Toronto Life March 2022

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Sibling Rivalry and the Messy Business of Succession Some of the most dramatic rivalries in film and literature happen between siblings. The Hebrew Bible is chock full of feuding brotherly intrigue: Cain murders Abel. Jacob cheats Esau out of their father’s blessing. Joseph’s brothers dump him in a pit and sell him into slavery. In Shakespeare, King Lear’s daughters compete viciously for his affection. Claudius kills his brother to win the crown and marry Gertrude. The Godfather is propelled by the tensions between Michael, Sonny and Fredo. In all those cases, the siblings believe they’re fighting over a scarce resource, something that can’t be shared: love, power, status or wealth. Last fall, Torontonians were gripped by the spectacle of a real-life sibling rivalry that played out like the script of…

The Good Doctor Christina Frangou’s feature on Irene Cybulsky chronicled a doctor’s ascent to the top of her field, the misogyny she confronted along the way, and her ultimate dismissal as head of cardiac surgery at her hospital. A few readers voiced skepticism that gender was the only factor in her firing. “It’s not enough to be assertive and dominant to be a leader. You have to be tactful and compassionate at appropriate times as well.” —junctionist, Reddit “Sure, she almost certainly faced sexism and misogyny. But she also doesn’t sound like someone you’d want to work with. If you’re the type of person to storm into a surgery to yell at the person operating, you care more about being right than patient welfare. The smartest people are rarely the…

On the day of the record-setting storm, more than 50 centimetres of powder shrouded the streets, forcing Mayor John Tory to declare a “major snowstorm condition,” an abstruse bureaucratic term that could be roughly translated as “stay the hell inside.” Still, some Torontonians ventured out, whether by bold choice or brutal necessity, digging their way out of thigh-high drifts and turning parks, like Jean Sibelius in the Annex, into impromptu rinks. “We just paid $2.5 million for land in the metaverse”—Lorne Sugarman, Metaverse Group, p.22…

Everyone has heard of the metaverse, but not everyone’s sure what it is. Help us out? If Facebook and Google were Web 2.0, the metaverse is Web 3.0. It’s the next phase of the internet, in which users explore video game–like 3-D worlds with a self-created avatar. You can do it now on your computer or with a VR headset. What does your avatar look like? Right now it’s pretty basic but ideally jeans, sunglasses, a Bruce Springsteen concert T-shirt, Nike sneakers. What’s the appeal of all this? Escapism, forgetting what’s going on in your day-to-day. It’s social, it’s fun, and you can be whoever you want. And as the technology improves, the experiences are going to become more immersive. How big is the metaverse? There are a few worlds,…

IT HAPPENED LAST MONTH: A LOOSE CHRONOLOGY…