Maclean's March 2024

I had my first kid when I was 31, and the whole experience was overwhelming. I loved being a mom and I loved my job, but juggling them was exhausting. After those first few sleep-deprived years, once I had regained some semblance of control over my life, I was not eager to parent another demanding newborn. I wanted a second kid, just not yet. My career was accelerating, and I enjoyed my life outside the home. So I put off the idea of another one. And then I put it off some more. Finally, six years later, I found the courage—and energy—to have a second child. Now I can’t imagine my life without Kid No. 2. I’m so glad it worked out. But I can completely understand parents who choose…

STRIKING BACK “Revenge of the Renter,” Jason McBride’s December cover story about Toronto tenants who are refusing to pay their rent, provoked a feisty response online. First, some advice for the renters. My condolences to anyone with a shitty landlord or property management company, but refusing to pay your rent is perhaps the worst thing you can do. You will be evicted and and replaced by the long list of people looking to get in, and then stuck scrambling to find a more expensive place. thatmitchguyReddit The story has a nice headline, but if you actually read the whole thing, the only losers are the renters. They went on a rent strike, and the landlord started processing evictions. The only landlord who will be upset about a rent strike is…

THE FASTEST WAY to convey the stratospheric significance of conductor Yannick Nézet-Séguin within the classical music world is to compare him to Taylor Swift. Let’s just go with “rockstar.” Nézet-Séguin got his prodigious start in Montreal, where he was born. At 13, he became the youngest student ever admitted to the Conservatoire de musique de Montréal. By 25, he was appointed the artistic director of Montreal’s Orchestre Métropolitain, where he has a lifetime contract. And now, at 48, Nézet-Séguin is also the musical director of the Philadelphia Orchestra and New York’s Metropolitan Opera. He’s got multiple Grammys. He tours Europe at least twice a year. He wears electric-coloured dress shirts and bleaches his hair. His baton is frequently hailed as a conduit to heaven. He’s even received the Behind the…

WHEN I STARTED WORKING as a policy analyst in Canada’s financial sector a little under a decade ago, I expected to find a boring but resilient banking system. The Big Five—TD, RBC, BMO, CIBC and Scotiabank—were founded pre-Confederation and have dominated the market ever since. Among analysts around the world, even those as high up as the World Economic Forum, Canada’s banks have a reputation for being risk-averse. That isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Boring survives financial crises, just as Canada did in the late 2000s. Meanwhile, south of the border, major banks failed due to unruly lending and the mortgage defaults that followed, turning the United States’ economy upside down. But to my surprise, I quickly learned that our banking system is risky sometimes. Not with our deposits, but…

ARTISTS RUN WILD IN KABLUSIAK’S FAMILY, on both sides. Their childhood homes in Yellowknife, and later Edmonton, were filled with relatives’ creations, including a painting of wild geese—a wedding present to their parents from Kablusiak’s uncle, Bill Nasogaluak, a famed Inuvialuk artist. “I didn’t get it then,” says Kablusiak, who busied their own tiny hands with crafts. “Now I know Inuit art collectors would’ve been foaming at the mouth.” With genes like that, it was practically a given that Kablusiak—who jokes that they only use their English name, Jade, at Starbucks—would eventually move to Calgary to pursue an arts diploma and degree. But as a drawing major, Kablusiak says, being confined to a page quickly began to feel like “holding in a sneeze.” So they pushed the envelope—first in new…

TERRACE, B.C., IS A RUGGED TOWN a 15-hour drive north of Vancouver. It’s the home of Coast Mountain College, which serves students from seven First Nations—Haida, Haisla, Nisga’a, Wet’suwet’en, Gitxsan, Tahltan and Tsimshian. Many travel vast distances to earn their diplomas. And until recently, student housing was a major issue in Terrace, where rentals are scarce and students can’t easily commute to class. In 2019, the college’s First Nations council proposed the creation of a culturally inclusive dorm for its student body, then nearly half Indigenous. Over two years, the college worked with Vancouver’s HCMA Architecture and Design to supplant its ’70s-era, water-damaged dorms with a new design. By the fall of 2021, Coast Mountain’s students had a new home: Wii Gyemsiga Siwilaawksat, a 230,000-square-foot, $21.6-million, three-storey residence whose name…