Maclean's May 2026

About a year ago, I started to notice something odd among many of my middle-aged friends and acquaintances. Suddenly, they were bucking the normal trajectory of age-related weight gain—and losing weight instead. I’d become accustomed to seeing their waistlines expand as meta-bolisms slowed down, so it was a shock when some of them appeared much smaller. In a couple of cases, they’d become so thin I worried they were ill. But of course, they weren’t sick. Or running ultramarathons. Or doing juice cleanses. They were just on Ozempic. Health Canada has officially approved GLP-1 drugs—Ozempic, Wegovy, Mounjaro—to treat medical conditions like Type 2 diabetes and obesity. Off-label, doctors are prescribing the medications to patients who want to drop some pounds and are willing to pay a few hundred dollars a…

NO GOING BACK For Maclean’s special issue on the Canadian workplace, Ali Amad investigated the messy reality of return-to-office mandates. Readers were unanimously (and vehemently) opposed. Such an important read. I’m writing this from the GO station in Toronto. It’s so chaotic, with people looking miserable after a wasted day. The leadership making these back-to-office decisions are full of BS when talking about collaboration. I have two friends who have to get to their offices before 8 a.m. to find space on their designated floor, and they sometimes have to work from the cafeteria. One friend left a government job because of the mandate, and leadership are apparently happy that people are doing this. My wife is in the office three days a week at her corporate job and spends…

Cohere co-founder Nick Frosst loves AI, but thinks some of us are definitely using it wrong AS WORKPLACES ACROSS Canada rapidly embrace automation, employees are starting to sweat. Silicon Valley—with its stock inflating, human-replacing, data-centre son-the-moon discourse—isn’t helping. But leave it to a Canadian to be the AI world’s voice of reason. Nick Frosst is one-third of the co-founding team behind Cohere, a Toronto-based multinational firm that develops and trains large language models, or LLMs, on companies’ internal data, helping them find ways to lower costs and boost productivity. Its AI agents aren’t here to take your job, Frosst insists. But they could take a few of your calls. Cohere’s corporate-world focus has, so far, been the secret to its success, with clients as varied as Bell, RBC and the…

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JUST NINE MONTHS AGO, a non-urgent patient in the emergency room at Sault Ste. Marie’s Sault Area Hospital might have waited roughly six hours before being seen. The hospital, where I work as a physician and the vice-president of medical affairs, serves Ontario’s Algoma District, which has a population of roughly 115,000 people. As the only ER in the community, we manage a wide range of cases every day: cuts, broken bones, seizures, food poisonings, respiratory illnesses, trauma wounds, allergic reactions, heart attacks and strokes. The next closest ER is in Blind River, nearly 150 kilometres away. Our staff triage to ensure that the patients with the most serious conditions get seen first. If a person arrives with symptoms of a severe heart attack or a massive stroke, for instance,…

ALBERTA HAS SHAPED who I am since the day I was born, 46 years ago at Foothills Medical Centre in Calgary. I can sing the words to “Four Strong Winds,” our unofficial provincial anthem. I’ve visited more rodeos than I can count. My first vehicle was an old pickup, and I taught myself to parallel park using two round hay bales. I’ve spent Saturdays on my family’s acreage, cleaning horse manure out of the barn and helping neighbours with their cattle. I know the beauty of a prairie sunset, and I’ve watched the sun rise over the Rockies. Despite my love for Wild Rose Country, I’m Canadian first, Albertan second. The flag that hangs in my office is the Maple Leaf. This national identity has taught me about the power…