We Will Not Leave This Place

Illustration by Genevieve Simms.

We were the only people in town who had a pool, as far as I knew. It wasn’t special, just a faux-gesture of superiority, something that helped us pretend to pretend to be better than the town or the people in it. A meta-lark. My mother liked the pool, thought it matched the house, which …

How I Failed at Life in Quebec City

In March 2008, about nine months before moving to Montreal, I visited a medium-size one-bedroom apartment located in the St. Roch district of Quebec City. It was a dark day. Three pm had the feeling of nighttime. It felt like winter was prepared to go into overtime, wanted to borrow from spring, not only April but also parts of May …

Dépanneurs vs. Bodegas: What Corner Stores Say About a City

Photo by Shawn Hoke (via Flickr).

I envy the French language for the word dépanneur. It turns what it does—dépanner, to help out—into a name for both its storefront and its staff, making that most personal of shops a kind of person in itself. We go to the dep to indulge, and the dep justifies those …

Maisy’s Most-Read Stories of 2011

Sacks of pitchblende Concentrate awaiting shipment at Port Radium, Great Bear Lake, 1939.

Presenting: Maisonneuve’s third-annual roundup of our most-read articles and blog posts of the year! A burst of interest on Reddit drove Julie Salverson’s “They Never Told Us These Things,” a thoughtful rumination on disaster and the a-bomb, to the top of the list. Articles about …

Someone Has to Save Us From This

Painting by James Benjamin Franklin.

They drove back after dinner. She allowed herself to cry silently in the car because it was dark and he was focused on the road. She had come close many times during the meal, which had dragged painfully into the night.

They stepped into the apartment and kept the lights off. They had lived there …

Kingers

Photograph of the Viau Cookie Factory, circa 1967, courtesy of Heritage Montréal.

I grew up in the East End of Montreal, down by the river. Like east ends the world over, it was a poor neighbourhood sandwiched between an army ordnance depot to the west and a huge Johnson & Johnson factory to the east. North of the factory was …