Maclean's Magazine - September 2024

In this issue

So You’ve Been Hacked
A new generation of ultra-sophisticated cybercriminals are targeting governments, corporations, hospitals and libraries—and laying bare how ill-equipped Canada is to fight back.
BY CAITLIN WALSH MILLER

Poly Math
The monogamy monoculture is a thing of the past. Here’s how five sets of poly Canadians make their relationships work.
BY ROSEMARY COUNTER

Beverley McLachlin, ex-chief justice and bestselling author, is keeping her eye on the world's legal drama

DURING BEVERLEY MCLACHLIN’S 28 history- making years on Canada’s Supreme Court bench, she ruled on laws that created a quantum forward leap in the state of human rights in Canada—for Indigenous people, for sex workers, for same-sex couples and for citizens seeking assisted suicide, pre-MAID.

5 mins

Log Off To Find Love - Apps have gamified meeting and mating-and affected our social skills for the worse. The real future of dating is offline.

In 2017, after being single for a few years, I wanted to get back into the dating game. I was newly sober at the time, so I wasn’t super-confident about venturing into my local bar scene in London, Ontario. Instead, I leapt into the world of digital dating via Bumble, which, back then, required women to send the first message. I thought, That’s feminist. I’m a feminist. Let’s try it! My first few months online provided me with an emotionally exhausting education.

5 mins

The Internet Oddball

How comedian Veronika Slowikowska got all of TikTok in on her jokes

2 mins

Green Scene - Montreal's Théâtre de Verdure stages plays and musical performances against a naturally beautiful backdrop

Théâtre de Verdure is a setting straight out of William Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream: a thespian's paradise in the middle of a lush woodland. Since 1956, the open-air stage has occupied an island in the middle of Montreal's Parc La Fontaine, exposing park-goers to regular, accessible (read: free) and dazzling productions.

2 mins

Bill of Health - I spent years with excruciating hip pain, languishing in Canada's health-care queue. I finally paid for private surgery-in Lithuania.

My hip pain started around 2015, when I was in my mid-30s. It began as stiffness, then the odd pinch or tweak. I live with my wife, Barbara, and our three kids on an acreage in Sturgeon County, Alberta, where we raise a handful of cows and some chickens. Our lives are very active. I'm also a maintenance supervisor at a nearby provincial park. That's a physical job, too-overseeing buildings, outhouses and campsites. I'm not exactly used to sitting still, so when my hip started to hurt, I pushed through it. I figured it was something minor and did some extra stretches. Instead, it got worse.

7 mins

BEST Affordable PLACES TO LIVE

THE BAD NEWS: OWNING A HOME in one of Canada's marquee cities is now largely the purview of millionaires.

2 mins

So You've Been Hacked - A new generation of ultra-sophisticated cybercriminals are targeting governments, corporations, hospitals and libraries and laying bare how ill-equipped Canada is to fight back

A new generation of ultra-sophisticated cybercriminals are targeting governments, corporations, hospitals and libraries and laying bare how ill-equipped Canada is to fight back.On a July morning in 2022, Brad Hynes, the IT manager for the town of St. Mary's in southwestern Ontario, was backing up the town's computer systems when things went haywire. File names became unintelligible strings of characters. Desktop icons went blank. File after file was impossible to open, a string of digital duds. The background wallpaper on Hynes's screen disappeared, replaced by the red-and-black logo of a Russian ransomware gang called LockBit. A line of all-caps text appeared: All your important files are stolen and encrypted!

10+ mins

Whole Lotta Love

Polyamory is suddenly everywhere-and it's changing the face of love, marriage and even child-rearing. Five intimate stories of non-monogamy.

9 mins

FANTASY ISLAND

An heiress lives her Gatsby dreams at her Big Rideau Lake cottage, complete with parties, lobster and champagne

3 mins

"The Taliban tried to kill me at 16.Eight years later, I am free in Canada."

I ATTENDED A PRIVATE ENGLISH SCHOOL in the Jaghori District of Ghazni province, Afghanistan.

3 mins

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Maclean's Magazine Description:

Canada's national magazine covering current affairs, politics, culture trends, ideas and personalities.