H.G. Watson
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Writer. Sometimes teacher, sometimes audience development. Writing a book about the teen mags of the 1990s and 2000s. 👩💻💖
Articles by H.G. Watson
Crown Point Hub, Hamilton: The Steeltown Charmer
One of my favourite places in the world to jog is my parents’ neighbourhood in Hamilton, Ontario. Cary and Kathryn Watson moved from Toronto to Crown Point Hub in 2008, looking for more room and financial freedom. They sold their semi-detached house for close to $320,000 (a fortune at the time) and bought their current home for $155,000. It’s one and a half storeys with big shuttered windows: imagine an overgrown cottage.
Is Canada measuring air quality accurately? Original
On Wednesday, July 15, Torontonians looked to the sky and found the sun obscured by haze. It wasn't smog or fog - it was smoke drifting down from 185 active wildfires in northern Ontario. As the day waned, social media feeds filled with photos of apocalyptic scenes the smoke had produced, captioned with descriptions of dystopian feelings of déjà vu.
In defense of blue-collar creative work
On the necessity of valuing the labour of writing When I started my Master of Fine Arts in the summer of 2023, AI was creeping into more of our lives. I get the fascination of bringing ideas to life with ChatGPT or Claude, in a way—It’s playing God without the messy work of tilling Eden. But that’s just the thing: creation is more than an idea. It’s the work. How many great novels, movies, investigative features, came because of the thinking, the research, the edit? Almost all of them, I’d wager.
How Canada Can Become a Nuclear Superpower
I first got interested in nuclear energy after the birth of my son in 2018. As an emergency physician, I specialize in triage, focusing limited time and resources on the most urgent problems. When I applied that logic to the climate crisis, the defining threat facing my son’s generation, the power of nuclear energy became clear. Between 1971 and 1993, Canada commissioned 22 reactors—one per year—resulting in one of the fastest per capita additions of clean energy the world has ever seen.
How Trump is Endangering North American Birds
Bird banding is simple: you catch a bird, fasten an aluminum band with a unique number around its leg and let it go free. Every year, many thousands of birds are banded this way by researchers and avian enthusiasts in Canada and the U.S. As the birds criss-cross the continent and western hemisphere, they’re recaptured by researchers and volunteers, and encountered by the public and hunters, who see the bands and report the numbers.
Why Canada Should Join the EU
Canada is in a tricky place. We’re a prosperous country in an increasingly precarious world, tied tightly to a superpower that’s grown more volatile. We’re reliant on commodities in a century that prizes ideas, and we’re trying to navigate multipolar geopolitics—all without a clear map. Our trade depends on open borders we don’t control. Our innovation feeds industries we don’t own. Our foreign policy has lofty values, but our economic leverage rarely matches our voice.
Give Canadian Kids $10,000 at Birth
Throughout my three-decade career, my north star has been creating wealth for Canadian families. One example of this is the children’s investing program I built in the ’90s, when I was president of the asset-management startup GT Global Canada. I often thought about grandparents who gifted shares in Disney, Apple and McDonalds and the disappointed expressions they’d get from their grandkids, who were expecting Air Jordans or the newest Barbie for their birthdays.
Will a GoFundMe gift affect your home insurance claim payout?
In December 2021, the Smith family in Baden, Ont. lost their entire home in a catastrophic fire on Christmas Day. Thankfully, the entire family and their pets survived, but they lost everything else: furniture, cars, clothes, and all the memories you collect while living in a home. Their insurance company helped them with short-term relocation options — but the family also received another form of support. Friends and strangers started a campaign on GoFundMe, an online crowdfunding platform.
Why this Ontario city is passing an anti-renoviction policy
In Ontario, the dreaded N13 eviction notice—also known as a renoviction—informs renters that they must vacate their home because the unit needs major renovations. Between 2017 and 2022, the number of N13 eviction notices rose by a staggering 986 per cent in Hamilton, Ontario. Under Ontario law, renters can move back to the same unit at the same price they were paying before, but many people aren’t aware they can exercise that right.
Power up: Building a sustainable supply chain for EVs
“As we transition to EVs, we need to make sure that we’re building this industry the right way from the start.” When Joanna Kyriazis bought a used 2021 Hyundai Kona Electric, she found it difficult to find out what the battery’s capacity was from the dealership. While Hyundai’s website says a new one can travel for more than 400 kilometres without being charged, her used car’s range topped out at 350 kilometres.
The Year Ahead: Our Guide To 2024
If 2023 was the year of wake-up calls—to the dystopian reality of AI, to the destructive force of climate change, to the challenges plaguing immigration and the cost of living—then 2024 will be the year we finally do something about it all. Post-secondary institutions will prep students for careers in quantum computing, the EV economy and, yes, artificial intelligence.
What are we going to do with all those EV batteries?
When Joanna Kyriazis bought a used 2021 Hyundai Kona Electric, she found it difficult to find out what the battery’s capacity was from the dealership. While Hyundai’s website says a new one can travel for more than 400 kilometres without being charged, her used car’s range topped out at 350 kilometres.
What to do if your insurance provider suddenly increases your rate?
Life is very expensive these days. Ongoing inflation has meant that prices for everyday goods like groceries and gas are way up. And the last thing you need is another unexpected expense. But sometimes, one comes in the form of your car insurance rates. Occasionally it might be because of actions you had control over – but just as likely, it’s because of something completely out of your hands. So, what causes your rates to go up? And, more importantly, what can you do about it?
SimplyCash® Preferred Card from American Express Review 2023
SimplyCash® Preferred Card from American Express Rated 4/5 stars. Apply Now Rewards 4% Earn 4% cash back on eligible gas station purchases made in Canada. 4% Earn 4% cash back on eligible grocery store purchases in Canada — up to $1,200 annually. 2% Earn 2% cash back on all other purchases with no limit. Welcome Offer Up to $400 in statement credits in the first 10 months Terms and conditions apply. Annual Rewards $636 Learn how we calculate this.
The Rise and Fall of a Chinese-Canadian Pop Star
Kris Wu, an ordinary kid from Vancouver, transformed into one of China’s biggest celebrities, with chart-topping albums, movie roles and lucrative brand partnerships. Then a series of social media accusations brought him down. (Photograph by Bil Brown) (Photograph by Bil Brown) In November of 2018, the Chinese-Canadian pop star Kris Wu was at the peak of his fame: young, confident, unstoppable.
Callum Shoniker is an animated hero
Callum Shoniker knows what it’s like to be a member of PAW Patrol’s fandom. He turned four in 2013, the year Spinmaster’s Canadian-made hit series about a pack of do-gooder pooches premiered, becoming an instant generational touchpoint.
The Building: Centennial College’s new A-Block expansion
Late in 2019, Larissa Roque, an architect with Anishinaabeg-owned Smoke Architecture in Hamilton, Ontario, received a request for proposal from Centennial College that was unlike any other that had come across her desk. “They gave us a poetry book and said, ‘Make this a building,’ ” Roque says. The collection in question was Living in the Tall Grass by R. Stacey Laforme, the elected chief of the Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation.
Longevity expert Peter Attia can help you cheat death—for a while - Macleans.ca Original
When Toronto native Peter Attia was working as a surgical resident at Johns Hopkins, he was haunted by a very specific stress dream: he’d see himself frantically running around a city sidewalk, trying to catch eggs that were falling from the sky. Many times, they’d splatter on the pavement—and all over his scrubs. Attia, who was training to be a cancer surgeon, later realized the eggs symbolized patients, people whose disease had advanced too far to treat.
I've been waiting five years for my parents to join me in Canada
I was in Grade 11 when my parents started talking about sending me to Canada for college. We lived in Muktsar, a small, crime-ridden city in Punjab, India. My father was a police officer, and my mother stayed home with me and my younger brother, Amanjit. My parents always wanted us to have more opportunities, so I moved to Toronto in 2008 for a computer networking diploma at Humber College. When I graduated, I told my parents that I wanted to stay.
This funky Fort Erie home is an architectural gem
From the outside, the Bower House could pass for a submarine with a periscope peering outward as interpreted by Pablo Picasso. From another angle, it resembles an inquisitive robot. Whatever it may be, the puzzling house at 888 Edgemere Road in Fort Erie, Ontario, which is on sale for the relative bargain price of $1.3 million, doesn’t look like anything else on the street.
Superbugs are overpowering antibiotics. We should fight them with phage therapy.
I have a clear memory of sitting on a Toronto-area park bench in 1985 as my dad—a computer executive and jack-of-all-trades—explained the arms race between our cells and a new virus called HIV. The military metaphor worked for me, an 11-year-old burgeoning physician-scientist with a fascination for jets and Transformers. I thought, Wow, there’s a battle going on inside us, and we have to find the right weapon to win it.
Why an Ontario city is now permitting homeless encampments and tiny homes in parks
Canada’s homelessness crisis went from bad to worse during the pandemic years, as encampments popped up in municipalities across the country. In the past, these tent cities were forcibly removed by local law enforcement.
The Move: From downtown Toronto to an artist’s escape in rural Newfoundland
Laura Dawe, 40 $115,000 Laura Dawe moved into her bare-bones two-bedroom apartment in Toronto’s Parkdale neighbourhood in 2011. At the time, she could barely afford the $1,200 monthly rent, so she opted to split the cost with her then-partner and a roommate. As the city’s housing market exploded around her, Dawe watched as her apartment went from nothing special into an affordable hidden gem. “It transformed from a hovel to a castle by sheer inertia,” she says.
Canadian air travel is in crisis mode—understaffed, overcrowded and plagued with delays. Here's how we're fixing it. - Macleans.ca
Monette Pasher is the head of the Canadian Airports Council. In this role, she works with Canada’s airports, airlines, government, industry partners and other stakeholders to improve the air passenger experience and create opportunities for travel and trade. For the last two years, air travel has lurched between shutdown and crisis mode. It’s not the experience that Canadians want or ought to have when they travel, and while there is still a lot to be done, many improvements are underway.
“Like a science-fiction movie”: The story of one couple’s evacuation from Kelowna
In the past few days, while Canadians watched Yellowknifers flee their homes, residents of another city were forced to make a similarly perilous evacuation due to ongoing wildfires. West Kelowna, B.C., with a population of 38,311, began evacuations on August 17 after a wildfire began 10 kilometres northwest of the city and quickly spread southward. Dramatic images of incinerated homes began flooding social media last Friday, an all-too-common sight during the worst Canadian wildfire season ever.
This church-turned-house in small-town Ontario has a thoroughly modern interior Original
Walk down the main street of Beeton, Ontario, a village an hour’s drive north of Toronto, and you’ll come across a red-brick church with a bell tower, surrounded by flowering trees. Just above the double doors, lettering inlaid in red stained glass reads “AD 1879”: the year the church was consecrated.
For the price of a studio in Vancouver, you could buy an entire island four hours away
In Vancouver this summer, the average sale price for a one-bedroom condo surpassed $800,000. But why buy a measly studio in downtown Van when you could preside over an entire island for $200,000 less? Head four hours due northeast of the city by car, and you’ll stumble upon a two-bedroom, one-bathroom cabin on a half-acre island abutting scenic Pavilion Lake. Price tag: $599,000.
I'm a Canadian actor on the SAG-AFTRA picket line. Here's why I'm striking.
Acting is something I was destined to do. I’ve known this was my calling since I was a toddler, when my family moved from Nigeria to Canada. At an early age I could be found honing my English over episodes of Sesame Street. By grade school, I was obsessed with The Sound of Music—and my mom was in tune with my need for a creative outlet. We relocated to Toronto, where she worked tirelessly to give me the opportunity to break into the business.
Canada needs a new labour force to become a global EV superpower. Here's how to do it.
My family has always been on the front lines of greenhouse gas reduction. My stepfather, Gary Taylor, was part of an Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change team that won the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize for highlighting climate change as an existential crisis. Growing up in Toronto in the ’90s, we’d often talk about climate change at the dinner table, and those discussions left a deep impression on me.
“Sixty-three per cent of N.W.T’s population have been evacuated”: A Q&A with Yellowknife mayor Rebecca Alty
Rebecca Alty has already lived through one wildfire scare. Before she was mayor of Yellowknife, she was living in the city when more than 300 forest fires burned in the Northwest Territories in 2014. The smoke heavily impacted the city, but no one was forced to leave. Now, over the last week, Alty has overseen a Yellowknife first: a complete evacuation of the city in 36 hours, as wildfires raged just kilometres from homes and businesses.
“It’s like going off to war”: This man is helping evacuate fire-plagued Yellowknife
The north is burning. Since early spring, forest fires have raged across the Northwest Territories. But in the last week, the flames reached the territory’s biggest population centres.
I started working at the Pacific National Exhibition when I was 12. It was a wild ride.
In 1980, when I was 12 years old, I got my first job working at Vancouver’s Pacific National Exhibition, or PNE. My dad drove me to the fairgrounds, where I was hired without an interview. I copied down my social insurance number, had my picture taken and was told to come back in a week. The PNE was the largest employer of young people in the province, hiring a thousand or so teens for two weeks of the fair. They didn’t have much time to vet the candidates.
What’s a mortgage default, and how do you avoid it?
The International Monetary Fund recently released a report highlighting countries that are at risk of mortgage default. Topping the list? Canada. Canada also has the highest rate of household debt, and three-quarters of household debt comes from mortgages. A combination of high interest rates and household debt makes mortgage payments more expensive than ever, putting Canadians in danger of not being able to afford their very own homes.
I started a drag camp for kids. Soon I was receiving thousands of hateful messages
Early in my acting career, I performed at local grade schools in a play called People Like Vince, about a kid whose uncle is coping with depression and other mental health challenges. In the middle of one performance, a young student, probably around eight years old, stood up and said, “My mom is like that.” All these years later, that moment has always stuck with me.
The Battle for a Prince Edward Island Beach
When Bryson Guptill moved from Ottawa to Prince Edward Island 27 years ago, he found in the tiny island’s coastline a kind of sanctuary—a serene landscape that seemed to reward endless days and weeks of exploring. After retiring from his job as a government policy analyst several years ago, Guptill dedicated even more time to his passion. Today he walks the island’s shores almost daily, posting regular maps of his hikes to a Facebook group for fellow beach fanatics.
This $2.1-million retrofuturistic dome home is an inhabitable EPCOT
The legendary American renaissance man R. Buckminster Fuller was responsible for a few futuristic architectural ideas, one of which was the geodesic dome, an ultra-strong spherical structure composed of small interlocking triangles. Most people have only ever laid eyes on these domes as tourists—say, at Disney World’s EPCOT Centre or Montreal’s Biosphere, built for Expo ’67.
This old-timey museum on Cape Breton Island got a 21st-century upgrade
During the Highland clearances of the 18th and 19th centuries, landowners forced roughly 70,000 Scots from their homes to make space for more profitable (sheep-farming) tenants. Many evicted residents crossed the Atlantic and resettled on modern-day Cape Breton Island, displacing the Mi’kmaq from their own ancestral home, known to them as Unama’ki. The Highland Village Museum, located in quaint Iona, has told the story of these back-to-back displacements since 1962.
Habitat: This prefab cabin was built on a family’s Georgian Bay island in 10 days
Alan Gertner always dreamed about escaping to a cottage surrounded by the rugged wilds of the Georgian Bay. He had visited a friend’s home nearby as a kid, and the landscape had entranced him. “It seemed like the most magical piece of nature. It was so close to Toronto but still felt worlds away,” Gertner says. After a five-year stint working abroad for Google, he returned to Toronto in 2014.
How Authors Are Taking On Generative AI
This is an installment of Automate Me, an ongoing Study Hall series about how AI technology is transforming the media and publishing landscape. When author Jane Friedman found out her name had been slapped on books likely produced by AI, she realized it could happen to anyone. As a reporter and author who covers the publishing industry, Friedman has been thinking about artificial intelligence for the better part of a year.
I love being an ER doctor—but the patient load is crushing - Macleans.ca
I’ve been a full-time emergency room doctor at Calgary’s Foothills Medical Centre and South Health Campus for almost seven years. I love many things about my job: the adrenaline of never knowing what awaits me during a shift, the challenge of providing the right care to people with wide-ranging ailments, the reward of a job well-done when you know you’ve helped someone in need. I’ve always been the type of person who has to look at a train wreck or car accident.
We bought an old ambulance and turned it into a home
In 2014, after I graduated from film school in Ontario, I came home to Vancouver to work in the industry. That’s where I met Nick one night at a bar. He was a semi-professional downhill longboarder. We were friends for years while dating other people. When my ex and I broke up in 2017, my friendship with Nick evolved into a relationship. He moved into my apartment soon after that. My rent was $1,200 a month, and Nick split that with me.
I couldn’t find affordable student housing, so I settled for a mouldy basement.
Last summer, I was living at home with my parents in Pickering, Ontario, waiting to start law school in the fall at the University of New Brunswick. To save money, I worked as a supervisor at the University of Toronto Scarborough, overseeing their tennis courts, baseball diamonds and other sports facilities. I needed to find a place to live in Fredericton, so I went on Kijiji and started apartment hunting. My budget was $600 a month including utilities and internet.
I am dying of cancer. Black-market psilocybin gave me a new lease on life.
In 2011, at the age of 54, I was diagnosed with stage II breast cancer. It was traumatic at first. For a few months, radiation and intravenous chemotherapy took over my life. When my scans showed no more evidence of disease, I was only too willing to put the experience behind me. Sadly, things took a turn for the worse in 2018, when a routine mammogram revealed that the cancer had returned. Even after a mastectomy, in 2021, I found out the disease had spread into my right lung, left ribs and sternum.
Why this Canadian author wants AI companies to pay up
More than 10,000 members of the Authors Guild, America’s largest organization for writers, recently co-signed an open letter urging AI leaders at tech companies like Open AI (owner of ChatGPT) and Meta to stop using their work without permission or compensation.
Solar panels and their impact on home insurance
With interest rates on the rise, many homeowners are looking to save money wherever they can. One way to do that is by finding ways to reduce energy costs. Solar panels are one way that you can theoretically save money while also cutting down your fossil fuel emissions. Once installed, a majority of your home is powered by natural, renewable energy. But despite the best intentions, some homeowners can hit snags trying to instal roof-mounted solar panels.
Is it smart to invest in Canadian real estate in 2023?
Real estate has often been considered a safe option for the more cautious investor. Your hard-earned money is more than likely to appreciate in property eventually — everyone needs a place to live. According to a poll conducted by Royal LePage in 2023, a quarter of all Canadians are planning on investing in property in the next five years — and of those, over 30 per cent will be first-time buyers.
A history of ‘media exclusion zones’
How injunctions became synonymous with police-driven crackdowns on press freedom in Canada Continue Reading A history of ‘media exclusion zones’ Twenty-three years ago, Karyn Pugliese was embedded with land defenders blockading the roads at Barriere Lake in northwestern Quebec, reporting for APTN on protests against a forestry development. She moved back and forth between the land defenders’ waist-high barricade of traditional land and the police lines unimpeded.
A history of ‘media exclusion zones’
How injunctions became synonymous with police-driven crackdowns on press freedom in Canada By H.G. Watson The clouds move among the old growth forest in the Fairy Creek logging area near Port Renfrew, B.C. Tuesday, Oct. 5, 2021. Photo by THE CANADIAN PRESS/Jonathan Hayward Twenty-three years ago, Karyn Pugliese was embedded with land defenders blockading the roads at Barriere Lake in northwestern Quebec, reporting for APTN on protests against a forestry development.
Are you covered if your neighbour causes water damage to your condo?
Condo living is appealing for many people. Mowing the lawn? Fixing the furnace? Cleaning the outdoor windows? Not your concern. However, one drawback is living in close quarters with your neighbours. You never know when the unit above you might have an overflowing sink or broken pipe that can lead to damage in your unit. If the worst happens, there’s a good chance your condo insurance will help cover your losses — but there are some things to keep in mind. Does condo insurance cover water damage?
What is a pending credit card transaction?
Have you ever checked your credit card statement and found that your available funds were much lower than your statement showed? It’s most likely you have pending credit card transactions. You may see pending transactions from any kind of merchant. For example, if you go online shopping at your favourite clothing store on the weekend, those purchases won’t process until at least the next business day. And many credit card issuers take several days to post any kind of payment to your balance.
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