flame flickering bright. The shinigami sighs and backs away from me. This isn’t something she can argue against.

“No, no, no, no,” I say, grabbing for her and then falling on my face.

I expect the karasu to deliver the deep truths on what redemption is and how to live with all the things you’ve done and what to do when you suddenly wake up one day and realize your life is a nightmare.

The karasu pecks at some crumbs on the ground, and then turns to me. “It’s not because you’re good. Or because you’re bad. It just isn’t time.”

The karasu waves the candle away, bites at a bug lodged in its feathers, and then hops toward the door.

“I can’t keep going,” I say.

“Drink tea, eat rice…” the karasu says. It gets distracted by the shards of mirror on the floor before continuing. “Go to sleep.”

The two of them leave the konbini together. When the doors open, the rest of the screaming birds follow.

I pick myself up. No one else stops by the konbini for the rest of the night, so I have time to clean up the feathers and blood and shit and spoiled food and toppled shelves. I can’t get the dark tinge off the tiles where the karasu died no matter how hard I scrub. This is enough.

When the sun rises over the rice paddy across the street, past the train tracks, and up above the konbini, I clock out.

I go home. I drink tea, I eat a bowl of rice. I sleep until sunset. I go to work. I don’t count as much as I used to. My hands bleed less. I often see the shinigami in the corner of my eye, sometimes I reach for her. But we won’t meet again for many years, not until the indifferent flame of the candle burns out.

In 2016, Felix Viton Ho showed up at La Vitrola on St. Laurent in Montreal, not sure what to expect. An undergraduate looking to feel involved in something, Ho had Googled “Montreal concerts” and come across the show listing. He climbed three flights of stairs and entered the dimly lit venue to find a crowd of two. It turned out to be a vaporwave show: a hazy, irony-soaked genre of electronic music that originated online. When the performance started, the two other people welcomed Ho into their midst, and together, they all began to sway.

It’s no secret that live music has become increasingly—and often exorbitantly— expensive. Artists and fans have to contend with a market that is effectively monopolized by Live Nation Entertainment (LNE). The 2010 merger of Ticketmaster and Live Nation means that the single company controls 70 percent of the event venues and ticketing market, gouging audiences with unexpected fees and dynamic pricing models. As Soraya Roberts pointed out earlier this year for Defector, just going to see a popular indie act these days often costs upwards of $50. From an artist’s perspective, these concert ticket prices aren’t indefensible: no one really buys records, streamers don’t really pay, and touring costs are only rising. Amidst this bleak landscape, DIY concerts can offer an adjusted model, one that exists not outside of capitalism but, at least, doesn’t require a Ticketmaster account.

After his introduction to Montreal nightlife, Ho started showing up to more local shows, frequently attending a series of small outdoor concerts put on by promoter Josh Spencer under the name KickDrum. “I asked the man at the door, Josh, if this thing was happening more often,” Ho recalls of his first KickDrum show. “He was like ‘yeah, it’s happening every Wednesday.’ So I showed up the next Wednesday, and I showed up the Wednesday after that.” Eventually, Ho asked Spencer what he could do to get involved, and Spencer asked him to hang out at the door and keep him company. “Maybe you’ll learn a thing or two,” he said. Five years later, Ho is one of KickDrum’s two promoters.

For Liz Houle, KickDrum’s other promoter, the goal is to create an artist experience that is “humane-ish…Because it’s not very humane to be an artist right now,” she says. KickDrum is not profit-seeking, which means Ho and Houle can take risks on new artists and program events that feel exciting and unusual. Meanwhile, their low overhead and NOTAFLOF policy—no one turned away for lack of funds—keeps costs down for audiences. They don’t use Ticketmaster, either, instead selling tickets on a platform they built themselves, with no extra fees.

Recent KickDrum events include two shows with PEI post-punks Absolute Losers, a show featuring rising stars Quinton Barnes and Fraud Perry, and a stripped-down folk night at underground venue MAI/SON. When they’re not worried about staying afloat, promoters can dive deeper into their communities, discovering something new—an energizing sound, a strange space—along the way.

*

DIY music as an ethos is commonly traced back to UK punk and post-punk scenes in the late ’70s and early ’80s, when bands like the Buzzcocks and Scritti Politti began self-releasing their music with a view toward transparency and anti-commercialism. But artists across genres have always innovated with what was on hand, from hip hop’s turntable experiments to the homemade instruments of skiffle. “DIY describes a music culture,” writes popular- music scholar Ellis Jones, “wherein emphasis is placed on forming and maintaining spaces for production and distribution which exist outside of, and are positioned as oppositional to, the commercial music industries.”

DIY music is not separate from processes of commodification—concerts and records still affix a monetary value to creative works. But what DIY can do is interrupt the corporate subsumption of all things artistic. “DIY practitioners,” Jones writes, create “commodities that attempt (successfully or otherwise) to bypass or mitigate consumption’s connotations of passivity, exploitation, and alienation.”

Musician and booker Daniel G. Wilson grew up studying these histories of rock, punk and DIY in Mississauga. “I liked the idea that these people were going against the grain,” Wilson says. He mentions that his earliest exposures to DIY came via his Jamaican background. “Musical culture over there already has a sort of natural DIY spirit,” Wilson says. “People wire up and fix up equipment to make soundsystems.”

As a teen, Wilson was part of a thriving all-ages scene in Mississauga, centred around the Masonic Lodge (where Billy Talent used to play in the ’90s, back when they were called Pezz). When the Lodge became too expensive to book, Wilson started trying to get gigs for his band JONCRO in Toronto. But he found bookers were hesitant to book bands without a following, and that this was even more of a barrier for bands with an aggressive sound and a diverse makeup. He points out that it can be easier for white bands to have a built-in audience and that these bands aren’t always welcoming others into their scenes.

Wilson decided to face the problem head-on. In 2017 he founded a festival for BIPOC-fronted and inclusive rock bands, Lingua Franca. “I’m like, ‘ok, I’m going to prove to everyone in this city that you can have an entire bill stacked with amazing bands that are all diverse,’” he says. The festival ran for one night in 2017, its first year, and in 2018, Wilson expanded it to three. “What made me happy was all these people—people playing and coming to the show—for the first time, they were not in the minority,” Wilson says. “The diversity on stage reflected the diversity in the crowd.” Wilson thought to himself: “I’ve done something magical here.”

Lingua Franca has never had grants or sponsorships. “I wanted to prove that you could do this with very little resources, the resources of your community,” Wilson explains. In removing corporate constraints, DIY can create space for marginalized artists who can find themselves structurally shut out of opportunities.

Removing those constraints can also create scenes in places that are ignored by the music industry. Brett Sanderson and Sophia Tweel put on DIY punk and hardcore shows in Charlottetown, PEI. For them, DIY is a matter of keeping music alive.

PEI’s population is only 150,000, Sanderson points out. “So it’s kind of hard to find people to come to shows. But if you keep at it for a long time—”

“You get a little following,” Tweel jumps in. “It introduces people to a scene that they’ve never really had access to before.”

Under the name Secret Beach, Sanderson and Tweel put on all-ages shows, aiming to provide an inclusive space where young people can get excited about music. “We have posters up at every show: no misogyny, no homophobia, no transphobia, no racism,” Sanderson says. “If you aren’t cool with that then you can leave.” They also hang posters from the harm reduction organization PEERS Alliance and emphasize a “no booze, no drugs, no jerks” policy.

Secret Beach has never put on a ticketed show, dealing instead in cash and giving as much of the proceeds as possible to touring bands. Though it may be hard to maintain a scene in a small place, Sanderson and Tweel are enthusiastic about PEI’s emerging artists. “Since we started doing shows,” Sanderson says, “we’ve definitely seen more kids starting bands.”

Likewise, Houle and Ho have noticed an uptick in underground activity in Montreal. “It’s been really lovely to see the surge of young people putting on things in their apartments or at the park,” Houle says. “People are just really down to experiment and try out new types of events and do underground stuff for just their friends.”

Up until this year, KickDrum was mostly run by Ho and Houle, but in January they started getting younger volunteers who wanted to help out and learn how to put on shows. KickDrum went from being two people to seven or eight, and Houle and Ho are excited to be able to pass on what they’ve learned.

For Ottawa’s Hannah Judge and Michael Watson, knowledge sharing is one of the primary motivators behind their DIY label, Club Records. Watson and Judge realized they were effectively running a label before they started calling it one. Watson had been producing and offering distribution to artists and Judge had been showing artists how to release their music, knowledge she gained through her band Fanclubwallet. “One day I just, like, made a logo as kind of a joke and I was like, ‘what if I made a website?’ Before we knew it I was like, ‘oh, this is a record label.’”

Club Records put out their first official release this year, emmersonHALL’s self-titled record. They are proud of the album’s reception, especially considering they spent $80 on promotion. “It feels like every day I’m getting to make a really cool art project with my friends,” Judge says. Like KickDrum, Club Records exists to uplift artists’ work, rather than extract value from it.

“When you sign with a major label, you’re thinking ‘oh, how much money do I owe them?’” Judge says. “And so nothing feels super satisfying,” Watson adds. If Watson or Judge produced the music, they will take a production royalty, but otherwise, at least for now, Club Records doesn’t take a royalty percentage from artists. Instead, when they invoice for a specific job—like producing, or music videos—they add a Club Records tax, which then goes back into their funds for artists. The DIY model allows practitioners to try out different approaches like this, instead of falling into old, exploitative dynamics.

Transparency is built into the Club Records process: the website features a resources page with how-to guides for touring, pitching music, and dealing with “the scary stuff ” (aka, money). Each of the documents on the page is editable, so users can contribute their own experiences, too. The resource page harkens back to those early UK post-punk releases, which featured itemized costs and how- to explainers printed on their sleeves.

Like Houle and Ho, Judge and Watson emphasize the vibrant DIY ecosystem they belong to, pointing to groups like Debaser and Side By Side Weekend. “It’s just cool to see all your friends in the DIY scene trying to do things to uplift the rest of the DIY scene,” Judge says.

*

DIY scenes have to uplift themselves, because their underground and non-profit nature makes sustainability a serious challenge. Venues face some of the biggest hurdles. “I often would joke,” Wilson says, “for the first couple of years every venue that I would book for Lingua Franca—except for the more sizable venues—would close the next year.” In 2017, Wilson booked Toronto vegan cafe D-Beatstro. By 2018, it was gone. The same thing happened the next time around with the classic punk venue Faith/Void. La Vitrola, the venue where Ho first fell in love with Montreal shows, closed in 2020, and underground venue La Plante followed soon after.

Longrunning Vancouver DIY venue and arts collective Red Gate Arts Society is currently facing its own existential threat. Active since 2012 (and even earlier, more informally), Red Gate has moved twice already: first after an eviction in 2011, and again in 2018 following a building sale. In their current Mount Pleasant venue, they operate under a licencing program for arts events in “unconventional spaces.” Co-founder Jim Carrico says that the city is now suggesting they apply for a new licence specifically for night clubs and sent a notice to their landlord. He’s not sure what prompted the notice, but in the time that he has been running Red Gate, Carrico says he’s seen more venues shut down than start up. “For there to be a music scene or an arts scene there needs to be a place where people can kind of mess up and make it up and experiment,” Carrico says, “and it has to be cheap.”

The housing and cost of living crises across the country place structural pressures on artists and practitioners to abandon DIY and professionalize. They also make DIY models increasingly necessary. Vinson Ng and Haina Wan of the dance music collective Normie Corp emphasize the importance of keeping events affordable. “The people that we want to cater to,” Ng says, “they’re just feeling it really hard, so there’s a lot of pay what you can, there’s a lot of pay it forward tickets.”

They started throwing events on Zoom during the pandemic and have expanded into in-person parties, mostly in Vancouver, with a focus on highlighting queer, trans, Black, Indigenous, people of colour and women artists. The organizers are especially proud of their Pride and Halloween events. “We can pack the room with like 800 to 900 people,” Wan says. “It’s just such a joy to share.” This year, they also hosted their first music festival, Camp Normie.

The question of whether to grow is a tricky one. Because they don’t prioritize profits, DIY models can lead to burnout, with organizers running out of capacity. Judge and Watson mention that the current structure of Club Records isn’t sustainable and they have still-secret plans to develop the organization.

Wilson would love to have the resources to book classic bands like Fishbone, he says. But he also knows that were he to expand, Lingua Franca would lose something in the process. “I think of the Afropunk festival, where a lot of Black punks are kind of sad because it doesn’t really cater to Black punks anymore,” he says.

For Ho, the question of what happens to KickDrum is almost beside the real point. “KickDrum is a useful resource,” he says. “But if the name KickDrum disappears tomorrow it won’t make a difference. What matters is the people, and the experience they’ve gained.”

Houle appreciates occupying a kind of middle ground between a business and a friend’s living room. “We’re not successful enough to go corporate,” she jokes. But the joke belies what KickDrum offers artists and audiences instead: community, creativity, and a fair deal.

Photo by Mork Eman

The last time I drank I was surrounded by family. I’d just returned from a solo trip to Scotland where I drank heavily every day for several weeks. When I got home I put my foot down. Okay, only on special occasions now. Every alcoholic knows this little cha-cha. A few weeks later, my partner’s brother’s wedding: a perfect occasion. I tried to hide from my partner just how many I was having. But on the goofy, lovely school bus back to the hotel, as everyone else on the bus sang “Bohemian Rhapsody” acapella in joyous harmony, standing on the seats and clapping, I slumped down in my chair and sobbed.

I was tired of waking up ashamed with painfully swollen eyes, if I remembered enough to feel shame. My life was finally good enough to be afraid of ruining it. My new partner barely drank, not because of addiction, but just because! It helped. He helped. And I stopped, two days shy of 29.

But there were and are things he cannot help me with. He does not understand what it is like to have a substance use disorder. Alcohol was not my only drug, just my main one: the constant, looming star from which my other drug use orbited. In my day-to-day life, it remains immensely beneficial to have a partner and friends whose social lives don’t happen to revolve around alcohol and drug use. But when I’m struggling not to relapse, they can’t relate.

Among other things, drinking helped me pretend to be the carefree person I thought everyone wanted me to be with more ease. But just underneath, I was deeply sad and lonely. I celebrated six years of sobriety in August. I took myself out to dinner alone to celebrate the occasion. I have muscled through my entire sobriety without a recovery community. Not by choice, really—there just isn’t one right for me (I tell myself).

Perhaps this is just what I do. I tell myself I have to do things alone.

I’m really proud of myself. And I’m still often deeply sad and lonely.

The loneliness I felt while I sat on that bus, it stays. Would it be assuaged in a recovery group? Would it fade in more intentional community with other sober folks, whether they experience addiction or not? There is opportunity for this sort of connection. It seems more people than ever are questioning their relationships with alcohol and exploring sobriety, evidenced by the rise of mocktail culture, the appearance of sober bars, and other sober social gathering spaces. According to Statistics Canada, despite a general increase in alcohol sales during the first year of the pandemic, the reported level of heavy drinking in 2021 was the lowest since they began asking this question in 2015, with the largest percentage decrease occurring in the 18 to 34-year-old age group: down 10.1 percent from 2020 and 31.5 percent from 2015. The statistics aren’t out for 2022 and 2023 yet, but I wonder if the (somewhat controversial) January 2023 updates to Canada’s Guidance on Alcohol and Health, which say “Research shows that no amount or kind of alcohol is good for your health,” has driven even more people to decrease their drinking and explore sober spaces. Would entering these spaces help me? I have a lot of questions about this cultural moment in regard to alcohol use and sobriety, community and loneliness, and how we relate to one another within all of this. But I’m not sure I’ve found many answers.

*

The notion of an addiction recovery support group is virtually synonymous with AA (Alcoholics Anonymous) and its various offshoots (Narcotics Anonymous, Al-Anon, etc.), and for good reason—membership is estimated at over two million. As a free and widely available service, it’s undoubtedly valuable: people come together, share their stories, and help each other feel less alone. Many people owe their sobriety to the community and structure they’ve found there. However, AA has a kind of monopoly. There are other options, like SMART Recovery—“Self-Management and Recovery Training,” a program with a scientific foundation based on practical tools and self-reliance that also offers free meetings—but none are anywhere close to as broadly available as AA. SMART offers roughly 2,000 local meetings per week in 23 countries in comparison to AA’s 123,000 groups worldwide. When you’re searching for support as an addict, it often feels like AA is your only option. If you have philosophical issues with the “Big Book” (a kind of bible which outlines AA’s 12 steps, traditions and history), or with the way things are run, it can feel like you are on your own.

In 2021, when I was struggling to access care for a drawn-out health crisis mid-pandemic, I was desperate enough for support that despite my multiple qualms with AA, I attended a meeting on Zoom. But my gut feeling of uneasiness won out and I never returned. Mostly, I loathed the idea of anonymity.

My concerns aren’t just philosophical, but practical. I’m so tired of hiding. I’ve always hid my various addictions; I led a convincing double life (I think). Anonymity feels like stigma to me. I’m exhausted by the need to shelter others from these apparently scary words: addiction, alcoholic, substance use disorder. I’m not interested in being part of a support group that upholds anonymity as a part of its founding principle.

“I have a lot of gratitude for AA for my sobriety, and a lot of unease about how the program operates,” Sachiko Murakami of Toronto, in AA from 2010 to around 2018, says. “People who stop going to meetings are assumed to be drunk or dead or miserable,” she says, and when she left AA, her friendships fell apart, requiring her to rebuild her social life for years. Chris Banks of Kitchener, Ontario, who attended AA for three years, also has an issue with its members telling people if they leave, they’re going to die an alcoholic death. These kinds of messages and cutting off of friendships push members into a closed circle, entirely dependent on the group for support and community.

I understand reality: stigma does exist and people can be cruel about addiction. Anonymity is one way of protecting people from that, to ensure they can comfortably attend meetings and get help. But I think we should question the fact that the main recovery support system available to addicts props up an old-fashioned way of thinking about stigma. I want openness and inclusivity prioritized in any community I enter. That leaves me looking elsewhere.

*

Unfortunately, in a similar shame vein, in my exploration of Canadian “sober curious” spaces, sober bars, and mocktail/non-alcoholic drink stores, few explicitly named themselves as a welcoming space for recovering addicts. Sure, there was language like, “…for those of us travelling a sober lifestyle…,” or “… for any adult who is skipping alcohol for any reason including health, belief, and/or just not the right time for an alcoholic drink,” or “We are an alcohol-free space that emphasizes a life lived more fully…,” or “… for Anyone Sober or Sober Curious!” On the surface, that’s inclusive enough, right? For sober people! Okay! But I rarely found the words addiction, recovery, or alcoholic on these websites. I get it. Not sexy! Capitalism! But here I am, a sober recovering addict, wondering if these sober spaces are for me. On most of the websites I visited, I get the distinct impression that they aren’t. The exception in my (certainly non-exhaustive) search was Sober City in Halifax, “the one and only place for information, resources, and inspiration on where to go and what to do in Halifax for the newly sober, the sober-curious, and those who occasionally dabble in the alcohol-free life,” where the word “recovery” does in fact appear in the about section when discussing the founder’s personal story. I think it’s telling that in my search, this small moment felt noteworthy to me.

Megan Campbell is the founder of Sober Socials in Ottawa. When I asked her what communities Sober Socials serves, she said “…those who are looking for like-minded people on the path of living, or curiously exploring, an alcohol-free life… most attendees are sober-curious or attempting to live without alcohol for a period of time and are excited to meet people who get it and can relate.” Sober Socials are paid events which began in 2022, often focused on mindfulness, movement and mocktails, and partnered with other businesses in Ottawa, like Knyota Drinks, a non-alcoholic drink shop. Sober Socials began in 2022 and Knyota Drinks opened their storefront in the same year. I asked Campbell about her personal relationship to sobriety. “I have been sober [for more than a] year now and no longer identify as sober, but rather as living an alcohol- free life…However, as someone who has overcome addiction and recovered, I also deeply resonate with the concept of sobriety and am compassionate to those in recovery.” Campbell not only runs Sober Socials but also openly shares her thoughts about removing alcohol from her life on the page’s social media. But I have to say, as much as I appreciate Campbell’s candidness, it frustrates me that the stigma against addiction is so strong that even a group supposedly for and compassionate to people in recovery cannot explicitly state as much in their general marketing and website copy.

Am I being harsh? I am not trying to single out any one group—this seems to me like the linguistic marketing trend nationwide. But my loneliness is rearing its head again. So many of these spaces seem to be saying, we want sober people here, but not addicts. We welcome addicts, but only if you’ll be anonymous. If these are the options, I’ll go out to dinner alone instead.

And I probably won’t order a mocktail—I’m not super interested in drinking anything that mimics alcohol. But I know many in recovery feel differently. When at a bar, Murakami drinks non-alcoholic beverages—she is partial to sober paloma mocktails—“because it does feel weird to be at a bar without a drink in your hand,” whereas Banks will go for the non-alcoholic beer. If they don’t have it, he’s happy to reach for a sparkling water.

As for a sober bar, I don’t want to be in a space that is mimicking a bar without the alcohol. I only go to bars now if there is a reason to be there, like a concert or a reading. I don’t want to go to bars just to go, even if there isn’t actual booze. I don’t feel good in those spaces at this point in my recovery. Banks and Murakami are also disinterested in sober bars. “Sober [bars] might be interesting but I much prefer just going where my friends want to go,” Banks says. Whereas for Murakami, it’s more a matter of where she is in recovery: “I don’t really need that level of support to maintain my sobriety these days…I would certainly go to support a newly sober friend, though!”

Our somewhat indifference to these organized physical spaces makes sense to me given that we don’t seem to be their target audience (though mocktails and non-alcoholic drinks on their own are clearly a different story). Do some people in recovery not seek these places out because they are excluded from the marketing, or are they excluded from the marketing because they don’t seek these places out? I am unsure. All I can say is that personally, I was tentatively interested in exploring these communities until I picked up on these language choices, and then, I was decidedly not. So, who are they for?

*

I wanted to talk to some sober-curious people (though not everyone I spoke to identifies that way) and get their read on things. Are they into mocktails? Are sober bars places they’d frequent? What do we have in common?

I put out a public call on Instagram and was surprised by the number of people who responded. The people I interviewed abstain from alcohol for many reasons— medication interference, health, family history of alcoholism, not enjoying drinking culture, partners with addiction, general disinterest. They also happened to mostly fall within that 18 to 34-year-old age bracket. Sarah Kikuchi of Halifax, 32, has recently noticed more people talking about sobriety on social media, which she appreciates. She says, “I have a fairly neutral relationship with alcohol. It’s not something I care much about but it’s hard to imagine life without it as it’s so prevalent.” Namitha Rathinappillai of Toronto, 23, notes this prevalence as well: “As I began distancing myself from drinking and drinking culture, I have become more critical to the ways in which alcoholism or ‘problem drinking’ is deeply normalized…”

Drinking holds a heavy presence over our social interactions. Early in my sobriety I avoided most places with alcohol (so, most places). Even still, if I’m at a party or show where people are drinking, I try to leave once people are visibly inebriated. I know others in recovery feel similarly. “I usually leave before everyone gets sloppy and annoying,” Murakami says.

What about sober social spaces or bars? I knew I personally didn’t feel welcome after looking more closely at their marketing, but do sober-curious folks feel differently? Interestingly, most of the sober-curious people I spoke with, despite this feeling that drinking culture looms large, were uninterested in the idea of sober bars or sober-specific meeting spaces. Either because they are, as Rathinappillai said, “just not someone who would frequent a bar, sober or not,” or like Christine of Ottawa, 33, “…everything I do in life is sober and just as fun so I don’t see the appeal of [sober] spaces/gatherings,” or like Heather Krueger of Airdrie, Alberta, 45, who, not loving crowds or loud music, is unsure if “a sober bar would be a space I would want to go.”

Clearly, though, these spaces hold appeal for someone— they exist! But for who exactly, I’m just not quite sure. It doesn’t seem to be for those in recovery, and it also didn’t seem to be the sober-curious folks I spoke with (though this was far from a scientific study). The people I interviewed seemed more interested in either engaging in spaces completely removed from drinking culture or did not seem to mind being around drinking in the first place.

At one point in my reporting, I felt slightly resentful toward these sober- curious spaces. The sharp turn from hopeful—maybe I will find a space to lay some loneliness to rest!—to excluded left me feeling angry. But after speaking to more sober-curious people, that anger faded away. It’s good that these spaces exist, even if they aren’t for the people I spoke with, or for me.

Everyone deserves a welcoming space, whether they have a perfectly healthy relationship to alcohol, never really liked drinking to begin with, have an active substance use disorder, or are sober and/or in recovery. Somewhere that aligns with their values, with people who appreciate their experiences. Ideally, there would be some kind of adult space where everyone could gather and feel safe, regardless of their relationship to substances.

Where is that space for me? I still feel alone on the bus, surrounded by people singing. Where do I go when the readily accessible recovery support group is rife with issues that I’m unwilling to look past? Where are the non-support-group sober spaces that are explicitly inclusive of addicts? Is it possible to create a space inclusive of, and safe for, the sober curious, sober people in recovery from addiction, and drug/ alcohol users? I don’t have an answer to these questions, but I think they’re worth posing. In the open, out loud, and in public, where they belong.

“How do I get an abortion?” an anxious woman asks the doctor. He responds with his own questions about her relationship status, her income and her decision to not have a child. This interaction isn’t fictitious; it’s the opening scene of Rachel Cairns’s podcast “Aborsh” and her upcoming autobiographical play, Hypothetical Baby.

Her unhelpful doctor’s appointment prompted Cairns to turn to Google for the information she needed. It also forced her to think about the state of reproductive justice in Canada and all of the people without access.

Abortion has been legal in Canada since 1969, but at that time, could only be approved by a panel of doctors and only performed if a pregnancy threatened the life or health of a pregnant person. In 1988, this approach was ruled unconstitutional, and abortion was more fully legalized. However, barriers to abortion care remain. Despite increased availability of medical abortions, which are induced by taking pills called mifepristone and misoprostol and can be prescribed online, surgical abortions are often inaccessible in rural areas. Many patients seeking this care end up needing to pay out of pocket to travel to clinics outside their cities or towns, and many end up unable to access the care they need at all.

Cairns was eventually able to get an abortion on Christmas Eve, 2019. She started writing the play the next summer as a way to process, and also to share. While it’s a one-woman show, Hypothetical Baby prompts the audience to think about the state of abortion access in Canada like Cairns did when she was googling to fill the gaps in her own health care.

Now that Hypothetical Baby is almost out in the world, Cairns says she feels both excited and nervous. “I’m trying to talk about abortion and reproductive choice and fertility publicly in the way we talk about it privately with the closest people in our lives,” Cairns says. “We talk about it privately with heart, humour, irreverence, oversharing, honesty, neurotic vulnerability. I’m trying to humanize the experience and show how fraught it is for many people.”

Cairns, who had an IUD at the time she became pregnant, says she grappled with the complexities surrounding her abortion. “It didn’t feel like I was choosing anything because I hadn’t consented to this [pregnancy] as a possibility,” she says. “At the same time, it was a choice that was informed by so many personal and societal factors that affect all of us, like housing, access to childcare, livable wages for the city you live in.”

As the pandemic halted live performances, Cairns turned the play into her award-winning podcast, “Aborsh.” In the podcast, Cairns speaks with experts and activists about reproductive freedom in Canada while sharing her own story.

Cairns’s work promises an honest conversation about abortion that sees her navigating the surprising emotions she experienced surrounding her choice to not become a parent. Written and performed by Cairns, Hypothetical Baby runs December 8 to 17 at Toronto’s Tarragon Theatre.