Maclean’s

In this interview, author Kyo Maclear talks of birds and bird-watching as an “ode to the beauty of smallness, of quiet, of seeing the unique in the ordinary,” “in an age in which bombastic noise often triumphs over quiet contemplation.”

Nearly 50 years ago, two 12-year-old Ojibwe boys escaped from an Ontario residential school and froze to death. The Canadian federal government used to forcibly assimilate Indigenous children inside church-run schools. Over 3,200 kids died in them. Others died while fleeing. After famously telling one escapee’s story in 1967, Maclean’s magazine finally gets to tell two of the other boys’ stories.

Jo Aubin is 38 years old and has Alzheimer’s disease.

Tatiana and Krista are not just conjoined, but they are craniopagus, sharing a skull and also a bridge between each girl’s thalamus, a part of the brain that processes and relays sensory information to other parts of the brain. Or perhaps in this case, to both brains. There is evidence that they can see through each other’s eyes and perhaps share each other’s unspoken thoughts. And if that proves true, it will be the rarest thing of all. They will be unique in the world.