Reader's Digest Canada

gone to the dogs

We’ve always had a dog in the house. Our last one, Charlie, was a mystery mix and too clever for his own good. He’d open doorknobs with his mouth. He’d snatch bread off a counter if you blinked. One January, a neighbour called me at work to ask if I knew that Charlie had unlocked a second-floor window and was dancing on our icy porch roof, barking at the mailman. Charlie died in 2017, after 16 hijinksfilled years. By the end, he was so arthritic that he had trouble getting out of his bed, but he still made the effort to meet me at the door. It felt wrong to replace him. The events of 2020 changed my mind. A new dog promised pure joy in a bleak time. Plus, several studies…

contributors

MARK WITTEN Writer, Toronto “Dementia Warning Signs” Witten’s stories have appeared in The Walrus, Toronto Life, Canadian Living and Today’s Parent. His health and science reporting has received numerous industry accolades, including prizes from the Science Writers and Communicators of Canada and the Canadian Nurses Association. Check out his latest story, about overlooked dementia symptoms, on page 30. ROGER LeMOYNE Photographer, Montreal “Bearing Witness” LeMoyne is an awardwinning photographer who has documented conflicts and human rights issues in over 50 countries. His work has appeared in Time, The Globe and Mail, Life and Maclean’s, as well as UNICEF’s fundraising photo library. He’s currently working on a book about Port-au-Prince, Haiti. See his images of displaced-persons camps in the Congo on page 74. OLIVIA STREN Writer, Toronto “Ping & Gaston” Stren is a National Magazine Award-nominated freelance writer who has been published…

letters

HOME DELIVERY I was delighted to see my old high school friend Liz MacInnis on the cover of the March 2021 issue. She deserves to be commended for her volunteer work at Red Cedar Café, a nonprofit that prepares and delivers free food to people in need across Victoria. They help seniors, people with or recovering from COVID-19, those who’ve lost work recently and anyone else dealing with food insecurity. — HEATHER MACDOUGALL, Montreal TURN DOWN THE VOLUME “Shhhhh…” (March 2021) reminded me of when Highway 407 was being planned in the Whitevale area of Pickering, Ont., in the 1980s. Residents were concerned about traffic noise, so planners used quieter asphalt—not concrete—to surface a four-kilometre stretch of the highway, along with an earth berm to partially block out tire noise. I later asked one…

group effort

MUSTAFA EL AMIN knows about overcoming barriers—and how finding a good mentor can help. At age six, he fled Sudan as a refugee with his parents and four siblings. His family settled in London, Ont., in 1992. They struggled to make ends meet and his parents’ marriage crumbled. El Amin’s father returned to Sudan in 1996, and his mother did the same two years later. El Amin, then 14 years old, was left to fend for himself. He bounced between an older brother’s house and friends’ homes, but nothing seemed to work out. He often ate at a local shelter. When he saw other kids making money selling drugs—sometimes clearing $20,000 a month—he decided to try it himself. In 2000, he was arrested and sentenced to a year in juvenile detention. “I…

good news

A SOLUTION TO THE WORLD’S WASTE AUSTRALIA According to the UN, humans throw out about 11.2 billion tonnes of trash every year. But Veena Sahajwalla, a materials scientist and engineer at the University of New South Wales (UNSW) in Sydney, has devised a novel approach to tackle the world’s garbage problem and revolutionize recycling: waste microfactories. While most recycling plants refashion old materials into new versions of the same product, Sahajwalla’s microfactories utilize thermal technology to “re-form” them into something completely different. Her first microfactory, launched in 2018, transforms discarded computer circuit boards into metal alloys such as copper and tin. Her second, which has been operational since 2019, repurposes scrapped plastics into filaments for use in 3-D printers. Both sites are funded by UNSW and are housed within the university. The microfactories,…

lebanon’s english-teaching sisters

In 2015, 19-year-old Spanish exchange student Janira Taibo met 13-year-old Salah, a Syrian Civil War refugee, on the streets of Beirut, Lebanon. The two struck up a friendship, and Taibo began teaching Salah English. That friendship was the inspiration for 26 Letters (the number of letters in the English alphabet), a Beirut school that offers free education in English, math and other subjects to 100 students between the ages of three and 21. “We mainly work with Syrian refugees, but we accept students of all backgrounds and abilities,” says Taibo. She runs the school with her twin sister, Tamar, two other Spanish co-founders and a team of 53 volunteer teachers and support staff that includes Salah, now 19. Lebanon is in the middle of a Syrian refugee crisis: an estimated 1.5 million…