Do you enjoy writing fiction, non-fiction, poetry, scripts, or academic essays? Maybe you don't like writing as much but you love correcting grammar and sentence structure.
If any of the above apply to you, VIU’s Creative Writing Association (VCWA) would love to have you.
Commonly known as “CREW Club,” VCWA is a weekly meeting run by students in the Creative Writing program. There’s a large emphasis on workshopping students’ submissions, but there’s also time set aside to discuss writing opportunities, submission deadlines, and personal goals.
VCWA wants to know their members’ ...
I’ve been banned. From getting new books.
By me.
Why, you might ask? Because I suffer from the age-old problem of readers the world over: too many unread books.
I put books on hold at the library. I pick them up. I see interesting options in the ‘New Titles’ and display areas; a few end up in my hands. I return home with a bulging bag that I set down beside the library bag from last week, which stands next to the desk with the books I bought a few months ago.
All are still untouched.
It’s not exactly bibliophilia, as I borrow more books than I buy. And it’s not ...
How do we find our creativity?
Inspiration can seem like a skittish adopted cat coming into our home for the first time. As badly as we want to go to it and let it know we’re a friend, it darts away under the couch or the bed every time we get near. No amount of toys or cans of tuna will get it out and we finally have to give up.
I turned to Dexter Pham to see how he coaxed his inspiration out of its hiding place. Pham is a twenty-two-year-old artist from Vietnam and a second-year Visual Arts student at VIU.
His art has a variety of mediums. He used to work mostly with graphic ...
I’m sitting in the $800 bedroom I’m renting. I hear my four other roommates in the rooms around me. My back aches from the $5 stool I bought on Facebook Marketplace. My Zoom camera is turned off to hide the tears streaming down my face.
My education is supposed to be my priority, but my world is falling apart around me.
My mouse hovers over the ‘Drop Course’ box on my online student record. I hear my heartbeat in my ears.
Do it.
Defeated, I close my laptop and go to bed.
* * *
University students are facing the hardest years of their lives.
Our ...
I’m sitting in my third-year Indigenous Literature course as my non-Indigenous professor begins his lecture. I look around and wonder if I am the only Indigenous person in the room.
In high school I was well aware of the low Indigenous graduation rates at both the secondary and post-secondary levels. My family, educators, and members of my community would remind me how important an education is.
The same year I graduated high school, only 46 percent of Indigenous men had a postsecondary qualification and eight percent had achieved a bachelor’s degree or higher, according to ...
The start of the 2022 school year has me thinking of beginnings but also traditions.
I’m the brand-new Arts Editor for The Navigator. How will I differ from all the past writers who made The Nav what it is today?
To answer this question, I needed to speak to a Navigator alum.
I met Erin Perkins in my hometown of Grand Forks, BC—a population of just over 4,000. To me, she was a parent to the kids I was teaching swimming lessons to. Little did I know, she was a Navigator veteran. I knew she was the person to talk to.
Perkins started as a Photo Editor for The Nav in 1996 and ...
Imagine this: you move to VIU from another country. You arrive at your new residence and are immediately overwhelmed by the transit system, language, and even the environment. It’s scary—all you want to do is huddle at your desk or under the covers.
Fortunately, there’s a community already waiting for you.
Cultural Connections is VIU’s special umbrella program based in the International Education building (B255) on the Nanaimo campus. It hosts a mixture of on- and off-campus events and activities open to all students.
Its mission is simple: “Connect students with students, with ...
Are you a VIU student who wants to be closely connected to your community? Maybe you’re wondering what more the university environment can offer you and what you can contribute to it.
The Navigator Student Press is looking for journalists and creatives who want to inform themselves and their peers through storytelling. If you strive to meet deadlines and have taken CREW 100 Introduction to Journalism or a relevant media studies course, then one of The Nav’s upcoming positions might be for you.
Below are the remaining available positions at The Nav for the 2022-2023 production ...
VIU’s student-run and full-colour annual literary magazine is going to be celebrated in-person for the first time in three years thanks to the lifting of COVID-19 restrictions. The launch of the new issue will celebrate the accomplishments of the nearly 90 VIU student contributors since 2020.
Portal 2022, on newsstands across the country in May, will be launched in Nanaimo on Friday, April 29th at The Grand Hotel from 6–8:30 pm (doors open at 5:30). The evening will feature readings from contributors to all three of the 2020–2022 issues, music by local musician Soren Van Helm, and the ...
When I first came to VIU’s Nanaimo campus, I was told “the science students stay at the top and the trades students keep to the bottom.” I've found this detached mindset prevalent at VIU, making it difficult to feel as though I’m part of a broader university community.
The Canadian Collegiate Athletics Association (CCAA)’s Women’s Basketball Nationals changed this for me. The championship tournament, played in VIU's Gymnasium March 25–27, showed me how connected the seemingly distant parts of VIU can be.
Just to clear things up for the one reader I may have confused, no, I was not ...
Spring is here! The days are getting longer, the grass is greener, and the air feels fresher than ever.
Walking around Nanaimo, I can’t help but notice the plethora of melodies singing in the trees and appreciate all the lovely notes that songbirds have to offer this time of year.
Why do songbirds sing? Singing in birds is primarily for communication purposes, such as declaring their territory, attracting a mate, and alarming others. For most songbirds, it is only the male that sings, and their sounds can be separated into two general categories: song and call. These are ...
This interview first appeared in an episode of Portal Magazine’s Portfolio series on YouTube, and has been edited for written format.
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I found myself on Giller Prize-nominated author Aimee Wall’s website after my professor said I needed more biographical details for my book review on Wall's book We, Jane. My eyes landed on the “email author” option.
Why not? I figured.
What I did not figure was that Wall would actually reply and agree to a Zoom interview with me.
In a nutshell, We, Jane is Wall’s debut novel about a mismatched and tenacious group of women who aim to ...
It's a stressful time of year for many students. The spring semester is almost over, and exams and final project deadlines loom ahead. But that doesn't mean the next couple of weeks need be filled with dread.
Here are my top four stressbusters to help you feel a little more at ease during the home stretch of this school year.
1. Listen to a podcast and do some cleaning.
I love escaping into a good podcast. It’s like reading but a little more entertaining and I don’t have to stress my eyes out anymore than school already does. Podcasts also motivate me to clean my house that ...
Buckle up—there’s a new club on campus.
The VIU Car Enthusiasts Club, started in January 2022, is currently the fifth car club at any of BC’s postsecondary institutions, according to founder and president Samantha Allan.
Allan explained the process getting the club underway: “I started brainstorming and then the brainstorming expanded and expanded, until it was almost too much to think about. I also wanted to do it right, so I did it very softly and quietly and then rolled it out as a complete package.”
Allan is finishing her Business Management degree. She also works for the ...
VIU Creating Writing and Journalism professor Susan Juby said her new book, Mindful of Murder, is a “murder mystery, but it’s a funny one.”
The novel, released March 8, is Juby’s twelfth and her “first real big” mystery. She has written mysteries for a Young Adult audience, but this is her first entry with an actual murder.
Mindful of Murder takes place at a new-age retreat centre on a fictional island in British Columbia. When newly-qualified butler Helen Thorpe’s former employer and owner of the retreat unexpectedly dies by suicide in the midst of a three-month silent retreat, ...
VIU’s Theatre department put on a fantastically creepy adaptation of Friedrich Durrenmatt’s The Visit from March 2–5—and they may have outdone themselves this time.
Adapted and written by professor Leon Potter and retitled The Visitor, the university’s theatre students tackled the age-old question of “how far would you go for money?”
The play centres around the citizens of an economically-deprived town. Claire, a fallen woman turned billionaire, returns and offers the town a billion dollars—if they let her kill local shopkeeper Alfred, the man who ruined her life.
The ...
*Spoilers for the 1937 novel and 2022 movie.*
I’m usually calm at movie theatres. But during Death on the Nile (2022), I lost it—and not in a good way.
Death on the Nile (1937) is my favourite Agatha Christie mystery. I’ve read it three times, presented on it in class, and watched all screen adaptations. This most recent one is directed by Sir Kenneth Branagh, who also stars as the detective Hurcule Poirot.
Naturally, I was excited when the new adaptation was announced. And nervous. I’d seen Branagh in Murder on the Orient Express (2017), also featuring the character Poirot, and ...
The province of BC has opened its doors for international students to access education in the province, with former Premier Christy Clark pushing to increase international student enrollment in BC by 50 percent back in 2011.
The quality and expense of that education has recently been in the spotlight, however.
The BC Federation of Students (BCFS) has found international student fees have risen 600 percent since 1991, leaving many international students struggling to come up with the necessary funds to pay for schooling and the high cost of living in Canada.
Under the BCFS, the ...
It’s been a long day—homework, class, more homework. Time to relax.
I put my coat and books away, and head into the kitchen to boil some water. While the kettle is warming up, I open the cupboard, grab a mug, then take a look at my tea selection. After some careful thought, I choose a Strawberry Secco: a Sencha green tea infused with, you guessed it, strawberries.
I open the bag and pour the loose leaves into the strainer. The kettle clicks. Once I’ve filled the mug with hot water, I stick the strainer in and wait.
Usually, I start my day with a cup of black coffee brewed in my ...
The balancing point of what you want to do and what you need to do to sustain yourself can seem like a near-invisible wire.
When I talked to Creative Writing and Journalism (CREW) student Joe Enns, it struck me that he seemed to have cracked the code to living as close to a balanced life as anyone can in 2022.
We met up outside the VIU Nanaimo campus Starbucks on a calm Wednesday evening. Enns was enjoying the last rays of the setting sun when I found him. We chatted about lifting COVID-19 restrictions and reclusive classmates as I set up my voice memos app. Sounds of coffee ...
It was Halloween night 2019, and a group of friends and I went to downtown Nanaimo to get our spook on.
By 10 pm, the line up to Level2 nightclub stretched down the block. This was fine with us, though—right next door, we knew that the less-packed Old City Station had space to dance inside.
Purple and blue strobe lights splashed the dance floor in a flurry of motions, fleetingly spotlighting the random faces of strangers. Sweaty bodies bumped into each other and no one could hear anything anyone was saying.
One friend spotted her crush across the room and moved towards him ...
*The dialogue in this article was edited for clarity*
Women make up 50 percent of the population in Canada, yet this number does not represent leadership positions across the country.
In a 2021 study from Stats Canada, it was found that there are fewer women in top decision-making roles. Women were more than two times less likely than men to be in top roles, such as chairman or president. It was also found that 1 in 10 surveyed women in management were presidents compared to almost 1 in 4 men in the field.
But that does not seem to be the case at VIU.
In July 2019, ...
After years of waiting, VIU will finally host the Canadian Collegiate Athletic Association (CCAA) Women’s Basketball Nationals from March 25–27.
VIU was initially going to host the event in 2020; however, the outbreak of COVID-19 sidelined those plans. For some, it represents a second chance, one that resembles “normal life”—what should have been.
But for the athletes, staff, students, and local fans of the Mariners, the CCAA Nationals mean much more.
The story of the Mariners women’s basketball team is one of overcoming adversity, community pride, the importance of teamwork ...
