Maclean's January/February 2024

IN THIS ISSUE OF MACLEAN’S Like many people, I have a love/hate relationship with my iPhone. The little computer I carry in my pocket morning, noon and night is an astonishing piece of technology that I absolutely can’t live without. But it also brings out the worst in me. It distracts me from my kids when I should be engaging with them. It seduces me into scrolling through social media for hours when I could be reading a book. It pings news bulletins that interrupt my work. It robs me of time and attention—my two most prized resources. The solution to vacant scrolling is, of course, self-discipline—just like the solution to eating too many potato chips is to stop eating potato chips. Every day I resolve to be mindful of…

2023 marks the 85th anniversary of Eli Lilly Canada, the Canadian affiliate of Eli Lilly and Company, one of the world’s largest research-based pharmaceutical companies. Established via a research collaboration with scientists at the University of Toronto, Eli Lilly Canada produced the world’s first commercially available insulin in partnership with the University of Toronto. This safe, stable, and reliable supply of insulin, which became widely available in North America, was accomplished via a shining example of collaboration in biomedical science, and was life-saving for the millions of people globally living with diabetes. This is the mission of Eli Lilly and Company — uniting caring with discovery to make life better for people around the world. And while the company has a rich past and a significant list of achievements, today…

IN EARLY OCTOBER, Manitoba chose Wab Kinew. The leader of the NDP and the son of an Anishinaabe chief, Kinew became the first First Nations premier in the province’s history—breaking a chain of conservative counterparts that, hours before, had stretched from Alberta to P.E.I. On the campaign trail, Kinew made the usual big-tent promises (balancing the budget and slashing the health-care queue), but many Manitobans also saw him as the rare politician who’d deliver. Progress is a satisfying campaign buzzword, but it’s a lot harder in practice, which is something Kinew knows well. Before he was premier, an NDP MLA and even a CBC broadcaster (his real claim to fame), Kinew spent years mired in addiction, a dark period that included an impaired-driving charge and an assault conviction, detailed in…

I SPENT THE FIRST DECADE of my life in the United Arab Emirates, one of the driest countries on Earth. I was six years old before rain showed up on the weather forecast. I still remember that storm—how excited my sister and I were, how we ran around outside testing our new jackets. In 2002, I moved to Canada for university, and since then, I’ve studied—and now teach—urban stormwater management. I decided early in my career that I wanted to design cities that were resilient to floods, storms and other threats caused by a changing climate. Righting Canada’s relationship with water is crucial, now more than ever. In the years since I arrived here, weather events have only grown more severe, often overwhelming the infrastructure built to handle them. Canadians…

WHEN PAOLINA RUSSO was a teen, every hour she wasn’t at school was focused on fashion. She’d scour thrift stores in her hometown of Markham, Ontario, for vintage treasures, have her mom snap photos of the outfits, then spend four hours a night uploading the shots to her blog, Calur Villade. (That’s a jokey, French-sounding spin on Value Village.) After high school, Russo applied to study fine art at Central Saint Martins, the prestigious London fashion school that counts designer Alexander McQueen among its alumni. When a scout flew to Toronto to assess portfolios—and review Russo’s paintings, sculptures and, yes, blog photos—he granted her admission on the spot. By her second year, Russo specialized in fashion, specifically knitwear, channelling her love of hyper-saturated video games into futuristic yet cozy clothes.…

VANCOUVER’S SOARING SKYLINE tells the story of Canada’s race to blanket the real estate market with residential units—no fewer than five new high-rises are expected to pop up in Metro Vancouver by 2027. Last June, a curvy newcomer emerged, proving that high density and high design can, in fact, mix. The Alberni is a 43-storey, gravity-defying build, home to 181 apartments, with studios starting at $1.2 million. When units went up for sale in 2017, it quickly became the most valuable pre-sale residential project in Canadian history. The Alberni is the first North American residential highrise project by Japanese architecture firm Kengo Kuma & Associates, whose next stateside project is the plant-covered Park Habitat building in Silicon Valley, with a lush vertical garden (or “green lung”) in its atrium. “A…