Food and Genocide

by Dorothy Lander One hundred and seventy civilians, mostly schoolchildren, in southern Iran will never eat another morsel of food. The deadly bombing of a primary school in Minab in southern Iran by  the United States Military Tomahawk missiles—twice so no accident— on February 28, 2026, swept me back to our Antigonish-based book launch this […]

Healing Words

by John Graham-Pole I’ve been reflecting on words I rarely heard during my fifty-plus years of medical practice. Words I was especially drawn to in later years, when making rounds, when writing chart notes, especially when listening and responding to my patients and their families. These are some of the words I’m thinking of: purpose, […]

Performing Medicine

By John Graham-Pole    For more than three decades, the University of Florida’s Arts in Medicine program (AIM: artsinmedicine.ufhealth.org) has brought visual, literary, and performance artists into the hospital’s wards and clinics. Its mission has been simply to enrich the experience of patients and caregivers through countless forms of creative expression. When my nurse colleague […]

Imagination and Health

Artmaking always uses imagination, that magical quality which seems to single us humans out as unique from every other living being.

What I Did and Didn’t Learn from Sir Joseph Rotblat, Nobel Laureate for Peace

Sir Joseph and me, September 2024, Thinkers’ Lodge, Pugwash, Nova Scotia In 2010, Dorothy and I were visiting our stepdaughter Cathy in Pugwash in Northern Nova Scotia, where she was living in the Sunset Community, a centre for people with disabilities. We came upon her pulling weeds outside the library and we ventured inside. My […]

Arts Medicine: Where and When and How and Why Did it Start?

Aboriginal Rock Mural Kimberley Region, Western Australia Posted by John Graham-Pole I don’t have answers to any of these questions, but I can tell you a story. It’s 1960, and I’m entering St. Bartholomew’s Hospital Medical School in the city of London on a quite unlooked for scholarship in Classical languages. It’s true I’ve been […]

YES! You are creative!

Discover your inner creator, and the joy in scribbling, stomping, and silliness.

Try all 6 spontaneous exercises and surface the creative hiding deep inside you.