Features

<p>It&#8217;s the middle of the afternoon, but I haven&#8217;t moved from my bed. The curtains are closed, the lights are off and I&#8217;m buried under a pile of blankets. I can’t move. I can’t breathe. I can’t sleep. All I can do is stare at the video on my phone.   A 91-year-old Asian man walks [&hellip;]</p>

<p>Tanner Augustine, a second-year St. Thomas University Mi’kmaq student from Elsipogtog First Nation, said if it wasn&#8217;t for a non-Indigenous woman to be able to marry an Indigenous man and be granted status, his bloodline would&#8217;ve been cut off generations ago. He said blood quantum is a way to divide people and it’s been working.  [&hellip;]</p>

<p>On a warm fall afternoon, Maggie Gilmore is in her grandfather’s work shed butchering a pig. She stands and stretches, surrounded by the remains of the pig, her dusty brown hair tied back and wrapped in a headband. Her glasses keep sliding down her freckled nose. She leans back in close to the table that [&hellip;]</p>

<p>Taylor Swift fans watched the pop star take back the rights to her old music by re-recording her songs, the most recent being &#8220;Love Story (Taylor&#8217;s Version).&#8221; Emma Leger, a long-time fan of Swift and a fourth-year sociology student at St. Thomas University, said she thinks Swift wants her fans to know it&#8217;s possible to [&hellip;]</p>

<p>The internet has been in a frenzy in response to Phoebe Bridgers’ performance on Saturday Night Live on Feb. 6, where she ended by smashing her guitar over a stage amp.  While guitar smashing is by no means a new practice in the world of Rock &#8216;n&#8217; Roll with artists like Jimi Hendrix, Kurt Cobain [&hellip;]</p>

<p>New Brunswick artist Fred Ross’ sketches of Candian-singer songwriter Charles Thomas Connors — better known as Stompin’ Tom Connors — to the Beaverbrook Art Gallery.  John Leroux, manager of collections and exhibitions at the art gallery, said the sketches were donated a year and a half ago. The sketches show a group of young people, [&hellip;]</p>

<p>I pick up my phone as it beeps with a new notification. This is the third notification today from Duolingo, a platform for free online language learning, reminding me to practice my Spanish, just like I have been doing for the past 130 days. The app gives me exercises, from repeating a sentence to translating [&hellip;]</p>

<p>You don’t celebrate Valentine&#8217;s Day? Well, I’m sure there’s a totally rational reason for that. Maybe you just hate the idea of love and despise the thought of other people enjoying themselves.  Ah, I see. You could be one of those people that believes “love should be celebrated every day.” Well guess what bud, couples [&hellip;]</p>

<p>The Black Lives Matter movement was nominated for the 2021 Nobel Peace Prize after a year of peaceful protests, activists speaking out and people coming together globally to speak up against racial discrimination. David Eno, a fourth-year international student at St. Thomas University and a member of STU&#8217;s Black Student Association, said Black Lives Matter [&hellip;]</p>

<p>Let me make a few things clear — I am not hating on mental health awareness. Though I cannot say I’ve suffered from serious mental health issues, I have had friends who have. I’ve gone through my rough patches. But I think there is an issue that needs to be addressed. The opinions on this [&hellip;]</p>

<p>Monica and Valeria Boquin are businesswomen by blood. They sold stickers and jewelry when they were in primary school and grew up surrounded by family members who had side hustles. “My parents, my mom especially, always taught us ‘you need to become your own boss,’” said Monica. The St. Thomas University students are twins from [&hellip;]</p>

<p>Cryptocurrency and the stock market have made the news lately because of a Reddit forum, WallStreetBets, taking on a large hedge fund. Elon Musk also tweeted about Dogecoin, causing the cryptocurrency&#8217;s worth to increase. Jarrett Oldenburg, a political science student at St. Thomas University and semi-frequent investor, has mixed feelings on cryptocurrencies. Oldenburg said there [&hellip;]</p>

<p>As blowing snow ravages outside, Dr. Jennifer Russell, New Brunswick’s chief medical officer of health, sits in a small government office wearing a black turtleneck, a fuchsia pink blazer and a string of pearls. An assistant helps rotate her phone to the correct angle.  For a little less than a year, Russell has been at [&hellip;]</p>

<p>Pokémon has faced a popularity boom during the pandemic that was impossible to predict, with an explosive card market and an oncoming 25th anniversary on Feb 27. The rapper Logic spent more than $250,000 on an original 1999 shadowless holographic Charizard card. YouTube star Logan Paul gained similar attention with the hundreds of thousands of [&hellip;]</p>

<p>With the lights dimmed, focusing on the artist on stage and their tune flowing through the seats, the audience at The Cap seems engaged. There&#8217;s no dance floor at The Cap during the pandemic and there are fewer people allowed in the building but the atmosphere is still vibrant. Plexiglass divides people between the booths [&hellip;]</p>

<p>Every table at the small Tipsy Muse café in downtown Fredericton is filled with university students looking for a place to study outside their bedrooms. I manage to snag a table, well not so much a table but two stools by a window, just before Kate Rogers arrives in a rush with a round of [&hellip;]</p>

<p>Cancel culture, which is when a group of people essentially seek to &#8220;cancel&#8221; someone, has emerged in recent years. The notion of cancel culture has been prominent in such cases as Harvey Weinstein, which resulted in #MeToo movement, or J.K. Rowling for her alleged transphobic comments. Olivia Parker, a St. Thomas University communications professor, said [&hellip;]</p>

<p>Ever since the storming of the United States Capitol on Jan. 6, the Canadian right-wing extremist group the Proud Boys has quickly come under heavy, international scrutiny. On Jan. 10, the Government of Canada considered labelling them a terrorist organization. The federal government said they will be investigating the group although Prime Minister Justin Trudeau [&hellip;]</p>

<p>Twitter permanently suspended Donald Trump&#8217;s Twitter account on Jan. 8 due to a risk of further violence following the deadly Jan. 6 United States Capitol breach.  The former U.S. president posted a video on the day of the breach, saying he loved the mob and called them &#8220;very special,&#8221; leading to a temporary suspension on [&hellip;]</p>

<p>One day last June, Caitlin Grogan opened her Twitter to a direct message from the Saint John Police Force. The message read, “good morning Cait and hope you had a wonderful weekend. I noticed in one of your posts commenting about your friend and a sexual assault. Please have your friend contact us if she [&hellip;]</p>