"You live like gypsies," my mother complains frequently over the phone, "are you ever going to settle down?"

      There may well be a remnant of the Old World gypsy left in us to blame for our nomadic ways, yet moving around while scraping by on the creative fringe has filled our lives with intriguing people and places, an abundance of stories and few regrets.

​

From the weed-infused grunge culture of Vancouver in the 90's and Montreal's delightfully seedy East Side, to Guysborough, Nova Scotia, where maritime hospitality clashed with a de facto segregation reminiscent of the Southern States.

      Back to our home province of Ontario. Muskoka to catch up with family, then Guelph to raise our sons while John wrote and published his first books with ECW Press.

      A decade later northwards to Capreol, a CN rail hub at the edge of the wilderness teeming with characters to stock John's next book "Savage Gerry" (Spring 2021), followed by North Bay where drug dealers, addicts, the mentally ill and the homeless have taken center stage in its downtown streets to the score of sirens heralding a new age. (To be revisited in "Mason's Jar")

     Fed up with slumlords and northern winters, a retreat back south to Kingston amidst a global pandemic, potential socio-economic collapse and a world on fire; an apocalyptic cocktail served up with a slice of willful ignorance by our country's mainstream Media.

 

The Canada we've lived in over the past few decades has stood in stark contrast to the publicly endorsed myth of Canada the Good. Its biased agenda not only trades off basic human rights (water, air, shelter, food etc.) in favour of short term profits, sentencing Canadians that are deemed economically insignificant or disposable to a life that fosters despair, disabilities, drug addiction, homelessness and, increasingly, suicide. It also conspires to whitewash Canada's past and present social traumas by suppressing dissenting voices to the point where renowned advocates, authors and journalists act as brand managers, censuring themselves in fear of reprisals and professional oblivion. 

 

We are launching this magazine to provide an inclusive space for the marginalized stories in our communities. For all those tired of the stigma and abuse suffered by an escalating number of Canadians trapped within a system of poverty and racial discrimination. A system that harms the very people and land it has pledged to 'serve and protect'. 

       A system that rewards little we ever learned in Kindergarten.

       Please share your voice so others will know they are not alone.