No Canada | 49.3

2026

No Canada

What was Canada? we might one day ask. Canadian writers have spent much time on the question of what is Canada, who is Canadian, where did we come from, and where will we go? Certainly today’s spirited and sentimental patriotism suggests we are going somewhere, or at least we aren’t going anywhere. Suddenly the reddest of necks has a feeling about sovereignty. Elbows up! is a defensive posture—and, like any passive-aggressive act, a story we are telling about ourselves.

This issue tells other stories. In the new era of CanCon, as feminists and writers it is our task to reject this Canadian exceptionalism, this too-comfortable back-patting. We must refuse to feel the way we are supposed to feel—a feminist stance, not a defensive one—in order to look at how we really live. The threat of American annexation demands that we identify with our country; but, as Sable Island Pony’s gorgeous illustration of Wet’suwet’en resistance reminds us, Canada is the invasive force. In an excerpt from her debut novel, Leila and Khaled, Nyla Matuk writes that the Zionist state presents itself as “a precious, vulnerable population in need of security—that’s why they are so militarized.” Like Israel, Canada insists on its right to defend itself; like Israel, Canada invests in its defense through tech, military, and culture. This, Matuk writes, “is a very ordinary colonialism.”

As writers and artists, our ordinary is implicated. Emily Riddle notes in our interview how arts funding can be tied up in resource extraction that goes against treaty agreements. “Even here at Banff Centre,” she says, “things are named after oil companies.” How can we begin to imagine alternative arts economies, Indigenous economies around art, that start with treaty, that align with BDS? What art, what literature, would such a system free us to create?

I have no answers, only gratitude. Thank you to Micah, Vanessa, and Natalie, thank you to the writers and artists, thank you to Room’s 2025 contest winners. I hope the writing and art in this issue can serve as a feminist counterarchive of this moment when someday, someone asks, what was Canada?

—Sadie Graham