I grew up in Oakville, Ontario, a city ranked the best place to live in Canada in 2018. My high school had Smartboards, laptops, tablets, and all the rest. But most importantly, my teachers and counselors gave me the confidence and the tools to make it to Queen’s, launching me on a path toward a successful life and career.Continue...
While celebrities are most often thought of as figureheads reinforcing rigid standards of beauty and gender roles, they can also use their influence to help normalize less-accepted or misunderstood facets of society. Recently, Sam Smith did exactly that.Continue...
In recent months, the Brazilian Amazon, the Earth’s largest tropical rainforest and its most biodiverse region, has been devastated by thousands of fires—and it continues to burn.Continue...
I believe public and private enterprises are key to saving the environment. Although private enterprises have spent years turning a blind eye to the environment’s welfare for the sake of profit, I think our generation’s sense of global responsibility can help to bring change.Continue...
With federal elections looming in both Canada and the US, politicians have been emphasizing for months where they stand on hot-button issues like the economy, job security, and health care. One of these issues that’s become increasingly polarized is the world climate crisis.Continue...
When I heard the new Quentin Tarantino movie was about the Manson Family, a radicalized cult, and their 1969 murder of American actress Sharon Tate, I was concerned. The writer-director is known for delighting in gore, and I feared the film would glorify the crimes and their perpetrators.Continue...
The Netflix original series 13 Reasons Why is one of the most controversial, boundary-pushing television shows on the platform—and perhaps in modern television. But despite its strong first season and talented cast, the series has since proven it should never have continued past its initial 13 episodes.Continue...
The planet may be dying, Western politics may be at an extremist tipping point, and life-threatening weather may be ripping through the Bahamas, but celebrity breakups somehow still make national headlines.Continue...
This August, Taylor Swift released her seventh studio album, Lover . Swift returns to her country-pop roots with this latest musical endeavor and reverts to a softer, more cheerful sound than that of her previous studio album, reputation .Continue...
More than a year and a half after its last season, Netflix released the third chapter of Stranger Things on July 4, bringing fans back to the 1980s. Season three invites us to once again experience the world of the Upside Down, Eleven’s nosebleeds, and the all-powerful villain, the Mind Flayer.Continue...
On a recent episode of reality show The Bachelorette, star Hannah Brown shocked audiences when she announced, “I f—ked in a windmill. And guess what? We did it a second time.”Continue...
Despite countless reality dating shows focusing on the love, drama, and sex lives of straight people, no show has effectively explored the LGBTQ+ dating experience. Until now.Continue...
This July, Disney announced that Black actress and R&B singer Halle Bailey will star as Ariel in its upcoming remake of The Little Mermaid. This decision marks the first time a woman of colour will play a traditionally white heroine in one of Disney's live-action adaptations.Continue...
Viewers from around the globe watched in awe on July 7 as the US women’s national soccer team took the World Cup for the second year running, defeating their competitors from the Netherlands. Co-Captain Megan Rapinoe hoisted the cup high and posed proudly for photos as adoring cheers rang out from the stands.Continue...
North American filmmakers have been trying to capture the quintessential coming-of-age experience since the rise of the teen comedy genre in the 1980s.Continue...
In a time when nostalgia sells better than sex, it’s hard to argue that Amazon’s new Jonas Brothers documentary, Chasing Happiness, is anything more than a ploy to sell the band’s reunion album.Continue...
The widely popular HBO series Big Little Lies follows a narrative structure that’s striking, unsettling and unexpected. It offers a refreshing sense of realism amidst shows that often romanticize complex human issues.Continue...
