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 …

A Photo Examination

The first thing I did was scan the photograph. I wanted to blow up some corners, get a good peek inside that black-and-white world where you are sitting, lovely, some fifty years ago. The back of the photo, curled lengthwise, says in purple print stamped by the photo shop: Foto Miniæ. Maturška Banja. Vila Soko. It must have been …

Time’s Up

Illustration by Gérard DuBois.

When I was twelve and falling in love with NBA basketball, its most exciting players were ten to fifteen years older than me. Then five. Then they were my peers. Now players my age are described as either “seasoned” or “washed up.” During a Phoenix Suns game I attended in 2008, as former all-star and …