The seeds for Meg Somerville’s gap year were planted way back in Grade 2. Her teacher had taken a year off to travel after his teaching degree, and made a point of sharing his experiences with his students. He told them about hanging out with orangutans in Borneo and displayed paraphernalia from his trip—a rain stick from Australia, postcards from Cambodia and a big world map—in the classroom. For the young Somerville, it was a window into a world she didn’t yet know, but she knew she wanted to explore. Her interest in geography, history and other cultures blossomed throughout her school years ..read more

As soon as Nathan Sears checked into his Airbnb in March of 2023, he knew something felt wrong. The door to his unit was so flimsy he thought he could kick it down. The building’s front entrance was unlocked, open to anyone who might wander in. He called his wife, Araceli, and gave her a video tour—he didn’t want to leave any valuables inside, he said. It didn’t feel safe. But the Airbnb was in a prime location, on the second floor of a beautiful, three-storey limestone heritage building in Old Montreal, at 135 rue du Port. It was just a 20-minute walk from the venue for the conference th ..read more

I’ve wanted to travel the world since I was a teenager. In 2009, after studying mechanical engineering at a university in Nigeria, I got a job with an oil and gas company that sent me to Texas. Three years later, I moved to India for work and, since then, I’ve lived in 15 countries. During all that globetrotting, I met and married my wife, Bola, and we had two children. For years, Bola and the kids were going back and forth between Nigeria and wherever I was located at the time. Eventually, I realized how much my jet-setting life disrupted our family, so Bola and I decided to find a permanent ..read more

When Rick Mercer, Canada’s favourite satirist son, retired from the rant game in 2018 after a blazing 15-season run of the Rick Mercer Report, he could have gone quietly. For a while, he got into amateur potato farming. But, every day in his shed overlooking the Atlantic, he was also writing, a new loquacious hobby that resulted in not one but two back-to-back instant bestsellers. There’s 2021’s Talking to Canadians, which charts Mercer’s course from his school days to getting CBC’s green light, and The Road Years, released last October, which chronicles everything after, including the drum le ..read more

The Ostrander family moved from Ontario to Douglas Parish on the outskirts of Fredericton, New Brunswick—and it’s been good for the whole family (Photography by Chris Donovan) The buyers Tracy Ostrander, a 45-year-old HR director; her husband, Scott, a 48-year-old car salesman; and their kids, Abigail, who’s 27, Kaiya, who’s 20, and Aidan, who’s 18 The budget $800,000 The backstory Tracy was born in Saint John, New Brunswick, but moved to London, Ontario, with her family when she was just a year old. After she met Scott on eHarmony in 2011, the couple settled down to raise their blended family ..read more

1. Tate McRae | Musician After conquering TikTok, this 21-year-old pop phenomenon is ready to win over the world In September of 2023, Tate McRae’s single “greedy” started a sprint up the charts, hitting No. 1 around the same time as she performed on Saturday Night Live and landed on the cover of Billboard magazine. Who was this suddenly unavoidable presence whipping her hair, with more TikTok followers than Beyoncé? In response to her sudden ubiquity, a particularly aggressive army of web trolls cried “industry plant”—a term that has been used to dismiss a certain type of well-packaged, label ..read more

Ryan Reynolds never set out to be one of Hollywood’s most bankable venture capitalists. As the story goes, the actor made his first big investment play buying ownership interest in Aviation Gin in 2018, after he tried the product and it was just that good. Celebrity-backed booze brands are as common as celebrity Ozempic prescriptions, but the difference is that Reynolds didn’t just put his face on the product—he also rolled up the sleeves of his superhero suit and got involved. Taking charge of Aviation’s branding efforts, he produced cheeky, self-deprecating ads that put an unknown alcohol br ..read more

Catriona Smart grew up in Newmarket, Ontario, to a pair of bubbly parents who entertained constantly—and she caught the bug too. Smart, a former bartender and current creative agency founder, and her fiancé, Jimmy Cook, host all kinds of parties in her stone-faced 1920s mansion in Toronto’s Forest Hill neighbourhood, where she moved toward the end of 2016.  Smart gutted nearly every part of the mansion before moving in—except for the 3,000-square-foot basement. A previous owner had transformed it into an ’80s-style grotto with a giant rectangular pool, built-in concrete daybeds and plenty ..read more

Sophia Mathur has been showing up for the environment since she was quite literally in the womb—her mother, Cathy Orlando, was pregnant when she was protesting Big Fossil Fuel in the 2000s. Mathur grew up in Sudbury, Ontario. At seven years old, she was tagging along with her mother to MPs’ offices and Parliament and, at age nine, to Capitol Hill, politely refusing diversionary trips to local zoos with her dad. “At the time, I was obsessed with big cats, and I thought, If we were more on track to solve the climate crisis, these animals would be saved!” Mathur remembers. Mathur’s advocacy picke ..read more

The morning of February 24, 2020, began like any other at Crown Spa. The first clients of the day began coming and going for sessions, and J.C., the manager, was upstairs in the apartment where she lived. J.C., whose full name is under a publication ban, had managed the spa for about five years, and it wasn’t unusual for her to work seven days a week, greeting clients at her desk and scheduling sessions. That day, she had a dentist appointment, and a newly hired receptionist had failed to show up for work. J.C. texted a friend, 24-year-old Ashley Noelle Arzaga, to fill in. She arrived around n ..read more