By Paul Cohen
One of the most striking things about Donald Trump’s presidency is just how surprised Americans were that it happened at all. On the very eve of the election in November 2016, despite polls’ margins of error showing him within striking distance of Hillary Clinton, Trump’s victory was unthinkable, a scenario too fantastic to contemplate (reportedly, even by Trump). And once he became president, a constellation of pundits and media outlets treated Trump as a ‘normal’ president in what was at once a performance of bothesidesism and a denial of the very possibility that Americans might have brought an extremist leader to power.
This surprise, which has given way to a reluctance amongst many to properly acknowledge the transformation of the Republican party into a far-right political formation, can only be understood as an absence of political imagination, a poverty of historical understanding, a blindness to the forces actively corroding America’s democratic institutions.
The same will not be said of the French if ever the far right comes to power in France.
Since 2002, when the leader of the Front National (FN – renamed today the Rassemblement National) party Jean-Marie Le Pen faced off against the center-right incumbent Jacques Chirac in the second round of France’s two-round presidential election system, French voters and politics watchers have had to seriously contemplate the possibility that a far-right leader might someday march into the Élysée palace through the front door. With the outgoing president Emmanuel Macron set to face off against Jean-Marie’s daughter Marine Le Pen in what polls suggest will be a closely matched second round of voting, French citizens heading to their polling booths next Sunday will have bathed in two dense decades of discourse on the electoral menace of the far right.
Nowhere has this grim thought experiment been pursued with more imagination than in a series of works of speculative fiction, Continue reading
In 2022, mime is probably not what you think of when discussing popular culture. The image of an individual with their face painted white, probably acting like they are trapped in a box, doesn’t demand attention within the ever-so-crowded cultural landscape. At the same time, however, the idea of 
I always thought that I was alone in connecting my personal surroundings to those I was researching. From the First World War soldier who wrote about loving and missing going to the theatre to the CBC producer who hated the number of memos they got, relating to people from the past and connecting them to our current world was a fun thought experiment as I waded through seemingly endless archival files. Over time, though, I have learned that a lot of people do this, whether in an effort to contextualize a person’s experiences, gain greater appreciation for those from the past, or just discover interesting anecdotes. Whatever the reason, making connections between past and present is a much more common practice than I once thought.
In 1968, American architect 
If you’ve visited Toronto for any length of time, you’ve probably found yourself on Yonge St. Starting on the shores of Lake Ontario, the street includes theatres, the Eaton Centre, the Air Canada Centre, and one of the city’s subway lines. Every day, thousands of people head to the street to work, shop, and socialize. As with any major street, however, Yonge Street has undergone significant changes over the past 70 years. From questions over accessibility and transportation to debates on the morality of certain commercial establishments and their clientele to reflecting Toronto’s emergence as the most prominent centre within Canada’s business community, Yonge Street has been a place where broad questions of power, community, and economics have played out from block to block.
Over the past two years, the onslaught of misinformation has increasingly attracted public and government attention. From the
