Letter from the Editor-in-Chief: Who is Seen, Who is Heard, and What Happens When the Truth is Obscured

by Gillian Smith-Clark ​for The 44 North

Editor in Chief

“Tell the Truth” stamped on pavement in white capital letters

This February/March issue of The 44 North is, at its core, about visibility: who is seen, who is heard, and what happens when the truth is obscured: by power, by indifference, or by deliberate misinformation.

Across these pages, you’ll find work that grapples with Black history and resistance, the freedom to read, women’s and girls’ safety, sexual and reproductive health, homelessness, and the quiet, daily ways communities hold one another together when institutions fail them. These themes may appear distinct, but they are bound by a single throughline: access. Access to knowledge, to care, to dignity, and to platforms that refuse to look away.

That tension feels especially sharp right now. In recent weeks, more than 300 journalists were purged from The Washington Post—a decision that lays bare how vulnerable even legacy newsrooms are when journalistic missions collide with corporate ownership. The paper’s slogan, Democracy Dies in Darkness—introduced in 2017 and greeted at the time with both praise and pointed skepticism—now reads less like branding and more like an unintended indictment. What does that phrase mean when an iconic publication is hollowed out by fear and corporate priorities, and when media power increasingly determines which stories survive, and which disappear?

This issue is our response to that question.

Independent media matters not because it is perfect, but because it is accountable. Because it asks uncomfortable questions. Because it makes room for more voices—especially young and marginalized voices—that are too often dismissed, underestimated, or filtered through institutions that no longer serve them. At The 44 North, we remain committed to publishing work that is courageous, ethical, and grounded in empathy, including, and more specifically, when doing so is inconvenient.

You’ll see that commitment reflected throughout this issue. Our review of All My Puny Sorrows by Miriam Toews explores grief, agency, and the limits of language when pain resists resolution. In our Artist Spotlight, Feels Zine offers a bold and tender exploration of queer sex and romance, reminding us that intimacy itself can be an act of reclamation. Nikki Giovanni’s poem “Rosa Parks,” featured in Poet’s Corner, anchors Black history not in abstraction, but in lived courage.

Several pieces examine storytelling as both a mirror and an intervention. Our feature on libraries as vital “third spaces,” including Dear TPL: The Passport Project, highlights how access to books and community resources can quite literally expand lives. “Novel Idea: How Fiction Helps Us See Ourselves” reflects on reading as self-recognition and survival. In The Writer’s Room, “ICE Murders: Lives in Slow Motion” uses current-events-based fiction to confront state violence in ways conventional reporting often cannot.

This issue also includes my own essay, “Watching Minneapolis from Canada: When Power Stops Explaining Itself,” which wrestles with proximity, responsibility, and what it means to witness injustice across borders in an era of relentless images and insufficient accountability.

At the heart of this issue is the winning essay from our inaugural essay contest: “The Pathogen of Perception: Quantifying the Multi-Dimensional Cost of Medical Misinformation” by Jason Wang.

Wang’s essay embodies everything we hoped this contest would epitomize: thoughtful analysis, moral seriousness, originality, and something more: a refusal to treat misinformation as a harmless difference of opinion. “Misinformation is not a victimless exchange of ideas,” Wang writes, tracing how falsehoods about vaccines during the global pandemic translated into preventable deaths—often borne not by those who rejected care, but by infants, immunocompromised patients, and those who never consented to the risks imposed upon them.

What makes this essay especially powerful is its insistence that the solution is not censorship, but literacy: scientific, media, and civic. “The answer is not censorship,” Wang argues. “It is teaching people how to think critically about health information the same way we teach them to read or do algebra.”  In a moment defined by fragmentation and distrust, this is a call not for control, but for collective capacity.

What happens to a society when it loses the ability to respond to shared threats? When truth is drowned out by noise, and institutions designed to inform either retreat or collapse?

This issue is our answer: we build capacity by telling the truth carefully. By amplifying young thinkers who understand the stakes because they have lived them. By defending the freedom to read, to question, to imagine, and to care for one another beyond narrow definitions of individual choice.

If we take the Post’s motto at its word and accept that “Democracy Dies in Darkness,” it is worth remembering that darkness thrives in silence and isolation. It recedes when we insist on seeing the world as it is, clearly—and when we choose, together, to keep the lights on.

— Gillian Smith-Clark

Editor in Chief, The 44 North Media

Why Libraries Are Vital Third Spaces, Featuring Dear TPL: The Passport Project

by Stephanie Ta for The 44 North

Co-Founder, The Toronto Public Library Passport Project

A black-and-white sketch of a public library

"The Toronto Public Library has supported people through moments that are deeply personal and often invisible. It has been there during unemployment, long study sessions, childhood afternoons, and later-in-life learning curves. These forms of support do not always get acknowledged."

On a beautiful summer day in July of 2024, I signed into our regular all-hands work meeting. Thirty minutes later, I signed off having learned that the full operations of the nonprofit we worked for would be closing its doors. We were all unemployed.

There was no dramatic buildup or warning, and it was strange how ordinary the information felt in the moment, even though everything was about to change. That kind of ordinariness sticks with you—it's a reminder that instability can creep up on you, even on beautiful summer days. 

It’s now 2026, and I still haven’t found long-term, permanent employment. Instead, I’ve juggled a long string of contracts. If I'm lucky, I have short roles and project-based work, meaning temporary positions with deliverable dates taking priority over purpose. This lifestyle has become familiar to zillennials in the questionable battlefield we call the workforce. With unpredictable employment crammed into long days and even longer nights, stability is an abstract concept; planning more than a few months ahead feels optimistic at best and foolhardy at worst.

It didn’t take long for me to realize how familiar my story is. Friends, colleagues, youth across the GTA, and hundreds of online strangers are all navigating similar realities. People are constantly moving between contracts, applications, side projects, and long stretches of waiting just to start. We’re all figuring out how to live without guarantees. Stability becomes less about things staying the same and more about knowing some places will still let you in. Life under capitalism means that we longingly emphasize our ability to own, control, and gain access. We yearn to have access—the type of access that means you don’t need to earn your right to exist in a space. You don’t have to be productive, successful, or certain. You can show up as you are, even when everything else feels in flux. 

This is the access we all dream about, which becomes grounding when nothing else feels secure or safe.

A model of the Riverdale branch of the Toronto Public Library, created from the pages of a book

During this very unplanned and unwanted gap period, I found myself spending a lot of time on the internet. I consume endless information that rarely makes me feel better. Feelings of comparison and competition close in even though I’m spending less time with real human beings. I needed a place to break out of these four walls and constant reminders of not having a place to actually be. I needed somewhere that did not expect productivity or optimism; somewhere that would let me exist without pressure. A place that doesn't cost anything. I’m one of the lucky ones because a place like that does exist. For me, one of those places is the TPL or its government name: The Toronto Public Library.

Some days, I went to the TPL to locate Knitting for Dummies. Other days, I went when I needed quiet space with outlets and backsupport. Most days, I just need to leave the house. The library has always given me somewhere to land. 

The library has always been important to me. Even as a kid, it felt special. It’s a place where you can wander without a goal and still feel like you’re going on an adventure. Walking through the aisles feels a bit like walking through a candy store. Every shelf offers a new possibility. You stumble into topics you never planned to learn about. If you speak more than one language, the world inside the library feels even bigger.

A library card unlocks more than books. It gives you access to museums, art galleries, and city attractions. It lets you learn how to sew or borrow equipment you might not be able to afford on your own. It makes curiosity feel affordable and within reach. It invites and welcomes you back into community. 

Youth Engagement Scarborough participants gathered on stage

Libraries are often described as quiet spaces, and they are. But they’re also places where people figure things out. For many, the library is one of the first public spaces they navigate independently. It’s where they print their first resume. It’s where they wait for friends after school. It’s where they sit without being told to buy something or move along. These moments are small, but they matter.

In my work with youth, I have seen how rare that kind of space is and how it’s continuing to dwindle. Many environments expect performance, progress, and answers. Libraries don’t. They allow people to exist while they are still becoming.

I know I’m not the only person who feels this way about libraries. So when my neighbour, Marisa, came to me with an idea, it immediately felt like something worth paying attention to.

Marisa told me about the unofficial Toronto Public Library passport—a passion project that encouraged people to collect stamps from each library branch they visited. As someone who moved to Toronto from the United States, Marisa discovered the library system as an adult. In many ways, she had explored more branches than people who grew up here. Her love for public access and community spaces made her wonder what the passport could become if it felt more intentional and reflective.

She asked if I wanted to help reimagine it, and of course, I said yes.

Stephanie on the steps of the Toronto Public Library’s Rivderdale branch in the winter

My background in nonprofit and social impact work meant I knew how to support a project like this. I knew how to coordinate people and move ideas forward. But it was my flexibility that made it possible. Contract work teaches you how to build things without waiting for perfect conditions. You learn how to make something real with what you have.

From the beginning, we were clear about one thing: This could not be a project about youth without youth being deeply involved. Too often, young people are asked to engage in ways that feel shallow. They are consulted after decisions are already made. They are invited to participate without being trusted to shape the work itself.

We wanted something different.

Youth volunteers were invited to visit their favourite branches not as researchers with scripts, but as community members. They talked to staff. They observed how people used the space. They noticed small details that are easy to overlook. They asked questions because they were curious, not because they were told to collect specific information.

What emerged were stories that felt real. They were not polished or uniform; they reflected how people actually experience the library.

One of the most meaningful parts of the project was the creation of branch-specific stamps. Designing a stamp sounds simple, but it requires people to think deeply about the place. What makes this branch feel like itself? What does it offer its neighbourhood? What stands out when you spend time there?

Turning those reflections into visual designs became a way of saying and emphasizing that their perspective mattered—not as a symbolic gesture, but in a real and tangible way.

This is what youth engagement can look like when it’s rooted in trust. Youth were not asked to represent an entire generation. They were not expected to perform expertise. They were invited to contribute as themselves.

Dear TPL: The Passport Project became our love letter to the Toronto Public Library. At a time when so much feels uncertain, it felt important to pay attention to the spaces that quietly support us. We wanted to capture what the library means to people and create room for reflection and memory.

Books stacked on top of a Toronto Public Library tote bag

Through Dear TPL, you’ll find a growing collection of stories, photos, and lived experiences from branches across the city. Youth and community volunteers documented moments that do not always appear in official histories. They focused on how spaces feel and why that feeling matters.

Creating something during a period of uncertainty can feel grounding. When the future feels distant or unclear, working on a project offers a way to stay present. Dear TPL was never meant to solve systemic problems. It was an act of care. A way of saying that these spaces mattered enough to be noticed.

The project is still growing, new stories are still being added, and youth are still encountering their local branches in meaningful ways. That ongoing nature feels right as libraries change alongside the communities they serve.

The Toronto Public Library has supported people through moments that are deeply personal and often invisible. It has been there during unemployment, long study sessions, childhood afternoons, and later-in-life learning curves. These forms of support do not always get acknowledged.

If Dear TPL does anything, I hope it encourages people to notice the spaces that support them and to share their own stories. For young people, especially, being trusted to help shape public memory is not just engagement; it is belonging. And sometimes, belonging is what keeps us going.

If you’d like to learn more or get involved—in Toronto or through the libraries in your city!—reach out to Stephanie here.

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.