Maclean's May 2022

MR. RIGHT I have never been a fan of Pierre Poilievre, (“The Ringleader,” April 2022). Looking back on his antics in the House, I recall him to be shrill, loud and self-reverent, always looking to advance his political career with the support of those who buy into the facade of a straight shooter. Most offensive of all is his penchant for appealing to the worst in us, as he did when he threw his support behind the so-called “Freedom Convoy”—a group of thugs who demanded the overthrow of an elected government, who occupied Ottawa for weeks, who made residents’ lives miserable, blaring horns and harassing them for choosing to wear masks. Poilievre is an opportunist. He’s smart, no doubt, but he does not, from my point of view, possess a single…

43°39'14.8"N 79°22'44.6"W OPENINGS Spring. Massey Hall, Toronto. By 2018, Massey Hall had lost its sparkle. The opulent concert venue was 124 years old when the board and executive administration closed its doors for a makeover. “The city grew up around Massey Hall,” says Jesse Kumagai, the venue’s president and CEO. “We needed to respect our history but embrace the exciting opportunities that lay ahead.” The project involved refreshing old and beloved elements, such as the hall’s original stained-glass windows and swooping Moorish arches. The newly constructed seven-storey tower next door will feature two new performance spaces and a state-of-the-art recording studio wired to each of the venue’s stages. After a short-lived return in November 2021 (thanks, Omicron), Massey Hall has officially reopened with a star-studded schedule that includes Canadian bands Broken Social Scene and…

A FEW YEARS ago, Kathy Collins was running her own art supply store and art school in Calgary when she began to experience troubling symptoms. She had always been a workaholic, capable and driven, but suddenly, in her early 50s, she was having cognitive glitches, like forgetting to place orders for the store. Her older sister Jean Collins noticed that when they spoke on the phone, she was forgetful and uncharacteristically weepy. While Kathy at first hid her struggles, she eventually admitted that things had gotten so difficult that she couldn’t run the business and was filing for bankruptcy. Jean, who was living on Vancouver Island at the time, went to Calgary to help Kathy through the process. Once she was with her sister in person, the scale of Kathy’s difficulties…

AUGUST 2020 25,200 views Kathy and Jean do a quiz: who’s had the most success with men (Kathy), who talks the most (Jean) and who is physically strongest (Kathy). JUNE 2020 90,200 views Kathy talks about her transformation, from not wanting anyone to know she has Alzheimer’s to sharing the experience with the world. JANUARY 2022 51,900 views Kathy and Jean stage a comedic recreation of life with Alzheimer’s, complete with repetitive questions and bloopers. Courtesy of @thekathyproject; Laurent Van Der Stockt/Getty Images…

IN EARLY MARCH, organizers at St. Michael’s Ukrainian Catholic Church in Montreal asked for supplies to help Ukrainians under siege by Russia’s invading army. They planned to accept donations for only a few days, but as the war raged on, Montrealers’ generosity stayed strong. Diapers and baby formula; Tylenol and menstrual products; clothes and Kraft Dinner; flashlights and shampoo—it all kept pouring in long after the deadline passed. Dozens of volunteers—many of them locals of Ukrainian descent, few of them churchgoers who had set foot in St. Michael’s—have been tearing open black garbage bags to sort the goods into cardboard boxes, which are then packed into 40-foot trucks and taken to Toronto’s Pearson International Airport. From there, they are loaded onto a Warsaw-bound plane in the hope they can be driven…

WAYNE KIM fell in love with Montreal bagels from three time zones away. As a teenager in Vancouver, he wasn’t much into the bread-like bagels sold in most stores. But Kim, whose family came to Canada from Korea when he was in high school, was dazzled by Siegel’s, a Montreal-style bagel shop in Kitsilano: the big wood-fired oven, the smell of honey water, the bagel’s crunchy outside and chewy interior. The budding entrepreneur in him, meanwhile, marvelled at the lineups of customers keen for a dozen poppy or sesame. In his early 20s, Kim headed to Montreal to learn the craft: hand-rolling dough rounds, boiling them in sweetened water and flipping them from oven to bin using long, wooden paddles. With a small bank loan and financial help from his dad,…