McSweeney’s List (20 May 2026)
THE NEW (OLD) NORMAL IS NOT OK
The word on the street is Hanta Virus. One can tell by the hushed tones, and careful media coverage, that even though the cruise ship outbreak is still considered a localized event, and the virus doesn't appear to be spreading any differently than usual, a lot of people are holding their breaths.
Folks are questioning and speculating, murmuring with concern. With a fatality rate significantly higher than COVID, and potentially infected people from the cruise ship now on watch across North America, worry is spreading. Thankfully, panic is more contagious than the disease appears to be, and odds are good that the whole story will pass quickly. The other underlying vibe though, are the whispers of yeah, I could use another lockdown.
When we were in it, COVID was a life-changing situation. For a lot of workers, it was the first time they worked remotely, and the first time they spent so much time with their families. We learned baking and crafting, resurrected the lost art of the phone call, and invented hanging together on video. (The NYE Zoom party I attended remains one of my favorite ever NYE gatherings.) We repeated the words New Normal until we believed that we really could build something better from the ashes of what used to be.
We didn't learn, though; and I'm a believer that when you don't learn the lesson, it keeps coming back harder until we do. While Hanta will likely be out of the news cycle shortly, I wouldn't be surprised if the Universe sent us another teachable moment to remind us of what we've already forgotten.
It took relatively no time for us to rush back into the arms of the status quo. Companies (worried about the relevance of middle management in the face of stats that show employees are more effective, productive, and happier working from home), forced folks back to the office. The Canadian government is currently demanding all employees return to their cubicles despite their admission that they don't have enough desks or equipment to have everyone there. Many of the existing buildings have infestations ranging from cockroaches and bedbugs, to birds and bats. Fixing these will cost a truckload of taxpayer money, as will acquiring new office space. But efficiency isn't as important as appearances in the Old Normal that is also the Current Normal.
Prices didn't drop after the spikes of pandemic pricing (surprise), and with everything going on nationally and globally, prices (and company profits) continue to soar. We're working harder than ever, racing on treadmills that never allow us to get anywhere. What better time to steal back the job satisfaction that working from home granted.
We saw what we could have, and then it was taken away. I wonder how many of those who had gardens growing still have the time to tend them. Do you still bake? Home cooking, raised to its rightful place as the wholesome center of the day, has fallen back to the gutter as an expensive, time consuming necessity. There's no time left to stir soup with love, let alone wait for bread to rise.
To be honest, we've been so recently burned, it's a wonder that we don't panic at every flu symptom. Instead, we’re back to sending our sick kids out with friends, dragging our sick selves to the office, wondering why healing takes so long. We lost the perspective that we gained. We've forgotten dolphins in canals, and wildlife on sidewalks. It was beautiful to remember that despite our grand, concrete visions, it's all just part of nature, and that includes us.
It took no time for society to decide that the essential workers we praised and depended on were just unskilled, replaceable labour. We took back the bonuses, and the high regard we held them in, despite the fact that they are still essential. If you doubt that, try running a society without them.
During the pandemic, we smiled at strangers more, recognizing that we were unified by the scary absurdity of the time. Now, despite the fact that things are still scary and absurd, we've turned our backs on each other, returning to averted eyes and divisive outrage.
Remember drawings in windows that said we're in this together, we’ll get through, everything would be ok? I think we need to bring those back…
Of course we missed our social lives during the pandemic, but how many of your relationships deepened during that time? How many of your friends and your acquaintances did you realize were truly your family, and how many fell away easily? We made tough choices about who was in our bubble, and what outings were worth the risk, only to forget everything and be forced back into the paradigm of social obligations and time spent with people whose company we don't even enjoy. Be honest: if you could play the oooh, sorry, I would, but you're not in my circle card again, wouldn't you?
A multitude of mistakes were made during COVID. The extremists on both sides did what they always do and made life unnecessarily difficult for the mainstream middle. It was an unprecedented global event, and the fact is, we learned a lot. Globally, we saw how different governments reacted to real time threats (and the results of those choices). Personally, we learned what mattered most to us: the people we kept near, the places we missed most, the pastimes that soothed us and kept us sane.
I missed concerts; being packed in with a roomful of strangers, unified as we sing along together. It reminds me of our whole human condition: in it together, pressed close with someone the universe randomly put next to you, eager to find joy. You can talk to anyone at a concert, because for those hours, you are friends. I enjoy knowing concerts exist, and are always happening, even if I'm not there; knowing that during the pandemic years, there was no music, no dancing, no live acts anywhere, brought a unique and sad sense of isolation that I've never felt before.
And remember that wild thing where we couldn't buy non-essential items? How crazy was that?! And who is the government to tell me that I'm the dead of lockdown winter, the smell of incense won't save my sanity? And who were they to tell me that as I went to my essential job at a doctor’s office, that nail polish wasn't an important aesthetic distraction on my creepy quiet commute, or as I took calls from sick, and frustrated people?
It was awful; I had to wear a pseudo Hazmat suit with a visor to visit my mom in the ICU. Later, I had an official letter that said my mother was dying, in case I was caught out past curfew on my way to see her in palliative care. It was an absurd and dystopian time.
So, why does the sound of another pandemic sound appealing? Because we find ourselves in differently absurd and dystopian times, and the devil we know sounds cozier. Maybe we need a few weeks every few years where the whole world slows down so we can remember what matters to us. We would use the time to stress test our relationships, reconnect with those we love, and reconfigure our work-life balance. Or maybe we need to create new personal boundaries, refusing to move unnaturally through an artificially sweetened world that demands we keep pace with…who? Why are we running? Who are we really trying to impress? Perhaps New Normal can only be achieved once we each address this for ourselves and refuse to be tempted or coerced off our individual paths.
TRIPLE THE POETRY
Paragraphe Bookstore presents a Three Poet Reading, featuring Stephanie Bolster (Long Exposure), Rhea Tregebov (Talking to Strangers), and Sarah Wolfson (A Common Name for Everything).
After Hurricane Katrina, the photographer Robert Polidori flew to New Orleans to document the devastation. In the wreckage he witnessed, and in her questions about what she saw in what he saw, Stephanie Bolster found the beginnings of a long poem. Those questions led to unexpected places; meanwhile, life kept pouring in. The ensuing book, Long Exposure, is Bolster’s fifth, a roaming, associative exploration of disasters and their ongoing aftermaths, sufferings large and small, and the vulnerability and value of our own lives. Incremental, unsettling, Long Exposure rushes to and through us.
Talking to Strangers is a book of bracing encounters. Throughout her four decades as poet, Rhea Tregebov has displayed an uncommon eye for the mysteries of ordinary life – moments where, as she writes, “[t]he simplest things / elude me.” This gift is brought to brilliant effect in her eighth book of poetry, her most charged to date. In gorgeous arias of recollection and evocation, of elegy and heartbreak, Tregebov mourns, praises, prays, regrets, summons, celebrates, and bears witness with formidable artistry and tenderness (“You wouldn’t think the inanimate would get tired /but it does.”) Direct, never forced, keenly observant, and marked by scrupulous craft, these new poems unfold in beguiling, often breathtaking ways. They confirm Tregebov’s place among the most significant poets of her generation. Talking to Strangers was awarded both the 2024 Canadian Jewish Literary Award for Poetry and the 2025 Western Canada Jewish Book Award Betty Averbach Foundation Prize for Poetry. The book was also long-listed for the Al & Eurithe Purdy Poetry Prize.
The poems in A Common Name for Everything build idiosyncratic worlds around the themes of nature, home, parenting, and naming – worlds that are at once poignant and absurd: a professional namer of lakes explains his standards; the rural gods are given names; a study of sheep results in loneliness. Steeped in sound play, and borrowing academic language to create a specimen lens, these poems bask in the local as they seek to name even the commonest earthly things.
WHAT: Three Poet Reading
WHERE: Paragraphe Bookstore, 2220 McGill College Ave., Montreal, H3A 3P9
WHEN: Thursday, May 20 @ 5 PM
METRO: McGill (Green)
DETAILS: Facebook
LOOK, LISTEN, LEARN
Fonderie Darling is delighted to invite you to a public conversation with artist-in-residence Insoon Ha, focusing on her artistic practice. It's a unique opportunity to meet the artist in her studio!
This conversation is presented in partnership with the Concordia University Research Chair in Critical Curatorial Studies and Decolonizing Art Institutions and in collaboration with the summer intensive course ARTH 490 Exhibitions as Fieldwork, taught by Dr. Alice Ming Wai Jim.
WHAT: Conversation: Insoon Ha
WHERE: Fonderie Darling, 745, rue Ottawa, Montreal, Quebec, H3C 1R8
WHEN: Thursday, May 20 @ 3 PM
METRO: Square-Victoria-OACI
DETAILS: FonderieDarling
PLAY WITH SOME PAGANS
Welcome all, to Pagan Game Night presented by Montreal Pagans! Come out for a drink or a meal, plus lots of laughs and thrills with like-minded folks.
Please note, this is a new venue. If you wish to play any of the games owned by the restaurant, you will have to pay a $9 cover charge. The organizers will bring their own games for free play. That being said, we ask that you order something off the menu to support the business for hosting!
Whether you're new to Paganism, a familiar face, or curious to learn more about it, we'd be delighted to enjoy the evening with you!
WHAT: Pagan Game Night
WHERE: Joker Resto Ludique, 4330 Wellington St., Verdun, H4G 1W4
WHEN: Friday, May 22 @ 615 PM
METRO: De l’Église (Green)
DETAILS: Facebook
OUR LITTLE BLUE MARBLE
Éco Fest MTL is a community-focused fundraising event supporting Coyote Programs in 2026, an environmental organization whose mission is to help young people, families, and educators connect with nature. The Nature Works Fund offers financial assistance to families so they can afford to send their kids to nature programs.
Éco Fest's goal is to unite Montreal residents in support of environmental initiatives, raise awareness, foster active community engagement, and create a festive atmosphere.
Come enjoy games, local musicians, and food from Le Rendez Vous!
WHAT: Éco Fest MTL
WHERE: Girouard Park, 3500 Girouard Ave., Montreal, H4A 1R2
WHEN: Saturday, May 23, 11 AM - 4 PM
METRO: Vendôme (Orange)
DETAILS: Facebook
ROCKSTAR MODE
BATTLEWAR officially activated Rockstar Mode at their 14th anniversary in April. So what do they do now? They get rowdier and wilder with the most dangerous pro wrestlers in the city!
They'll be stepping into the ring at Foufounes Electriques, and throwing each other over the top rope to become the new number one contender for the BATTLEWAR Championship.
Bodies flying? Sign us all the way up!
Featuring "Mononc" St-Jacques, Les Brasseurs, Michel Plante, Les VIP, Plein Gout, Junior Benito and BATTLEWAR Champion, Thomas Dubois!
BATTLEWAR Tag Team Championship: Les Brasseurs(c) vs. Les VIP
Foufounes Electriques Championship: Michel Plante(c) vs. Kacey Diamond
The BATTLEWAR Battle Royale: Leon Saver, "Triple X" Sexxxy Eddy, DANTE, Kristara, Giant Tiger, Tyler Nox, Dreya Mitchell, "The OG" Jason Gray and more!
$20 • 18+
WHAT: BATTLEWAR: Rockstar Mode
WHERE: 87 St. Catherine St. E., Montreal, H2X 1K5
WHEN: Sunday, May 24, Doors @ 7 PM, Show @ 8 PM
METRO: St. Laurent (Green)
DETAILS: Facebook
World’s Smallest Comedy Night has so many cool things happening, so here are their events this week in order!
What Do You Know? Like, Seriously…
Tonight! Come to Hurley's for Trivia Night, and get bonus laughter! Enjoy delicious pub fare, and get ready to show off your trivia skills. Grab your team, and enjoy this night of comedy, friendly competition, and great company!
This edition is hosted by Vance Michel, featuring Nazeer Khan, Troy Stark, and Sarah Warren.
WHAT: Trivia Night at Hurley's
WHERE: Hurley's Irish Pub, 1225 Crescent St., Montreal, H3G 2B1
WHEN: Every Wednesday @ 8 PM
METRO: Lucien l'Allier (Orange) & Guy-Concordia (Green)
RSVP: Eventbrite
FEMMETASTIC
Funny ladies take center stage this week for Femmes Night! Enjoy brassy broads, classy cacklers, and the funniest femmes in town!
Hosted by Abby Stonehouse.
WHAT: World’s Smallest Comedy Night Femme Edition
WHERE: Hurley's Irish Pub, 1225 Crescent St., Montreal, H3G 2B1
WHEN: Monday, April 27 @8 PM
METRO: Lucien l'Allier (Orange) & Guy-Concordia (Green)
TICKETS: Eventbrite
Dirty Monday
The Monday Night Dirty Mic is the place to be! Hosted by Vance Michel, every show is an unpredictable and unique experience as a hilarious collection of comedians from newbs to pros take the stage. See the best before anyone else, and catch seasoned locals doing their freshest funnies!
Comics: show-up, sign-up
WHAT: Monday Night Dirty Mic
WHERE: Hurley's Irish Pub, 1225 Crescent St., Montreal, H3G 2B1
WHEN: Every Monday, Sign-up @ 10 PM, Show @ 1030 PM
METRO: Lucien l'Allier (Orange) & Guy-Concordia (Green)
DETAILS: Facebook
