WHEN I WAS EIGHT years old, playing with Barbies, I always imagined they were businesswomen wearing power suits and living in a big city. Barbie was the only model I'd seen of a woman whose identity wasn't wrapped up in motherhood. By the time I was 12, I dreamed of one day travelling, having adventures, owning pets. All of my life goals had one thing in common: they didn't include kids. After babysitting other people's children, I'd come home and say, "I don't want this." My family and friends told me I'd change my mind.
I went on to study sociology and environmental studies at Acadia University in Wolfville, Nova Scotia. I spent four years thinking deeply about the state of the Earth. In 2006, during my third year, I saw the effects of climate change firsthand when I did an exchange program at the University of Western Sydney in Australia. In one of my environmental science classes we took a field trip to the Pejar Dam, which supplies water to the city of Goulburn. For the first time in its 27-year history, it was practically empty. It can hold 9,000 megalitres of water, but it was down to just three.
We walked along the bottom of the dam, cracked and dry, where there should have been water. Hoses and sprinklers were banned, and residents were using buckets of water to shower. Until Australia, I realized, I'd only understood the climate crisis in theory. Walking around the university, I'd pass through the haze of wildfire smoke. I kept expecting class to be cancelled, but things were business as usual. These experiences opened my eyes.
Diese Geschichte stammt aus der October 2024-Ausgabe von Maclean's.
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Diese Geschichte stammt aus der October 2024-Ausgabe von Maclean's.
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"I escaped Gaza and sent my family to Egypt. Now, my goal is to reunite with them in Canada."
Bombs destroyed my neighbourhood and killed my loved ones. I hope my family and I can find refuge in Quebec.
TIDAL WAVE
Susan Lapides chronicles her family's summers in a tiny New Brunswick fishing town
THE NORTHERN FRONT
In Ontario's hinterlands, a battle is brewing between First Nations, prospectors and the provincial government over a multi-billion-dollar motherlode of metals. Inside the fight for the Ring of Fire.
THE CULTURE WAR IN THE CLASSROOM
Several provincial governments now mandate parental consent for kids to change pronouns in Schools. Who gets to decide a child's gender?
THE JACKPOT GENERATION
Canada is in the midst of the greatest wealth transfer of all time, as some $1 trillion passes from boomers to their millennial kids. How an inheritance-based economy will transform the country.
My Child-Free Choice
For a long time, I wasn't sure whether I wanted to become a parent. The climate crisis clinched my decision.
The Main Event
Calgary's massive, modern, newly expanded BMO Centre is open for business
Embrace the Four-Day Workweek
Canada is facing a national productivity crisis. One counterintuitive solution? Give workers more time off.
Richard Ireland, mayor of Jasper, is ready to rebuild
IT'S TEMPTING TO LEAN on numbers when conveying the scale of the damage wrought by July's fire in Jasper, Albertathe worst in the national park's 117-year history. Water bombers were grounded in the face of 400-foot-high flames. More than 25,000 visitors and residents were evacuated as hundreds of firefighters flew in to assist. Damages exceeded $700 million. A third of the town's structures were consumed-historical buildings, tourist haunts and family homes. One of them belonged to Richard Ireland.
"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.