Arts & Culture

“We won’t forget, and we won’t stay silent”: London’s Bosnian community marks 30th anniversary of Srebrenica genocide

On Saturday, July 12, the Bosnian Canadian Islamic Centre (BCIC) held a memorial in the Rayner Gardens area of Springbank Park to mark 30 years since the devastating events of the Srebrenica genocide. As the hot midday sun bore down on the attendees, members of the BCIC, local MPs, City officials, and Muslim community leaders spoke on the importance of remembrance and recognition in preserving the memory of the victims and ensuring the atrocities of that day are never repeated again. In April of 1993, a year into the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina, the UN declared the town of…

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London Film Screening Marks the 35th Anniversary of Mohawk Kanehsatà:ke Resistance

On July 11, 1990, a 78-day standoff began when the Mohawk of Kanehsatà:ke resisted the violent expansion of a golf course onto their sacred forest and ancestral burial grounds. Commonly called the “Oka crisis” in settler communities, the siege by Sûreté du Québec (SQ) Quebec provincial police, the Canadian Army and RCMP, marks a “watershed moment” for Indigenous land defense and struggle on Turtle Island. To mark the 35th anniversary, there was a free public screening of Kanehsatake: 270 Years of Resistance (1993, directed by Alanis Obomsawin) on July 10 at DoughEV (621 Dundas Street), co-hosted by London International Socialists,…

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“Letters in a Shell” and “The Alarm”

A lyric in free verse, I wrote Letters in a Shell in June 2025 as an emotional response to the ongoing and escalating suppression of Palestine activism observed on Western University’s campus, in London, and on social media. Letters in a Shell The body is a shell It speaks, sometimes it moves, Across imaginary lines. It arrives and it departs.  The body is a shell Sometimes it’s recognized, Sometimes handled.  There are times this is unwanted. At such times this is unjust.  The body is a shell, but a hand can write a letter,  on paper or on glass. The…

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Pride and Protest: “Parade” Screening at Museum London

Last month, I went to Toronto’s Soulpepper Theatre to watch a production of Michael R. Jackson’s Tony and Pulitzer award-winning musical, “A Strange Loop.” I was stunned by its unapologetic Blackness, especially seeing it amongst a predominantly white crowd. The musical offers a gritty understanding of the lived experiences of a Black gay man in the modern era (modern as in like 2015 modern, to be fair), so much so that a white family with their young daughter packed up and left by the third song. I could not stop thinking about this white family leaving. I kept wondering if…

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Crowd of people sitting on the floor of Poacher's Arms surrounding the stage as Whine Problem prepares to play their final song of the evening

MAGICAL Evenings: June 18, 19 Music Show Reviews

Last week I went to two music events at a local bar, Poacher’s Arms, 171 Queens Ave. The first one was a free event on Wednesday called “Queerrr Jam”. This was held in collaboration with “Grrrls Jam”, a free event held at Poachers Arms once a month, where femme and gender-nonconforming people can go up and jam on the Poacher’s stage.  In this case, it was for anyone within the queer community to perform at. Queerrr Jam was run in collaboration with MAGICAL 519, which stands for Multicultural Accessible Gatherings Improving 2SLGBTQIA+ Community Affirmation in London, a collective that aims…

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Inside the London Premiere of Vancouver-based documentary series Ana Falastini

On May 25, Palestinian-Canadian filmmakers Dalia Al Ahmad and Rawan Ramini came to Western University’s Conron Hall to premiere their Vancouver-based documentary series “Ana Falastini.”  The event brought upwards of 100 community members together and featured surprise performances from the Asala Dabke group and the debut of the Palestinian Threads of Diaspora project in London. The filmmaker duo showed three episodes of their five-episode documentary series, each discussing a specific part of Palestinian identity through interviews in both Arabic and English. Part 1 — History “To be a Palestinian is politicized.”  The first portion of the documentary opened with members…

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“Portrait of Elliot”: Painting of brain cyst stars at neuroscience conference

At Museum London on February 20th, a painting of a glowing brain is displayed on an easel. The stylized MRI brain scan, from the back-of-the-head view, is aflame in yellows and reds that form a hazy halo around a starburst of highlighter-green brain fluid. Folds of pale coral-coloured grey matter coalesce into cranial nerves bordered by a streaming blue-violet neck. In the right hemisphere drifts a ghostly cyst.  The piece is called “Portrait of Elliot”, painted by artist Natasha Beaudoin. It is based on a real MRI scan of her boyfriend, Elliot Tomlinson, who was diagnosed with an arachnoid cyst. …

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“Come with me inside a black hole”: A talk by physicist Carlo Rovelli

“They’re remarkable objects… I hope I can tell you something more about their strangeness and their beauty,” says physicist Carlo Rovelli of black holes on January 30th at Western University’s Conron Hall, for the 2025 Duncanson Lecture. Behind him beams a photo of Sagittarius A* — a black hole 26 million kilometers wide in the center of our Milky Way galaxy, 26,000 light years from Earth (1 light year is about 9.4 x 1012  kilometers). The photo — the average of thousands of photos taken from a telescope — shows a hazy orange-yellow ring of fluctuating brightness circling a dark…

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Poetry and Prose, Roots and Rhythm: Black History SLAM

As the state of the world continues to change around me, it’s been hard to decide how to respond to it. There’s an endless list of things that need attention and many systems to fight to create any sort of change. When responding to a capitalist status quo that places profits above people and the environment at large, it’s hard to feel sane in any one form of response, so I’ve been able to find solace in multiple things at once. Protesting with the community; promoting and engaging in mutual aid; and, most recently through journalism, sharing underrepresented stories and…

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Council of Canadians Poetry Recital

On February 4, about 60 Londoners met at the Central Branch of the London Public Library to participate in “A Town Hall on the Future of Canada”, hosted by the Council of Canadians and the London and District Labour Council.  Speakers on organized labour, public health, the environment, and social justice and militarism presented the ongoing and interrelated crises facing people living in Canada today. But they also presented an alternative vision based on community connection and a call to action to change the trajectory of the Canadian state and its continual onslaught of policies and legislation against the working…

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