Maclean's March 2025

Last fall, when my son left home in Toronto for his first semester of university on the West Coast, I was not nearly as bereft as I imagined I’d be. For one thing, he seemed ready for a big adventure, and I was excited to see how it would all unfold. But I also wasn’t convinced he was saying good bye for good. There’s a reasonable chance that, at some point in his young life, he’ll move back in. When my generation graduated university in the 1990s, moving home was considered a sign of failure. People disdainfully labelled that group “boomerang kids.” Not anymore. Many of my fellow Gen X friends are welcoming back their university graduate kids with open arms. A neighbour sent his youngest off to university last…

HOLD THE PHONE In the December issue, Luc Rinaldi investigated the faltering patchwork of school phone bans. Many teachers and parents echoed his concerns: Technology can be used for learning, sure. But that’s contingent on kids having the maturity, drive and self-control to use it that way rather than getting distracted. A lot of kids just aren’t going to be able to do that. Expecting teachers to impart those skills isn’t feasible either. I think it’s too big of a task. It’s ridiculous that smartphone use in class became an accepted thing that a lot of parents defend. I know that phones have practical functions, but the vast majority of smartphone-use hours are for fun and socialization. It’s no different than letting a kid bring a game system to class…

CONVERSATIONS WITH THE NATION’S NEWSMAKERS BACK IN JANUARY, with an inconveniently prorogued Parliament and the U.S. president pressing on their necks with some very un-ally-like tariff threats, Canada’s premiers decided to defend themselves. For Alberta’s Danielle Smith, this manifested as a friendly trip to Mar-a-Lago; Doug Ford, on the other hand, leaned into dealmaking and merch. For David Eby, B.C.’s premier and leader of the provincial NDP, however, it meant war. He adopted an economic eye-for-an-eye approach, and nothing was off the table—not export bans, not travel boycotts and certainly not retaliatory import tariffs, right down to Florida orange juice. The power-premier pose makes sense: excluding Trump, Eby’s province is in a time of serious flux. Along with political live wires—like involuntary drug treatment, screen bans in schools and out-of-control…

EVER SINCE I STUDIED interior design in grad school, I’ve been intrigued by the idea of a circular economy, one in which materials are used and reused through remanufacturing and reclaiming. When it comes to homes and buildings, this practice is known as “deconstruction,” which describes the careful dismantling of existing structures in order to give their parts—foundation, framing, roofing and finishes—a new purpose somewhere else. I didn’t realize how rare (and sometimes controversial) deconstruction was, however, until I moved from New York to Toronto with my husband in 2019. At that time, I was working as a designer with a condo-focused firm on renovations and new builds and saw firsthand how much waste there was. After COVID kicked off a countrywide reno blitz, I’d see piles of old-growth lumber,…

IN JANUARY OF 2024, midway through my third year as a psychology student at Mount Royal University in Calgary, I realized I needed a new place to live. I was going through a separation and paying $800 a month for a campus dorm room. The situation wasn’t ideal: I was 45, more than twice the age of most of my neighbours, and the noise coming through the thin walls was a near-constant distraction. But when I looked into nearby housing options, rents were easily more than double what I was already paying. One day, I spotted an ad for a pilot project by the Canadian Alliance for Intergenerational Living, or CAIL, a Calgary-based nonprofit. It offered students affordable housing in vacant units at Silvera Westview Town Suites, a local retirement…

AS CANADA FIGHTS VALIANTLY to jack up its missing middle-density housing stock, the country’s heritage buildings are getting second lives. In Winnipeg, the conversion of the James Avenue Pumping Station has been decades in the making. It was first built in 1906 to supply the city’s hydrants with water drawn from the Red River. After it was decommissioned in 1986, however, it sat idle, scaring off developers with its foundation’s questionable integrity. Finally, in 2016, after 17 false starts, it was revived by the architects at 5468796, whose flashlights illuminated a game-changing feature on an early tour of the boarded-up facility. Two gantry cranes, once able to drag 20,000 pounds worth of machinery to and fro, could be repurposed to support a second floor. By 2019, the pumping station’s mixed-use…