In the new feature film Unarchived, co-directors Hayley Gray and Elad Tzadok highlight community archives across British Columbia. Their film reveals just some of what has been erased from the official record and challenges larger institutions to re-examine narratives that don’t reflect the totality of our shared experience. Unarchived has its world premiere Sept 30 at VIFF. We speak with Hayley Gray and Elad Tzadok.

Vancouver municipal voters will go to the polls on October 15. Electors will have to sort through 137 candidates to decide who the mayor will be, as well as city councillors, school trustees and park commissioners. To break it down a bit for us, we talk with Redeye collective member Ian Mass with his City Beat report.

In the lead-up to Vancouver’s upcoming municipal election on October 15, Women Transforming Cities has launched the Hot Pink Paper Campaign with eight policy asks for candidates in the election. These policy asks are based on months of community input from women, gender-diverse residents, and front-line organizations. Campaign lead Mahtab Laghaei joins us to talk about what they want to see candidates support.

Carmen Rodriguez is an internationally acclaimed Chilean-Canadian author, educator and journalist. Her 2021 novel, Atacama, is set against the backdrop of Chile in the first half of the twentieth century and Europe during the Spanish Civil War. It is both a sweeping historical novel and gripping tale of personal drama. Carmen Rodriguez joined us in November last year to talk about the book.

Earle Peach is the director of three Vancouver-based choral groups including the High and Lows Choir and Solidarity Notes Labour Choir. He also plays a bunch of instruments and performs with musical groups. In his 2021 book, Questions to the Moon, Peach says songwriting is his strongest self-identification. The book is a collection of stories and lyrics, published by Lazara Press.

In June 2021, NSCAD University in Halifax announced that it was going to set up an institute to study Canadian slavery. The initiative was spearheaded by Dr. Charmaine Nelson, the first Black tenured professor of art history in Canada. The Institute for the Study of Canadian Slavery will be a hub for the study of the art, visual cultures, and histories of Canadian slavery and its legacies. We talked with Dr. Charmaine Nelson last year.

In 2017, El Salvador became the first country in the world to pass a comprehensive law banning on metals mining nationwide. The vote was the result of a 12-year struggle by small farmers and their allies to protect the waters of the Lempa River from the impact of gold mining. Robin Broad and John Cavanagh tell this incredible story in their 2021 book The Water Defenders: How Ordinary People Saved A Country From Corporate Greed. We spoke with John Cavanagh shortly after the book was published.

Canadian history, as many of us learned it in high school, leaves out or distorts the histories of many Canadians who do not fit into the prescribed narrative of this country. Students are often left questioning how they can study a past that does not reflect their present. The book “Transforming the Canadian History Classroom: Imagining a New "We", calls for an approach that places students at the centre of the history classroom. We spoke with author Dr. Samantha Cutrara in February 2021.

The National Trust manages historic properties and areas of countryside in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. In September 2020, the Trust commissioned a report on connections between their properties and colonialism, including links with historic slavery. The report attracted the attention of a group of Conservative MPs who attempted to discredit the work of the historians who produced it. In January 2021, we spoke with Professor Corinne Fowler of the University of Leicester about the work and the attacks on it.

A long tradition of the amateur detective exists in the mystery genre. The latest sleuth is Annick Boudreau, a clinical psychologist created by a Vancouver comedian, playwright, and novelist who based the character of Annick Boudreau, in part, on his own therapist. We speak with Charles Demers about the book, Primary Obsessions.