Ann doesn't know how old she is. She thinks she's probably 40 or 41, but she became separated from her parents as a child, and she has no record of her birth. When she was a child she lived alone on the streets of Kampala, Uganda-one of thousands of homeless youth in the city-and survived by collecting plastic bottles and scrap to sell to recyclers. She slept outside at night, then later in a church, and attended school by day. Remarkably, after years of diligent study, she secured a high school scholarship, saved money and enrolled in university. She earned a degree in international business and began a career in business development for multinational corporations.
Ann, who asked me to use a pseudonym to protect her privacy, married and had three children. But her husband grew vicious to her and the kids, and she began to fear for her life. She fled Uganda alone, planning for her children to join her later. She went first to the Middle East, where authorities seemed indifferent, before a friend told her to try Canada. With a visitor visa in hand, she used what little money she had to book a plane ticket and an Airbnb in Etobicoke, in Toronto's west end, for five days last November. The first day, she phoned Legal Aid Ontario and asked how to make an asylum claim. She asked whether she'd be welcome and safe in Canada and when her children would be able to join her, and was told that her concerns would be dealt with in time. To find a place to stay, she called Central Intake, Toronto's 24-hour hotline for emergency shelter.
Over countless calls across four days, the Central Intake operators told her every shelter in the city was full; one suggested she extend her Airbnb stay. She found a list of shelters in the city. One by one, she visited each by bus or on foot.
Denne historien er fra July 2024-utgaven av Maclean's.
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Denne historien er fra July 2024-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.
Allerede abonnent? Logg på
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.
