Maclean's

I have managed to live half a century without becoming a sports fan. Usually, I relax doing nerdier things. Classical music concerts make me happy; I belong to a subculture of Canadians who worship the Icelandic pianist Vikingur Ólafsson, for example. I also relish long bike rides along Toronto’s waterfront trails and British police procedurals. I’ve never turned to sports to unwind. I don’t know the rules of football, and hockey is too violent. Years ago, down in Florida, my husband and I bought cheap tickets to see the Tampa Bay Lightning play the Ottawa Senators. We sat up close and watched men repeatedly bash each other against the boards right in front of us, sometimes splattering blood. An exceedingly unattractive spectacle. But this past fall, like millions of other…

The robots are here at UHN, and more are on the way. UHN’s Sprott Department of Surgery is home to Canada’s largest robotic surgery program, and once the new surgical tower is built at Toronto Western Hospital, UHN will also have the country’s largest concentration of surgical robots under one roof. These machines aren’t replacing surgeons—they’re amplifying them by extending expert capabilities to benefit patients in new ways that go beyond the most sophisticated surgical teams. As home to some of the only robots of their kind in Canada, UHN’s advanced technology also enables surgeons to train the next generation in pioneering techniques reshaping health care. “Using robotics allows surgeons to push the boundaries of surgery even further, decreasing the severity of surgery, making procedures less invasive and ultimately improving…

WHAT FUTURE? In the November cover story, Courtney Shea traced the relationship between Gen Z’s fatalism and their tendency to splurge now and pay later. When you’ll never be able to buy a house and the world’s about to burn up anyway, why not enjoy a $10 matcha latte? The article correctly and effectively diagnoses an important problem in the difficulty of navigating personal finance for young Canadians. However, it struggles to produce a clear statement on who is to blame and the remedy for the situation. It mentions a lack of financial knowledge, social media influence, new psychological tactics from lending companies, and a terrible economy where gainful employment, homeownership and retirement seem impossible. “Competing for jobs in places like Toronto and Vancouver is incredibly difficult. It’s easy to…

CONVERSATIONS WITH THE NATION’S NEWSMAKERS ADAM SHOALTS IS a member of a dying breed. For one thing, he had to be pressured by his now-wife into getting a smartphone. And service tends to be sparse where he works. Shoalts, originally from Fenwick, Ontario, is one of Canada’s greatest living explorers—our very own bearded, millennial Indiana Jones. He’s done archeological digs in four countries, hosted guided hikes focused on edible mushrooms and has faced down gale-force winds, rapids and entirely too many bears for comfort. It’s all part of a larger project: to keep Canadians in touch with the country’s wild side. Shoalts has faithfully chronicled his many treacherous expeditions. In his latest bestselling book, Vanished Beyond the Map, he recreates the Arctic journeys of Hubert Darrell, a fellow wanderer whose…

RADICAL SOLUTIONS TO THE COUNTRY’S PROBLEMS I BOUGHT MY FIRST Bitcoin in 2011, in the middle of my MBA at the University of Alberta. Everyone was curious about crypto back then, but most businesses weren’t sure what to make of it. For users, the payment experience was confusing and clunky, and use cases were limited to the odd high-profile anecdote. Case in point: the first documented Bitcoin purchase was made in 2010 by American software developer Laszlo Hanyecz, who paid for two Papa Johns pizzas with 10,000 Bitcoin (worth roughly US$856 million today). Beyond headlines like these, there was no straightforward way for regular people to learn enough about crypto to use it to their benefit. It’s a different story today. As of this writing, the total market value of…

This past October, the 2025 Maclean’s Ideas Summit: Education explored what it means for Canada to pursue sovereignty as an economic strategy—and how being on the frontier of scientific research could get us there. The event, hosted at the MaRS Centre’s Jewel Box and presented by Moderna Canada, included several of the country’s top scientific and medical thinkers. On their minds? How to translate our many advancements into IP, jobs and more resilient supply chains. For full event coverage, visit macleans.ca/events CANADA WHO? Maclean’s editor-in-chief Sarah Fulford (left) kicked off the evening by explaining Canada’s current evolution within the larger global realignment. “We are, as a country, redefining who we are,” she said, “and redefining what sovereignty means.” SCIENCE RULES The evening’s panel of experts included (below, left to right) Teresa…