Since Medical Assistance in Dying (MAiD) was legalized in Canada in 2016, the process has relied not only on the doctors and practitioners who help carry out people's right to die, but a group of people you may not have heard of: volunteer witnesses. Two independent witnesses — who are not involved in the care of the applicant, nor stand to benefit from their death — must sign and date every application for MAiD. Three volunteer witnesses reflect on the process, as a bill that would amend their role winds its way through legislature.

Michel Groulx lives in a tent, in an encampment just east of downtown Montreal. Michel, armed with his own recorder, takes us into his world, introduces us to his neighbours. And explains why, even with winter coming, he has no intention of relocating to a shelter. PLUS, In March, at the beginning of the pandemic, Stephen Smith lost his sense of smell. But he set aside his concerns while his wife, an asthmatic, struggled with more serious COVID-19 symptoms. As time went on and his wife got better, Stephen noticed that his sense of smell still hadn't returned. He couldn't smell spring in bloom. In fact, his sense of smell (and taste) became strangely warped, turning favourite scents foul. Now, eight months on, Stephen's worried that some smells, and the memories they evoke, may never return.

In the mid-2000’s, childhood friends Paul Nguyen and Mark Simms started a website about their Toronto neighborhood: Jane-Finch.com. The website had news, community boards, and videos that the guys would make, usually with local rappers. The website got a lot of love -- until suddenly that changed. A Toronto talk radio station broadcast a series of interviews that largely condemned the rap videos, saying they encouraged gang violence. Paul and Mark only found out this had been happening months after the interviews started. Their website took a hit, and the guys were scared, angry… and largely silent. Now, 15 years later, they’re talking about what went down.

For decades, Robert Keating had been searching for his birth mother with no success... Until an unlikely encounter with a customer at his pet store, and a 19th century painting, provided the clues he needed to find her. PLUS, writer Ivan Coyote on the moment their grandmother, even in the midst of her late stage dementia, made Ivan feel fully seen.

In 2002, Bob Kerr made a grand romantic gesture that was so downright embarrassing, it still makes him cringe. Now, nearly 20 years later, Bob is reaching back out to his ex-girlfriend Zoey, to find out what she really thought of his bid to win her heart… and learns the script is never what you think it is. PLUS, In 1999, Pasha Malla and Mark Trenwith made a strange trade: they traded personal stories. Each agreed to only tell the other guy's story as if it was his own. 19 years later we got them on the phone to re-tell the stories they traded... and see how they held up. (Spoiler alert: they didn't; hilarity ensued.)

When two librarians in Kelowna B.C. decide to hold Drag Queen Story Hour for kids, they plan everything… from the books about inclusion and diversity that educational assistant Tyson Cook will read while in character as “Miss Freida Whales,” to the rainbow wand-making craft they’ll lead with the kids and the music breaks they’ll take so the kids can get up and move around between books. But what Ashley and Chris don’t plan for… is the ideological tempest that is unleashed on the city of Kelowna — engulfing librarians, activists, parents and politicians. Drag Queen Story Hour turned into a pitched battle to define what is the role of a library, who is it for, and who gets to decide?

Two stories about COVID and companionship: Dusty Springfield is the luckiest cat on earth. When COVID-19 hit, Dusty’s owner, Jennifer Yoon, was suddenly home all the time. What a luxury for a rescue cat with abandonment issues! PLUS, Jean Grevstad is an active 91-year-old in a seniors’ residence in Nelson, B.C. Bob Keating meets and spends time with her, taking down her life story for posterity. But when COVID-19 hits, Jean is left facing a second pandemic of loneliness.

Super Duty Tough Work is the first ever hip-hop group from Manitoba to be nominated for the Polaris Music Prize. We follow frontman Brendan Kinley, a rapper who draws on the past to make music for the present. Brendan is the youngest in a long family legacy of musicians, including late Juno winner Gerry Atwell and virtuoso pianist Winifred Atwell. Against the backdrop of his deep-rooted family history in music, hip hop as a space for social commentary, and Super Duty teetering on the edge of a national breakout, this is the anatomy of a hip hop album.

Trevor Campbell has unfinished business. After abandoning ship, he never reconnected with Paul and Nans. It’s been five years. Now he wants to find them, to finally talk about the day he fled.

Trevor Campbell joins the anarchist stage company “Caravan" and has his first taste of life with this ragtag family of theatre pirates. It's all terribly romantic, as Trevor travels with them in Europe, and later joins them in Louisiana. But it’s also terrifying, when U.S. government agents pay the ship a surprise visit in New York.