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Cottage Life •

How a young family in Alberta turned a shed into an off-grid cabin for less than $30,000

For most of us, sheds are a place to stash our yard tools and sports equipment. But lifestyle blogger and interior designer Deborah McDonald reimagined a shed as a place for her, her husband, Patrick, and their kids, 15-year-old Berkley and 13-year-old Palmer, to finally have a cabin of their own. The McDonalds, based in Central Alberta, used to be trailer folks. They would drive their trailer out to their Clearwater County “quarter-section,” a measure of about 160 acres on Deborah’s family’s fa...
The Globe and Mail •

Who needs retirement? Vancouver senior shares his culture and expertise in Chinatown

Vancouver’s Chinatown is like a second home for Bob Sung.

A third-generation Chinese-Canadian, Mr. Sung’s family has lived in B.C. for more than 130 years, running retail and wholesale food businesses and working with restaurants and grocers in Chinatown. Now, Mr. Sung shares his cultural heritage and his food expertise through culinary and cultural walking tours through that second home.

“I use food as a medium because food is my passion. Food is my background,” says the 73-year-old, whose co...
Toronto Life •

Real Weddings: Inside the city hall wedding of two TTC superfans - Toronto Life

Emily Fenech, a 29-year-old product manager, met Nicholas Ashmore, a 28-year-old PhD student, at a bar in Kingston, Ontario, in 2019, while the two were studying at Queen’s University. Their shared love of The Lord of the Rings and similarly close-knit families (Fenech is especially tight with her grandparents) drew the two together. After Nick moved to Edinburgh in 2021 to start his PhD, Emily followed in 2022, and the couple is still based there. They were engaged in 2024, and an intimate 15-p...
Cottage Life •

Buy the Way: This young couple bought their cottage off-market through a personal connection

As of 2015, Josh Reyes had never been to a cottage. His family, who is from the Philippines, would go on camping trips, but it wasn’t until he started dating Mallory Rowan that he began cottaging each summer at her family’s place on Dickey Lake, Ont.
By 2020, he was a full-on convert. That summer, the couple were visiting a friend’s cottage on Lac Bataille in Val-Des-Monts, Que., when he realized just how much he loved the lake. “We were sitting on the dock, watching the sunset, and I looked at...
The Globe and Mail •

How artificial intelligence is helping urban planners design smarter, more livable cities

From housing demand to traffic congestion, city planners have long relied on imperfect models to predict how people move and live. Now, artificial intelligence promises to make those forecasts more accurate.

Mohamad Khalil, a transportation engineering researcher who is currently a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Alberta, has been interested in machine learning long before it was trendy.

“I actually started working with machine learning in 2014,” he says. “To me, at the time, it seeme...
The Globe and Mail •

Can this Ottawa couple find a four-bedroom home outside the city for $800,000?

Christine Ung had only been living in her one-bed-plus-den condo in Ottawa for a few months when she met Jack Glick on dating app Hinge in April, 2023. Mr. Glick lived in a three-bedroom, two-and-a-half-bathroom townhouse 20 minutes away in Gatineau.

“It was a lot of back-and-forth,” Ms. Ung said about commuting between their two homes. Mr. Glick shared his home part time with Zev, his five-year-old son from a previous marriage. On weeks that he didn’t have Zev, Mr. Glick would stay at Ms. Ung’...
The Globe and Mail •

Inside the new movement toward respectful wildlife encounters

When Jesse Villemaire first started working as a wildlife photographer in 2015, he noticed other photographers doing “questionable things” at the time, like feeding animals – what’s referred to in the industry as baiting – to get a great shot.

“I just knew it felt wrong,” Villemaire says. “I started questioning the things that I was seeing that didn’t sit right with me.”

Three years later, in 2018, the Muskoka, Ont.-based photographer and his wife Susan began hosting wildlife photography works...
The Globe and Mail •

Halifax swaps dated interchange for new urban neighbourhood

A new redevelopment on the northern edge of downtown Halifax is transforming an underused stretch of infrastructure by replacing the aging Cogswell Interchange with a vibrant urban district.

In the late 1960s, the Cogswell Interchange was built with the intention of connecting it to a larger freeway around the city’s peninsula. After the overpass was constructed, the freeway was cancelled due to opposition over the demolition of historic buildings required to make room for it.

The interchange...
Toronto Life •

Real Weddings: Inside a kitschy art-filled celebration at the June Motel - Toronto Life

Briony Douglas, a 41-year old visual artist, first met Steve McKeon, a 40-year-old custom fabrication engineer, when they were working as bartenders in Toronto in 2008. They lost touch for years, until Steve asked Briony out on Instagram in March of 2022. Their relationship progressed quickly after that: travelled to Vancouver six weeks later for a family wedding, and Steve moved into Briony’s apartment later that year. The couple was engaged by March of 2024 and wed in a whimsical lemon-themed...
The Globe and Mail •

An overachiever’s guide to holiday hosting

If no one posts a photo of your Michelin-star-worthy holiday meal, did you even spend two days sweating over a hot stove cooking it? Earning social media accolades goes beyond delicious food. Dinner needs to look as stunning as it tastes.

Louise Borins is the owner of Into the Kitchen, a company that brings clients into the inner sanctums of some of Toronto’s top restaurants (La Palma, DaiLo, Mamakas Taverna) for one-on-one workshops. She is also an enthusiastic home cook who has been entertain...
Canadian Grocer •

How Zing’s Pantry Shortcuts turned a pandemic project into a zesty business

In the spring of 2021, Rane began exploring retail partnerships with independent shops in Toronto, including the Dark Horse Espresso Bar chain and Sanagan’s Meat Locker. “We were really moving through word-of-mouth,” explains Rane. “Customers were recommending us to their local retailers.” By the end of 2021, the company had about 50 retailers on board, mostly in Ontario, with a few spots across the country and in the United States. That year, Zing also added more sauces and seasonings to its li...
The Globe and Mail •

Why Indigenous-owned financial firms are joining forces with the country’s biggest banks

Indigenous-owned financial firms are beginning to make their mark in Canada, contributing to First Nations’ pursuit of economic self-determination. Take Longhouse Capital Partners, a Vancouver-based, Indigenous-owned asset manager. Founded in 2022, Longhouse is now raising capital to build a $1-billion fund dedicated to financing major infrastructure projects for First Nations communities, such as transmission lines and wireless towers.

According to Fred Di Blasio, co-founder of Longhouse Capit...
The Globe and Mail •

A Calgary couple facing rising rent searched for a three-bedroom home. What did $672,500 get them?

In 2018, Al Sow and Aissatou Thiam moved into a two-bedroom rental apartment in Calgary’s Beltline neighbourhood, paying $975 a month. A year later, their son, Kadia, was born. At the time, they shopped around for a larger rental but came up empty-handed.

“We didn’t find anything that we liked,” Ms. Thiam says. The 36-year-old recalls seeing cramped bedrooms and living spaces in comparable rentals. So the couple stayed put.

Then, in 2022, their daughter, Fatou, was born and the family was reac...
The Globe and Mail •

Hybrid work treats staff as ‘adults’ and is best for retention, satisfaction, productivity, experts say

At the end of 2022, Vik Kambli, chief operating officer and leader of people operations for veritree, says the company’s pivot from remote working to a hybrid schedule happened somewhat organically. The Vancouver-based climate-tech platform, which verifies, tracks and measures reforestation, is a spinoff of the sustainable clothing company tentree and was just a year into operations at the time. “The needs of that business were calling for a higher level of collaboration within the team,” Mr. Ka...
Toronto Life •

$7 million for a brilliant bungalow in rural Erin with 98 acres and an organic veggie farm - Toronto Life

A four-plus-one-bedroom, six-bathroom home in rural Erin. The property sits on a huge 98-acre plot that includes a 12-metre-long heated swimming pool, vegetable and herb garden beds, organic hay fields (managed by a local farmer), wetlands, groomed hiking trails, and a vast forest. It’s about a 90-minute drive to Toronto and is near Caledon Ski Club and various golf cours...
Toronto Life •

Real Weddings: Inside two university sweethearts' modern Hindu ceremony - Toronto Life

Moe Kohli, a 29-year-old product design manager at Yelp, first met Aria Patel, a 31-year-old Google account executive, in 2016, when the two were business students at Wilfrid Laurier University. They began dating shortly afterward and kept their relationship going after graduating and moving back into their parents’ homes in Ajax (for Moe) and Markham (for Aria). In October of 2021, they got their first apartment, and they were engaged by July of 2024. Their 170-person modern Indian wedding took...
Canada Media Fund •

Verticals on the rise  | Canada Media Fund

Also known as microdramas and ultrashorts, vertical shows, which are shot to be viewed on smartphones, are growing at a remarkable pace in Canada.
In September 2023, Italian-Canadian filmmaker Dom Cutrupi saw his first vertical show.  
“A producer I was working with shared with me a piece of content — an episode,” Cutrupi recalls. “I looked at it, and I was like, ‘There's no way I'm going to do this.’”  
Cutrupi had just finished shooting his second feature film and thought the concept of vertic...
The Globe and Mail •

The design duo behind Creators of Objects spin resin into bold housewares

It was 2013, when design duo Joanne Byrne and Jonathan de Swaaf were working on a wall treatment for a restaurant, that they first experimented with resin. The pair, whose Toronto studio is known as Creators of Objects, constructed clear cherry blossom flowers to give the installation a 3-D effect.

A few years later, in 2016, Byrne and de Swaaf started exploring what else was possible with the material. “We were inspired by the sculpture artist Rachel Whiteread,” Byrne says. “She’s an incredibl...
Toronto Life •

How an unlikely series of events made the “Born ready” baby Vladdy T-shirt to go viral - Toronto Life

If you’re a Jays fan, chances are you’ve seen that adorable T-shirt featuring a drawing of three-year-old Vladimir Guerrero Jr. at his father’s Expos game. The shirt, which shows the tyke replacing an Expos helmet with a Jays hat, has Guerrero Jr.‘s now-iconic line, “Born ready,” scrawled under the illustration.A Toronto artist, director and actor is behind the design, and he has a chance airport run-in with someone one degree of separation from Jays royalty to thank for it.Artist Kit Weyman dre...
Toronto Life •

Real Weddings: Inside a Virgin Radio host's joyful ceremony with chosen family - Toronto Life

Morgan Wynn, a 33-year-old operations coordinator for a software start-up, first met Shannon Burns, a 32-year-old Virgin Radio host and content creator, through the Tumblr queer community in 2012. Their friendship began on the internet, since Morgan lived in the US and Shannon in Edmonton, but they met IRL in 2013 at a Pride event in New York. Regular friend-group vacations kept them in touch, and they made their relationship official in 2020. Morgan relocated to Toronto in the summer of 2022, a...
Canadian Grocer •

How Edward Lalonde turned a kitchen-counter experiment into a fast-growing protein brand

Lalonde focused on direct-to-consumer e-commerce to start. It was a one-man show for the first three years as he worked to get his business off the ground. “It was just me packing all the orders, doing customer service and the purchasing,” says Lalonde. “I was working 80 to 100 hours a week. It was rough, for sure.” He was packing orders in his Montreal apartment and took over his parents’ garage, bringing orders individually to Canada Post to ship them. The long days paid off. In 2022, Lalonde...
Toronto Life •

Real Weddings: Inside a Chinese and Korean celebration at the Old Mill - Toronto Life

Susie Kim, a 31-year-old software engineer, first met Peter Li, a 31-year-old design studio owner, when Susie transferred to Peter’s high school in 2011. They soon became high school sweethearts, and their relationship progressed when they both attended the same graphic design program at OCAD University. A decade later, in 2022, Susie and Peter got engaged during a walk in Evergreen Brick Works, and they were married in September of 2024 at the Old Mill. Their celebration included swan ice sculp...
The Globe and Mail •

Tech for good: Entrepreneurs in tech merge innovation with social impact

It’s no secret that the tech industry in Canada has resulted in some incredible discoveries and innovations. But Canadian women entrepreneurs are finding ways to create a social impact with their technology businesses. Here are a few of their stories.

It was in a first-year design course in 2018 that Lianna Genovese, a biomedical and mechanical engineering major at McMaster University in Hamilton, met Elissa, a woman living with cerebral palsy. “She mentioned to our class that she loved paintin...
Toronto Life •

Inside an ultra-kitsch Vegas elopement - Toronto Life

Zarmina Shafton (née Khan), a 30-year-old registered psychotherapist, met Aaron Shafton, a 29-year-old fintech executive, on Hinge in 2018. By July of 2020, the couple had moved in together, and in May of 2023, they got engaged while on vacation in Italy. Eager to keep their nuptials intimate and low-key, Khan and Shafton eloped in Las Vegas on the sixth anniversary of their first meeting, with Lady Elvis officiating and two photographers as their only witnesses. Here’s how it all came together....
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