by Peter Scotchmer | Nov 25, 2025 | Essays
In this piece, Peter talks about how Hagar’s pride blinds her to the shared moral wisdom all humans depend on. In Margaret Laurence’s novel The Stone Angel, the combative central character Hagar Shipley (nee Currie) tells the story of her own life. The reader must be...
by Aashisha Chakraborty | Nov 11, 2025 | Essays
Writers have always feared and worshipped the most perilous ironist of all — the restless, consuming, and merciless fire. “It was a pleasure to burn.” Few first lines have scorched themselves so deeply into memory. In Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury gave us a world where...
by Aashisha Chakraborty | Nov 4, 2025 | Essays
Aashisha traces writers’ obsession with the oldest ironist of all — the boundless, beloved, and beautiful sea. The sea is a fascinating concept, not only because water makes up three-fourths of the planet as well as the human body (thanks, fourth-grade writer...
by Nigel Scotchmer | Oct 2, 2025 | Essays
Nigel writes an encomium for the Cost of Glory… Twenty minutes on the rowing machine and the display will dutifully say I have rowed 3.7 kilometres. But that is not really where I am. In my mind, memories merge. I am rowing from Miletus on the Maeander to...
by Nigel Scotchmer | Sep 30, 2025 | Essays
Nigel writes on the irony of hindsight, and how looking back is the only way we ever really learn. “It is a narrow mind which cannot look at a subject from various points of view.” – George Eliot, Middlemarch It is a long drive to Ottawa, and one that I...
by Aashisha Chakraborty | Sep 23, 2025 | Essays
In The Remains of the Day, Kazuo Ishiguro holds up a mirror to our own compromises— how much of life we trade away in the name of duty. “The evening’s the best part of the day. You’ve done your day’s work. Now you can put your feet up and enjoy it.” I wish. To be...