Maclean's April 2024

My 12th-grader spent last September considering where he might like to attend university. After lots of research, he created a shortlist that included a fine arts program at Concordia University in Montreal. Then, in mid-October, a shocking announcement came out of Quebec: François Legault’s Coalition Avenir Québec government, in an effort to reduce the number of English speakers in Montreal, declared that tuition for out-of-province university students would almost double, from about $9,000 per year to about $17,000 per year. The change would come into effect in the fall of 2024, just in time for my son to start university. I did the math and realized that my family’s RESP savings would not cover the new tuition costs. Concordia fell to the bottom of my son’s list of potential schools.…

WHEN IT COMES TO DIABETES DRUGS, there’s just something about Toronto researchers. In 1984, 63 years after Banting and Best isolated insulin, Daniel Drucker, another U of T alumnus, co-discovered glucagon-like peptide-1, or GLP-1, a gut hormone that lowers blood sugar and suppresses appetite. Drucker and Co.’s eureka moment was exciting-ish in endocrinology circles. But it wasn’t until decades later, when a GLP-1-mimicking drug called semaglutide proved effective for weight loss, that their work became the shot taken ’round the world. The ripples of the “Ozempic effect” are now unfathomably huge: a suite of evermore GLP-1 drugs (Wegovy, Mounjaro and Rybelsus), a soon-to-be $100-billion industry, so many op-eds about our screwed-up body politics, witch hunts around celebrity users and, on a more serious note, widespread shortages that are expected to last…

GABRIEL DIALLO’S PRE-TEEN PARTY TRICK was to recount, in near-perfect detail, the marathon match between Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic that capped off the 2012 Australian Open. He still keeps a commemorative tennis magazine from around the same time. In childish chicken scratch, a pro player’s name is Sharpied out on the cover and replaced with: Diallo wins Australian Open. It’s impossible to chalk up Diallo’s present day success to daydreaming alone. From the time he was six, Diallo’s mom and dad—immigrants from Ukraine and Guinea—took him to matches at IGA Stadium, just down the street from their home in Montreal’s Villeray neighbourhood. By 11, Diallo was practising there six afternoons a week as part of Tennis Canada’s national development program. Before school, he joined his mother, Iryna, a professional handball…

The buyers: Haritha Gnanaratna, a 36-year-old shopkeeper, and Audra Williams, a 47-year-old communications officer for a public-sector union The budget: $450,000 The backstory: Gnanaratna emigrated from Sri Lanka to Toronto with his family in 1990, while Williams made her way from Ottawa to the city in 2011. The two connected on a dating app in May of 2018 and, by November, they’d moved into an 800-square-foot apartment, spread over two floors in an old Victorian home in Toronto’s Parkdale neighbourhood. Both had steady jobs: Williams was a communications specialist and Gnanaratna worked on the events team at a Toronto social enterprise. They also ran Temperance Tonics, a non-alcoholic cocktail business, on the side. Though Williams and Gnanaratna loved their urban life, by 2020 they’d started to feel like Toronto didn’t love them…

Industry 4.0 and the rise of smart technologies mean successful digital transformation is a must for manufacturing companies. “With the rapid proliferation of digital technologies, modes of production and operation have been profoundly transformed,” says Hussein Ibrahim, director, Centre national intégré du manufacturier intelligent (CNIMI). “By embracing intelligent manufacturing technologies, companies can make their production processes smarter, improving production efficiency and product quality.” But manufacturing companies face challenges along their digital transformation journey, such as resistance to change, lack of expertise, outdated systems, privacy concerns, and lack of an overall digitalization strategy. CNIMI, a partnership of Université du Québec à Trois-Rivière and Cégep de Drummondville, was created to help companies overcome these challenges. The centre is home to applied research projects and a technological showcase that compares the operation…

The Canadian Institute for Advanced Research (CIFAR) is a global research organization proudly based in Canada. For 40 years, CIFAR has brought together outstanding researchers from across disciplines and borders to tackle the most important questions facing science and humanity. Through its 15 research programs, CIFAR convenes close to 400 of the world’s top researchers from 141 institutions in 20 countries. Its community of researchers is among the most highly cited in the world, including 20 Nobel Prize laureates and three Turing Award winners. CIFAR’s model of funding long-term, interdisciplinary, and deeply collaborative global research inspires new directions of inquiry, accelerates discovery, and yields breakthroughs across borders and academic disciplines. Fundamental research addresses every aspect of life and health, individuals and societies, information and matter, and earth and space. CIFAR’s…