Littoral

Undertow

Place: A bench facing southeast on the Flour Dock, Peel Basin, Tiohtià:ke Date: 2026-09-25, 08:05 EDT Conditions: 10ºC and sunny. Clear skies reflecting off the calm water. A crisp autumn breeze.

I woke up early again today. I facilitated a post-screening panel for Club Sexu and the National Film Board of Canada last night, and it felt good. I felt in my element, and crashed shortly after getting home. I crawled out of bed, washed my face, brushed my teeth, then slid my bomber jacket over the restlessness that has pressed on my shoulders for months. Wandering sleepily down Sainte-Catherine in the morning light, I ended up, as I often do when I’m downtown this early, at Café Olimpico.

The place was full, as always, and there was just one barista at that hour. Today, a group of cyclists in matching spandex and white helmets crowded around the edge of the bar, right by the door. I could only assume they were European, since they took their coffees standing at the bar despite the room having absolutely no space for it. In town for the UCI Road World Championship, I surmised. The already cramped space was more perilous with their presence, my backpack and my eyes dodging unintentional elbows and sideways glances. I’m used to it in this city, in this body.

I ordered an oat latte and a chocolatine to go, tipped with a smile, and snaked my way out the door. By this time, those same cyclists were crowding the sidewalk. I brushed my way past, not even sure where I was going until I saw the 35 idling at the corner of Union and Maisonneuve. The Transit app says it leaves at 07:35, so I meander on board and grab a seat.

The sun had been out the whole time, though you could hardly tell. The towers block its light from the street at this time of day, leaving only the wind. Sharpening the breeze into something that cuts. I glanced out the right-hand window and saw an ad on a neighbouring bus: Encourager le français, ça donne du courage. It’s meant to encourage francophones to be patient with business owners who are still learning the language. A plea for empathy from a campaign that now feels as if it’s from another time.

These days, politicians have been talking differently about language. The structures that facilitated inclusion have been defunded by austerity’s thousand cuts, sharp like the autumn breeze, and those who were already struggling to get by are left in the dark. Painted to be the problem for society’s ills. Scapegoated. Marginalized. I felt the tension rise in my body, so I took a photo and turned my attention to the other window as the bus wandered down Côte-du-Beaver-Hall, Saint-Jacques, and McGill. The bikers from the café, in an even larger, even more spandex-clad group made their way past us on the protected path by our side. They eventually make their way past the bus and we don’t see them again. Returned to the current of a city sleepily coming to life.

I’ve been exploring this same route for days now, largely without meaning to, and I don’t think that’s coincidental. When I first moved here, I used to call this area “Little Toronto.” There was something about the tightly packed condo towers, the chain storefronts, the suspicious absence of parks. The corner of Peel and Wellington, where I got off the bus with a quick merci to the bus driver, makes the case on its own. The traffic lights here have a bright yellow border, which is common in Toronto, but much less so here. There’s a protected left turn that gets priority over pedestrians. The cycle stays red on all sides for just a beat too long, daring anyone to run it. These structures have already decided who they’re for and who gets the luxury of moving through them unencumbered. That knowledge too settles onto my shoulders and folds into my route toward the water.

The buildings have been hiding the sun’s warmth since Sainte-Catherine. That is, until I get to the rail underpass just past the corner of Peel and Smith. It breaks free for a glorious moment, bathing my skin and the Farine Five Roses sign in its warm, morning glow. Wind threads my coat, brushing my neck, and for a heartbeat, the world holds. I take it in with a profound inhale before moving toward that bench facing southeast on the Flour Dock that’s been calling my name.

Indoors

Place: My couch next to the window, Quartier des spectacles, Tiohtià:ke Date: 2026-09-21, 21:36 EDT Conditions: Damp from sweat. Lit by dim phone light in a dark room that’s just a touch too humid. Noise from the city below is barely perceptible in the background.

It started, as it usually does, with the flick of my thumb. A muscly anticapitalist influencer in a tight tank top offers a sharp analysis of the creeping tides of fascism. Denied a fish, a sea lion snorts and barks in perceived indignation. A clip of a butch queen voguing fem from the last ball. The limbless body of a wailing child, carried on a stretcher to a hospital that no longer exists. An exclusive review of the new folding iPhone. Official US government accounts posting fascist propaganda. A dog in a Christmas sweater howling along to Mariah Carey. Another village is wiped from the map, turned into yet another non-native forest; this one bears my country’s name. I scroll to the comments, click “see more,” and read people begging for a crumb of recognition from under the jackboot of genocide. One person replies: “Reported.”

One last flick to close the app, followed by a deep, shaky inhale. I glance around the room—clothes strewn across the floor and tables cluttered with dishes and granola bar wrappers—and I am undone. The feed doesn’t sort by weight. Catastrophe and restaurant reviews share the same pane of glass, the same brightness, and demand you navigate the unfathomable gaps between them at the speed of a swipe. And I did, until I couldn’t.

Had it come to mind, I might have counted all the nights where my chest tightened like a fist, all the mornings spent doomscrolling until my breath went high and shallow, all the times the room tilted while my hands shook, low and steady. I’ve been carrying this cursed rectangle of weather in my pocket. Every once in a while I’d pull it out, mostly out of habit, before being consumed. I’d sometimes call it “staying informed,” and I’d sometimes call it “a lifeline to community.” With increasing frequency, I was also calling it “bearing witness.” Nobody tells you that all that looking can become a duty, and there’s only so much looking the body can take before something gives. And then something gave, and the body sat alone. Shaking. Sweating. Sobbing. Sinking.

This current has been holding me for years. My body aches for another water.

Jason Arday’s name has been sitting in my chest for weeks. He was the youngest Black professor in Cambridge University’s history, before being accused of plagiarism by a far-right postdoc at the University of Ghent and mercilessly piled on by the British press. He resigned and was found dead days later. My body read it as being pressured out of the world for his excellence, for having dared to claim a place in the halls that would exclude us. The same halls, incidentally, that were built with the wealth stolen from the resources and forced labour of our ancestors.

I hadn’t gone looking for the story. The polemic surfaced in between the sea lion and the folding iPhone, and it settled in my sternum before I could say his name. I carried him around. I swallowed his story like a stone.

That night, on my couch next to the window, another name crossed my feed. Thélyson Orélien. A Haitian-Québécois novelist, recent winner of the Prix du roman Fnac, was accused by an anonymous account on X of having written his novel with AI. He denies this, but the outrage machine is already turning. I felt that same tightness in my chest from weeks earlier: strangers certain they’d caught a fraud, our very own Arday, mais en français. It’s hard not to see the pattern immediately: Black excellence, then suspicion, then the pitchforks. I’m still not sure my body can hold the weight of it again.

It’s been a few days, and I’ve since deactivated my Instagram account. I found a tool that deleted all of my Blacksky posts. I archived Fragments, my one public-facing writing project. Long scrolls of my own voice, rushing down the drain. It didn’t feel like leaving. Not quite. More like taking my hands out of a current I’d been feeding with my body and my story for years, everything I’d put there travelling without me into rooms I’d never see.

So this is what I built. If you stumbled across this page after wondering where I disappeared to, welcome. Littoral is the other water I’ve been aching for: a place for things to arrive, be noticed, be set down, and be stayed with for as long as I need to. These pages are currently bare because I’m rebuilding them to be about what my body’s meant to carry.

As for Fragments, it’s not gone. It’s simply moved indoors, where I can tinker with it away from the public eye. I’m hoping to shape it into something I can publish, once my body and I are ready for all that entails.