Maclean's

In a bygone era, upstate New York was a Canadian’s paradise. We spent our slightly weaker dollar in its casinos and outlet malls, picked up fatty, foreign delicacies at Target, trolled Americans at away games and drank in the majesty of Niagara Falls from a different angle.

With high school in the rearview mirror and plans set for the fall, students have the summer to relax, work, travel and enjoy the newfound freedom of adult life. But a number of administrative tasks need to be dealt with over the summer to ensure a smooth start to university in the fall. Every school has their own deadlines, and information typically comes to students piecemeal, so it’s important to keep on top of emails and regularly check the school’s website for key dates and deadlines.

In May, Alberta Premier Danielle Smith announced a referendum on whether to separate from Canada. Or, more accurately, she announced a referendum, and that referendum will be about whether to eventually have another referendum, and that second referendum will be about independence. Unsurprisingly, this convoluted two-step has been met with ridicule.

For me, as for most Calgarians, the Stampede is a festival of firsts: my first time on a rollercoaster, my first time hearing the bleat of a goat, my first time wearing a bolo tie. Then, too, there was the first time crowd-surfing, mosh-pitting and shooting a BB gun; the first time getting debilitatingly drunk, heatstroke and fired (in that order). There was the first time meeting a hypnotist, a hoop dancer and a sculptor who didn’t have a day job.

I’ve always noticed words and mannerisms that struck me as distinctly Canadian, which other people might overlook: duotangs instead of folders, runners instead of sneakers, saying sorry when someone bumps into you. I’ve been collecting these observations in my head since I was a kid in the ’70s. This came in handy just over a year ago, while I was studying for my master’s in branding at the School of Visual Arts in New York City.

Last semester, on the final exam of the health-care law class I teach, my students scored the highest grades I’ve seen in 20 years as an instructor. It was an at-home, closed-book exam. Eight per cent of the class scored perfect on the multiple-choice section, and over half scored over 90. In the long-answer section, the responses were formulaic, typo-free and detached from the course material; they lacked the telltale signs of rushed exam writing. It was clear my students were using AI to cheat.

Canada’s Arctic defence infrastructure has shapedJeannie Ehaloak’s life from the very start. After her father helped construct the Distant Early Warning Line—a chain of U.S.-built Arctic radar stations designed to detect incoming Soviet attacks—he took a job maintaining several DEW Line sites in Nunavut. It was here that Jeannie was born in 1963. At age four, she and her siblings were taken to residential school in Inuvik, 1,200 kilometres away from their family.

In 2020, I co-founded Authologic, a digital identity verification platform, in Warsaw. The next year, we were accepted into Y Combinator, the Silicon Valley startup accelerator that helped launch companies like Twitch and Airbnb. At the time, European tech startups looking west only saw Silicon Valley. The region is driven by an elusive formula of technical capability, aggressive venture capital and sheer audacity.

With Summer here, final post-secondary acceptance letters have landed in mailboxes. For many Canadian families, the excitement of this life-defining milestone is quickly followed by a highly practical and looming question: How are we actually going to pay for it?

For many years, I consulted on social-media campaigns in the film and television industry. I understand how social platforms capture our attention more than most. They help us share messaging, connect communities and shape how we see the world around us. So, back in 2018, when my daughter turned 12, I felt prepared for her to get her own accounts and benefit from their world-widening capabilities. Many of her friends were online already. The bullying started soon after my daughter got her device.