Special thanks to the ones who saw it before it existed.
We did some redecorating. Visit us: bloom.thevarsity.ca
TABLE OF CONTENTS
A rose by any other name
March
Tales from tending to the greenhouse
Devouring my $10 mango
The allegory of the garden
Edible flowers and city markets
Broken daisies
Undercutting action with aesthetics
Our hypoxic economies
Novel beginnings
Beyond you
Hit me baby, one more time!
You are the flower
Sidewalk weeds
Ode to sugarcane
A new type of garden
To become Violet
Episode 19: My Mother, Myself, and Time
The enthusiasm of the masses
Beauty in plain sight
Glasshouse
The kinship of giving blood
Autumn leaves
Sweet violets: The story of Mammola
Letter from the editors
Coming up with the theme “Bloom” was no more than being in my fourth year of university. It was no more than being 21, and thinking about it in my office at 21 Sussex. I didn’t have an office at 21 Sussex until this year. I didn’t have, see, think, or know many things that I do now until this year, or last year, or the year before. “Bloom” arose from looking to the past. With “Bloom,” let’s gaze back, ponder now, and dream forward.
— Shontia Sanders, Magazine Editor-in-Chief
One week to design such a complex and interpretive magazine was a whirlwind. I hope “Bloom” throws you off a little, makes you look twice, and makes you look closer. It is a snapshot of chaos, and of a love for nature finding its form. It reflects the way growth unfolds: beautifully, uneven, and reaching for light.
— Chloe Weston, Creative Director
A rose by any other name A cultural criticism
Elisabeth Rowsell | Writer
Raina Prouxl-Sanyal | Photographer
March
The snow has landed
The white blanket that used to cushion my soul has turned to sleet
A grey haze, your love a smog that never cleared
Suffocating my lungs
I can’t breathe
Around you
The tenderness has faded
Your heart has hardened
And my body’s gone cold awaiting release.
I wonder when this changed
When did you change?
I blame myself
Ignorant
Bliss
I choose to see the softness
Trust me it’s hard
Staying soft in this hard world
Was it all a lie?
One of the masks you wear
Shapeshifting my reality
Where am I?
Waiting for the ice to thaw
A ticking bomb
I crave renewal
Has the love melted?
Am I waiting for a miracle?
I remember the lush green
We used to stand in the sun
I miss the taste of sugar
The envelopment of warmth
Tomorrow is nothing but a promise
It feels as if spring will never come.
I’ve heard with solstice comes bloom
Bring about my rebirth
How long until I recognize myself again?
I want to forget
Your rotten ways
Wilting away
The bitter words you can’t take back
Light that dimmed
A stolen spark
Let time mend me whole
Spring must come
Eternal and undying
I will blossom
Zoe Keary-Matzner | Writer
Wren Shan | Illustrator
Chloe Weston | Photographer
Tales from Tending to the G reenhouse
What we lose when we’re ecologically disconnected
Last summer, I took a Work Study job at the U of T greenhouse, taking care of the dazzling variety of plants they keep locked up at the top of the St. George Earth Sciences building — if you’ve never been, I highly recommend it, we have turtles!
As I went through the plant watering shifts each day, I realized that all I saw was a sea of green — I didn’t know any of the species individually. I wanted to know who they were, and I wanted other people to find out too. I decided to start an independent project, creating labels on the ecological and cultural history of some key plant families in the greenhouse.
I care a lot about plants, specifically the relationships between plants and their ecosystems, between plants and other kingdoms of life, and between plants and humans. I’m interested especially in how we relate to these strange life forms, what stories we tell about them, and have told about them for thousands of years.
When I was a kid, I went to a summer camp where I learned all about plants. Specifically, those that grow in the Humber River Valley, where our camp was.
Near Old Mill subway station lies a little pocket of woodland and meadow, fed by the river, jarringly close to the busiest parts of the city. I learned as much as I could — I’d yap endlessly about the the ‘weedy’ but edible burdock, the skin-blistering wild parsnip, the pale purple chicory flowers, the tea-souring sumac berries, the water-
glistening jewelweed, the hemlock that can kill you in minutes, the nightshade berries that can treat Soviet neurotoxins, and the sting-soothing plantain ‘weed’ that grows all over the city. I loved all of it.
I learned all about these flora, and for a few glancing weeks, experienced what it was like to know an ecosystem. Or, not just ‘know’ it — but be connected with it, be part of it.
It’s a feeling of being part of something larger than yourself, something ever-present, something beautiful, that so many people spend their lives striving endlessly to find. It’s a feeling of peace on a large scale, not an individual scale — even if things aren’t going well in your own life, life goes on, all around you. That can be comforting.
Histories of plant knowledge
For millennia, across every culture, in every corner of the globe, people felt this same urge to connect with their plant ecosystems. Historically, Indigenous people across the world who lived in and were dependent on their local ecosystems acquired a deep connection and expansive knowledge about that ecosystem.
dependent on local biomes — instead, the resources we use to sustain ourselves — food, shelter, et cetera — come from elsewhere, and are separated from us by supply chains.
With my greenhouse labelling project, I wanted to give people a way to learn about the ancient history of our relationship to plants. This ancient ecological knowledge and connection are embedded in many mythologies, religious texts, and ancient poems.
The rustling of papyrus marshes masks the newborn cries of the someday king, Horus, in ancient Egyptian mythology.
Such knowledge is known as Indigenous Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK), which the Indigenous Climate Hub calls “a cumulative body of knowledge, practices, and beliefs about the relationship between living beings and their environment. [TEK is] passed down through generations via oral traditions.”
Traditional knowledge about local ecosystems is largely absent in the culture and knowledge base of colonial societies like ours. The ecosystems that surround us exist in our cultural periphery, and we understand them through a perspective not of curiosity, but of extraction and exploitation. Urbanized capitalist colonial societies are not
The vanilla bean’s symbiotic connection with the melipona bee is enshrined in the Totonac people’s story of two clandestine lovers, who, when executed, turn into a bee and a vine for eternity. The yew’s simultaneous toxicity and medicinal value is reflected in folklore from ancient Ireland to the medicine of the Cowlitz in the Pacific Northwest.
Almost every species of plant has some story, some place in mythology, in some culture around the world.
It’s all the more painful, then, that many of us seem to have lost this connection in modern colonial societies. I wonder if this lack of ecological connection aches somewhat in our collective psyche. I wonder what would change if we regained this connection.
Ella MacCormack | Writer and Illustrator
I laughed when I saw it at the store: two pounds of mango, nestled happily into a white foam net blanket. It wasn’t until I reached the self-checkout, mango in hand, that I realized its price. I cradled it all the way home. But even nestled carefully in the crook of my arm, the mango still bruised.
Most mangos are picked unripe to survive transportation around the world. Not this one. This $10, tree-ripened, Peruvian mango was plucked at the peak of ripeness and shipped by air to me, for me.
I tried to ignore it in the kitchen, but even from across the room, I could smell that it wasn’t meant to last much longer.
I delicately washed the mango in the sink, accidentally peeling the skin under the sticker. I cut into it with my sharpest knife, although I could have used a butter knife to pierce its soft flesh. I bit into the halved mango, juice staining my face and running down my forearms.
Saturn Devouring His Son was painted by Francisco Goya directly onto the walls of his dining room, the oil paint covering the floral wallpaper beneath. It depicts Saturn, hunched over and feral, consuming his child. Goya stared at Saturn while he ate; Saturn stared at Goya while he ate. Saturn’s eyes look distressed by his own violence, but his mouth gapes hungrily for more.
The painting was never meant for public consumption.
Over my sink, I tried not to choke on my feast. I simultaneously hungered to consume, to possess, to preserve. In my careless bites, the mango’s bitter skin clung stubbornly to the flesh.
In the original myth behind the painting’s posthumous title, Saturn devours all of his children whole out of fear one would overthrow him as prophesied, just as Saturn did his own father. Goya stretched the horror, instead imagining Saturn engulfing his son limb by limb.
I was forced to pause breathlessly between slices, resisting clarity fighting its way back to my head. Not yet.
Saturn’s fingers dig into his child’s lifeless flesh. His grip is desperate, holding onto his creation slipping away.
I grazed the pit with my teeth and kept going, desperate not to waste a single fibre. My body rebelled. It was too much. I spat the excess into the now blood-orange sink, coughing and breathless.
Satiated, I leaned against the solid counter, my eyes unfocused on the bleeding mango skin left behind.
The allegory of the garden
A tale of wild growth and measured care
Asal Arefi | Writer
There was a garden, and in it, the air moved with the quiet pulse of life, carrying the murmur of flowers through it. In one corner, the earth ran untamed — thick with wildflower blooms that arched and swayed in ecstatic disorder. Their stems entwined as if in secret congress, petals trembling in devotion to the wind’s caprice. Some leapt skyward in bursts of colour; others bent low, brushing the soil in soft surrender. Yet all moved as though the air itself had taught them to grow.
Beyond that, the other half lay in measured repose. Rows of stems stood in rigid elegance, leaves trimmed to exacting curves, blossoms aligned in patient geometry. A breeze wandered equally through both halves of the garden, bending some stems in playful arcs, flattening others with the scent of rain, honey, and sunwarmed earth.
Amid the measured rows, a single wildflower had taken root unlike any other. Its stem curved with a quiet deliberation, neither rigidly straight nor entirely surrendered to the whims of the wind. Its petals — brushed with the riotous hues of the untamed corner — held a tentative bloom, as if testing the power of the sunlight before daring to unfurl.
Around it, ordered stems pressed close, polished leaves glinting in silent appraisal. The wildflower stretched toward the light, brushing against its neighbours. It swayed between these impulses, drawn toward the soft disorder beyond its row, yet tethered by the careful geometry of the row from which it sprung. In the stillness of its rise, the flower seemed to pose a question with its very shape. An unspoken weighing of air,
soil, and light — as though the garden itself had stilled to watch its choice: to bloom freely, or to take root in order.
The wildflower pushed itself from the soil of the bed, its stem trembling. The hands of the pruned blossoms in the neighbouring row reached in silence, brushing the wildflower’s edges, folding its petals with careful insistence: do not stretch too far, do not sway beyond the measure. To rise without guidance was to fall; to bloom without restraint was to perish. The pruned leaves remained unbroken, their colour fixed in quiet symmetry. They endured because they were watched, tended, and restrained from the transgressions that could break a less careful stem.
For a moment, the wildflower bent at their insistence, its colours dimming as if absorbing the wisdom in restraint. Yet even as the scissors of careful care hovered, it quivered with a strange resolve, a tremor that ran from root to tip, carrying the memory of wind-tossed neighbours and the pandemonium of blooms beyond the neatly ordered rows.
Beyond even the measured rows, a figure crept through the garden, unseen yet everpresent. Its touch was subtle: brushing leaves here, shifting soil there — a hand of guidance felt but never grasped. The wildflower shivered at the thought of the unseen hand, sensing a weight in the earth beneath its roots, a suggestion of shape in the wind’s chaos. It understood that the figure sought to teach the garden how to bend without breaking, to harmonize the tumult of bloom with the patience of order.
The wildflower stretched, feeling the hidden hand’s tug and the polished rows’
Emma Cervinka | Illustrator
unblinking gaze. A shiver ran through its stem, the cool fear of risk and peril. Each leaf vibrated at the edge of possibility, each petal sensing the threat of fracture. The pruned blossoms murmured again — a chorus of caution. The figure’s hand lingered, inscrutable, its intent uncertain to the blossoms, bearing the weight of ruin or restraint. And in that uncertainty, the danger pressed close, daring the flower to either rise or shatter.
A storm brewed one night. Wind tore across the garden, hurling raindrops like cold stones. They fell sharp and sudden, bending stems to the earth, bruising petals and bleeding colour from the garden’s face. This row of flowers trembled but remained unbroken, their perfect symmetry a shield against the chaos. Yet the wildflower, slender and unguarded, shuddered at every lash, every invisible hand that sought to command its sway. Each gust whispered of risk, of fracture, of the merciless price of reaching too far…
Yet still it rose, defiant — tasting the peril that came with the air’s embrace, learning in each quiver that the path of its nature was neither safe nor easy; nevertheless, it was its own.
Petals tore and bent beneath the wind’s fierce caress; a stem faltered, then rose again, trembling at the mercy of the air. All around, the blossoms held, flawless and unyielding, yet the wildflower’s act of blooming itself bore the gamble of decay. The wildflower swayed, as all wildflowers sway, for all blooms must wither at the end of someday. Tasting the bite of the wind and the sting of rain, a pulse ran through its veins — a pulse no garden, nor field, nor meadow could ever contain.
Edible flowers and city markets
Blooming cuisine, drinks, and goodies around the city
Olivia Mar | Writer
Brennan Karunaratne | Photographer
Around Toronto, chefs are turning to blossoms and petals for inspiration, transforming simple meals into works of art. These edible flowers add both colour and character to the city’s culinary scene. From restaurant plates to coffee cups to beautiful boutique flower shops, this article highlights how Toronto celebrates blooms both as food and as art.
Lee’s Restaurant
To start with, one of my personal favourites, Lee Restaurant’s 24-ingredient slaw. This culinary masterpiece is chef Susur Lee’s signature — also known as Singapore slaw. It is an elegant stack of red and green onion, cucumber, carrot, pickled ginger, Thai basil, taro root, lotus root, roasted peanuts, rice vermicelli, tomatoes, sesame seeds, sun sprout, perilla leaf, lemon balm, coriander, buckwheat sprout, kalmansi juice, daikon sprouts, fried shallots, picked red onion, a yuzu honey and salted plum dressing, and edible flowers. The restaurant — located at
497 Richmond Street West — complements its outstanding food with excellent service, not to mention the gorgeous abacus-inspired décor.
Olivia’s Garden
Travelling northwest from Lee’s, up to Crawford and Harbord, Olivia’s Garden at 569 Crawford Street is a coffee shop found in the heart of Little Italy. The cafe blends a love of gardening and gastronomy, serving coffee with floral arrangements and cakes adorned with edible flowers. For even more avid floral fans, Olivia’s Garden also features workshops: Latte Art, A Garden in a Box, and a Floral Master Workshop, to name a few.
Enoteca Sociale
Travelling west of Little Italy into Little Portugal, Enoteca Sociale is a restaurant at 1288 Dundas Street West. Among many delicious meals, one in particular features yellow flowers that routine customers might be familiar with: their Fave e Cicoria, a mixture of fava bean purée, pecorino
and dandelion.
Byblos
For Middle Eastern cuisine, Byblos can be found north of Roy Thomson Hall and the Royal Alexandra Theatre, at 11 Duncan Street. This restaurant incorporates flowers into its cuisine with a salad called “grilled radicchio and walnut.” The leafy green mixture features a Bulgarian feta, date molasses, red grapes, sabzi — or vegetables, and a pomegranate flower vinaigrette.
Off the Hook Fishbar
Finally, travelling northeast from Byblos, just past the Don River at 749 Broadview Avenue, is a restaurant called Off the Hook Fishbar. This fish and chips restaurant offers a wide variety of seafood dishes, including crab cakes, oysters, and seafood chowder. Their vegan fish and chips feature deep-fried banana blossom –– a tropical flower often used as a plant-based alternative to fish.
romano –– a hard Italian cheese made from sheep’s milk,
Beyond indulging in delicious edible flowers, Torontonians can also bring pretty floral décor home from various flower shops across Toronto. Along Avenue Street, just north of Bloor, three flower stores sit side-by-side: Jong Young Flower Market, Yang’s Flower Market, and Grower’s Flower Market & Gifts. Jong Young Flower Market sells both cut and potted flowers. For over 70 years, the store has continued to sell flower arrangements, vases, river rocks, soil, fertilizer, moss, and more. Yang’s Flower Market has a wide variety of flowers, from bouquets to arrangements. Finally, Grower’s Flower Market and Gifts has many different flower arrangements to choose from, including birthday flowers, ‘just because’ flowers, and love and romance
flowers. Visitors can choose by flower type, plant, colour, collection, and price.
There are even more floral options if you travel southwest along Bloor Street. For independently owned stores, Gold Leaf Market and Village Market are great options. For big-box store options, 7/11, on 334 Bloor Street West, and Metro, at 425 Bloor Street West, sell bouquets. For flowers of a plastic nature, you can find a wide variety at the Dollarama at 512 Bloor Street West. Southward, on Spadina and Front Street, the Indigo at The Well has plastic flowers of another kind: LEGO.
Holiday Markets in the GTA also sell a wide variety of flowers. Closer to downtown during the festive season, the Toronto Botanical
Garden, at 777 Lawrence Avenue East, has its 2025 Holiday Ecomarket on November 21–23 and November 28–30 on Friday from 2:00 pm to 6:00 pm and Saturday and Sunday from 10:00 am to 4:00 pm. They have a garden shop, winter workshops, and an indoor, nature-inspired eco-exhibit designed by the Toronto Botanical Garden horticulture team. Evergreen Brick Works at 550 Bayview Avenue also has its annual Evergreen Winter Market, where the Winter Garden Workshop allows visitors to use seasonal foliage, natural materials, and dried flowers to craft lotions, candles, wreaths, and more.
Flowers big and small can be found all around downtown Toronto and beyond. Blooming buds plucked from the garden turn into delectable edible flowers. For those wishing to bring nature indoors, varied types of bouquets can be found across the city. Floral colours and expertly crafted arrangements make any house a home with their beautiful blooms and blossoms.
I run my fingers over her cheek. I would’ve never imagined how soft they could be. “You know, your dad bought me flowers the first time we met. Daisies. He put them in his backpack, so half the buds snapped off before I even got to hold them. But I was still so happy. Of course I kept them!” I can’t help laughing, remembering how giddy I was in that moment. “The next
untied. I thought he was quiet on the way home because he was scared. He didn’t speak when he walked me upstairs, or when he locked me in my room.” A shiver runs through my body. “I didn’t leave that room for days. He said I should never go out without him.”
“Even when I thought I was going crazy, he wouldn’t let me out. He would put his
though. They said if I hadn’t called, you would have gotten hurt.”
I sigh as the nurse walks back in. Running my hand over the embroidered blanket, I smile at her. “I think I know what I’m going to call her,” I say to the nurse as she checks the monitor. She smiles as she raises her brows. “Yeah? What will it be?” I look down at my daughter. “Daisy.”
daisies
action with aesthetics
American actress Blake Lively’s pictureperfect skin and almost-smile are framed by a cascade of purple flowers in the poster for her controversial 2024 film, It Ends With Us The poster’s tagline, “We Love, We Break, We Pick Up the Pieces,” hovers beside her face in profile, which seems to emerge from the darkness, leaving a trail of blooming flowers in its wake. The imagery seems to promise a film full of grit and resilience — a woman scarred by her past, yet growing stronger in the present despite it.
Floral facades in ItEndsWithUs
It Ends With Us is based on author Colleen Hoover’s 2016 romance novel about Lily Bloom (Blake Lively), an aspiring florist who falls for neurosurgeon Ryle Kincaid (Justin Baldoni), only to end up in an abusive relationship with him. Her first love, Atlas Corrigan (Brandon Sklenar), re-enters her life after her mother — an abuse survivor herself — urges Lily to leave
Ryle, ultimately imparting the message that abusive cycles can be broken.
The book landed in a broader cultural moment when celebrities were breaking barriers in the entertainment industry. Hillary Clinton made waves in her presidential campaign, Dior appointed its first female creative director, Lady GaGa performed at the Oscars with sexual assault survivors to raise awareness about sexual assault on college campuses, and Amy Schumer became the first woman included on the Forbes “Highest Paid Comedians” list.
Despite their intense subject matter, both the book and the movie were marketed to the masses controversially. Lively made a popular video inciting viewers to “Grab your friends, wear your florals, and head out to see it.” One critic thought Lively’s promotion made the film seem like nothing more than a “fun girls night out where you might, you know, go for a pedicure, a
manicure and a glass of champagne,” which they argued “isn’t necessarily appropriate [considering the film’s dark subject matter].”
Instead of framing Lily Bloom’s canonic connection to flowers as a symbol of women’s growth and resilience amid patriarchal structures, the film’s marketing echoed the trademark early and mid-2000s feminism that equated empowerment with beauty, confidence, and success, painting it as a stylized brand. This approach feels performative because it replaces the complex realities of women’s experiences, including pain, recovery, and resistance, with marketable optimism.
Male director Justin Baldoni stated that after reading Hoover’s original novel, he thought his adaptation “could be such an empowering film.” However, some critics and observers noted that Baldoni’s public profile as a ‘male feminist’ may be performative, pushing the film’s marketing further in the direction of surface-level
Mackenzie Duffy | Writer
Virag Takacs | Photographer
empowerment. Baldoni has built a brand around feminism, through his book Man
Enough and his TED Talk “Why I’m done being ‘man enough,’” which has raised questions about the film’s parallel performative and surface-level marketing, highlighting things like florals and aesthetics over the film’s dark subject matter and how to deal with it in the real world. Many critics view Baldoni himself as a performative feminist, amid his ongoing legal battle with co-star Blake Lively, wherein she accused him of sexual misconduct on set. Baldoni is currently being sued by the New York Times after a judge dismissed his defamation suit against Lively and the New York Times
False feminism and performativity: commodifying empowerment
When feminism is used as a brand strategy, it isn’t promoting progress — it’s promoting profit. The issue is not that feminist media exists in the mainstream, but that its marketing flattens complex ideas into easily consumable products. In this climate, even stories with genuine feminist potential get packaged as feel-good, quirky empowerment narratives, focused more on aesthetic than activism. What needs to change is not the visibility of feminist media but the way it is promoted, not as a brand to buy into, but as a lens that challenges who benefits from the story being told.
Performative feminism appears across much of modern pop culture, often in works that are celebrated as feminist but only skim the surface. Take Greta Gerwig’s Barbie; though praised for its glossy pink satire and empowering speeches, its message ultimately conforms to the same capitalist framework it critiques. It’s a film about dismantling patriarchy that still sells Barbies.
Similarly, Taylor Swift’s 2019 song The Man critiques double standards in the music industry, imagining how she’d be treated differently if she were male. Yet the song’s success as a pop anthem also reflects how feminism is often commodified into catchy empowerment rather than a call for structural change. Beyoncé’s Run the World (Girls) era projected a powerful image of female strength, but critics noted that its “you can do anything” rhetoric aligned more with capitalist ideas of success and selfconfidence than with women’s liberation.
This pattern extends to the revival of romantic comedies in the late 2010s and 2020s, with films like Isn’t It Romantic, The Perfect Find, and Anyone But You, which rebrand the genre with seemingly ‘girlboss’ heroines who balance careers and romance while rarely questioning the social expectations that constrain them. While there’s nothing wrong with enjoying these stories, it’s worth asking what their empowerment narrative really promotes: independence within the same systems, or the genuine dismantling of them?
Many of these examples take serious topics and simplify their feminist narratives to fit within structures that are still patriarchal. What they push is the idea that women can be feminists without fighting against the patriarchal system, allowing them the illusion of change without actually challenging men’s power. These promotional choices don’t oppress women outright, but they present feminism through a controlled, commercial lens, with women like flowers blooming in a greenhouse, carefully tended and arranged to appear strong, as long as they stay within boundaries defined by the industry.
As author Koa Beck states, performative feminism does “not seek to alter the systems that oppress women… but to succeed
within them.” Instead of dismantling patriarchal systems, performative feminism teaches women to thrive within them, playing by the same rules rather than challenging them. It frames empowerment as individual achievement rather than collective liberation, making feminism more about personal branding than systematic change.
Structural, actionable change
The performativity of many current ‘feminist’ movies and music makes feminism palatable to the patriarchy. It waters down the fact that women deal with complex issues that cannot be reduced to feel-good
empowerment and require tangible efforts beyond ‘girly’ sayings and a barrage of pink. Feminist stories shouldn’t be easily marketable, as it is in the nature of feminism to challenge which stories are made profitable and which ones become invisible. When feminism becomes something that sells, it has become something that rewards comfort and optimism over critique. We need more stories that let complexity truly blossom, showing women not as polished symbols of empowerment but as flawed, conflicted people navigating systems that resist their growth. The media should challenge the social, economic, and gendered systems that continue to restrict women’s power, not just reassure audiences that equality has already been achieved.
A more authentic growth comes when art nurtures uncomfortable truths instead of burying them in fluff. The bouquets we’re sold may look perfect, but they’re cut off from their roots. So when it comes to the media we consume, will we keep admiring the polished arrangements, or get our hands dirty tending to something real?
You can watch it happen in real time, yet still miss it. Focus on one flower, one person, or one virus, and you will look up to realize that endless growth has happened all around. At what point does a patch become a meadow? When does an infection become a pandemic? When growth overruns the system it depends upon, a catastrophe can occur. To prevent ecological and economic collapse, we must identify the point before the tipping point — but how can we notice when growth becomes uncontrollable if we are the inputs pushing it forward?
technological and scientific discoveries. However, indiscriminate growth has also been tied to colonialism: with the exploitation of the Americas, Africa, and Asia for resources and labour. Even with modern efforts to decolonize and develop equality in globalized trade, the unchecked growth created at the expense of historical colonial expansion has left some post-colonial states struggling with poverty and exploitation.
Our hypoxic economies
Blooming is a concept often positively associated with growth, flourishing, and prosperity. Yet blooming can be simultaneously detrimental and inconspicuous. Nature’s growth can be uncontrollable; it can manifest as a force to be reckoned with and feared. Cancer ravages a human body; algae render a body of water uninhabitable. When you watch very closely — before cells metastasize, or grow and spread, before water becomes hypoxic or deprived of oxygen — there is very little that catches the eye to indicate a burgeoning bloom.
But let us start at the beginning. Place a cell in a petri dish. Under appropriate conditions and with sufficient nutrients, the cell will divide. Then divide again. And again. Eventually, the petri dish will be filled with cells, with each piece of nutrition and space maximized. Like those cells, humans have expanded from smaller hunter-gatherer tribes into a global civilization. Humans on Earth have bloomed across the land to fill the space provided.
This insatiable growth of colonial and capitalistic expansion mirrors algal blooms, where excessive flourishing of one species deprives all other aquatic organisms of life, only to consume itself in the toxic environment it creates. Through eutrophication, nitrogen and other fertilizing chemicals spill into nearby bodies of water, causing algae to excessively flourish and cover the water’s surface. This prevents light from reaching other aquatic plants. As the plants die off, so do the algae. The dead plant matter decomposes with bacteria, and the water becomes hypoxic — low in oxygen — killing off any remaining life in the water.
What is remarkable about eutrophication is how rapidly the lovely green algae blooms appear on the water. It’s similar to the initial economic growth that is created by excessive capital and investment; they’ll both become a noxious, foul sheet that covers the surface of the water. By monopolizing all of the available resources — for algae, sunlight; for humans, capital — there is nothing left to sustain the system. Growth becomes the ironic death of the whole lake, or the death of our economic order.
Rebecca Liu | Writer
Doga Baskan | Photographer
This expansion is exponential, where growth accelerates depending on the available space and resources. But more interestingly, as growth engulfs physical space, it becomes difficult to pinpoint the exact moment when an initial growth becomes an insurmountable bloom.
The growth we can see is often judged as inconsequential until this misjudgment is identified, but then it is too late. Cancer cells divide uncontrollably rather than undergo programmed cell death, even when they fail to fulfill their function. In humans, cancer can be preventable, but only with routine checkups and preventative measures. Constant vigilance is required to stop the spread of cancer, as the earlier it is identified, the higher the chances of survival. Yet around half of cancers are diagnosed at an advanced stage. We often cannot see growth until it overtakes our body, like a creeping vine blooming through our vital organs to ensnare and choke our key processes for its own survival.
In economics, growth is almost always the ultimate goal. Our need for constant economic growth weighs us down like the great Sword of Damocles, demanding not just incremental improvement, but exponential growth in as many economic sectors as possible.
The need for growth has driven innovation, as capital has historically been invested in
Like cells, pushing to expand to every corner of a petri dish, humans have developed capitalistic economic systems that resist self-reflection. While blooming economies may be beautiful, they are all-consuming. The push for continuous growth-fueled prosperity fails to consider ethical, environmental, and social concerns. Developed countries have eased into colonial wealth, all while preaching narratives of development through economic growth to the same countries they colonized.
Like a lake that becomes unlivable due to the frivolous flourishing of algae — depriving all other organisms of nutrients until the water becomes hypoxic — globalization and neocolonialism may destroy countries. We are currently too entrenched to notice a hypoxic cliff of no return, and when we all finally look up, we might just find undesirable growth has happened all around us.
Despite the seemingly impossible subtlety of signs of growth, there are always signs if you know where to look. If you continuously monitor that petri dish, screen for cancer, and watch every new bud of algae, it reveals subtle patterns of growth. If we let the vines of disaster twist and grow around us, we will be strangled. Growth can be alluring asters dotting a meadow, but it can also prove to be the cause of a slow death of a contained system. Cells have no consciousness, no self-determination, and no morality in deciding to bloom to the maximum of their environment. If humans can be both garden and gardener at the same time, at what point does a bloom become a weed?
Beginnings
Bushra Azim Boblai | Writer
Ibrahim | Illustrator
In this time of leaning against brick walls and opulent indulgence of frightening intimacies, I want to avoid your eyes forever
When a director is framing two souls in greedy desperation to consume and connect new days and new pinings, a horizontal surface — maybe a bed is the setting that allows for unbroken eye contact and eager opinions
We don’t need pedestrian things like those to cordon ourselves off from all other voices, or for you to follow me out like Eurydice would an untormented Orpheus and we continue with our universe-building endeavour.
Vera
Beyond You
Zainab Abdul | Writer
Chloe Weston | Photographer You
My home is small and dark. On the best of days, a thin stream of light barely reaches me. You tell me to settle with my lot; I don’t deserve to follow the sky.
But I cannot settle with my disposition, Can’t compromise with the need to grow, When my innermost desires and yearnings all push forth, Only for you to step over me if I lift my head.
The thin stream of light falls on my face, Beholds me in a piece of afternoon, Fills my room with whisperings of something better. It pulls me up, only for me to fall back into my cold, dark cave Just as my face reaches the day.
Tendrils of despair wrap themselves around my head, Curling over my temples, leaving room for me to scream. And you come over once again, To remind me that my place is here, eating dirt.
But in spite of you, My heart softly beats at night. I manage to move despite the despair wrapped around my neck. And the light still lifts me up.
Resisted the hail of stones trying to push me back down, And looked up at the world outside of you
I spend most of my time working at a music/video store — yes, those still exist — in a dying mall in suburban Ontario. I am no stranger to trends — in fact, they’re my neighbours. At every corner I turn, there’s a Forever 21 store rehashing popcorn tops, a Showcase hiding Pokémon card booster packs behind the cash desk, or Bath & Body Works bringing back a signature scent from the nineties.
The irony of where I work is palpable. Malls themselves are a dying art. Empty husks replace the bustling shops that once stood there.
Sixty-somethings come into my store every day, and marvel: “People still buy records?” They gawk at the $30 cassettes under the glass counter, more of a collector’s item than a piece of music to listen to. They open up to whoever stands behind the register, reminiscing about the days you could get ‘em for just 10 bucks,
then buying something they loved when they were 14 for three times the price. But it isn’t just the oldies coming in; my customer base is split into two: nostalgic music enthusiasts reliving the seventies, and kids who missed the rise and fall of physical media, too short to reach into the grave where their favourite artist is buried.
Youngsters haven’t suddenly become interested in the warm intricacies of a vinyl — most of them don’t even have access to a
History repeats itself, and apparently, so do the tunes we listen to
Maggie Aghababyan | Writer
Weston | Collage
record player. They’re not chasing sound quality; they’re chasing a way to blend their urge to consume with their urge to stake claim in popular culture as a whole.
Half the time, all they want is a selfie of themselves with a vinyl covering their face. It’s not about listening — it’s about being seen.
Consumerism has become an identity, and nostalgia is a new
The worst part? The modern music we’re expected to consume has gotten boring!
Music these days, much like the disks they’re printed on, is recycled. The same melodies, chord progressions, and even the videos musicians upload to YouTube are references to something that has already been done.
And what’s the fuss? Why make something original when we already have formulas that work? If the Jackson 5’s 1969 Want You Back guitar riff was so iconic, why shouldn’t Taylor Swift ‘borrow’ it — uncredited — for the intro to her 2025 song, Wood? Or if Britney Spears’ soaking wet 2001 …Baby One More Time performance was so groundbreaking, why wouldn’t Sabrina Carpenter do the exact same thing at the 2025 VMAs, 25 years later?
It’s the same reason that people still buy records, and kids cover their faces with album art. For those who’ve seen the original, it’s a poignant reference to a bygone era which people are willing to shell out hundreds to relive. For those who haven’t, it’s an opportunity to experience it secondhand, to say: “Yes, I was there too. This is who I am. See me.”
Our reliance on references and the need to be involved has diminished our ability to invent, and the big artists who release an album a year are scrambling to stay relevant. Referring back to music’s glory days strikes two birds with one stone: artists can now hail themselves as intellectual lyricists who command the writings of the past to their will, and give younger audiences the faux badge of honour of experiencing the creative craft of past pop culture.
The beast that is popular culture always needs to be fed, and nostalgia is an easy meal: decades in the making but full of empty calories. We’re hungry for more.
But when a full meal means putting yourself out there, in an era of ‘cringe’ or trying too hard, who dares to cook from scratch? Have we, as consumers, scared artists into the warm, suffocating hug of nostalgia? Or have we become complacent, allowing artists to keep recycling old concepts because whatever they make, we’ll buy anyway?
The answer might arrive for us in the years to come. As of right now, the American Music Machine hums on — just as hollow as the mall I work in, harkening us back to the golden days of consumerism.
Chloe
You are
As the summer transitions into fall, our surroundings start to slowly change. It gets colder. The leaves start to fall. Our days shorten, and the flowers that bloomed graciously in the summertime wither away. Our drab environment also reflects our mood. The physical change of our environment can be uncomfortable for some of us because it reminds us that time is passing us by.
Every year, when autumn rolls around, I become excited for the cooler weather and the holidays. But then this sense of isolation creeps in. When the colder months come, I start to go into a sort of mental hibernation. I no longer feel the desire to socialize, and a sense of inadequacy takes over me. The cooler weather allows me to ruminate over myself more since I’m less inclined to go out. I sit and think about every aspect of myself, and those thoughts spiral quickly into negative ones, like thinking about all the things I think I lack in life.
In the university context, the change of seasons seems to elicit a campus-wide inclination
toward ‘locking in’ on things like fall midterms and exams. The stress of school, combined with the lack of sun, becomes suffocating. This period of the year represents more of a ‘serious’ phase of life, both on and off campus, and it seems like many of us no longer allow ourselves to have fun — if it is only reserved for the summertime.
I’ve realized I did not get sad or have feelings of seasonal depression until I was older. I wondered if it really was the weather that affected me so drastically, or something else. Either way, I knew there was no way I could continue living the majority of the year feeling virtually dead inside, only to come back ‘alive’ during the summertime. I started to look for ways to brave the cold of winter storms and improve my mood.
I also decided to do some research and gain insights from my fellow students on how the changing seasons affect us.
When asked how the changing weather made him feel, second-year engineering student Jason Liu responded, “I think it’s cool to see the
progression of character… and how every year you are changing a little, but then also you are still yourself. So, I think the [changing] seasons are almost like a diary entry… like a milestone.”
This sentiment is a reflection of people’s perception of time and its relation to the season. A big part of the anxiety that builds up in the wintertime can be the anticipation of the new year. The start of the new year reminds us of everything that we hoped to achieve in the previous year and whether we were able to complete them. Our “progression of character” is put in the spotlight when we see the weather slowly changing.
Second-year statistics and economics student Riku Asari explained that “[The transition between] summer to fall marks the beginning of the [school] year.” He highlighted that this transitional period is reflected by seasonal mood changes, explaining how “You can associate [summer] with being bright and exciting,” but with fall and winter, “It’s the middle of the season
Suemy Lima Hung | Writer
Hannah Katherine | Photographer
the flower
[and the] academic year,” which is when Asari remembers struggling with his academics the most last year.
Cindy Wang, a second-year mental health science specialist student, echoed a similar sentiment, explaining how during winter darkness, “Vitamin D really plays a big role in my happiness,” because it is more scarce during winter when there is less sun. She also delved into how the changing seasons create a feeling of social “isolation:” “[During winter] I only want to be at home because it’s so cold.”
Although seasonal depression is not a confirmed mood disorder as defined in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM)-5 handbook, it is still a “major depressive disorder” that hinders many people’s regular activities. While seasonal depression can be a struggle, there are some effective ways we can try to cope with it.
Looking for hobbies is a good way to distract ourselves from the darkening winter days, where the sun sets as early as 4:00 pm, and is one way
to take our minds off them. I recently found a newfound passion for watching movies, which has helped sprinkle moments of joy into these dark, gloomy days.
In my conversation with Asari, he advised that when dealing with loneliness, “Talking to someone in person is the best method.” I agree — surrounding ourselves with friends and family can also alleviate the sense of isolation that comes with our increased habit of staying in during the colder months.
On the more scientific end of battling with seasonal depression, a study from the University of Pittsburgh showed that seasonal depression and the tiredness it often induces stem from a circadian delay. During the summer, the sun sets late and rises early, but in the winter, it sets early and rises late. Since our body is used to the sleep pattern of the summer time, it causes us to sleep later and wake up later than usual during the colder months, but still feel tired.
This relates to our circadian rhythm — or daily sleep cycle — being confused due to the
lack of light. As a result, I think one of the best ways to treat seasonal depression is to have a consistent sleep schedule, which allows us to adapt our circadian rhythm to changing light times. This can look different for everybody, but ideally, one would sleep at around 10:00–11:00 pm and wake up between 7:00–9:00 am. The main idea is to sleep at the same time and wake up at the same time to train our body to feel tired only at a certain time.
When navigating the emotional toll of seasonal fluctuations, Wang says we have to look for “The light at the end of the tunnel,” which for her is hanging out with her friends and celebrating the holidays. And I agree. Whether it’s making sure to get outside while the sun’s still up, finding hobbies we enjoy, or making sure we adapt our sleep patterns to the change in daily light, we have to be conscious of how we adapt to seasonal changes. After all that work is done, there’s always the bright light at the end of the dark, cold tunnel: another summer, like clockwork.
Sidewalk weeds
As I was shivering in my sleeping bag, pulling my sleeves over my fingers like makeshift mittens, and listening fearfully to the unknown sounds outside the nylon walls of our tent, I questioned why anyone would do this for fun. Thankfully, after three scorching days and two freezing nights, my family packed our newly purchased camping equipment into our car and drove back toward the hazy city skies. That was my first encounter with what everyone seems to call the ‘great Canadian outdoors.’ My lack of knowledge and appreciation for the vast and rich landscapes of my home country has always been a source of shame and embarrassment in my life.
In Becoming a Shark, Reflections on Blackness in Canadian Wilderness, writer Phillip Dwight Morgan recounts his journey cycling across Canada to cement his belonging in the country as a Black man from Scarborough.
trip, but this time, my cabinmates were my sixth-grade classmates. We were given a list of items to pack for the trip, and to my surprise, I lacked many of the listed essentials.
colour our nation. Similarly, Morgan writes that as he saw his peers naturally embrace the outdoors, he “felt the all-too-familiar feelings of apprehension, fear, and alienation,” which
Jordan Kabir-Bahk
Chloe Weston | Collage
led to his withdrawal from these places. My parents never put me in swimming classes, nor did we have a cottage that backed onto a lake. Anytime I was confronted with water, I was too embarrassed to try and learn, especially since my peers were swimming laps around me. Now, I find myself as an adult who can’t even float.
Although I consider my inabilities shameful, mine and Morgan’s stories are far from uncommon, especially amid the immigrant diaspora in Canada. The pressure to prove that you deserve your passport manifests itself in a multitude of ways, like the survival instinct to assimilate. To share the same culture, values, and pastimes as your neighbours. If their hobbies are skiing, canoeing, and hiking, you take them up and try to camouflage yourself within what seems like a singularly predominant sociocultural landscape. But what do you do when you realize the environment you are trying to assimilate into is actively used to rationalize your alienation? How do you reconcile the desire to shapeshift into those evergreen trees that line the forests, with the knowledge that this forest doesn’t welcome you into its ecosystem?
Writer Eva Mackey’s The House of Difference debunks the image of Canada as
exceptionally tolerant, instead asserting that this is merely a strategic narrative used to support the national image. She analyzes how Canada’s history of immigration was enshrined in racial exclusion, with specific time periods boasting policies that reflected the country’s goals for its desired identity. Canadian immigration laws used the environment as a reason for barring Black and Asian immigrants, arguing that they were biologically unsuited to the foreign climate of Canada. This notion that racialized individuals were scientifically incompatible with Canada’s physical environment was systemically perpetuated by federal law as a reason to refuse non-white immigrants from the early 1900s to 1953.
I believe the Canadian identity is not a singular, cookie-cutter entity that you must conform to in order to ‘belong.’ Every Canadian’s personal identity weaves together to create the fibres of our nation. As the child of an interracial marriage between a Bangladeshi immigrant and a first-generation Korean-Canadian, the uniqueness of my Canadian identity is often questioned and challenged by tradition. However, the validity of my belonging is found in the immigrant-populated Toronto neighbourhood I call home, my circle of
friends who come from every continent, the dream of something more that brought my dad to this country from halfway across the world, and the idea that I am here because I don’t belong anywhere else.
My Canadian identity has nothing to do with the great outdoors, and for many diasporic communities, theirs is not a matter of embracing nature, but having nature embrace you. The physical Canadian environment, to me, is personified — a living, breathing creature that has the ability to swallow me whole. It is dark, frightening, and unknown. We are strangers. It can sense that I don’t belong to its soil, that I don’t have the same roots as the other trees. Immigrants’ encounters with nature are often unromantic. Stories of migrants sleeping at the border, and refugees drowning in rivers or scaling jungles to escape their homes, are not as wholesome as the leisurely outdoor activities Canadians pride themselves on. They reflect how the environment can act as a barrier in our journeys to new homes.
So no, I don’t enjoy camping, I don’t hike for fun, and I don’t know how to swim. You and I have very different memories associated with the elements that surround us. Still, I am just as Canadian as you.
Ode to sugar cane
Pilar Amparo Dominguez | Writer
Dowon Kim | Illustrator
The farmer’s hand searched for citrus
In the odorous, rotting tree
An ounce of gold in the Don’s great mine
He’d give his life for but never see
His toil would feed the hundreds
His sweat would quench the crowd
And the thump of his heart, for as long as it beat
Would be the world’s quietest sound
His kubo may fall to amihan
As habagat has taken his son
But there is little time for mourning
When the reaping has begun
And that lament that has been forgotten
I will say as it has been sung
The harvest won’t come without thunder
And sugarcane does not grow without blood
kubo – hut, shack, barrack
amihan – north wind
habagat – southwest monsoon
Don – a title of nobility or respect
Zainab Abdul | Writer
Simona Agostino | Illustrator
Crouching on my knees, with my forehead against the cool wood of my apartment door — or rather, former apartment — I couldn’t help but feel overwhelmed at how things had changed over the last year. What had become of me?
Sighing, I stood up and composed myself. Moving my furniture was a headache for later, but everything else needed to be packed away by the end of the day. I turned the key to my apartment door, hoping to find comfort in seeing my houseplants. I made a mental note to thank my neighbour, Sylvia, for taking care of them while I was gone.
I had barely turned away from the door after locking it when the shock of seeing my beloved plants as nothing more than shrivelled brown leaves gripped me with terrible dread. My mother had helped me plant those, each and every one. And now her last memory, my beautiful plants, were also gone. All because I had left.
Crackly, dried brown leaves scattered all around the base of the flower pots, disintegrating in my fingers, crunching under me as I dropped to my knees, trying to find a single sign of life. It was there, alongside those leaves at the base of the pots, that the weight of my regrets overtook me.
Whatever possessed me to travel three months after her passing had solidified into a thorny vine of guilt, strangling me somewhere between when I had lost my luggage and when I had gotten mugged. All that damn trip gave me was a cold sense of loneliness that had settled deep inside me, following me around like a shadow. The fact that I had left my mother’s plants in the care of a neighbour, and left everyone she ever loved, just so I could isolate from her memories, was a blemish on my past for which I would always hate myself. If only I didn’t crumble back then… I had been so desperate to run away from the grief I’d left behind, anything that could keep me grounded. Anger began to replace the regret, bubbling up inside me, deep in my stomach.
I suddenly stood up, moving for the door. Where was Sylvia?! I knew I was being rash, but I couldn’t help storming over to her door to yell at her about my flowers. I tried composing myself, taking a deep breath before I approached. Instead of Sylvia, a shaggy-haired blond man opened the door.
“Hi, can I-” he started.
“Where is Sylvia? I need to talk to Sylvia,” I yelled at him. I took another breath, trying again to calm myself down, cognizant of how rude I sounded, and hoping this person was a one-time guest so I’d never have to see him again.
“Oh, the previous renter? She left a few weeks ago. You are?” He shifted on his feet, studying me. I hated it. I hated wearing my feelings on my face; I could feel the embarrassing heat rising up to my cheeks.
“I’m her next-door neighbour. Well, technically I was. I’m in the middle of moving out,” I scratched my palm nervously as I spoke.
“Oh, Sylvia left something for you. Hold on,” he said, reaching beside him. He handed me an envelope.
“Thanks,” I said, taking it from him. I stared at the envelope for a moment and turned to leave.
“You sure you’re okay, miss? Need help with the move?” He called out.
I turned to say a quick “I’m fine, thank you,” before disappearing into my former apartment.
In the envelope was my spare key, an apology letter for the plants, and an explanation about why she had to move so quickly. She couldn’t reach me because my damn phone was stolen. That stupid trip.
Three days was the longest I could wait before calling. But I needed a place to stay, and there was only one person I had left. I toyed with the phone, sitting at the table with a cold plate of microwave-meal mush in front of me. Five minutes of anxiety and three bites of mush later, I finally dialled her number, putting the phone on speaker and setting it on the table.
“Hey, I’m back in the city. Can I stay over… indefinitely? I lost my apartment,” I explained.
A long pause followed. I imagined her telling me I should’ve known better, should’ve managed better, should’ve been there for her. I imagined her denying me, telling me my mistakes weren’t her responsibilities.
“Of course. My doors are open as long as you need.”
I was surprised. Relieved. I wiped my sweaty palms on my pants.
Another long pause. I cleared my throat.
“I’m sorry for leaving you for so long, Farah. I’m sorry for not celebrating your baby with you. I’m already a terrible aunt. I don’t even know if I have a nephew or a niece!”
I raked my fingers through my hair, fingers catching on knots, wondering if the baby was sleeping in the back somewhere, if I was disturbing him or her as much as I felt like I was disturbing his mother.
“It’s okay. I was upset at first, but I get it now. Besides, it’s been so long. You withdrew from everyone after Mom… I guess you left three months before your nephew was born — yeah, it was a boy, by the way. Listen, you know how I am with words, but I promise you things will get better. Just come over. It’s about time we sit together. We haven’t properly sat and just… talked, like we used to, since… Mom passed.”
“I know, I missed you,” I sighed, head in my hand as my food sat cold in front of me. “I’ll be there tonight.”
We said our goodbyes, and I refocused on my food.
A cold sweat broke out on my forehead. I’d left her to deal with her grief on her own, and she barely had time to process that before being plunged into a new kind of challenge — having to take care of a baby. A shiver ran down my back. I couldn’t be there for anything. Why would she take me in? She should dump me out, turn me to the streets! She shouldn’t want to see my face ever again! The familiar sting behind my eyes came back. I felt indebted to her in a way I wouldn’t ever be able to pay back.
Sometime after the death of my mother, I became inexorably lost. Every turn in this city, which was so beloved to her, every corner reminded me of her. My mother loved every part of life, everything about being alive! And everything that she loved reminded me that she wasn’t here anymore. It was suffocating, terribly suffocating to see her everywhere and find her nowhere. Before she passed, I understood the reality of death; I knew the dead never came back. But it was like she took the colours of my world right along with her, and I forgot about everyone who was still here, who was still waiting on me to break out of my trance.
I recalled an argument with my sister before I left for England.
“I don’t care about you, or anyone else for that matter! I can’t breathe around here!” My chest heaved with the final words, hair falling in front of my eyes.
“Funny, I thought we made promises about taking care of each other. And all of a sudden it’s all about you, huh? I’m the one who has to care, I’m the one who has to do all the functioning because what, I’m not a damn person? I don’t mourn her, I don’t miss her? It’s all you are, isn’t it? And vacationing is a funny way to mourn, by the way. Good luck, go, get out!”
My sister seldom spoke in such jabs, and she held back tears as she did.
“Fine, you don’t get it anyway, you never did!”
“Go yell somewhere else, out of my house,” she said, turning her back.
“You’ll never see me again in your damned house so long as I’m breathing!”
“Hey,” I said, stepping into my sister’s house. It was warmer than my apartment, and the faint scent of something sweet lingered in the air.
“Were you baking?” I asked, taking my shoes off. She nodded in response.
“Why so quiet?” I asked.
“I just-” she began.
Seeing the tears forming, I hugged her to my chest like I used to when we were kids and one of us got hurt. It was like in that moment, we finally acknowledged all the pain that seemed to bind us on opposite sides of the world.
A high shriek broke us apart. I pulled away and saw the baby on the carpet, awkwardly trying to lift himself up.
“Hello,” I said softly, moving towards him. “What’s his name?”
“Jacky.”
“Hi Jacky! I’m your mama’s sister,” I said, sitting in front of him.
Jacky looked up at me, eyes wide and quizzical.
“He’s got Mom’s eyes!” I gasped. My sister came and sat on the couch in front of us, smiling.
Jacky hesitantly moved a hand towards me, almost flopping over from his seated position.
“He’s just learning how to sit on his own,” my sister explained.
I picked him up and sat him on my lap. Brushing my fingers through his soft brown curls, watching his eyes study my face, noticing the two little stubs of teeth he had. For the first time, I understood that cliché expression: calling babies “bundles of joy.” I sighed, wishing all the world’s goodness upon Jacky, who occupied himself playing with my fingers.
In a moment, his gurgle stole away every one of my worries. I saw the blooming of a new flower, filling the gaps left by every flower I’d just lost. It was overwhelming to try and process this new relationship, to comprehend the immediate connection, the feeling of my heart surging, of blood pounding, of beholding a living product of love; a product of my mother’s love passed down, reformed, reinventing itself. The depths of my heart called out to this child, my sister’s son, my mother’s grandchild, my nephew. Time slowed as I beheld the only sliver of peace I had had in what felt like years.
Then it clicked: I was an aunt! A soft corner of my life had just revealed itself to me, and I looked forward to staying with my sister and with Jacky, whose bright hazel eyes put me at such ease that a strange sort of reconciliation with the past finally seemed possible.
| Writer
It was hard to remember what it used to be like as he trudged through the decaying matter, the cold sharp on his soles. Life in society had been less tangible, existing through ideas rather than what was real.
His tattered clothes were nothing against the wind, stomach spasming, clawing up his throat. He needed to wait until it was difficult to swallow before drinking from the bottle in his pack.
He stared down. This was how human feet had looked for thousands of years — like his now, damaged. They weren’t meant to be soft, warm, or unscarred.
He was scared of running out of thoughts, out of fantasies. He knew to constrain himself to debates and elaborate fictions, never food, family, or comfort. He remembered how he used to have several names for each day as they came. Now, as the days blended together, he wondered what time had really ever meant.
He surveyed the horizon, looking for anything promising. There was food sometimes, the kind in cans or packets, bottled water, never much else. Not so many of the things that reminded him of when he was a kid. Not anymore. No books or pictures. Just cracked glass and plastic scraps, which were poorer company than just about anything.
Dirt hung in the air, creating a gritty film over the misshapen horizon. The
structures in the sky shimmered only in contrast to their backdrop. They, like the now foreign sky, were grey. He couldn’t feel the kind of rage reserved for those with a clear conscience, only a throb in his chest, a dead feeling in his eyes.
He sometimes joked to himself that now, he wouldn’t be able to tell if he’d gone colour blind, just like his father.
His foot suddenly caught the ridge of a lifted piece of pavement. He stumbled, falling forward. Something sharp stabbed upwards into his right hand. It burned dull and bone-deep. He groaned; fate had finally forced his hand. With no clean bandages or soap, infection would make quick work of him.
He looked up.
There, visible through a tiny crack in the pavement, was vivid blue. He’d forgotten what it was like to see a colour like that. Forgotten how to look upon it was to bite into it, become it, consume it.
It held the light differently than anything else, didn’t float it over its petals indifferently, its colour took and gave from it. The flower glowed peculiarly in sharp detail amongst the haze.
It wasn’t possible.
Reaching down, cracked fingers shaking, he brushed the velvet of its petals. So lovely, his chest filled to bursting with warmth. It was a strikingly warm thing to breathe the same air as another.
He knelt and sat, at once realizing how
cold the ground really was, beside the flower. For a moment, they stared together into the bleak horizon.
He wondered if they could see them — him and that little flower — from up in their satellites. He didn’t think so; they’d long abandoned physical reality.
He tried to swallow, his throat catching in the process, and sighed, drawing in the greasy air. With his good hand, he pulled the water bottle from his backpack, unscrewed the lid, and gazed at the little blossom beside him. Did it feel the cold the same way he did? That wouldn’t be fair.
And what could he do? He had nothing left to give. It was too late for penance.
Gingerly, he poured the bottle’s contents where the flower grew, shaking it to dispense every drop. He dropped the bottle to the ground with a hollow clack. It would be at home there, amongst the garbage, where he’d come to rest with what they’d left behind.
He lay his head down, his chest warmer still, feeling the acid bites of snowfall on his face as they floated from the sky. Grey, like everything but the little thing beside him, that would have the last of him.
The sleeve of his shirt was now soaked, the throbbing in his hand starting to fade. His eyelids grew heavy. They’d look brilliant from above, entwined, painted in vivid colour.
It wasn’t so bad, this way.
Lujaine Hallschmid
Aksaamai Ormonbekova | Collage
Brennan Karunaratne | Designer
Episode 19: My Mother, Myself, and Time
A coming of age
Elisabeth Rowsell | Writer
Julia Dedda | Photographer
Gilmore Girls, a comedy-drama which aired from 2000–2007, centres around main characters Lorelai Gilmore and her teenage daughter Rory, and their smalltown lives in eccentric Stars Hollow, Connecticut. I watched the show for the first time when I was 15, the same age as Rory in the first season. Lorelai and Rory’s icy blue eyes, pale skin, and brown hair reminded me of my own and my mother’s. The show became part of my yearly routine: a rewatch or two every fall, savouring the coziness of the setting and familiarity of the nearly-memorized dialogue.
After a few rewatches of all seven seasons, I found very little of Gilmore Girls to be a surprise. I laughed in anticipation of the jokes I knew were coming, and prematurely got annoyed when Rory made decisions with outcomes I knew would be disastrous. Despite this, the show never got stale; the fact that it did not change with every rewatch made it a source of dependability and comfort throughout my teen years.
In high school, I attempted to dress like Rory: I found a sweater similar to her famous marshmallow-white cableknit sweater, I wore navy blue flared jeans, and I bought exclusively deep-jeweltoned clothes like the Gilmore girls often wear. I fell in love with autumn, reading,
and listening to ’90s alt-rock — the stuff my mom always tried to get me to like. I idealized getting into an elite university and pushed myself to achieve top marks. At my graduation, I was valedictorian — just like Rory.
While my mother and I have an age gap over twice that of Rory and Lorelai’s, I found myself and my mother echoing their dynamic. Rory and Lorelai’s conversations were notorious for how fast they were spoken, and the wit that weaved them together. Advice was never a one-way street with the Gilmore girls. Both Rory and Lorelai helped each other with relationships, friendships, school, and work. They shared music recommendations, makeup, and clothes.
In 2010, researchers at the University of Lille Nord de France published a study on mothers of teenage daughters. The study observed four general categories of mother-daughter relationships, classified by two factors: the mother’s attitude towards her own femininity — whether she saw herself as a mother or as a woman first — and towards her daughter’s femininity — whether she saw her daughter as a little girl or as a woman. The report found that these attitudes shaped the duo’s perspective on sharing clothes.
My mother and I are best friends: she is my first audience, the first to hear the stories of my life. Our conversations are filled with laughter and inside jokes, our shared playlists full of songs we have introduced to each other. When it comes to fashion, I trust her eye, and I make no major purchases without her opinion.
of-age — is going through an adjustment: she is aging out of a stage of maternal femininity and aging back into ‘traditional’ femininity, while witnessing her teenage daughter aging into femininity for the first time. Thus, the two women are, for the first time, in a similar stage of life and able to share clothes, a critical medium of self-expression. Consumption habits are similarly shaped by this dynamic, which the study recognizes as a susceptibility to interpersonal influence.
I have often helped my mother pick out her clothes for a work event or a date with a friend, laying out all the potential combinations of shirts and necklaces and of coats and shoes to match. I let her take what she wants from my box of earrings, mimicking how she shared her own jewelry collection with me years before. I thought her identity was already determined, but I saw that she continued to grow her wardrobe with the clothes I had lent or suggested to her, and
saved Pinterest “Pin” filled me with hope that I might finally resemble the women, some real, some fictional, I admired. The next month’s trends then drained my hope and ignited new, unachievable aesthetic goals, which ate away at my sense of self.
Now nearing the end of my teenage years, I often reflect on the thoughts and motivations of my younger self. My identity has rarely felt static because, though at times unnoticeably, it is constantly evolving and will never be complete. I have learned that I can appreciate and identify with various and seemingly incongruent components, which, when melded together, form a distinct me. I am not Rory Gilmore, but I can relate to her sometimes, usually in the fall, bundled in my marshmallow sweater, and reading a book. I am a product of my mother’s love and advice; her reliability is invaluable to a disoriented teenage girl. At times of adolescent confusion and during the recurring micro-identity crises of adolescence, I have found that it helps to step away from my obsession with building an identity and to think of my mother when she was my age. She had no idea who she would become, but today, her daughter looks up to her like a movie character.
The category I thus associate with Lorelai and Rory’s relationship — and my own with my mother — is the one in which both members are seen by the mother as women, and where clothes, accessories, and advice are consequently shared regularly. Identity and style for both mother and daughter are forged jointly.
In both the show and the study, the mother — a guiding figure for her daughter during her coming-
With every watch of a Gilmore Girls-style edit on Instagram or each view of a ‘fall-core’ mood-board on Pinterest, I would mentally encode details from the media into my identity, which I tried to keep thematically harmonious — usually by buying clothes that fit a certain aesthetic. This constant exposure to clothing trends, makeup tutorials, and content produced by other fictionalcharacter-obsessed teenage girls was, over time, crushing. Every frivolous purchase or
I have always seen my mother as solid and steady — eternally an older version of myself. Time moves too slowly to notice new wrinkles on her face or silver strands in her hair. It is only when I watch videos of her when she was a new mother, her hair darker from a lack of greys, wearing a t-shirt now worn by my 21-year-old sister, that I am struck with a feeling I cannot quite describe. It is at once comfortable and uncomfortable. It is warm, but sad. It is not nostalgia, but it may be the passage of time — something abstract and rarely seriously confronted — that wakes me up and focuses my attention on the present. It is a swift sense of awareness, and it feels like a spotlight on a dark stage, revealing the dust particles floating in the air, dancing around all the thoughts and memories I have never deeply considered.
Internal change is slight, and it happens so slowly that it is imperceptible until we look back at something that has remained unchanged: your once-favourite show, an old video of your mother. It was when I watched Gilmore Girls for the first time at 15, for the third time at 16, and the tenth time at 19, when the plot was so ingrained in me that I could predict the next scene, that I noticed how much I had changed. I feel jumbled now, but one day, without even realizing the shift, my future daughter may look at her mother as I do mine.
enthusiasm of masses The
The Toronto Typography Show and the metropolitan artistic space
Bushra Azim Boblai | Writer & Photographer
Famed Canadian writer Mavis Gallant decided to move to Paris, France, as soon as she sold her second short story, “One Morning in June,” to The New Yorker. In an interview with The Guardian, Gallant recounted that she was determined to dedicate herself to her art. She decided on Paris as her city of choice because of the “black and white films, [and] the paintings.” Gallant was not the only artist who answered the siren call of metropolitan cities.
Artists have been flocking to urban metropolises to make names for themselves for thousands of years. According to sociologist and University of Valencia professor, Joaquim Rius-Ulldemolins, there are three main reasons for this. First, cities are where most cultural media industries are located. The second reason is that cities are where markets for artistic labour are located. These markets give artists access to more jobs, business opportunities, and long-term
growth in their careers. The third reason is that artists prefer to live among each other as a community of like-minded individuals. Living a lifestyle of artistic engrossment and curiousity about the world, its systems, and its people means artistic communities provide acceptance and support for creatives.
Toronto is a shining example of artistic metropolitanism. Remnants of artists’ lives and works are everywhere in the city. From construction walkway murals, multiple year-round international festivals for the literary, cinematic, musical, and visual arts, internationally renowned art galleries like the Art Gallery of Ontario and the Museum of Contemporary Art, to theatres like the Theatre Passe Muraille, the city is the epitome of a thriving arts ecosystem. With its cultural industries, markets, and artistic communities, Toronto has all the markings of what makes a city a haven for arts and the artists, according to the guidelines set by Rius-Uldemolins.
At the end of summer this year, I found myself at an art show opening that exemplified how this metropolitan environment nurtures new artists and movements. It was the ninth annual Swash and Serif Typography Show at the Northern Contemporary Gallery in Roncesvalles. The show, which is Toronto’s only typography art show, is hosted by the Toronto Design Directory. The Typography Show is designed to be a showcase of new and veteran artists in the city, creating exciting work with lettering as their medium. The hanging fee, a fee an artist has to pay the gallery to exhibit their work, is an affordable $55, and anyone who wishes to participate can submit their typographical work through a form on their website.
showcase experiences or career requirements, the Typography Show is devoid of the usual financial and institutional barriers to entry that plague the art world. This was reflected in the artists and the crowd at the opening night, which was easily the most diverse art event I have personally been to in the city — an actual reflection of Toronto’s demographics as one of the most multicultural cities in the world. The opening reception was free and open to the public, and I learned that many people had found out about the event through their social media feeds.
There were children running around asking precocious questions about the letters they could identify and the colours that they liked, and couples earnestly looking at displays, then glancing to see if the other had experienced the same reaction to the art in front of them. There were so many friends of the artists excitedly entering the gallery with bouquets of flowers that the crowd flow never seemed to slow down. It was a stunning display of Toronto and its arts community and what they have to offer to each other.
The artworks selected for display this year reflected the multifaceted concerns and interests of the city. William Selander’s “A Change Is Proposed At This Sight” was a cheeky nod to the blue and white advisory signs that go up before a new construction project can start. Osman Bari of Chutney Magazine’s “Basic Exercises” was a moving piece about learning to write in a mother tongue — something that immigrant children often do not get to connect with. Nader Ibrahim’s “Alive, Neighbourhood” uses the Arabic word, حَيّ — which means both ‘alive’ and ‘neighbourhood’ — to expand on how neighbourhoods are powered by their people and the relationships built among them. Pegah Resalatpanah’s “Did
Iran Even Have Ballet and Opera?” pieces draw attention to the orientalist and dehumanizing characterizations that people in the Western world often assign to Middle-Eastern societies like Iran’s. The show exhibited multiple language scripts and art forms all around. Seeing how popular the opening night for an art show for new, up-and-coming artists from Toronto demonstrated how symbiotic the need and appreciation the city and the arts have for and of each other. The arts have an influential presence in a city like Toronto. Our various international festivals and events throughout the year are often free or affordable for the public to attend. The city’s publishers and authors also work with local bookstores and libraries to host many literary launches throughout the year, bringing attention to Canadian and International literature that would otherwise be ignored. Institutions like the Art Gallery of Ontario, Hot DOCS, and Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) Lightbox also offer free annual memberships and/or discounts and benefits for most under 25. This abundance of opportunity for the public to partake in art frequently and affordably is what makes metropolitan cities such a vibrant artistic market. According to a report from the Toronto Arts Council this year, the arts contributed $8.4 billion to the city’s economy in 2023, which is five per cent of its Gross Domestic Product (GDP). The arts also provide employment to 15 per cent of the city’s workforce. Not only is Toronto the biggest market for artists in the country, but it is a significant player in the international market as well. And according to the 2024 annual report from the Toronto Arts Council, Toronto is home to 40 per cent of the country’s artists and arts workers. The gigantic marketplace the city provides, along with the overrepresentation of the country’s artists, makes Toronto a metropolitan city for the arts.
Besides the economic and market benefits that arts in cities like Toronto provide, for locals and visitors, public arts installations and events are also often the ‘third place.’ American urban sociologist Ray Oldenburg characterized the third place in his book, The Great Good Place, as those separate from the workplace or school, and the home, where we create community connections and meet new people while decompressing from other aspects of our lives. Karen Christensen, Oldenburg’s co-author of the updated
edition of the book, added that these places have to be open and inviting, informal, unpretentious, and have regular visitors to properly function as a third place.
This idea of arts events functioning as the city’s third place was apparent at the Typography Show. Typography is a niche genre in the arts that doesn’t generate that much buzz in the zeitgeist. Lettering is a part of our daily lives in our languages, our commerce, and our road signs. But 94 artists showcasing 151 artworks drew a passionate crowd of people from all over the city to support their friends and family, or to simply partake in art. Children, parents, grandparents, and young people were all exposed to artists they might have never interacted with otherwise. Whether it be an Arab artist demonstrating the importance of human connection through words of life, or a Pakistani Canadian artist expressing his frustrations at not having access to a language that is a part of his heritage through Urdu handwriting, the marketplace and its audience are introduced to artists who add to the rich fabric of the Canadian artistic tapestry.
Accessible public avenues to art for artists and Torontonians through events like the Typography Show shape the kind of art and vision we as a city give exposure to. The diversity and enthusiastic public participation shown at the Typography Show indicate a strong future for metropolitan art in Toronto.
“Keep it safe, Lovey,” her mother says. Lovey takes the blue pot in her hands and smiles at the plant within it, the singular bud hiding all its beauty. “The Queen of the Night is always the star, just like you.” Her mother pats her head and turns back towards the garden beds in their backyard.
Lovey clutches the pot close to her chest, her fingers warm against the cool ceramic. Her eyes don’t leave the plant as she flies through the house, yelling goodbye to her father as she grabs her schoolbag. “Everyone is going to love it,” she whispers to herself.
The school bell rings as Lovey runs through the halls. She gets to her seat, giggling. Every child has a trinket laid out on their desk. The excitement is palpable as Ms. Floraison makes her way to the front of the class. Her dress is covered in roses — pinks and yellows blooming with every step. Lovey touches the unopened bud of her plant with the tip of her finger. She planted this Queen of the Night five years ago and has been eager to see the magnificence of its white bloom. The flower opens once, for a single night. She’d never seen it, but had been dreaming of the night her parents would finally wake her to see her own flower open in all its glory.
“Good morning,” Ms. Floraison says. A song of voices echoes her greeting. “I’m so glad to see you all brought your special items. I can’t wait to hear about them.” The children fidget, waiting for their moments to shine. “Now, who would like to go first?” Twenty small hands shoot into the sky. They stretch higher and higher, chairs wobbling as their legs lift off the floor.
One after another, children walk up to the front of the class and present their items: beaded bracelets, old letters from faraway relatives, stuffed bears, toy playsets. Lovey buzzes with anticipation. No one brought anything as special as her Queen of the Night. Her parents told her stories of its birth, stories of the beauty of its bloom. Now she was going to show it to the world.
“Eleanor, would you like to go next?”
Ms. Floraison asks her. Lovey jumps out of her seat, the world seeming to revolve around her plant.
“This is my Queen of the Night plant. My parents say it’s the most special flower because the bloom is so
big and it only opens for one night. No one else I know has any because they’re so hard to take care of, but it’s my parents’ favourite. That’s why it’s special to me.”
The class stares at Lovey, brows knitting together in confusion. A hand raises from the back. Lovey smiles at the chance to call on the little boy. “Have you ever actually seen the flower?” he cries.
“No, but my mom says one day I will.”
“How do you know it’s special if you’ve never seen it? It’s just like any random bush or tree!” The boy snickered.
Lovey’s face falls. She looks down at
“Does it do something cool?” another child asks. Lovey’s eyes drift to the girl’s desk, finding a drone in her hands.
“Can you even play with it?” another shouts.
“No, it’s delicate,” Lovey says quietly. Their stares start to bury her. She sees her peers whisper, lips moving with barely distinguishable sound. Tears well in her eyes.
“Thank you, Eleanor, that was very good,” Ms. Floraison says. She smiles kindly, starting a round of applause. Lovey can’t stop staring at the plant. The lonely plant. The stalk and leaves bare without the flower her parents adore. That’s what makes it special, but no one can see it. Even she had not seen it. How can her family love something so much if no one else can see how special it is?
When the final bell rings, she picks up her pot. Walking home, Lovey watches the sidewalk as she drags her
feet. Her mother is waiting for her when she gets home, a crooked smile brightening her dirt-stained gardening shirt.
“What’s the matter, Lovey?” her mother asks. Her father comes in, his face pinched with concern.
“Why can’t the Queen of the Night bloom?”
Lovey’s parents exchange a glance. “It’s a special flower. It only blooms for one night,” her father says. She’d heard those words a million times before.
“That’s not fair, everyone else had something cool to show. All I had was a regular plant,” Lovey cries.
“Others don’t have to believe it’s special for it to be. The only thing that matters is what it means to you.” Her mother bends down to hug her, but Lovey pulls away, tripping over her own feet. Gasps ring out as the pot hits the ground and shatters. Shards of blue ceramic lay scattered across the floor, roots exposed, leaves broken. Terror spreads across their faces.
Lovey runs to her room, hiding in her bed as tears soak her pillowcase. She hears her parents’ voices speaking from outside the door and buries herself deeper under the covers, desperate to escape the concern she knows will paint their faces.
“Lovey!” her father calls gently. He opens her bedroom door and peels her blanket back. She sniffles, her face puffy from tears.
“We have something to show you,” her mother says, pulling Lovey from the bed. They walk outside to the garden, and Lovey feels the world freeze. They glued her blue pot back together, and in it was her Queen of the Night in full bloom.
“These plants are special to us because we know how beautiful they can be, even if only for a night. It doesn’t matter if no one else has the patience to see them bloom; we know the value in waiting together,” her mother says. Lovey smiles as the giant white flower glows in the moonlight.
“I love it,” Lovey says, touching the flower petals with the tips of her fingers. She turns to look at her parents standing shoulder to shoulder, their crooked smiles mirroring the pot’s uneven cracks. “Thank you.”
Glasshouse
Zoe Keary-Matzner | Writer
Averyn Ngan | Photographer
Emily Low | Model
You see a windowpane glint, pale
Catching light
Capturing light.
The air is sunlight breathing, Butterfly wings against glass.
A leaf-green water droplet, Diatoms soaring
Through a garden.
Their bodies, razorblades on rose petals
Soon, hundreds of mites Sliced.
Sprayed oil droplet. Insects, suffocating.
Crystalline gardens, nested. Their glasspane intersections, glinting, Shattering.
In this Eden, You are God.
Your eyes fill with light.
YTZ to CDZ
YTZ to CDZ
Aksaamai Ormonbekova
Designer Aksaamai Ormonbekova
Designer
The kinship of
A poem on blooming relationships
Jacquelyne Goligher | Writer
Parwin Rafie | Illustrator
The Varsity Magazine
Some people fear the needle but not I I see beyond the liquid in that line
I see a rose that blossoms from my skin
I see a stream that flows like molten wine.
We say that blood is thick and water thin, And blood binds me to my own kith and kin, But sacrifice, poured forth to save and heal Makes relatives where strangers would have been.
How strange, to grant a bond I cannot feel, Although untouched, unseen, it’s no less real.
giving blood
Brennan Karunaratne | Illustrator
Grandma,
Orange leaves are coming in fresh. The muted green of summer is cluttering the metal around the roots of the tree. Some wanted it to stay green year-round, liking the eccentricity, but in the end, we chose to keep the leaves changing with the seasons.
Looking at the auburn ground and amber buds glowing like lanterns from the branches, I’m grateful for that decision. The tree in the city center stands taller than most buildings. We can see it from the train station across the marsh, and from the community center in the other direction.
Olivia Voulgaris | Writer
There are no roads, but streetcars weave through grassy corridors, and subways run 10 floors underground through apartment complexes, linking canteens and recreation centers together. The solar fields on the outskirts of the city run miles against the sky, bordered by sunflowers.
There were geoengineering projects that launched over a century ago, but are mostly closed now, reopened as museums that host summer camps and school field trips. The older staff tell stories about a time when it didn’t snow, and the kids, used to rolling around in the cloud-like fluff, buried waist deep, scarcely believe it. The few projects that are still active are maintained only for stability as the globe recovers.
As part of a more recent initiative, burrows for wildlife were established in small quads around the city, with deer passings and tunnels for smaller critters constructed under long stretches of railways. Large fields for grazing were built in the city center at the base of the tree to cover up the remnants of construction. People gather there in warm weather to see the animals who come and go as they please.
Hannah Katherine | Photographer
At first, we were worried the tree wouldn’t thrive. But the roots quickly took to their artificial counterparts, and we got to work on the forests soon after. Their ability to grow was a bit finicky because we couldn’t figure out how to get the trees on a ‘natural’ cycle. The weather changed, and snow fell heavily on the leaves of the deciduous trees instead of on bare branches, so the forests looked like fields of giant mushrooms. That’s what Ivy called them, giant mushrooms. She’s five now, so she’ll probably forget the odd winters of the transitional period when she’s older.
Our city, you should know, is neither the only one nor the most advanced. There are others popping up globally, and we have communications with many of them. Most of us are rebuilding the same way — community-focused, nature-focused, not making the same mistake as past generations. Some regions are still dark, either lost or still fighting. We’ve heard nothing of vast parts of North America, aside from a few cities slowly developing along the major rivers and up north. I assume you and Mom didn’t settle in any of them; not out of your own volition, at least.
I often forget how much time lies between us. The generational and political differences were huge. I had no hope of understanding you. Why you stayed there, why Mom stayed with you. She used to tell me about the climate refugees, and I wonder if you knew that she spoke about them differently than you did. That she did not celebrate when the boats were turned away.
In any case, I am not really writing to have a conversation with you, nor am I
writing to say you were wrong, because I writing to say I’m alive and well, and I know you’re not. I’m writing to say you have a great-granddaughter. One you might’ve met and known, if only for a little while. I’m writing to remind myself that these things are true, and you don’t need to read this for them to remain true.
I want to tell you that I remember one thing from very long ago, back at home. When we lived in the same house, when we had nothing to disagree over because I didn’t know where your cough came from, why I couldn’t go outside for longer than an hour, or why Mom told me the map in your study was inaccurate.
I remember I played in the piles of leaves that you raked on the lawn. Bright orange leaves, freshly fallen from the maple tree in the middle of our yard. For one hour a day, with your weak lungs and my childish defiance of the heat, you scrounged together all the old tree could muster into a small pile, only just a bit bigger than four-yearold me. Then you got on one knee and told me to jump off it, and I’d be ‘consumed by the earth’ over and over for the entire hour.
For whatever it’s worth, please know I did not settle when Ivy and I made it to this city. I did not settle when we heard of some peaceful regions near home. I did not settle when I saw snow for the first time, or the countless solar panels, or the blooming fields with wires wrapped around the greenery, which told me we’d be okay. I settled when the first leaf fell in our city center and the orange buds started to grow, knowing we could build a home here. I hope you’re resting easy under a bed of autumn leaves.
— Maple
Sweet Violets Sweet Violets
Sweet Violets
The story of Mammola
Simona Agostino | Writer & Illustrator
For those who know of Mammola, Italy, there are likely a few things that come to mind: its culinary mastery of the stocco, — stockfish — the village’s origins as a colony of ancient Greece, or its less savoury reputation of being populated by members of the Calabrian mafia, the ‘Ndrangheta. Today, a community of just under 2,500, Mammola belongs to the Metropolitan City of Reggio Calabria, the southernmost region of the Italian peninsula. Situated near the Ionian coast, the ancient village is flanked by two mountain ranges: the Aspromonte and the Serre.
It’s the place from which my surname originates. Where my paternal grandparents spent their formative years. It is also where my great-grandmothers, both widowed in their thirties, reluctantly left in the hopes of a more prosperous life for their children than could be offered in southern Italy’s historically unindustrialized and agrarian landscapes. To me, Mammola is first and foremost a home of storytellers — and it seems that this storytelling runs deeply through its roots.
Take, for instance, my greatgrandmother Elisabetta — ‘Bettina’ — who in 2012 penned a quite compelling manuscript detailing, with her astounding memory, all of what she could recall of our family history. Her younger brother Giuseppe, too, had a penchant for storytelling. He was something of an established author, having published four books in the late ’80s and ’90s, detailing the lives of migrants from Italy to North America. Recently, I got a hold of some copies of his books — all of which were published in Toronto, but written only in Italian. I feel drawn to one in particular, Vita Mia Est., a deeply personal collection of tales from my great-granduncle’s life, the lives of my great-great grandparents, and of my paternal family’s hometown.
In Italian, the colloquial name for the viola odorata — the sweet violet — is la viola mammola. Neither the origins of the word ‘mammola,’ nor the true origins of the town itself, are certain.
Nevertheless, in Vita Mia Est., my greatgrand-uncle Giuseppe wrote of Mammola’s
founding myth, which apparently came from one of the town’s elders. It was a story of two newlyweds, Peppino and Marinella, who’d given everything up to elope and arrived from the sea to Mammola, then
uninhabited. Taking in the rolling hills, dotted with all kinds of wildflowers, Peppino picked a sweet violet from the fields, its fragrance sugary and strong, and gave it to his bride, who mirrored its
beauty. With the violet, he vowed to her his unconditional love. Holding the small bloom in the palm of her hand, Marinella said, “Mammola… that will be the name of the village we will build.”
Giuseppe admits that the amount of truth behind this tale is uncertain. Yet it is known that this legend was passed down from generation to generation over the town’s millennia of existence.
Sweet violets are herbaceous perennials, meaning they return to the earth in the autumn and winter, but bloom again in the early spring. They are versatile and find ways not only to adapt, but to thrive in many habitats. Historically, the sweet violet, with its shy, downward-facing petals, has been said to represent humility; yet its patterns of growth speak as well to a quiet resilience to bloom again. It’s a secret strength of which the Mammolesi — the people of Mammola — are well aware. The humility needed to admit fault, the strength needed to forgive, and the compassion to instinctively put your loved ones before yourself. The story of the legendary Peppino and Marinella, who uprooted themselves to start anew and bloom again, reverberates through the generations of those who call Mammola home.
Almost 30 years ago, Giuseppe described the strides the Mammolesi had made in rebuilding their lives across the globe. “Through their stories,” he wrote, “I wanted to highlight not only the sacrifices and humiliations that emigrants often endured in their search for work, but also to bring to light the[ir] resilience.”
Yet another one of Mammola’s storytellers is my 96-year-old great-grandaunt, whom I visited twice this summer to record everything she had to say. Every family has stories in danger of going extinct — such is the nature of generations. Reckoning with my family’s stories and their subjects, many who have long since returned forever to the earth, is not only a method of preservation but also of teaching. In recording these near-forgotten stories, I leave nothing out — I take the good, the bad, and the horrendously ugly. In the spirit of the Mammolesi, I hope to continue telling and rediscovering our stories. Though generations of sweet violets have passed on with the winter, the new flowers, still from those same roots, will be sure to bloom with the first signs of each spring.
