Kevin Keystone

The tiny cartoon characters in your pocket have been quietly marching into the future. In many cases, you’d have to look closely to notice. Did you see when the syringe emoji, ordinarily red with blood, turned a whitish vaccine-coloured blue? Or when the face-with-mask emoji, ordinarily with eyes angled downward in unwell distress, suddenly smiled behind the security of its…

Liz Levine is an expert in death. The writer, director, and producer — best known for her work on Kyra Sedgwick’s Story of a Girl and Douglas Coupland’s JPod — lost both her maternal grandparents, a sister (to stillbirth), and several friends before she even finished high school. The loss has only continued into adulthood: “I’ve been to more funerals than I am years…

I am sitting on the subway, reading with horror and fascination. Is this how it really was? I ask myself. Miriam Moscowitz, the main character of Cary Fagan’s new book, The Student, is in her final year studying English at the University of Toronto. It is the 1950s, and she has asked her professor for a recommendation letter: He avoided looking at her but took the pipe from his…