Born and raised in NDG, Collin now lives in the South Shore as a full time single dad to his two teenage sons John and Patrick. Living with them are their younger half-siblings Harrison and Charlee, and their step-dad Gerry. A blended family brought together by the death of the children’s mother Sandee, who passed suddenly and unexpectedly in 2019.

Autumn hits our hemisphere on Sept 22, making this my last essay of technical Summer. I'm writing this in a fleece hoodie, hood up, and in a couple of hours, that’ll be too hot. A couple more hours, and I'll pop my shoes off in the grass, feel the sun, and notice how different it feels than it did a few weeks ago. Still, I'm so grateful for this gentle transition.

In the past few years, our cinematic landscape has been blessed with an increasing number of movies about the queer and trans experience. From Tangerine (2015), a movie about two transgender sex workers, to I Saw the TV Glow (2024), a powerful allegory about transness.

Let's talk about my blunt force mouth. While no one has tapped me to speak on their behalf, I'm speaking for all the mouths like me. Consider the social dances we do: the way we soften truths, put pretty icing on shit patties, and spend inordinate energy trying to make people comfortable when we ourselves aren't.

Have you ever attended an event that featured sketch comedy, stand-up comedy, bands, AND live wrestling, where 100% of the ticket sales went to life-saving mutual aid for Palestinians in Gaza? Me neither!

We’ve all thought, “are we there yet?” We probably all thought it today at least once, be it in traffic, in line, on a metro that may or may not be resuming regular service any minute now…or now…or -- Or even when listening to someone talk, watching them circumambulate the point with no apparent plan to get there.

In the 1920s Mikao Usui invented (or discovered) Reiki. An energetic healing modality, what made Reiki different was that it allowed the practitioner to act as a channel for universal energy instead of tapping into their own energy, thus taking less out of the healer, and by extension, allowing for more healings.

Squat The City! How to Use the Arts for Housing Injustice by Norman Nawrocki is not a book that can be easily categorized. It’s not just a how-to book where each chapter outlines step-by-step instructions.

While I'm pretty spoiled with PTO, two weeks off is a rare treat. It felt so much bigger and badder because it was summer break, of course, and for a brief moment I was able to channel some of the summer vacation vibes of childhood.

Sitting with a bestie on her condo terrace, smoking a sunset joint, we chatted among the flowers. We were grateful to have the whole space to ourselves, no one crashing our vibe, no one grilling on the sleek new barbeque, and not a cloud in the sky.