Letter from the Editor-in-Chief: Holding Multiple Truths

by Gillian Smith-Clark, ​for The 44 North

Editor in Chief

Pine boughs decorated with small yellow lights

As the year turns, we’re invited into a season that often arrives wrapped in a package of expectation: celebration, connection, spiritual renewal, reflection. Yet the holidays also hold multiple truths at once, and for many, the season arrives with more complexity than cheer—distance from family, uncertainty about the future, unresolved conflicts, and more questions about spirituality and religion than answers; alongside the not-so subtle pressure to reinvent ourselves on January 1st. This December/January issue of The 44 North looks at the holidays with honesty and curiosity, and joy and hope. Not because everything feels okay, but because to find joy and peace in the holiday season, it is not only possible, but necessary, to hold multiple truths at once. To see the world as it is: in all its beautiful messiness. 

This issue, our team explores the realities that shape our well-being at this time of year. Our feature story by Abbigale Kernya examines what it means to spend the holidays away from home—whether by choice, circumstance, or necessity—and how distance reshapes belonging. Abbigale and Helena together take on the pressures of New Year’s resolutions and career planning, challenging the embedded assumption that success and happiness in life can be scheduled like a process, or a destination at which we eventually arrive. The latest Life Outside the Box podcast episode is a powerful and inspiring conversation with Cal Campos, focused on questioning the systems we’re in and having honest conversations about suicide.

We’re also excited to share this issue’s Artist Spotlight, featuring Extended Mic, a community-rooted platform showcasing diverse young creators pushing the boundaries of film and poetry. And in our Book Review, we take a closer look at John Green’s Everything Is Tuberculosis—a deeply human, vulnerable reflection on illness, interconnectedness, and what it means to care for one another in a fragile and inequitable world.

We are honoured to publish a powerful work by Rohit Doel, whose poem and essay on disability justice push us to listen more deeply, to expand our definition of community care. Our Poet’s Corner highlights Terrance Hayes’ “The Same City,” and Mikaela Brewer brings us into the world of social support with a short story about calling 211, asking what trust in community looks like when it’s tested. Plus, we offer a collaborative gift guide from our team—because hope and joy can also taste like a good meal, or arrive as a small, thoughtful gesture.

Lastly, we're excited to be offering our very first essay contest. If you're hoping to submit over the holidays before our January 6th deadline, check out the recording and resource packet from our writing workshop, here.

As we close out another year, we’re not chasing perfection. We’re choosing presence: with ourselves, with each other, and with the complicated realities shaping our world. Whether your holidays are joyful, heavy, chaotic, beautifully quiet, or even all those things at different points, we’re grateful to be there with you on your journey.

Here’s to truth, peace, and possibility!

— Gillian Smith-Clark

Editor in Chief, The 44 North Media

A Holiday Gift Guide to Help You Spend & Consume Less

by The 44 North Team

From us to you this holiday season

A handmade gift wrapped in paper, gold ribbon, and a pinecone, sitting on a wooden table next to scissors

When everything is expensive, you want to be more sustainable, or produce as little waste as possible, it’s time to think outside the box.

The Holidays don’t need to be about spending money—they can be about taking the time to make meaningful things. 

Stories to Share, Ideas to Keep

Books travel further than we do, and as James Clear noted, “Books are the closest thing to a time machine that humans have ever created.”  Starting in early high school, every year during the holidays, my dad would gift me a book (or two) and write the date and an inscription inside.  My bookshelves today still hold many of those volumes, and now that he’s gone, every time I pull one off the shelf it’s like he’s reaching into the future to speak to me—and I’m receiving another wonderful gift.  This holiday season, my suggestion is to give a favourite book, either from a local store or from your own shelf—perhaps a copy you dog-eared and loved, with the date and a message inside the cover. 

If you don’t have a book to give, curate a small reading list, like a playlist of ideas:

• Something that made you laugh

• Something that soothed you

• Something that shifted your thinking

• Print it, fold it, tie it with twine. A library card is optional, but a poetic touch.

—Gillian

Edible Moments (Not Projects)

Forget elaborate charcuterie boards. A gift can be four perfect shortbread cookies wrapped in wax paper. Or a tiny jar of cocoa mix or soup with a handwritten recipe. Or one tea bag paired with one cookie:

“A moment of calm, to be used whenever needed.”

Small servings can feel intentional and thoughtful—a treat for now, not a chore for later.

—Gillian

Scrapbook Holiday Cards & Letters

Sometimes it’s hard to generate the words we’d like to share with our loved ones, especially during the holidays. But if you have old magazines, notebooks, cookbooks, textbooks, or even holiday cards around, you may be able to borrow words in some fun, crafty ways:

• From a book or magazine (that you’d recycle otherwise), use scissors to cut out a full page of an essay, short story, or news article. Circle or cross out words, sentences, and phrases with a permanent marker. What you’d like to say might erupt as the words left on the page! 

• Gather an array of materials with writing in them, such as notebooks, cookbooks, textbooks, or past holiday cards. Pick out phrases or sentences you love, and cut them out with scissors. Rearrange your fragments on a new piece of paper to craft a message, card, or letter!

Of course, you can always go full-craft-mode and decorate your pages with other make-shift supplies around your house. Some fun ones might include memorabilia we usually throw away, such as receipts, ticket stubs, bottle labels, sleeves of to-go coffee cups, twist-ties, or information/business cards. Get creative!

—Mikaela

Make Ornaments

Get your craft on and make something meaningful for your loved ones with things you already have lying around your home. Felt? Air-dry clay? Old wrapping paper? This is one of those easy gift ideas that lets you customize your ornament for whoever you’re giving it to, and there is no shortage of tutorials and links online to learn how to do it. 

It also allows us to slow down during what can be a very busy and overwhelming time of year. Put on some music, light a candle, eat a snack, and get crafting. 

—Megan

Holidays Away From Home: Everything is Going to Be Different Now

By Abbigale Kernya for The 44 North

Managing Editor

String lights and small holiday plants on a white windowsill

“I love everything about my home here on Vancouver Island, but no matter how many peppermint candles I light or ornaments I collect for my future family, I am still waiting for the unfamiliar sense of grief to make room for my holiday in my new life. It can be hard to start your own traditions away from your family, knowing that while you are crafting holiday magic of your own, there is also a missing piece where you used to stand. That is the sort of grief I’m feeling this holiday: the guilt of growing up and the understanding that everything is going to be different now.” ​​​​

This is my first Christmas away from home. 

Not away as in university or somewhere thirty minutes away, trying to make a landlord's special house a home. I mean away as in 4,000 kilometres away. I love everything about British Columbia and my little life on the island. I love the misty mornings as the night’s rain rolls off the mountains and the lizards under my feet and the weather that never really gets that cold. Not like the cold back home. Not like anything I’m used to back home, really. 

It’s a strange feeling to call this place home when it’s so unfamiliar to everything I’ve ever come to recognize these past twenty-two years. It’s even stranger to put up my Charlie-Brown-tree in my one-bedroom apartment, knowing that somewhere along those kilometres between me and home, family traditions aren’t interrupted by someone’s absence. For me, being that someone comes with a different sort of winter blues. 

I love everything about my home here on Vancouver Island, but no matter how many peppermint candles I light or ornaments I collect for my future family, I am still waiting for the unfamiliar sense of grief to make room for my holiday in my new life. It can be hard to start your own traditions away from your family, knowing that while you are crafting holiday magic of your own, there is also a missing piece where you used to stand. That is the sort of grief I’m feeling this holiday: the guilt of growing up and the understanding that everything is going to be different now.

The most important part of going through the motions that come with spending holidays away from family is that it is okay for things to be different—it would be strange if they weren’t! In this stage of adulthood, I find myself standing in the doorway of understanding that part of life is to start your own, while holding gratitude close to your chest for the memories and celebrations that got you to where you are now. 

Alternatively, I imagine my parents at twenty-two (also living on this island away from home), beginning their lives separate from their families. I imagine my mother excited and scared and maybe a little sad to be so far away during our favourite time of the year, but grinning like a Cheshire Cat at all of the unpaved paths lying ahead (to us!).

Coming up on six months of living here, I get asked a lot what it feels like to be living across the country from everyone and everything I called home. The usual “how are you doing?” or “Does it get lonely?” or even, “You can always come home.”

While those questions can be tackled with equal parts excitement and fear at any given point in the year, I think the holidays set the table with a different set of emotions—one that definitely isn’t helped by the 4 PM sunset and bitter, wet weather clouding the otherwise natural serotonin our bodies need to think clearly. In this sense, yes, I am feeling lonely. 

And that is okay.

It’s normal to feel lonely, it’s normal to feel guilty, and it’s normal to miss your family and friends a little extra this holiday season. While holding the grief—and perhaps even a little guilt—in your hands, it’s important to recognize there is nothing selfish about whatever adventure you are on that takes you away from wherever it is you call home. At the end of the day, the holidays aren’t specific to one place. The things that bring us joy in this season (connection, giving, family, etc.) can be found anywhere. Just because you may not be there physically, doesn’t mean you are any less deserving of celebration or holiday joy.

We create the magic in this season—not big box stores and not fancy wrapping paper or Black Friday shopping, but humans coming together to make this holiday as special as it is.

So yes, I know it’s hard to not be there (physically at least!). 

That said, remember that you exist in a time where it is lightning-fast and easy to hop on the phone, hop on FaceTime, or send a postcard in the mail that arrives the next day. If coming together is what you miss, either the familiar baking traditions or holiday eve movie marathon, nothing is stopping you from filling your new home with the warm aroma of nostalgia to celebrate together, even if not together in the way you wish.

And remember, everything is always a plane, train, bus, or car ride away.