I'VE ALWAYS BEEN A FARMER. I grew up mere steps away from where I live now, near the village of Fillmore in southeastern Saskatchewan. My grandparents acquired a 640-acre property in 1956, and as a kid, I helped harvest crops and raise livestock in their fields. I didn't spend my days off from school sitting on my parents' couch and watching TV-there were always jobs to do. When I was young, my dad farmed 1,500 acres; my task was to help feed our 80 cows and ensure they all had bedding. As I got older, my dad charged me with harrowing and flattening the ground for low-growing crops, like peas and lentils.
Most days, I'd sit in the cab of my dad's tractor while he worked the fields. As a young boy, there was nothing more exciting than riding a large piece of machinery. I'd lie on a ledge behind the seat, holding my little lunch kit, just like my dad's. Occasionally, he'd let me take the wheel. Other times, I'd doze off on the cab floor.
In 2006, I left home to earn a degree in agriculture, specializing in agronomy and crop science at the University of Saskatchewan. I returned home to join the family farm in 2010. We faced exceptional challenges during my first two years back. The spring of 2011 was so rainy that we could only seed a quarter of our property, and it didn't grow well at all. When an infestation tore through our crops, I sprayed pesticide in the fields, wondering why I bothered when we wouldn't get much of a yield. But then our luck turned around, and I realized that the unpredictable ebbs and flows of farming are part of the package.
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Esta historia es de la edición September 2023 de Maclean's.
Comience su prueba gratuita de Magzter GOLD de 7 días para acceder a miles de historias premium seleccionadas y a más de 9,000 revistas y periódicos.
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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.
