Innholdsfortegnelse for Winter 2024 i 3 Magazine

Harleen Sidhu Writer, “Better Together,” pg. 8 What do you enjoy about interviewing people about their homes and spaces? They’re such sacred places, so being invited in to talk about someone’s [home] is such an intimate, beautiful experience. Walking in their shoes, experiencing a whiff of their way of life and hearing about the things that make them, them is so, so special. Baljit Singh Photographer, “Making Her Mark,” pg. 26 What was it like to be on set with a crew of largely South Asian creators? It felt extra special because it’s so rare to see us in more mainstream set spaces without being tokenized or seen as a “diversity hire,” and because the executors of the vision for the story about Maitreyi Ramakrishnan were people that also looked…

The narrative is so familiar that it borders on cliché: Go to school to study something practical and, importantly, profitable. Then, land a secure job, court a suitable partner and rear children, who can reap the benefits of your hard work for future generations. The expectations placed upon first-generation immigrant kids can feel so universally experienced that for Marlon Rodrigues, it took a global economic shutdown to break free from the pressures of meeting them. When work shifted online in 2020, Rodrigues, then a growth-focused marketer in tech, found himself carving out his new path by packing his bags for Costa Rica. “I thought it was going to be a two-month thing. I took 30 pounds of stuff in my backpack, a yoga mat and flip-flops,” he says, laughing, over…

IN Danzy Senna’s new novel, Colored Television, a struggling biracial novelist-turned-screenwriter begins working with a hotshot Black TV producer who establishes the stakes of the cultural landscape: “Diversity, diversity, diversity. The default is whiteness. They get this flurry of interest in us every few years, but if you don’t strike fast and hard, they return to the tundra. You know how it works.” Released in late 2024, the book arrives in the wake of box office hits like Jordan Peele’s Get Out, and Issa Rae’s critically acclaimed series Insecure. Senna satirizes the way identity politics has become cultural currency, literal cash, in America. Its nerviest passages brim with the energy of a collective knowing. These days you can’t scroll Instagram, or TikTok, if you’re more vertigo-resistant—without encountering so-called ethnic comedy: usually…

It’s 2010 and Nina Miller-Browne, her husband, and their 12- and nine-year-old daughters arrive at Pats Peak in Henniker, N.H., to enjoy quality time swooshing down man-made snow created by one of the largest snow-making systems in the state. They are guests for an annual ski fundraising event. The eight-year-old daughter of the friend who invited Miller-Browne’s family is eagerly urging both families to start racing down the slopes. But there’s one problem: the Miller-Browne family has never skied before. Miller-Browne is Jamaican-born and loves the outdoors, but didn’t grow up next to snow-covered mountains. Still, that wasn’t going to stop her from getting her family to the top of the mountain—even if they didn’t realize they were supposed to pull the ski bars over their laps during the lift…

“My late mother was a very talented seamstress; she had probably 50 projects on the go that she would never finish—that was just her personality. When she passed away in 2015, we were going through a sewing room at our house in London, U.K., and I found an unfinished skirt made from a cross weave of ribbons that are half an inch deep. I remember her spending hours with it, meticulously making sure each ribbon was in line. She would get mad every time my dog went upstairs, because he would waddle all over it and mess up her grid system! I thought, I can’t let this go; it was too much work. So I saved it and brought it with me to Toronto when we moved here in 2017.…

Home. For most, it’s a place, a familiar landscape, a return to the roots. But for the global citizens among us, home is an evolving concept, shaped by the places we’ve lived, the languages we speak and the myriad cultures that colour our lives. The theme of this issue of 3 magazine explores what home means for those who live between borders and beyond boundaries—a notion both simple and profound for the third-culture community. As I write this, I find myself travelling through India and the Middle East, places that feel both familiar and foreign, reminding me that home is not a fixed point on a map. It’s an experience, a feeling, something carried within. Since launching 3 magazine, we’ve embraced this multicultural spirit, knowing it’s a key to unity…

Catherine Hernandez’s latest novel, Behind You, is not your usual ripped-from-the-headlines story, and the first hint is the book’s opening epigraph: “It’s not about him, it’s about us.” The “him” is an unnamed serial killer modelled after the real-life criminal who stalked Scarborough, Ontario, more than 30 years ago, who Hernandez prefers not to name. It’s her attempt to redirect the reader’s attention away from the perpetrators of violence and toward the people they target—the “us,” who in the usual true crime saga would be reduced to one-dimensional victims, but here occupy most of the reader’s attention. This shift in focus to the people just behind the bigger, flashier story is Hernandez’s MO as a writer. Her previous three books—Scarborough, Crosshairs and The Story of Us—all focus on diverse characters…

The first iPad came out in 2010, and within a few years, the market was also flooded with affordable Android handhelds. On these devices, Skype and FaceTime made the Jetsons-era idea of a videophone possible, but I noticed a glaring issue. I wanted to purchase one for my grandmother so she could better keep in touch with friends and family, especially those overseas. But, at the time, with multiple options for a smartphone, I couldn’t find a version that simplified things enough for her. The complicated sequence of taps and inputs required to operate it was a barrier. Although online shopping allowed for one-click checkouts, there was no convenient equivalent for connecting with loved ones. In the past, my grandmother would grow anxious whenever I paid her a visit. After…

Mane Attraction Big, loose curls, fabulously lush Afros and natural textures have been taking over the runways for the past few seasons, marking a penchant for statement-making hair that continued at the spring 2025 shows, particularly at 3.1 Phillip Lim, Collina Strada and Ralph Lauren. “We have seen a rise in natural texture on the runway for a few reasons,” says Sam Groeneveld, senior designer at Lure salon in Vancouver, who points to fashion’s recent tendency for accessibility and inclusion. “The girls [on the runways] are portrayed as ‘everyday girls,’” he says, citing the growing trend in beauty for a “flawless, natural look.” Drink Champs While countries like Japan have long been giving Scottish whiskies a run for their sterling, new distilleries from less conventional corners like New Zealand, Italy,…

As our team has been working to build 3, I’ve found myself thinking a lot about the notion of home. Not just where we call home, but also what “home” actually means. In Western society, media and pop culture, we tend to talk about it as if it’s a singular, not to mention permanent, place. But as anyone who has moved countries knows, that’s not necessarily the case. For those of us who came to Canada from somewhere else (and there are about 8.3 million of us, according to Statistics Canada, plus the millions of people who belong to various diasporas), home is where we were born, the places we spent our formative years and where we live now. Or perhaps it’s more accurate to say that home is often…

IT’S A FRIDAY EVENING and Maitreyi Ramakrishnan and I are tucked into a corner of a hotel lounge in downtown Toronto, mid-conversation, when an older gentleman walks by, sneaking glances at her out of the corner of his eye. We both notice him recognizing her, so it’s no surprise when he doubles back to politely interrupt our chat. “Excuse me,” he says. “Are you Ram’s daughter?” A consummate professional, Ramakrishnan doesn’t skip a beat. She confirms that she is Ram’s daughter, and she’d be happy to take a few photos and pass along a greeting from the man, who, it turns out, is a colleague of her dad’s. After he departs, we make eye contact and burst out laughing. His timing was impeccable; Ramakrishnan had just been joking that it…

The world is in turmoil and Canada is on the front lines of the upheaval. Even before the re-election of Donald Trump, the profound difficulties in our relationships with India and China highlighted a need to rebuild Canada’s understanding of a rapidly changing world and how we secure a place for ourselves in it. We can no longer rely on others to solve our problems, even if we ever really could. Underpinning these deep challenges to our international engagement is a surprising parochialism across much of government, academia, media and the private sector in Canada. Our favourable geography and history, and peaceful, generally easy prosperity (for us) of the post–Second World War era, especially after the Berlin Wall came down, have left this country complacent. As a result, and in…

But our launch party wasn’t the only must-see event to hit Toronto in September. Just two days later, on September 5, the annual Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) began, leaving the city buzzing with impressive cultural icons. Lucky attendees were able to catch exclusive screenings of the hottest films of the year (including People’s Choice Award winner The Life of Chuck, starring Tom Hiddleston) and glimpses of celebs-of-the-moment like Jacob Elordi and Florence Pugh. And as a TIFF media partner, 3 was there for all the glitz and glamour. In fact, we even convinced some of the festival’s most famous faces to stop by the first 3 Magazine Lounge and IMDb Portrait Studio at the Intercontinental Hotel. We also caught celebrities pausing to autograph the traditional 9L of Moët &…