Innehållsförteckning för November 2022 från Maclean's

A year and a half ago, a family was out for an evening stroll on a suburban sidewalk in London, Ontario, when a 20-year-old man driving a pickup truck jumped the sidewalk and ran them down. Like many Canadians, I was horrified when I heard about the incident. The story is heart-wrenching and unfathomable. The police allege that the killings were intentional—that the driver, Nathaniel Veltman, out-fitted the truck with a device to optimize its murderous impact and that the attack was motivated by anti-Muslim hatred. The event left four people dead, including both parents, who were much-loved, accomplished professionals in their 40s. Their high-achieving teenage daughter also died, along with the family’s beloved grandmother. A three-generation catastrophe in a single act. A nine-year-old boy, who suffered serious injuries, was…

OVER THE LAST FEW YEARS, I started farming crickets—four billion of them. My company, Aspire, which opened a facility in London, Ontario, this spring, is the result of several years spent looking for a solution to global food insecurity. Insects are already widely consumed as a tasty source of nutrition, and few people know that processing bugs uses a fraction of the land and water that other livestock use. The 12 acres that house Aspire would be enough to raise just six cows a year. We’re aiming to produce 12 million kilos of cricket protein in the same amount of time. An operation of this scale could never exist if we hadn’t taken risks on new technologies, and we need to make sure Canadian farmers are in a position to…

WHEN PEOPLE TALK ABOUT ALPHONSO DAVIES AS A SOCCER PLAYER, the first thing they mention is his speed. It’s his superpower, his cheat code, his magic trick. It’s the thing that, along with relentless hard work, self-belief and a rocket-launching left foot, has made him the best soccer player in Canadian history. In a now-famous World Cup qualifying match against Panama last October, Davies sprinted 40 yards up the sideline, gently plucked the ball from the foot of a dawdling Panamanian, took it inside the penalty area, and then, outfoxing both defender and keeper, promptly put the ball in the back of the net. His top speed during that run was 37.1 kilometres an hour, a pace mere mortals would be lucky to reach on a bicycle. In the Bundesliga,…

IN JUNE OF 2018, ÈVE LENOIR was visiting a friend in Tingwick, Quebec, when a handsome neighbour popped over to borrow some tools to renovate his treehouse. Lenoir, an interior designer turned farmer, said, “Oh my god, you have a treehouse?” Patrick Lessard, a firefighter who grew up in nearby Danville, didn’t just have a treehouse. In 2008, he’d purchased a 15-acre forested property that included eight ramshackle buildings. Lenoir spent the rest of her vacation helping Lessard paint the exterior of the treehouse. Slowly, they began to renovate the buildings by hand. They painted the exteriors black and finished the interiors with natural blonde wood. The pair have been together ever since, dubbing the property “Magic Tingwick.” Each building contains souvenirs from the couple’s faraway travels, such as door…

From an early age, Chyenne McPherson knew she wanted to be a skilled tradesperson. She had grown up around them, enjoyed math, problem solving and hands-on work. She originally thought she wanted to be a pipefitter, but eventually realized her passion was to be an industrial mechanic. She took a one-year millwright course while bartending and graduated at the top of her class, but ended up taking a labouring job in Western Canada. Then came the call she had been waiting for: an offer from the Department of National Defence of an apprenticeship at Halifax Dockyard in her home province of Nova Scotia. The job is like an automotive mechanic’s, only “working on a ship and with bigger equipment,” she says. Apprenticeship is “hands-on and where a lot of the practical…

LIKE HIS FAMILY before him, Tyler Harbaruk imagined a lifelong career in the oil and gas industry. Growing up in the oilpatch town of Macklin, Sask., it was a way of life. After high school, he earned a diploma in petroleum engineering and quickly landed a well-paying job in his field. The position demanded extensive travel across Western Canada and the U.S., taking him away from home for weeks at a time. As Harbaruk’s relationship with his fiancée (now wife) grew, he questioned whether his itinerant lifestyle was a good fit. “I knew I wanted to start a family soon and that I wasn’t going to want to work away forever.” He decided to switch gears and pursue a career that would keep him closer to home. But he struggled…

MACLEAN’S ANNUAL university rankings continue a tradition established in 1991: to provide essential information in a comprehensive package to help students choose the university that best suits their needs. We place universities into three categories, recognizing the differences in types of institutions, levels of research funding, diversity of offerings, and breadth and depth of graduate and professional programs. Primarily Undergraduate universities tend to be smaller and have fewer graduate programs and graduate students. Universities in the Comprehensive category have a significant degree of research activity and a wide range of programs at the undergraduate and graduate levels, including professional degrees. Medical Doctoral universities offer a broad range of Ph.D. programs and research; all universities in this category have medical schools. In each category, Maclean’s ranks institutions in five broad areas…

CHOOSING A UNIVERSITY is one of the most important decisions students make in their post-secondary careers. Another is deciding what to study. And sometimes, the second decision helps inform the first, with students selecting a certain university because of a particular program it offers. In our eighth annual program rankings, we evaluate how Canadian universities measure up in the programs they offer in five popular fields in the sciences and social sciences, based on the programs’ reputations for quality and research strength. Maclean’s contacted faculty and senior administrators at universities across Canada, seeking their views in an online survey. We asked academics if their area of expertise was in any of the following five disciplines: business, computer science, education, engineering or nursing. If so, they were asked to list up…

FOR YEARS NOW, businesses and policymakers have warned of the so-called skills shortage in Canada. Most Canadians have heard about the urgent need for more employees with science and technology training and, thanks in large part to the pandemic, for workers in the hospitality, construction and manufacturing sectors. Yet there is another occupation that is in very high demand, though it might not get as much attention: financial planning. In fact, the job prospects for those who choose this career are excellent. Financial planners develop strategies to help people achieve their financial goals. A number of factors are driving the need for more highly trained, certified professionals, including demographics, industry trends and changes in legislation, not to mention Canadians’ high levels of financial stress. Aging population, longer retirements, immigration By…

Read more at innovatingcanada.ca There are a lot of voices offering a lot of opinions on Canada’s ongoing green energy transition. In Ontario, though, you would be hard-pressed to find a better-informed perspective than that put forward by the electricity workers themselves — those who have kept the energy sector thriving for decades. The Society of United Professionals (SUP), founded more than 70 years ago by a collective of working engineers, today represents more than 8,000 professionals across the province of Ontario, predominantly in the electricity sector. “About 35 to 40 per cent of the workers we represent work in the nuclear sector,” says Michelle Johnston, President of the SUP. “The nuclear portfolio is extremely important, especially when we talk about climate change. We need to minimize fossil fuel use…

IN MY SENIOR YEAR OF HIGH SCHOOL in my hometown of Quito, Ecuador, I fell in love with computer science. It was like a puzzle. For each assignment, I had to look at the different pieces and use my creativity to figure out how they fit together. My mentor said I should study computer programming at university, and my boyfriend, who was at the University of Toronto, encouraged me to apply to Canadian universities. When I was accepted by the University of Waterloo, I had no idea what to expect from Canada. I flew to Toronto in August of 2016 with my mom, two weeks before the beginning of my first semester. When we passed by the suburbs, I thought they looked so safe, just like the movies. My roommate was…

MONEY TALK Our September issue’s cover story was a collection of expert essays explaining and analyzing Canada’s roller-coaster economy. One writer, for example, suggested the widespread adoption of electric vehicles could ease gas prices. Naturally, readers had their own opinions. Gas prices go up because of supply and demand. So watch what happens to the price of electricity when further oil and gas policy restrictions hit and carbon taxes increase. The battery-powered car won’t look so wonderful when the price of charging it is more than the cost of a tank of gas. Graham Stranks on Facebook “Implement punitive taxation on rental, income and investment properties”JOSH LEHR Facebook Others offered their thoughts on how to lower rent prices: Promote destinations other than Toronto and Vancouver to potential immigrants. Places like Saskatoon,…

FEW BUILDINGS ARE DESIGNED not to stand the test of time, but Calgary’s 9th Avenue Parkade was always headed for a reno. Initially, at least, the seven-storey complex—which opened last year—was built to fill a dire need for parking in Calgary’s East Village, home to the city’s National Music Centre and its busy Central Library. (Neither has its own lot.) But with the rise of remote work, and local industry expanding well beyond oil and gas, Kate Thompson, president and CEO of the Calgary Municipal Land Corporation, says the question of future-proofing became central to the parkade’s blueprint. One day, if those 510 spots weren’t needed to house cars, perhaps they could house residential or office space—both of which are in high demand. The contract for the aluminum-clad convertible garage was awarded…

THE CREE ARTIST KENT MONKMAN HAS A STRIKING ALTER EGO: Miss Chief Eagle Testickle, a time-travelling, shapeshifting, gender-fluid agent of imagination who appears in many of his works. With her flowing dark hair, glamorous outfits and red-soled Louboutin heels, she stands out in Monkman’s work alongside his depiction of settlers and colonists. The contrast is intentionally destabilizing, both funny and deadly serious: in his 2016 tableau “The Daddies,” she brazenly sits naked atop a Hudson’s Bay blanket, holding court among the fathers of Confederation, disrupting the colonial narrative of North American discovery. In 2019, the Met museum in New York commissioned two monumental works featuring Miss Chief. It was her—and Monkman’s—breakout moment on the world stage. Miss Chief is the star of Being Legendary, Monkman’s ambitious new Royal Ontario Museum exhibition…

TALK TO ANYONE in construction and they’ll say everyone needs workers. Some industry experts believe the demand for skilled tradespeople will soon rise to dizzying heights. So, the industry is eager to encourage the next generation of workers to consider a career in the construction trades, says Alisdair Dickinson, vice-president of human resources for Graham, a leading North American construction company. “It doesn’t matter how many executives you have, if you don’t have tradespeople, you have no business,” he says. Dickinson says the construction industry’s reputation for job security and good pay makes it attractive, and the work is becoming more technologically and environmentally sophisticated. “This is a good place to go and make a difference, and earn, and have a rewarding career.” Here, then, are five concrete reasons why…

A SIMPLE BROCHURE changed the whole course of Andrea Osborne’s life. She was visiting the band office at her boyfriend’s reserve to apply for welfare when she spotted a pamphlet from Trade Winds to Success, a not-for-profit that connects Indigenous people in Alberta to training opportunities in the skilled trades. Osborne got in touch, and started with pre-apprenticeship training, hoping it would lead to opportunities in mill-wrighting, a trade involving installing and maintaining machines. It struck her as interesting and challenging. Maybe even too challenging. “I graduated top of the class, so they sent me up to work early. I didn’t even get to finish my class. I kind of hit the ground running from there,” says Osborne, who lives in Edmonton and is now a few qualifying hours away…

INTERNATIONAL INTERNSHIP had always appealed to Marina Melanidis, but financially, it was out of the question. At 19, she was living with her parents to save money and making 90-minute trips by bus and train to the University of British Columbia, where she was studying global perspectives on natural resources conservation. While searching for co-op programs, she spotted a posting to be a Queen Elizabeth Scholar at the Wildlife Institute of India. She leapt at the opportunity. After an interview, she was selected, and in little more than a month, she was on a plane. It was her first major trip without her parents. “I went to India for four and a half months, and it was one of the most incredible, challenging, rewarding experiences of my life,” says Melanidis.…

ONE AUGUST DAY when she was 24, Brittany Rosborough stepped off a plane in Kugluktuk, Nunavut, to begin her new job as a teacher. She was north of the Arctic Circle, but the weather was warm — and so was the welcome. Rosborough, who loves to travel, had already spent a year teaching in China. She thought she would also be in Nunavut for a year, but the close-knit community and beautiful landscape soon had her rethinking her plans. Six years later, she’s still happily teaching in the territory. In 2020, after four years in Kugluktuk, she made the move to the capital — the “big city” of Iqaluit, population 7,700. “I love going home for the summer, but I also really love coming back,” says Rosborough, who earned degrees…

JAY MALLARI immigrated to Canada along with his wife in 2012. Like many other new Canadians, he wanted to expand his horizons in his adopted home. With a background in finance in his native Philippines and a degree in business, he found a job at Sun Life Financial, one of Canada’s largest insurance and financial services companies. But he also saw a need for people to help new immigrants navigate the Canadian financial world and plan for their futures. “I wanted to help people in the same boat as we had been in,” Mallari says. “But I had no idea how to incorporate everything involved in real financial planning. That’s when I decided to educate myself.” He earned his Qualified Associate Financial Planner™ designation, and today he is president of Cambria…

Read more at innovatingcanada.ca Canada has been one of the great pioneers and early adopters of nuclear power. That history has left us with a legacy of clean energy to power our homes and businesses, it has driven incredible innovation in the medical sciences, and it has employed thousands in a rich ecosystem of scientific, industrial, and extractive research and insight that continues to provide vast economic benefit to this country. But it has also thrust upon us the necessity of becoming pioneers once again, this time in tackling nuclear power’s greatest challenge: the safe management and storage of highly radioactive waste products. Canada’s used nuclear fuel is a stable solid material in the form of a fuel bundle. The current inventory of used nuclear fuel from six decades of…

Read more at innovatingcanada.ca The future of Canada, and the future of the world, depend on clean energy. Countries around the world are struggling to wean themselves from carbon-intensive fossil fuel energy in the midst of a climate crisis, even while the simultaneous electrification of transportation and heating drives up the already booming demand for electricity. Renewable generation capacity like wind and solar is being built out as quickly as possible but, in any honest assessment of the situation, there remains a huge gulf between our needs and what renewables can provide. And the most pragmatic solution is buried in Saskatchewan. Canada’s wealth in nuclear fuel is incredible, and NexGen Energy’s Arrow Deposit in Saskatchewan’s Athabasca Basin alone contains over 100 million kilograms of uranium. Canadian mined and milled uranium…

If you haven’t heard of Actinium-225, it’s for good reason. Even with an army of nuclear scientists, you’d be hard-pressed to find more than a trace of the isotope anywhere on Earth. Actinium-225 is so rare that the annual global production is less than a grain of sand, which is why it has been dubbed ‘the rarest drug on Earth.’ Today, the unique properties of Actinium-225 have also made it one of the most sought-after isotopes in the world by the medical community. The material made headlines in 2016 when a German patient suffering from terminal cancer was treated with a novel therapy enabled by the rare isotope. Eight months later, the tumours had largely disappeared, the patient was still alive, and international researchers were clamouring for more Actinium-225. Further…

The buyers: Nicole Bergot-Browning, a 47-year-old children’s soccer franchise owner; Matt Browning, a 40-year-old civil engineer; and daughters Finley, who’s eight, and Nora, who’s three. The budget: $1 million. The backstory: In 2014, the Bergot-Brownings dropped $714,000 on a three-bedroom semi-detached home in Toronto’s Danforth neighbourhood. After Nora’s birth in 2019, the family took regular trips to visit Nicole’s parents, who lived near Qualicum Beach on the east side of Vancouver Island. Matt, a native of Grimsby, England, loved the mountains, and Nicole says the island felt even more like home than north Vancouver, where she grew up. “Every time we visited, we were like, ‘What’s our five-year plan to move out here?’” Nicole says. At the time, moving didn’t make sense. Nicole worked in television production—a city-bound pursuit—and the…

IF YOU ASK LONG-SUFFERING SOCCER FANS, Team Canada’s appearance at this month’s men’s World Cup in Qatar was hoped and prayed for, certainly, but perhaps also something of a pipe dream. After all, it had been 36 years since the boys in red qualified for the sport’s pinnacle event. Many of the country’s most diehard soccer-watchers had resigned themselves to, once again, donning the jerseys of whatever nations their distant or not-so-distant relations hailed from. But to those on the inside—especially the team’s plucky British coach, John Herdman—Canada’s ticket to Qatar was inevitable. In recent seasons, the team has experienced an electric, out-of-nowhere ascent. As Herdman said himself, mere minutes after his boys bested Jamaica 4-0 at Toronto’s BMO Field in March, “it’s time.” Of course, today’s Team Canada bears…

IN A MODERN AUTO PLANT, robots are everywhere. People? Not as much. Even if thousands are employed there, they may be hard to spot on the assembly line. “You walk through and you say, ‘Where are they? They’re not putting the cars together. They must be somewhere else,’” says David Santi, dean of the Marshall School of Skilled Trades and Apprenticeship at Ontario’s Mohawk College. The “somewhere else” might be an office, where they’re working with artificial intelligence software. Or a shop, where they’re fixing a robot or retraining it for optimal performance based on data analytics. From mines to main street, automation has transformed how workplaces operate and reshaped the work of skilled tradespeople. “Smart factories” and “Industry 4.0” are the buzzwords insiders use to talk about the…

It’s a beautiful morning in Kitimat, B.C., and hundreds of employees are arriving to work on one of the most important construction projects in Canada’s history, a massive, $40-billion liquefied natural gas plant. Many are members of the Haisla Nation, including Kyle Amos, an apprentice heavy equipment technician. “I found something that I really love doing, and I feel lucky to do it right here in Kitimat,” says Amos, who started his career at Ledcor as a labourer. Amos is one of the many Ledcor employees who has advanced a skilled trades career because of the company’s commitment to training and employment for Indigenous Peoples. Ledcor has a long history of working with and partnering with Indigenous communities across Canada. The company recognizes the importance of cultivating meaningful relationships based on…

As reported by McGraw Hill Canada, research has shown that classroom diversity enriches all students’ educational experiences. Students learn from those whose experiences, beliefs and perspectives are different from their own. These interactions can lead to increased innovation and collaboration inside and outside the classroom. Interacting with people from different countries and backgrounds on a daily basis presents students with opportunities to learn how to communicate differently, and often more effectively, than what they are accustomed to. Students who regularly connect with racially and ethnically diverse peers improve their critical thinking and problem-solving skills. Overall, when presented with opportunities to critically explore these experiences, students can become more accepting and tolerant, and it sets them up to be good citizens in an increasingly complex and pluralistic society. In post-secondary education,…

FRED ZHOU’S CAREER as a financial planner has roots in his childhood. Growing up in Kamloops, B.C., Zhou would often serve as a translator for his mother, who did not speak much English. When he was eight, he and his mom met with a financial advisor who encouraged her to open a registered education savings plan for Fred and his brother. “If my mom had not met that person, she most likely wouldn’t have invested in an RESP,” Zhou says, “and that might have meant a completely different future for us.” Today, as a senior financial planner with TD Wealth, a division of TD Bank, in Kamloops, B.C., Zhou is following in the footsteps of the advisor who helped his family so many years ago. He is one of 17,000 Canadians,…

Read more at innovatingcanada.ca Canada has a history of innovation in the nuclear space, and McMaster University ranks high among the nation’s key leaders. Located in Hamilton, Ont., the university is recognized as the go-to place for nuclear research, training, technology, and innovation. As the country looks toward a low-carbon future, McMaster’s nuclear experts are driving research on small modular reactors (SMRs) — a new class of nuclear reactors with the potential to change the future of clean energy production in Canada and around the world. “The significant benefit of SMRs is that they can be installed more quickly and in more flexible ways — and with lower capital investment and shorter timelines for construction, SMRs will be especially useful in areas where a full-scale grid-sized nuclear reactor isn’t practical,”…

Nuclear power has been integral to Ontario’s energy landscape for years. “It has contributed to Ontario having among the lowest greenhouse gas emissions from electricity in the world,” says Dr. Markus Piro, Canada Research Chair in Nuclear Fuels and Materials, and Chair of Department of Energy and Nuclear Engineering, Faculty of Engineering and Applied Science at Ontario Tech University. Going forward, nuclear energy is expected to play a key role in helping Canada meet its net-zero carbon target. Ontario Tech University has nuclear in its DNA Located in Durham Region, Ontario Tech is a major supplier of talent to the nuclear industry. Since its inception, Engineering at Ontario Tech has provided nuclear industries with highly qualified graduates to satisfy industry demand. We offer the only accredited undergraduate nuclear engineering program.…

Nuclear power is gaining momentum worldwide as countries look to fight climate change and achieve energy sovereignty, but until recently, nuclear power plants have been fiscally and operationally intensive. Fortunately, a new generation of nuclear reactor technology is changing the game, and Westinghouse Electric Company — a global supplier of safe, innovative nuclear technology — is leading the way in Canada. Westinghouse is currently developing the eVinci™ microreactor, a next-generation, very small modular reactor for decentralized remote applications that creates cost-competitive and resilient power with superior reliability and requires minimal maintenance. An innovative new reactor “Traditionally, Westinghouse has been focused on larger commercial nuclear system designs, but our engineers saw a need for very small reactors for decentralized applications, for example, industrial mines and remote communities across northern Canada,” says…