The Margin (Canada)

If you didn’t know better, you’d think this was a club. The audience crowds towards the stage, packed cheek to jaw in the dimly-lit space, the lack of light accentuating the trippy projections behind the band – Japanese-American art rock pioneers Deerhoof. It's a big deal to see them here – this is the only Canadian venue on the tour, and their latest album came out to solid reviews.

Since Prime Minister Carney called off trade negotiations with the US last Friday, much of the has on the physical goods now affected by Trump's 50% tariffs. Beer! Hockey sticks! Essential oils for some reason! But the true stakes of this trade war are overwhelmingly digital.

Futures trading can only be done in a margin account (for more on how these work, see our explainer). When trading futures, you are taking on the obligation to buy or sell a large quantity of the underlying thing. For example, if you buy an oil futures contract, you are agreeing to buy 1,000 barrels of oil. If the price of each barrel is $82, then on expiration, you are expected to spend $82,000. You do not, however, have to have $82,000 in your account.

Ten years ago, Justin Trudeau promised me a clean economy. In his scenario, gone would be the belching smokestacks of power plants, replaced by shiny new wind turbines and solar panels, whose electric power I'd use to drive my EV as it zipped down silent highways free of any gasoline stench. Better still, we wouldn’t just be living green, the new government promised, but we’d also be rich.

Ujwal Mantha, a 27-year-old graphic designer originally from India and now based in Toronto, graduated in 2021 and has had a few full-time roles since. But after a recent layoff, he’s now back on the job market, and his search for work since graduation has come with more pressure than simply paying bills and gaining experience: certain pathways to permanent residency require Canadian work experience, and self-employed or freelance work doesn't count.

For three years, Sandra paid hundreds of dollars a month out of pocket for semaglutide and similar medications. When the price of her weight-loss prescription climbed to $571 a month, she resorted to putting some of it on a credit card, cutting back on other spending, and stretching the time between doses from seven days to 10 (not something her doctor had advised).

I don’t really know how to cook without tomatoes. They used to be a routine purchase – usually around the $1.50 to $2 a pound range, never expensive enough to make me hesitate or even notice. One of my staple dishes is South Indian tomato rasam, a spicy, tangy, soup-like dish made with tomatoes, lentils, herbs, and Indian spices – my kids love it. So when I saw tomatoes at Food Basics had reached $3.99 a pound, it didn’t feel like the price of just one vegetable had gone up.

When Susan Harvey took ownership of her parents’ house in the Algonquin Highlands in 2010 – first as a cottage, then as her primary home in 2014 – she also inherited something else: a sister who hasn’t spoken to her since. “We were happy to buy her out so she could buy a house,” says Harvey, a retired interior designer. “She felt the process took too long and that I was trying to cheat her.