Recently, I wandered into the Vancouver Art Gallery to see the work of Tamio Wakayama, a Japanese-Canadian photojournalist. He was born in 1941 in New Westminster, B.C., and died in 2018 in Vancouver. Shortly after his birth, the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor and Wakayama’s family was forcibly moved into an internment camp. According to the…
I’m drawn toward poetry that is visceral, descriptive and accessible rather than academic. I was excited to discover this new collection by Vilma Blenman, which accomplishes all three. Like a filmmaker, Blenman pulls the reader into her scenes, so that we feel as though we are experiencing them first-hand. Blenman has lived her adult life…
Emancipation is a word for a work in progress / five stretched syllables patient as a long sword / hummed then strummed. / It’s a word for a road winding through woods, / a river running north, a start standing still, / a light in a house on a hill
In early 2015, while I was still serving as director of library services at Ambrose University in Calgary, I was invited by The Langham Partnership to become the library consultant for the Engagement de l’Afrique (EA) initiative. The primary goal of EA was to enhance the research culture at three seminaries in francophone Africa offering…
Gaspereau Press is one of Canada’s most iconic independent presses (called “Canada’s most stubborn publisher” by The Walrus) with a long-standing emphasis on in-house printing of high-quality, limited runs of books. Founded in 1997 in Wolfville, Nova Scotia, by Andrew Steeves and Gary Dunfield, Gaspereau Press’ legacy and backlist transferred in 2025 to Keagan Hawthorne,…
Dave Larsen’s debut novel, Green Street in Black and White, compactly narrates the backstory of the upheaval of Englewood, a middle-class Chicago neighbourhood, as integration began. The book poses as fiction, though it tells painful truths. The names have been changed – I suspect to protect kind, scared, belatedly guilt-beset white Christian sisters and brothers….
It can be difficult to define beauty. In his new book, Wesley Vander Lugt understands beauty to be traces of divine glory in the natural world and in human culture. He aims to show readers why beauty’s impact is necessary to a vibrant faith and hope. Vander Lugt, a teacher of theology and a director…
“Poetry may seem to be an indirect way of speaking, but it’s more direct in touching the affective, relational part of us. It’s the language of the heart for those who have ears to hear. It’s especially valuable to read Christian poetry.”– D.S. Martin, in a 2024 Faith Today interview D.S. Martin’s latest book, The…
This past Spring, I read Let Your Heartbreak be Your Guide: Lessons in Engaged Contemplation by Episcopal priest Adam Bucko. I considered my life and saw that my heart had been repeatedly broken. I revised the question to: What is my greatest heartbreak? It didn’t take long for the answer to emerge – my failings…
Snow settles like psalmson the cathedral of pines,each flake a whispered prayerin winter’s deep silence. Through frosted windowpanesI watch the sacred dance –crystalline choreographyof mercy falling soft and slow. The evergreens bowbeneath their white vestments,patient bearers of winter’s weight,keeping faithful vigil in the cold. And somewhere beneaththis blanket of grace,dormant seeds waitin their earthen chapel,…
Last January, the house I grew up in was empty. My mother had moved in with one of my sisters. Over the spring and summer, we emptied shelves and found new homes for family things, trying to hold on to memories while preparing the house for sale. My parents owned that house for over forty…
At four years of age, I decided to learn how to write. I sprawled on the living room carpet, placed a blank page over a flattened Smarties box, and traced the letters. Then I ran to the kitchen, triumphantly presenting the sheet to my mother, exclaiming, “I can write!” She observed, “You copied a Smarties…
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