At 12 years old, Ashley Wadsworth didn't yet have a smartphone. She didn't need one, figured her mother, with a close-knit community of family and friends in Vernon, a small city in British Columbia's Okanagan Valley. But she did use the family laptop to see what her friends were posting to social media. Among her peers, it wasn't seen as bold to add friends of friends on a whim, or to message a cute stranger to say hi. Wadsworth and her friends mingled confidently online the way previous generations might have at the mall. That's how, in 2015, Wadsworth became Facebook friends with a 16-year-old English teenager named Jack Sepple, after spotting him on a mutual acquaintance's page. Wadsworth had always been curious about the wider world, and Sepple offered a window onto faraway places-even if that place was only Chelmsford, a city of about 180,000 people in Essex, an hour northeast of London.
Wadsworth was bright and gregarious. She played ringette, tennis and the clarinet. At school, she went out of her way to befriend international students, knowing they might feel lonely, so far away from home. Sepple, by contrast, was withdrawn. He didn't have a thriving social life, and his biggest hobby seemed to be social media, but Wadsworth liked his scrappy charm. Their three-and-a-half-year age gap was mitigated by distance, and the fact that Sepple also lived at home with his family.
At first the pair were more like pen pals, confidantes whose daily exchanges refreshed the scenery of each other's lives. Within a few months, Wadsworth began mentioning Sepple to her mother, Christy Gendron, as well as her sister, Hailey, and her father, Kenneth, who lived nearby with his wife. Gendron was cautious about the burgeoning relationship, but felt more comfortable after Sepple sent photos of himself. They seemed to prove he was who he said he was: a bored teenager who, like so many of his generation, socialized largely online.
Denne historien er fra July 2023-utgaven av Maclean's.
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Denne historien er fra July 2023-utgaven av Maclean's.
Start din 7-dagers gratis prøveperiode på Magzter GOLD for å få tilgang til tusenvis av utvalgte premiumhistorier og 9000+ magasiner og aviser.
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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.
