Indholdsfortegnelse for December 2024 i Maclean's

In the days before my 12-year-old daughter started middle school this fall, I was bombarded with emails from her school board heralding the new smartphone ban, which would forbid any mobile phone use in the classroom. Over Labour Day weekend, newspapers were full of opinion pieces about this pivotal moment in our culture. The whole world, it seemed, had come to realize that smartphones are an obstacle to learning. Schools in Canada were finally going to do something about it. Now, a few months into the school year, my daughter says not much has changed. Kids sneak their phones onto their desks, hide them behind books, look down at them in their laps. She also reports that every teacher enforces the no-phone policy differently. Some make a point of keeping…

Created for Dr. Amin Madani, a general surgeon and director of the Surgical AI Research Academy at University Health Network (UHN), has spent most of his career obsessed with making surgery better—both for patients and surgeons. While completing his PhD in surgical education, Dr. Madani aimed to understand how errors occur in the operating room and what characteristics and behaviours define elite surgeons. “For the longest time, I’ve been focused on mapping that out,” he says. “It’s not so much about having good, steady hands but instead it’s about how they use their brain and make decisions.” As technological capabilities and accessibility advanced, Dr. Madani realized there were exciting opportunities to use computer brains—or artificial intelligence (AI)—to supercharge surgeons’ skills. “I met people doing computer vision AI research who started…

WHEN IT COMES TO WEALTH, some things never change. The bulk of Canada’s money is still held by a few at the top. On average, a billionaire will earn a typical Canadian’s yearly salary by January 2. What has changed is where that affluence lives. Now, mixed among the evergreen hedge fund managers and real estate moguls are e-commerce giants, crypto cowboys, tech wizards. Compared to eras past, it’s a whole new world of wealth. For almost 20 years, our sister publication, Canadian Business, kept tabs on the 100 richest people in the country, an ambitious project that was last published in 2017. Seven years, one pandemic and a cost-of-living crisis later, we thought it was time to take a fresh look at the uber-wealthy in this country—so we partnered…

November is Diabetes Awareness Month, a time for people in Canada to show support for those affected by diabetes. Diabetes Canada is encouraging everyone to participate in the Let’s Make Time campaign, inspiring people to dive deeper into understanding this often “invisible” condition and to share that valuable knowledge with their communities. Every three minutes, someone in Canada receives a diabetes diagnosis, and the reality is that you or someone in your circle is likely impacted. Diabetes is a chronic condition that poses numerous physical, emotional, and social challenges. According to a new report by Diabetes Canada, The Social Experiences of Living with Diabetes, nearly 90 per cent of people living with type 1 diabetes and nearly 70 per cent of people living with type 2 diabetes experience feelings of…

“I want to be part of this country. But I look around and hear people talking as if immigrants like me are stealing from it.” IN 2020, MY HUSBAND AND I were living in Delhi. On the surface, things were good: we owned our home, I had a stable career as a business analyst and my husband did post-production work for TV and film. But India felt suffocating. In the past few years, the country has become sharply polarized between supporters and opponents of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, whose Hindu-nationalist policies have divided the country and marginalized minority groups. People like us, who don’t support the prime minister, feel targeted. We wanted a more stable environment, and Canada was a top contender. Everything we heard—from word of mouth, from immigration…

FOR A CITY OF JUST 11,000 PEOPLE, Bromont, Quebec, isn’t short on entertainment for visitors; 1.6 million of them flock there each year to blow off steam. For the active tourist, there’s downhill skiing, mountain biking and the trails circling Mont Brome. For those looking to gear down, there are galleries, gourmet restaurants and a handful of spas. One is Balnea, which offers massages, thermotherapy and yoga on 80 acres within an 800-acre nature reserve. In 2023, Balnea embarked on a multi-year, eco-friendly expansion of its facilities, hoping to capitalize on the slow-tourism movement that, pre-COVID, swept Quebec (and the country). Backed by $5 million in funding from the province’s Tourism Industry Recovery Assistance Program, Balnea tasked MacKay-Lyons Sweetapple Architects and Etienne Lemay at Architecture Écologique to lead phase one:…

Trish Carter, a 47-year-old mother of two and former Ontario resident has had asthma since she was 20. “At first, I didn’t know what it was,” she recalls. “I just chronically had a cough and shortness of breath. Eventually, a doctor diagnosed asthma and gave me an inhaler.” She loved being active, but her asthma often got in the way. Many Canadians struggle with their asthma — most people don’t use their inhalers correctly, and most are unaware they even have a problem. According to the Lung Health Foundation, there are over 4.6 million people living with asthma in Canada, and every year an estimated 250 Canadians lose their lives to the disease,” says Lung Health Foundation CEO Jessica Buckley. “While asthma can’t be cured, with proper treatment, and regular…

Those who’ve gone through it are the first to say that quitting smoking is difficult. However, with the right tools and a good dose of motivation, anything is possible. Caroline Bonin is well aware of this, having taken on the challenge of gifting herself a smoke-free life nearly 15 years ago. Read our interview with this inspirational woman who took the path of choosing herself and believing in her strength. A habit is born Cigarettes came into Caroline’s life fairly early, at a time when smoking daily was normal for many people. “In the 1990s, you could buy single cigarettes at the corner store,” she recalled. She was drawn to it because it was forbidden, and gradually, she developed the habit of smoking daily. “It played a big part in…

TRILLION-DOLLAR BABIES Readers got worked up over “The Jackpot Generation,” Katrina Onstad’s October cover story about Canada’s trillion-dollar generational wealth transfer. Some boomers were especially piqued by the suggestion that they had better fortune than their millennial heirs. I am so tired of reading about how “lucky” our generation was to buy a home. We worked three jobs, took in boarders, pinched pennies for years, all with the goal of homeownership. When we built a lovely house in the country, people who worked with my husband asked how we could possibly afford such a beautiful home. “I am so tired of reading about how ‘lucky’ our generation was to buy a home”LINDA HARMAN Nanaimo, B.C. These people made the same salary that my husband did, but they lived a different lifestyle.…

I CAN EASILY PINPOINT the origins of my obsession with public transportation. Growing up in a rural part of Langley, B.C., it took me an hour to bike to the nearest corner store; if I wanted to get anywhere fast, I had to hitch a ride with my parents. I longed for more: accessible shops, a main drag for people-watching or even a SkyTrain, like they have in Vancouver. During high school, I spent a lot of time online in transit-focused forums and, by the time I moved to Toronto for university, I’d travelled to Europe and Asia, comparing their networks to the ones back home. In 2016, I started my own YouTube channel, RMTransit. My videos get into the specifics of America’s terrible buses and Helsinki’s excellent trams, but…

This past September, on the first day of class, an Ontario high school teacher I’ll call Adam attended a school-wide meeting about the province’s new restrictions on students’ smartphones. He and his colleagues had heard lots of buzz about the new rules, which they felt were long overdue, but had little concrete information about how teachers on the frontlines would enforce them. According to Adam, the previous school year had been a gong show. Students arrived every morning with phones out and AirPods in, bleary-eyed from late nights scrolling. They texted during the national anthem and played mobile games under their desks. They shared pictures and videos of each other, of teachers and of after-school fights. They coordinated mid-period vape breaks in group chats. One student went to the bathroom…

IN 2021, I LEFT MY HOME AND FAMILY in Punjab, India, and moved to Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario, to attend college. Canada was advertised at home as a land of opportunity—but if I’d known then what I know today, I never would have come here. My plan was to obtain a Canadian education and work toward permanent residency. I enrolled in a postgraduate diploma in hospitality and tourism from Sault College, which I chose over schools in larger cities because I wanted to learn about Canada and develop my skills in a low-pressure environment. I completed the program, got a three-year post-graduation work permit in 2022, moved to Mississauga and started a job as a housekeeping supervisor in a hotel. In my mind that was just the beginning: I wanted…

BACK HOME IN the Philippines, I built a good career as a criminology professor. By 2022 I’d earned a Ph.D. and was working up the professional ladder. But academia in the Philippines is male-dominated. I was even passed over for a job in favour of a man who was far less qualified, without a master’s degree. I switched to human resources, which is more egalitarian, and decided to study abroad and get an international degree, which would make me more competitive at home. Canada quickly emerged as a top choice. I focused on B.C.—the mild weather and natural beauty appealed to me. In early 2023, I enrolled in a two-year HR program at Camosun College in Victoria, one of the province’s largest public colleges. I planned to get a work…

IN THE LATE 1970S, I left Sudan to study political science in Vancouver. I wanted to become a diplomat and send money back home. Instead, I ended up driving cabs and working long hours for little pay. It was a lonely time. By the time I became a Canadian citizen in 1982, my dream of diplomacy had faded away as I struggled to make ends meet. After 14 years in Canada, I returned home to be with my family again. Soon after arriving, I married my wife, Lubna. We settled in a northern suburb in Khartoum, and I inherited my father’s hardware store. We had two daughters and shared a large house with relatives. We were content. Everything changed in April of 2023. Civil war erupted between General Abdel Fattah…

In early 2019, Gerald Green, 58, of Stellarton, N.S., visited his doctor for a cough that wouldn’t go away. Suspecting pneumonia, his doctor ordered a chest X-ray. However, the results revealed something quite different—a tumour on his right lung. Follow-up biopsies confirmed that Green had a form of advanced, stage 4 non-small cell lung cancer that had spread to his lymph nodes, bones, hip, spine and one of his ribs. A lifelong non-smoker, Green was shocked at his diagnosis. Lung cancer is the most common cancer worldwide, and the leading cause of cancer-related deaths. About 32,000 Canadians are diagnosed with lung cancer each year and approximately 20,600 Canadians are expected to die from the disease this year. The cancer subtype that Green was diagnosed with is defined by the presence…