CATEGORIES

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!

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.

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.

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.

"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.

FANTASY ISLAND

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

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.

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.

The Internet Oddball

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

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.

How we got to 41 million - For decades, Canada has been a model of inclusive immigration

Canada had grown more quickly than expected-by 1.1 million people over the previous 12 months, mostly due to a huge wave of international students and temporary foreign workers. And yet, despite the fanfare, this population boom wasn't a good-news story. Because there were not enough homes for all those new people.

The Big Idea - Capture Carbon From the Air - Companies need to stop their emissions from polluting the skies. Direct air capture can help absorb what's already up there.

Companies need to stop their emissions from polluting the skies. Direct air capture can help absorb what's already up there. The world’s first DAC technology was developed by research groups at the University of Calgary and ETH Zurich about a decade ago. Canada is well positioned to be a world leader in DAC. The technology requires two main ingredients: plenty of that porous geologic storage and renewable energy infrastructure. Canada has an immense amount of storage capacity.

"I moved from Nigeria to Canada-by accident"

I came to Alberta to visit family in 2019. I never left.

The New Arrivals

Over the past two years, Canada has welcomed a record number of immigrants. Here are some of their stories.

THE RELUCTANT REFUGEE

I was one of the first Syrian refugees to land in Canada in 2014. The settlement process was confusing, prolonged and alienating. How Canada finally became home.

BOOM TOWN

For more than half a decade, Charlottetown has sustained the highest immigration rates in Canada. The influx has saved PELL. from demographic oblivion—and made it a case study in the perils of ultra-rapid growth.

NOW HERE TO GO

Thousands of refugees live in shelters, hotels and on the streets of Canada's largest cities. How the country is struggling to cope with a massive surge in global asylum seekers.

Ship Shape

For 50 years, the Port of Montreal catered to out-of-town cruise passengers. Its splashy new waterfront tower is amonument to local life.

The Old Soul

How Luna Elle honed her mature, Sade-esque sound and nabbed a Juno nom-all before turning 20

Nigara Shaheen, Toronto-based judoka and refugee Olympian, fought her way to the top

NIGARA SHAHEEN'S ROAD to this year's Paris Olympics has been more treacherous than most. Born in Jalalabad, Afghanistan, in 1993, she was just six months old when her parents carried her across the mountainous border into Pakistan, fleeing the country's raging civil war.

Revenge Of The Renter

Hundreds of tenants, struggling to afford skyrocketing rents, are refusing to pay their landlords at all. They call it a rent strike. The landlords say it's illegal. An inside look at the frontier of a growing class war.