Maclean's September 2025

For the better part of last year, my third-floor home office in Toronto shook every day. A condo tower was going up nearby and, starting at 7 a.m., Monday to Friday, drills and excavators ripped into the ground and made a terrifying racket. I could see objects on my desk dance around, as if there was an earthquake. Some of my neighbours complained about the noise and vibrations but, to me, the cacophony was a sign of progress. The busy road up the block had recently been rezoned to allow for residential developments, and a major transformation was underway. Four new condo buildings were sprouting along a two-kilometre stretch—eight if you zoomed out a bit further. The way I saw it, the construction was accomplishing two good things: addressing the…

CREATED BY When Dr. Gordon Keller returned to Canada in 2007 to take on the directorship of UHN’s McEwen Centre for Regenerative Medicine—now the McEwen Stem Cell Institute—the country reclaimed one of the world’s leading stem cell researchers. Growing excitement around stem cells in Canada, coupled with a landmark philanthropic investment from Robert and Cheryl McEwen to UHN to help accelerate regenerative medicine and stem cell research, meant the time was perfect for Dr. Keller’s return. After working 25 years in Europe and the United States, Dr. Keller came home to Canada to build a world-leading stem cell institute in Toronto—a city with a renowned stem cell research community. That network grew out of the legacy of Drs. James Till and Ernest McCulloch’s groundbreaking discovery of blood-forming stem cells through…

STRONG AND FREE Just in time for Canada Day, Maclean’s released a special 120th anniversary edition devoted to the country’s newfound nationalism in the face of Trump’s threats. For some readers, the feeling was contagious. This is a first for me. I don’t think I have ever written to a magazine about its content. I was a Maclean’s reader here and there for about 40 years. Then, after our recent election, you sent me an offer to renew my subscription and I took it. I was amazed at the changes. It has been many years since I have read any magazine cover to cover. I did so with the first issue I received. Amazing articles by people in the know about what Canada needs to do to survive in this…

BLACKBERRY, THE ORIGIN STORY of Canada’s iPhone, was the vehicle that vaulted director Matt Johnson into the mainstream—sweatband in tow. On the indie circuit, however, Johnson had already cemented his cred with mad-genius guerrilla films that made some wonder if his brain had formed without a fear centre. For 2013’s The Dirties, his debut feature, he went undercover as a high-schooler; for his moon-landing mockumentary Operation Avalanche, he infiltrated NASA (for real). Maybe the most beloved of Johnson’s runand-gun projects is Nirvanna the Band the Show, a Borat-style buddy comedy in which Johnson and co-creator Jay McCarrol rope unsuspecting Torontonians into their stunts—3D-printing a (fake) gun at a library, for example. Now it’s received the big-screen treatment: Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie screens at the Toronto International Film…

THROUGHOUT MY THREE-DECADE CAREER, my north star has been creating wealth for Canadian families. One example of this is the children’s investing program I built in the ’90s, when I was president of the asset-management startup GT Global Canada. I often thought about grandparents who gifted shares in Disney, Apple and McDonald’s and the disappointed expressions they’d get from their grandkids, who were expecting Air Jordans or the newest Barbie for their birthdays. I wanted to make investing fun for those kids, so for the under-10 set, GT rolled out gift boxes that contained a frameable stock certificate, a stuffed toy and a storybook starring Henry the Hedgehog, who discussed money with his animal friends. For tweens and teens, there was an Archie-style comic book. The program became a big…

VANCOUVER IS A TALE OF TWO CITIES. Its downtown real estate prices have duelled with Toronto’s for the most expensive in Canada, with wealthy buyers casually snapping up one-bedroom condos for $760,000, their current benchmark price. At the same time, housing advocates estimate that Metro Vancouver needs to build roughly 11,000 new affordable units each year to stem the city’s homelessness problem. The Butterfly, opened earlier this year, houses residents at the high and lower ends of the income spectrum—in one extremely tall package. The project took off in 2012, when the Canadian developer Westbank tapped Revery, a local architecture firm, for a very specific job: fusing a luxury tower that would “take their breath away” with affordable rental units and community amenities closer to ground level, on land owned…