The great clear-out continues. We squirrel away the flotsam and jetsam of our lives in so many ways, often without any serious thought.
Yet, while I appreciate her intention to aid in the decluttering of our spaces, the famous Marie Kondo test of holding something and gauging the degree of joy it evokes seems to me to be fundamentally flawed. What if that box of past greeting cards I have amassed—some expressing condolences, others hope and encouragement—would be the very thing to remind me of the love and joy that I have enjoyed at a future moment of loneliness or loss?
How do we truly live in the present without holding our past with love and respect?
I have thought about this question a lot while editing this issue as many of the stories it contains touch on it in different ways. One theme that recurs is hardly revelatory: gratitude. A concept easy to brush up against, much harder to sit with honestly.
Cherisse Du Preez is a Vancouver Island-based scientist who grapples with big ideas and complex systems. Her work focuses on a space most of us barely comprehend and will never visit: the deep ocean floor. Exploring and mapping this frontier raises and answers questions about not just a spectacular ecosystem and the organisms it supports, but all life—including ours—on Earth. Du Preez sits on the cutting edge of this scientific understanding, having achieved her position despite a potentially overwhelming dyslexia diagnosis in childhood.
Staring down death may be the moment when, even if we spent our entire lives avoiding it, we see what it is to be human and which parts of that journey really matter. Hailey Merkt was a beautiful and vibrant young woman. A life full of possibilities stretched out in front of her. Leukemia took those possibilities away. In a moving and frank piece of creative nonfiction, writer Claudia Casper explores the last moments she spent with the young woman she loved. A lunch where there was nothing more to hide behind, where joy and pain was inexorably intertwined, and the act of being present was all that was left.
Our cover star, Vancouver’s own Alexander Gumuchian, a.k.a. bbno$, describes himself as a glass half-full person. The rap artist is beloved among Gen Zs at home and abroad as much for his lighthearted, wholesome attitude as his honesty about his physical setbacks and mental health struggles. In a world where it is increasingly difficult to separate fact from fiction, truth from lies, we can only hope that authenticity continues to shine through. And if our young people are able to recognize it when they see it, despite the onslaught of distraction and noise, perhaps all is not lost.
I have decided to keep the cards.
Read more from our Spring 2025 issue.
