Speculating Canada on Trent Radio Episode 13: An Interview with Sean Moreland

In this episode of Speculating Canada on Trent Radio, I interview Ottawa author, editor, and academic Dr. Sean Moreland. Dr. Moreland teaches various courses at Ottawa University, including courses on horror. He is also one of the co-editors of Postscripts to Darkness (which you can explore at http://pstdarkness.com/). He has published short fiction in several collections of speculative fiction such...

Speculating Canada on Trent Radio Episode 12: Alpha Flight

Continuing the comic book theme, this week James Kerr and I discuss Marvel Comics’ Alpha Flight, the superhero team that the American Marvel Comics designed for Canada. James and I talk about some of the positive things that Marvel Comics did with their Canadian superhero team such as including the first gay character (Northstar), indigenous characters (Shaman, Talisman), French Canadians...

Speculating Canada on Trent Radio Episode 11: Nelvana of the Northern Lights

For this episode of Speculating Canada on Trent Radio I examine Canada’s first superheroine Nelvana of the Northern Lights. Dressed in Blue and Green with a fur-trimmed skirt and green cape with northern lights dancing around her headband she flew around wielding the powers of the Northern Lights to keep Canada safe from invasion, pollution, and destruction while venturing into...

Upcoming interview with Diane Walton Wednesday July 16th

This Wednesday July 16th I will be doing an interview with Diane Walton, managing editor of OnSpec magazine: speculative author, feminist, fan, and supporter of the Canadian fantastic. Ms. Walton and I discuss the nature of the Canadian fantastic, pushing the envelope in SF, bringing forward characters from diverse backgrounds that are often under-represented in texts, the challenge of creating...

Home is a Place Created in Tales

A review of Amal El-Mohtar’s Mon pays c’est l’hiver (Lackington’s issue one, Winter, 2014 http://lackingtons.com/2014/02/13/mon-pays-cest-lhiver/ ) By Derek Newman-Stille We pretend that home is an easy concept, something that comes easily, but Amal El-Mohtar’s Mon pays c’est l’hiver poetically charts the challenge of home. We hold on to memories of a wintery, beautiful landscape. But our sense of place always...

What Lay Beneath Modernity?

A Review of Kate Heartfield’s Their Dead So Near, Lackington’s issue one, Winter, 2014 (http://lackingtons.com/2014/02/13/their-dead-so-near-by-kate-heartfield/) By Derek Newman-Stille We are distant from our dead. In urban centres, we build over the dead, erasing the history of what came before us in our construction of the new. Kate Heartfield’s Their Dead So Near takes us into Ottawa’s Macdonald Gardens, called by...