Jordan Heath-Rawlings, Author at The Big Story: Recent Episodes
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Masking has become second nature to most of us during the pandemic. But with the end cautiously in sight, how many of us will still cover up once we’re no longer forced to? In eastern nations like Japan, masking in crowded public spaces in simply part of the culture — especially during flu season. Why...
The post Will we still use masks when all the mandates expire? appeared first on The Big Story.
Their last game in Toronto was in September of 2019. Since then, the Blue Jays have been on one of sports’ longest odysseys—playing home games as the road team, then in Buffalo, then Florida and back to Buffalo again, waiting for permission to enter Canada. That finally changes next week as the team comes home...
The post How the Blue Jays finally came home appeared first on The Big Story.
You’ve probably thrown something out when it was past the date on the package—even if it didn’t really seem like it had gone bad. Better safe than sorry, or as the campaign used to tell us, “When in doubt, throw it out.” But best before dates are not the same as expiry dates, and this...
The post How ‘best before’ dates waste tons of Canadian food appeared first on The Big Story.
The public is currently being told to venture into the crown jewel of Vancouver’s park system “at their own risk” as dozens of people, including a two-year-old child, have been attacked by wild coyotes this year. And Stanley Park is not the only green space in Canada dealing with the newly-aggressive animals attacking human visitors....
The post Coyotes have taken over Stanley Park. And it doesn’t stop there. appeared first on The Big Story.
Last week, retired general Jonathan Vance, former chief of the defence staff, was charged with obstruction of justice related to an investigation into allegations of sexual misconduct. That sounds like a shocking piece of news, but really it was an almost inevitable conclusion of the latest scandal that put Canada’s military justice system, or lack...
The post Inside Canada’s broken military justice system appeared first on The Big Story.
Most vaccines in Canada are administered by family doctors, so when Covid-19 vaccinations began to receive approval late in 2020, those physicians got ready to roll up their sleeves and dive in. But the call never came. While a few pilot projects let a relative handful of doctor’s offices receiving doses, the vast majority of...
The post Family doctors want to come off the bench for the “last mile” of vaccinations appeared first on The Big Story.
On Friday Canada’s largest province enters stage three of reopening—by far the biggest move since early this year, before the third wave of Covid-19 hit. Other places around the world have had varying degrees of success as they’ve come out of restrictions, but perhaps the best example to reassure anxious Canadians is out west, where...
The post As Ontario tentatively reopens, Alberta is in full swing appeared first on The Big Story.
And why were the police so focused on the 15-month old’s parents in the wake of his death? Nathaniel died in 2015, after sustaining a severe brain injury. And in the weeks and months and years to come, the investigation narrowed to his parents as the prime suspects. It was a preoccupation that, in hindsight,...
The post What happened to Nathaniel McLellan? appeared first on The Big Story.
As the United States winds down its involvement in Afghanistan, things are becoming more and more dangerous for Afghan citizens who have aided soldiers over the past two decades. And nobody is in more danger than those who worked as interpreters for Canadian and allied forces. Years ago, Canada had a program to fast-track visas...
The post Canadian veterans push for help for Afghan interpreters appeared first on The Big Story.
Two people are dead, a town is all but destroyed and more than a thousand people have essentially become climate refugees. And that is the toll of just one of the hundreds of forest fires raging in British Columbia at the moment. But it’s in the future of Lytton that we can get a glimpse...
The post Lytton, B.C. is Canada’s face-to-face encounter with the future of climate appeared first on The Big Story.
The heated discussion over a full return to business as usual versus an embrace of remote, flexible work is often couched in language of productivity, creativity and efficiency. But as more and more corporations announce their post-pandemic plans, it’s becoming clear that there’s a bigger, deeper issue at stake: Control. What makes companies feel like...
The post What’s the fight over returning to the office really about? appeared first on The Big Story.
Now that vaccines are widely available to almost any Canadian who wants one, the focus turns to convincing people who haven’t had one yet to get their needle. It’s easier said than done, for more reasons than just hesitancy. And if our inbox is any indication, after months of mixed messaging, Canadians have a lot...
The post Vaccine FAQ: mixing and matching, kids under 12 and are we slowing down? appeared first on The Big Story.
Traditionally, Ontario (and parts of Quebec) would see outbreaks of the creature known as the Gypsy Moth every decade or more. But the past two years have seen back to back outbreaks, each of them much larger than what we’d seen in the past. And we’re currently not sure if this is an anomaly, or...
The post Meet the invasive species rampaging through Ontario forests appeared first on The Big Story.
A lot of us are lucky enough that we’ve never thought of Canada Day as anything but a day off to enjoy all the country has to offer, and to celebrate the story we tell ourselves about this land. It’s a good story, honestly. But as so many of us have learned over the past...
The post What stories should we tell on Canada Day? appeared first on The Big Story.
First of all, what is a heat dome? How rare is it? How deadly? Are the all-time high temperatures the Pacific Northwest experienced this week an anomaly, or a terrifying glimpse of the new normal? Can we pin this all on a warming climate? Or is some of it an unlucky combination of weather systems?...
The post Is the “heat dome” in B.C. a sign of summers to come? appeared first on The Big Story.
Right now, the Bank of Canada is working on a “digital loonie” that will replace cash at some point in the future. Governments around the world are either following suit or way ahead of us. While banks have been giving their customers access to digital wallets for years, cryptocurrencies are attempting to corner the market...
The post What does the future of money look like? appeared first on The Big Story.
Last week, Core Development Group announced its intention to spend a billion dollars buying family homes in hot markets across Canada and converting them to rental units. On the surface, this would seem to bring badly needed family rentals into markets that are in desperate need of them—but there’s a lot more going on here...
The post When a developer becomes a landlord to thousands of Canadians, what happens? appeared first on The Big Story.
Her real name is Romana Didulo, and over the past few months her following has grown to tens of thousands. And she’s putting them to use in real life—handing out cease and desist “orders” to authorities and businesses across the country. The penalty she promises for not complying and removing all Covid-19 restrictions is death....
The post QAnon’s “Queen of Canada” is organizing harassment on streets across the country appeared first on The Big Story.
Too bad, you’re likely getting one anyway! Over the past few weeks there have been unmistakeable signs that the governing Liberals as well as opposition parties are getting ready to send Canadians to the polls—whether they want to go or not. From fundraising to renting rooms, passing bills that will look great in campaign literature...
The post Are you ready for a late summer federal election? appeared first on The Big Story.
One year after being singled out—first by Premier Blaine Higgs, then by members of his own community—as “Patient Zero” for a New Brunswick Covid-19 outbreak, Dr. Jean-Robert Ngola is still putting his life back together. Last May an outbreak in Campbellton, NB, was blamed by Higgs on an “irresponsible medical professional”, and online Dr. Ngola...
The post What do you do when you’ve been blamed for a Covid outbreak? appeared first on The Big Story.
Usually, when someone is charged with murder, their name is all over police statements, and then all over the media. But when police neglect to release that information—and some forces have been doing that more and more frequently—the murder itself can go missing. From the media, from the conversation, and eventually from the statistics kept...
The post What happens when police won’t ID a murder suspect? appeared first on The Big Story.
When Alberta announced last week it would join several U.S. states in offering the chance of life-changing prizes to citizens who get their Covid-19 vaccine, they were chasing a simple truth: For some reason, we tend to value the remote chance of a big reward far more than the certainty of a small one. This...
The post Here’s the thing about vaccine lotteries: They work. appeared first on The Big Story.
Across Canada, in every municipality, there are people experiencing homelessness. It happens everyday. But what really matters is what happens to those people after they become homeless. Homelessness can quickly become a cycle, a self-fulfilling prophecy, a chronic condition. And in many places policy treats it that way, creating benchmarks for people to clear before...
The post How Medicine Hat became Canada’s first certified ‘zero homeless’ city appeared first on The Big Story.
The months-long blockade at Fairy Creek is something of a tipping point for the province’s NDP government’s attempt to balance its environmentalism and its logging interests. Before his party was re-elected, Premier John Horgan pledged to follow a report with recommendations to protect B.C.’s old-growth forests, of which only three percent remain. Almost a year...
The post B.C. has a blueprint to save its oldest forests. Will it use it? appeared first on The Big Story.
That’s not hyperbole. Many Americans (and Canadians, and citizens around the world) hoped that once Donald Trump was out of office, and Joe Biden became president, the country would experience a snap-back towards political normalcy. That hasn’t happened. And driven by their fears of being ousted by Trump’s base, Republicans around the country are continuing...
The post How close is America to the end of democracy? appeared first on The Big Story.
It’s a gigantic update to Quebec’s language laws, which have been part of the cultural fabric of the province for 50 years—and the proposal even goes so far as to update Canada’s constitution. But does Bill 96 actually protect French in Quebec? Does it help newcomers learn and use the language? Will it make it...
The post What does Bill 96 mean for Quebec? And for the rest of Canada? appeared first on The Big Story.
Last week the federal government announced a tentative plan to announce a less-tentative plan for a July border reopening in the coming weeks. What we do know: It’ll be fully-vaccinated Canadians only who can skip the quarantine, and there will still be plenty of checks and balances. What we don’t know: Almost everything else. After...
The post When will the border reopen? What will it look like when it does? appeared first on The Big Story.
When Disney+ launched its newest Marvel show, Loki, this week, it came with a marketing campaign: “Wednesdays (when new episodes of Loki will be released) are the new Fridays (when Disney previously released new episodes of Marvel and Star Wars shows).” The campaign means that Disney is choosing not only to release new episodes weekly,...
The post Has TV reached the end of the ‘binge watch’ era? appeared first on The Big Story.
This week, Canada’s reckoning with its racist history was interrupted by its racist present. A terrorist attack in London, ON killed four members of a Muslim family and left a nine-year-old boy orphaned and injured. Are we finally past saying things like, “This kind of stuff doesn’t happen in Canada”? Are we ready to shed...
The post Islamophobia in Canada is getting worse. Will Canadians confront it? appeared first on The Big Story.
Lots of people, when applying for jobs, hope the people doing the hiring can see them as people, instead of as assets that can deliver value for the company. For job seekers with disabilities or neurodivergence, it’s just the opposite—they wish that employers could see the real value they’ll bring to the business instead of...
The post Why hiring Canadians with disabilities is a competitive advantage appeared first on The Big Story.
There have been promises in the past. And committees, and commitments and commissions and no shortage of apologies. But in the wake of the 215 children found buried where a residential school once operated near Kamloops, there’s a growing sense among Canadians that none of the past work has been enough. Is this reckoning real?...
The post If Canada’s residential schools reckoning is real this time, what happens next? appeared first on The Big Story.
The promise was pretty clear: During his first successful campaign as Liberal leader, Justin Trudeau told LGBT voters that we would end Canada’s longstanding ban prohibiting men who have sex with men from donating blood. At the time, it seemed like a simple promise to keep. A few years later, he claimed it wasn’t so...
The post Trudeau’s Liberals promised to end the blood ban. Now they say it’s “complicated”. appeared first on The Big Story.
Every time there’s a protest, or dispute, or anything else newsworthy in rural Canada, the media shows up to cover it. And runs into the RCMP. Sometimes, nothing happens. But more often than not, access to the story becomes a story in itself, with the RCMP insisting media aren’t allowed in, or offering access only...
The post What happens when the media fights back in a battle with the RCMP? appeared first on The Big Story.
Less than one percent of the 1.8-billion Covid-19 vaccines used so far have gone to low-income countries. And in those countries new variants are emerging that could impact our vaccine efficacy. Canadians spent the first four months complaining about our slow rollout, but we’re soon to be second in the world among countries with the...
The post Our pandemic’s ending here. And almost nowhere else. appeared first on The Big Story.
Less than two months from now, unless something changes, the postponed 2020 Olympics will begin in Tokyo, Japan. Unless the country’s government listens to both its populace and its doctors, all of whom are urging them not to proceed. Japan has vaccinated less than three percent of its population. A medic this week warned of...
The post Will the Olympics go ahead as planned? Should they? appeared first on The Big Story.
Toronto, Vancouver, Montreal … Canada truly has some of the world’s biggest and most beautiful Pride celebrations. But it also has some of the smallest. In places like Taber, Alberta (POP: 9,000), Annapolis Royal, Nova Scotia (POP.: 500) and Norman Wells, Northwest Territories (POP: 800) communities have begun holding Prides of their own, often marked...
The post What does Pride look like in small-town Canada? appeared first on The Big Story.
It’s always been this way but … why? When it comes to everything from routine cleaning appointments and checkups to more complicated procedures like abscesses and crowns, many Canadians scramble to pay for their own dental care. Even for those lucky enough to have insurance, many employers’ plans don’t have enough coverage to take care...
The post Why doesn’t Canadian health care include dental coverage? appeared first on The Big Story.
This is the story of a Jeopardy! contestant who made a white supremacist gesture on the program. Only he didn’t. But that didn’t stop thousands of people, including several dozen former Jeopardy! contestants from insisting that he had, and hunting ceaselessly for evidence to back up their assumptions. This is a story about what the...
The post Why online conspiracies aren’t just a QAnon problem appeared first on The Big Story.
After nearly a century of moving Canadians between rural towns and big cities, Greyhound Canada announced last week it would end all Canadian routes. This is a move that could be devastating for hundreds of thousands of Canadians who lack access to a car and might be stranded without access to medical appointments, connection to...
The post Is Greyhound’s exit a tragedy or an opportunity? appeared first on The Big Story.
When people started presenting with symptoms, local doctors and scientists wondered if the mysterious neurological disorder might be Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease. But it wasn’t. It wasn’t anything else that we recognize, either. And the symptoms are a long list that run from inconvenient to painful to life-altering and deadly. We don’t know what’s causing it, haven’t...
The post A terrifying medical mystery in New Brunswick appeared first on The Big Story.
When Uber first arrived in Montreal, it wasn’t legal—but that didn’t stop it. And cabbies were angry, but little was being done at the government level, and police were rarely if ever enforcing the law. So one man decided to take the matter into his own hands, waging a war that, while ultimately unsuccessful, left...
The post Montreal’s Taxi Sheriff and a one-man war against Uber appeared first on The Big Story.
A comprehensive, Canada-wide study found that Canada has some of the highest levels of radon in homes in the world. Roughly half the homes tested failed to meet WHO standards, and even by Canada’s more lenient standards, one in five were above the threshold of what’s considered safe. The prairie provinces scored worst in the...
The post Does your home have dangerous levels of radon? appeared first on The Big Story.
About 40 percent of the Amazon packages delivered to Canada come through Ontario’s Peel Region. It manufactures almost everything. It’s where trucks get loaded up and head out across the country, full of everything. And for months now, it’s been on fire with Covid-19. Vulnerable workers in multigenerational homes, without sick days, bringing home the...
The post Inside Canada’s hottest hotspot: Why did it take so long to help Peel? appeared first on The Big Story.
Thousands of small businesses used the Canada Emergency Wage Subsidy to keep afloat and avoid laying off their staff. But they weren’t the only type of business to qualify for and receive the CEWS. Among some of the companies that took government money are companies that bounced back after a bad month, companies who fared...
The post What happened to the wage subsidies the government gave to businesses? appeared first on The Big Story.
It began with allegations of sexual misconduct, but it went beyond that into a bureaucratic tangle that left the alleged victim’s parents without justice, the RCMP spending hundreds of thousands to keep a constable on leave and an embarrassing look into an organization that badly needs to fix its policies. What went wrong in the...
The post A mountie has been on paid leave for 16 years. He’s not alone. appeared first on The Big Story.
When Ontario and Alberta decided they would stop giving the AstraZeneca vaccine as a first dose, part of the reasoning was an abundant supply of other vaccines. But that feels like cold comfort to Canadians who eagerly lined up because “the best shot you can get is the one in your arm” and now might...
The post Your complete vaccine rollout FAQ appeared first on The Big Story.
We are in the home stretch of this pandemic, even if you wouldn’t know it from anything Canadian officials tell you. Vaccines work, and hundreds of thousands of Canadians are getting theirs every day. We can look to the United Kingdom right now to see what happens when enough people get their shots. We know...
The post Why public health communications are an utter disaster appeared first on The Big Story.
The forest in question this time is a piece of land known as the Greenbelt. The highway, if it’s built, would be known as Hwy. 413. If you think this is just a story about Toronto—you’re wrong. The fight over Hwy. 413 has arrived at the federal government’s level. And how the government chooses to...
The post Forest vs. Highway: The eternal Canadian battle appeared first on The Big Story.
You know something’s gone wrong when the government is promising to amend their changes to the broadcasting act to make sure it doesn’t apply to, say, your personal Twitter feed. But that’s what the federal government had to do this week after public outcry surrounding Bill C-10. That is just one of the more obvious...
The post How the Liberals screwed up Bill C-10. And how they can fix it. appeared first on The Big Story.
How many strangers have you chatted with recently? Probably not a lot. And while your immediate reaction to that might be, “Great, I hate talking to strangers about nothing”—the research doesn’t back you up. Casual small talk plays a larger role in our well-being than we assume it does, and most of us are doing...
The post How are you? I am fine: What we lose without small talk appeared first on The Big Story.
A year ago we never would have imagined that humanity could collectively change its work habits so quickly, or that governments could unveil ambitious national programs so quickly. We all saw a silver lining last Spring when the global shutdown brought with it clearer waters and skies and a record drop in emissions. If we’re...
The post Did this pandemic teach us how to tackle the climate crisis? appeared first on The Big Story.
The Alberta Premier does not like restrictions, or telling people to stay home. His caucus likes that stuff even less. But the third wave of Covid-19, which is hammering Alberta thanks to looser restrictions than the rest of Canada, has left Kenney with no choice. Kenney hasn’t been tough enough on restrictions to contain Covid-19,...
The post As Alberta’s cases spike, Jason Kenney faces a no-win situation appeared first on The Big Story.
We have a certain image of the sort of person who reports encounters with Unidentified Flying Objects. It’s a … skeptical image, to put it mildly. And it couldn’t be further from the truth, at least according to the actual reports that are filed. And there are actual reports. Dozens of them. Filed by pilots...
The post Canadians are reporting UFO sightings. What happens with those reports? appeared first on The Big Story.
A year ago, as the pandemic’s first wave began to recede, British Columbia was held up as a shining example of a large Canadian province that managed to beat back Covid-19. Its top doctor, Bonnie Henry, was a hero and even something of a celebrity. A year later, all that has changed. BC has been...
The post How B.C. dodged Covid-19’s first wave, but got swamped by its third appeared first on The Big Story.
In neighbourhoods like Peel in Ontario, South Asian-Canadians are being impacted by Covid-19 at a much greater number than their share of the population. At the same time, many have friends and family in India, which is facing perhaps the worst outbreak of the entire global pandemic. As South Asian-Canadians in hotspots try to navigate...
The post For South Asian-Canadians, two pandemics at once appeared first on The Big Story.
You probably know already that most of the illegal guns in Canada come from the United States. But how much do you—or the police—really know about the long journeys they take to get here? Who’s buying them and moving them? How do they get across the border? Why aren’t more stopped before they can enter...
The post How do handguns get from American gun shows to the streets of Toronto? appeared first on The Big Story.
A rare side effect has dominated the discussion of the AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson vaccines. Some people have used the potential for blood clotting as a reason to “hold out” for other vaccines, even as the wait leaves them vulnerable to Covid-19. How realistic are their fears? What are we learning about this side...
The post A look at the science behind vaccines and blood clots appeared first on The Big Story.
Even people who have spent their lives covering governments of all stripes can’t recall a week like the one Ontario’s Progressive Conservative government has had. New restrictions, massive public blowback, and immediate reversal on some just-announced measures. Rising ICU numbers threatening to overwhelm the hospital system. Police forces publicly declining to enforce new tactics the...
The post Inside an unprecedented week in Ontario politics appeared first on The Big Story.
Picture the moment Covid-19 became real to you—when you left to work from home, or sports shut down, or someone you know got sick. How accurate is that memory? Now, what do you remember about the days, weeks and months that came afterward? When you tell these stories to your grandchildren one day, how will...
The post How our minds make lasting memories out of a pandemic haze appeared first on The Big Story.
In one week, the @VaxHuntersCan Twitter account has grown from a few thousand followers to more than 85,000. By the time you read this it may be close to 100,000. And that’s because the account has one simple mission: find available Covid-19 vaccination appointments in clinics, hospitals and pharmacies across Canada, and find people ready...
The post Canada’s Vaccine Hunters have tips to help you book your shot appeared first on The Big Story.
In the middle of a world gripped by plague, a major scientific discovery passed nearly unnoticed. If it’s verified, it means one of the most important models we use to understand particle physics is incomplete. And that would open a doorway to a world of things we can’t explain yet. If you’ve spent that past...
The post We may have just realized how little we understand about our universe appeared first on The Big Story.
In recent years, meditation has become a huge business in the western world—with millions of people testifying it has helped them calm their minds, improve their mood or even work through bouts of mental illness. There is no shortage of press about the positive effects of meditation on people, and there are plenty of studies...
The post Why does nobody talk about the dangers of meditation? appeared first on The Big Story.
Last weekend, protesters clashed with police over the closing of GraceLife Church in Alberta. It’s not the first time that houses of worship have been a flashpoint for anti-lockdown action. Why has religion, and in particular evangelical and fundamentalist Christianity been so opposed to restrictions on in-person gatherings, even in provinces run by conservatives? How...
The post Is in-person worship an essential service? appeared first on The Big Story.
In the late 1990s, it became clear that Canada’s health data systems would need to go digital. A thorough report was presented, the first of many to come, laying out what needed to happen for Canada to lead the world in digital health data. A national data system would track everything from outbreaks and symptoms...
The post Canada had a blueprint for an amazing health data system. We never built it. appeared first on The Big Story.
And also… bubbles are supposed to burst, aren’t they? At some point? It’s been more than half a decade since house prices in Canada began to truly climb, and that climb has accelerated even through a pandemic. It’s no longer just the big cities that are driving prices, either. It’s the smaller towns outside them—and...
The post Canada’s housing bubble is hitting smaller and smaller communities appeared first on The Big Story.
Have you ever been mistaken for somebody else by a stranger? They call you by another name and you say “Sorry, that’s not me.” And they say something like, “Oh, I’m sorry, you look just like them.” Sometimes, they might add with a smile, “Are you sure you’re not related?” And you say nope, and...
The post They were switched as babies, and found out decades later. And they aren’t alone. appeared first on The Big Story.
It’s been … a bad year for economies, to put it mildly. The jobless rate has risen just about everywhere. Small businesses across Canada have scratched and clawed to stay afloat. Larger businesses have fared better, but have also issued layoffs to compensate for loss of revenue. And even as vaccines roll out and the...
The post Even as the third wave rises, new businesses offer a glimpse at pandemic’s end appeared first on The Big Story.
You’ve probably never heard of Line 5. It’s an offshoot of Enbridge’s main pipeline and it moves more than a half-million barrels of crude oil and natural gas from Alberta, through the United States and back across the border to Sarnia, Ont. Unless the state of Michigan gets its way and shuts it down on...
The post The Line 5 pipeline: A disaster waiting to happen, or necessary to avoid an energy crisis? appeared first on The Big Story.
We all want this pandemic to be over. But it’s not. And vaccines alone won’t stop the third wave of Covid-19 that’s now rolling over much of Canada. The third wave is driven by variants, and you’ve probably heard them mentioned many times. But what are they? How are they worse than original Covid? What...
The post Is the third wave really “a new pandemic”? A Covid-19 Variant FAQ appeared first on The Big Story.
Most of us have been isolated for more than a year. Many of us, though, have been isolated for longer than that, and will feel it even more sharply when those of us who do have lots of friends and family can resume seeing them. Before there was a global pandemic, there was an epidemic...
The post How capitalism profits from an epidemic of loneliness appeared first on The Big Story.
It ramped up with Canada’s detention of a Huawei executive, and China’s retaliatory detention of two Canadian citizens. But it didn’t begin there. And tensions are not likely to end if and when Michael Spavor and Michael Kovrig, or Meng Wanzhou, are released. The truth is, the diplomatic relationship between us and the emerging superpower...
The post How Canada-China relations became strained to the breaking point appeared first on The Big Story.
Its name is the Ever Given. It will forever be a part of the history of this odd time. And when it lodged itself horizontally in the Suez Canal last week, it launched a thousand memes—but also brought global shipping and supply chains to the brink of disaster. How could such a simple screwup cause...
The post Ever Given: The stuck boat that was both a crisis and a comedy appeared first on The Big Story.
Picture the last story you read or heard about a woman killed by a man. Where did she live? How old was she? Why did you picture it that way? With much of 2020 spent under stay-at-home orders, it’s not a surprise that Canada saw a jump in femicide. But what is surprising is what...
The post Canada’s invisible victims of femicide appeared first on The Big Story.
For almost a year now, reporter Cynthia Mulligan has been staying in touch with people who caught Covid-19 early and survived, only to see their debilitating symptoms linger. What do their symptoms and experiences have in common? Not much, except for two things: None of them has fully recovered, and nobody has been able to...
The post What we know (and don’t know) about long-haul Covid appeared first on The Big Story.
Canada’s Supreme Court issued an historic ruling yesterday, deciding by a 6-3 margin the the federal government does indeed have the power to implement a carbon tax (or a price on pollution) in provinces that don’t set their own. The decision has implications on both sides of the fight, and on how future governments could...
The post What does the carbon tax ruling mean? appeared first on The Big Story.
A long time ago, an amenity in a condo was limited to things like a pool, a gym or maybe a patio. Now, as units grow smaller and developers court buyers, they’ve become more and more luxurious. You want a rock-climbing wall? Access to communal BMWs? A rooftop running track that lights up at night?...
The post How the condo amenity wars are changing Canadian cities appeared first on The Big Story.
The second graduating class of this pandemic is about to enter the workforce. There are still very few jobs and thousands of grads desperate for them. Plus, this year’s grads have the added benefit of an entire year without mentorships, extra-curricular activities or all the other ways young adults make themselves more attractive to recruiters....
The post Can we create a national plan to kickstart graduates’ careers? appeared first on The Big Story.
So, now the AstraZeneca vaccine is OK for people over age 65? What about the blood clot risk?! Why are some pharmacies taking walk-ins for people in their 60s right now, but some government portals are only booking for people 75 and up? Why is it suddenly alright to go four months between doses? Why...
The post Canada’s vaccine rollout is slow, and very confusing. Here are some answers. appeared first on The Big Story.
Hundreds of thousands of Canadians have lost loved ones to this pandemic. And most of them lost them without being able to say goodbye or to properly mourn them. Grief over a death is challenging at any time, but how are we coping without the two parts of the process that can offer us comfort....
The post Covid and grief: What happens when we can’t say goodbye? appeared first on The Big Story.
The Simpson family’s circumstances have barely changed at all over 30 years—but the world around them has dramatically shifted. When the show debuted, Homer and his family were holding onto the bottom rung of the lower class, and were portrayed that way through all sorts of financial crises. But by today’s standards, Homer—who has a...
The post How Homer Simpson became an aspirational figure appeared first on The Big Story.
For more than 12 months, Asian-Canadians and Asian-Americans have been targeted for harassment, assault and worse. In the early days of the pandemic, it was words. Then actions. Then violence. And all along they have found it difficult to get a real, comprehensive response from police or government—often being forced to document their own assaults...
The post A year of anti-Asian racism reaches its inevitable, tragic conclusion appeared first on The Big Story.
Dr. Jennifer Kwan is just one of dozens of ordinary Canadians who decided early in the pandemic to spend their free time presenting data on the virus to the masses via easy to understand charts. These unlikely dataviz experts have been integral to the general public’s familiarity with things like waves, exponential growth, positivity percentage...
The post How a family doctor helped Canadians understand COVID-19 appeared first on The Big Story.
And will Canada ever remove the monarchy? A week ago, it seemed like a tipping point was at hand, as the world reacted with shock and scorn to allegations of mistreatment and racism from Prince Harry and Meghan Markle in an interview with Oprah Winfrey. But what has happened since the interview aired? How did...
The post One week out, did Harry and Meghan’s interview really change anything? appeared first on The Big Story.
In 1994, a small Toronto church gave birth to a bizarre spiritual movement that spread across the country and the globe. It was known as the Toronto Blessing, and among its many eventual destinations was a church named Bethel in Redding, California. More than a quarter century later, Bethel is one of the most powerful—and...
The post How the Toronto Blessing helped build America’s most unusual church appeared first on The Big Story.
If there’s one thing this pandemic has taught us, it’s how poorly we care for our elders in Canada. The stories of the carnage in long-term care facilities have been endless and bleak. The gaps in the system have been laid bare for all to see. That’s the bad news. And it’s horrific. But the...
The post How we can fix elder care in Canada appeared first on The Big Story.
Once you’ve received your COVID-19 vaccine, you’ll also receive proof that you’ve got it. That’s not a new concept—we do it for children’s vaccinations all the time. The big question health organizations, governments and even businesses are currently contemplating though is what you’ll be able to do with it. Will you need proof of vaccination...
The post How will Canada (and the world) use immunity passports? appeared first on The Big Story.
It’s been a sign of spring for well over a century—baseball players heading down south to meet their teammates, toss around a few balls and play some meaningless games. In the grand scheme of things, not much about Spring Training matters, but it’s still become a symbol of rebirth, and the end of winter, to...
The post Why baseball means spring, and spring means hope (with bonus Blue Jays ASMR) appeared first on The Big Story.
It’s tax season! If you took any form of government COVID-19 relief this year, you’ve probably got all sorts of questions about how that impacts your return. If you didn’t, but you worked from home, you might be eligible for deductions you haven’t even considered. As tax season begins, the pros are being swamped with...
The post How COVID-19 will impact your taxes this year appeared first on The Big Story.
Since the 2008 financial crisis, the single-family rental industry has exploded in the United States, with massive companies buying up as many single-family homes as possible, and renting them out en masse. What that means is that millions of Americans now have megacorporations as their landlords—and that’s going about as well as you’d expect. And...
The post How a Canadian pension fund profits from American evictions appeared first on The Big Story.
Provinces are rolling out their vaccination plans for the general public, and they all seem pretty similar. After the initial push to vaccinate frontline health-care workers and residents of long-term care facilities, programs will proceed by age groups, starting with the 80+ cohort. It makes sense, as the elderly are most at risk from COVID-19....
The post Who are we vaccinating now? Who should be next? appeared first on The Big Story.
Temperatures are rising everywhere. Severe weather is becoming more common. And climate disasters are becoming an increasing part of our lives. So it can feel like we’re hurtling off a cliff. But in the past few years, we’ve also made incredible progress on reducing emissions, renewable energy and other efforts—so much so that the grimmest...
The post A note of optimism on the climate crisis appeared first on The Big Story.
What if your face could serve as your passport and identification? Does that sound convenient, or incredibly creepy and invasive? As advances in technology spread from pilot programs to wider use at borders around the world, there’s very little governing what agencies can and can’t do with the data they capture. And there’s almost no...
The post Would you let your face be your passport? appeared first on The Big Story.
The social media giant is currently negotiating with the Australian government—which is a big improvement from last week, when Facebook was blocking all links from Australian news media. In Canada, the federal government has indicated it will follow Australia’s lead in taxing Facebook and distributing the revenue to struggling news media. Facebook has no plans...
The post Is Canada’s government about to go to war with Facebook? appeared first on The Big Story.
You remember it, even if you’ve forgotten how to pronounce it. Oumuamua was a cigar-shaped object that passed through our inner solar system and mystified plenty of scientists. It didn’t fit any of the categories we have for space debris, comets or meteors. So what was it? Where did it come from? When will we...
The post Have we found proof of alien civilization? appeared first on The Big Story.
Over the past several years, vulnerable men have been disappearing from communities around Vancouver Island. They walk away, and then they are never seen again. Are they running? Have they gotten lost, and perished in the woods? Is there something more sinister happening? The host of Island Crime: Gone Boys, which launches on Monday, has...
The post Men have vanished on Vancouver Island. What happened to them? appeared first on The Big Story.
It could be a sign of the oncoming resource apocalypse. It could be a useful tool to determine the market value of regional water reserves. It could just be an experiment that goes no further than a small part of California. Or it could be the first domino to fall on the march towards commodifying...
The post What does it mean when water is traded as a commodity? appeared first on The Big Story.
One of Joe Biden’s first actions as President of the United States was to cancel the permit for the Keystone XL pipeline. And one of Alberta Premier Jason Kenney’s first reactions to Biden taking office was to get really mad about that. Alberta had a lot of money invested in this pipeline being built. They were counting on it for...
The post With no Keystone XL pipeline, what’s Alberta’s Plan B? appeared first on The Big Story.
The past 12 months have seen a flood of scientific misinformation on social media. Some of it is lies for profit. Some of it is myths and hoaxes for engagement. And a whole lot more of it is just unintentionally wrong—complex science parsed by scared amateurs in the middle of a terrifying pandemic. But it...
The post A team of experts plan to battle science disinformation head on appeared first on The Big Story.
A man in Montreal was found dead in a portable toilet. The shelter he often used had been temporarily closed for overnights due to a Covid-19 outbreak. The Canadian winter puts those without homes in danger every year—but Covid-19 has made it impossible for them to access many of the resources that can be lifesaving....
The post Homeless in the winter, in a pandemic. A deadly combination. appeared first on The Big Story.
He goes by Real Dr. 6ix. He has 140,000 followers on Instagram, where he posts before and after photos of his clients—and also graphic videos of surgeries he performs. And this is where the ethical trouble starts. There is a whole subculture of influencer surgeons who take their followers inside the operating room. Their patients...
The post Inside the world of Instagram surgeons appeared first on The Big Story.
The investors came from Reddit. They came in droves. They bought GameStop stock and sent it soaring. They cost massive hedge funds hundreds of millions of dollars. They sent shockwaves through the markets. Now a full-fledged mania is underway, with several other stocks in play as well. How did all this happen? Is it a...
The post What the heck just happened on Wall Street? appeared first on The Big Story.
Sometime soon, if all goes well, we’ll have four or even five approved vaccines for Covid-19. Do they work differently? Is there a “best” one, and will some Canadians hold out for that brand? How many eligible people are opting out of the early doses? Are reports of allergic reactions and even deaths following vaccination...
The post What Canadians do and don’t understand about Covid-19 vaccines appeared first on The Big Story.
He was known to have a fascination with the markets, court documents reveal. So when a retired officer began inviting others to join an investment group, many of them went along. And some of them saw a return on their money. For a while. What happens next offers a glimpse inside Ponzi schemes, internal investigations...
The post Inside the ‘Miami Group’: A policeman’s alleged Ponzi scheme appeared first on The Big Story.
Good morning. It’s Monday. It’s January. It’s cold. It’s dark. There’s a pandemic. If you have been following public health guidelines in many parts of the country, you probably went, roughly, nowhere this weekend. And saw nobody. And now it’s back to work. What responsibility do employers have for helping their employees with their mental health? What’s the business case...
The post What do employees need to work through a long, dark winter? appeared first on The Big Story.
There were no mass arrests, military tribunals or public executions. Donald Trump went to Florida and Joe Biden went to the White House and nothing ‘Q’ said actually happened. So once Biden was inaugurated, what did the QAnon army do? What happens to a movement when … nothing happens? Where do the followers, who have...
The post QAnon after Trump: The ‘Storm’ that never came appeared first on The Big Story.
Joe Biden will be sworn into office today, hopefully without incident. But in the United States, proponents of democracy are analyzing how close their own came to collapsing. When one party, or even just one powerful politician, decides to disregard norms that have always held fair elections together, it creates stress on a system not...
The post Is Canada’s democracy safer than America’s? appeared first on The Big Story.
Covid-19 devastated long-term care facilities across the country in the Spring of 2020. But over the summer months, many provinces found ways to reinforce the places that care for our most vulnerable. Ontario, however, did not. What did Quebec and other provinces do to mitigate the impact of the second wave on long-term care residents?...
The post Other provinces learned from the first wave. Ontario failed to protect long-term care residents. appeared first on The Big Story.
We’re now 10 months into a global pandemic and solidly into its second wave. And across the country, many workers are still not staying home when they’re sick—because they simply can’t afford to. Why don’t so many businesses offer their employees paid sick days? Why haven’t provincial governments mandated that they do? Why do critics...
The post Why do more than half of Canadians not have paid sick days? appeared first on The Big Story.
Most of us have spent the past year closer to home than ever before. And for a lot of Canadians part of that process has involved realizing just what their neighbourhood does and doesn’t have. Maybe it’s time to rethink how we create neighbourhoods, in order to maximize livability in our towns and cities. Maybe...
The post Can we build 15-minute cities where we live? appeared first on The Big Story.
Our host would be fine with never seeing another Donald Trump tweet ever. But is that fair? Is it a slippery slope? Social media companies, and other service providers, have the right to refuse service to anyone breaking the rules they promised to abide by — but not even the most left-wing voters would pretend...
The post Is free speech actually in danger online? appeared first on The Big Story.
Our parents warned us that the Internet could harm us—from stalkers to kidnappers, pedophiles, the dangers of too much screen time and countless other things—but did they heed their own lessons? Boomers lead the pack as the generation most likely to share disinformation, and over the past few months we’ve seen some of the results...
The post Is the internet breaking your parents’ brains? appeared first on The Big Story.
At the time it seemed like it might be the worst disaster of 2020. When Flight 752 was shot down in Iran, 176 passengers and crew, including 55 Canadians, were killed. In the months to come, the cries for answers would be drowned out by the rise of Covid-19, leaving the victims’ loved ones still...
The post “It’s like walking in darkness”: One year since Flight 752 appeared first on The Big Story.
The world watched as an angry mob stormed the US Capitol Wednesday. It was a scene few imagined we’d ever see—but it was also, somehow, inevitable. In the weeks since the election Donald Trump had been broadcasting his desire for his followers to take action. Then they did. The mob was cleared. Joe Biden’s win...
The post What now for America? And could it happen in Canada? appeared first on The Big Story.
The past year has been hard on all of us—but especially for those to whom we entrust our children. From a rush to online learning with schools closed, to a hasty back-to-school plan that was followed by rising Covid-19 numbers in schools, to the uncertainty of not knowing when or how they’ll be able to...
The post Teachers are doing their best. But they’re at the breaking point. appeared first on The Big Story.
In some parts of Canada—especially Ontario—hospitals are close to the breaking point. At the same time, tests are finding a variant of Covid-19 that may spread much faster than the usual virus. How worried should we be about what this means for the next several weeks? What do we know, and what don’t we know,...
The post How worried should you be about the new Covid-19 variant? appeared first on The Big Story.
This past week, Ontario broke its seven-day average Covid-19 case record. Its hospitals are nearly full. Its vaccine rollout is slow. And the government lost its finance minister, who became the first of several politicians around the country to be found travelling outside of Canada in the middle of the pandemic. When Covid-19 first hit...
The post Covid? Rising. Vaccines? Slow. Politicians? Travelling. Inside a bad month for Ontario appeared first on The Big Story.
Over the past ten months we’ve been accustomed to seeing our daily routines change in ways large and small. Covid-19 has popularized phrases from “in these unprecedented times” to X “will look a little different this year”. And for many Canadian families there is no annual tradition as profound as the holidays. And for those...
The post “Christmas is a little different this year”: An interview with Santa appeared first on The Big Story.
Ten months into this pandemic, after so many of us rediscovered how vital local news can be, there are even fewer local newsrooms in Canada than when it began. How did we end up here? What are we losing when small-town papers die? How is it possible this virus has made local news both more...
The post A pandemic makes local news more critical, but also more endangered appeared first on The Big Story.
It’s as ambitious as any Canadian government has been so far—but is it enough? A new climate plan rolled out by Justin Trudeau last week takes aim at some real metrics for change. So how would it directly impact your life, and your wallet? What else is the government doing to move us into the...
The post Is Canada’s new climate plan finally getting serious? appeared first on The Big Story.
A moratorium on evictions in Ontario was once part of Premier Doug Ford’s plan to “make sure you and your family can stay in your home during this difficult time.” But that moratorium didn’t last forever and the past month has seen a torrent of virtual eviction hearings, with tenants often left frustrated, confused and...
The post ‘Tis the season for mass evictions? appeared first on The Big Story.
There will always be a group of people who flatly refuse to get vaccinated, and public health messages probably won’t convince them. But there are far, far more Canadians who might get vaccinated, but are nervous of what they see as a potential risk. In some online communities, misinformation about Covid-19 vaccines, as well as...
The post As vaccination begins, how can we convince hesitant Canadians to take the shot? appeared first on The Big Story.
Welcome to the newest era of consumer capitalism. It’s dominated by ‘Blands’ — clean, sleek, online products that bill themselves as the handcrafted little guy here to disrupt the giant corporations. They have origin stories. They care about values and design. And they’re unique—except they’re all exactly the same. From toothbrushes to mattresses, health insurance...
The post Have you ever purchased a ‘Bland’? appeared first on The Big Story.
Middle Class is a term that comes from the 1950s, and while the economics surrounding it have changed fundamentally in 70 years, the goals and hopes and dreams of the people that belong to it have not. How long can that continue? What does a modern Middle Class look like? What should they aspire to?...
The post What will the ‘Middle Class’ of the 2020s look like? appeared first on The Big Story.
An investigation into an allegation of a racist game being played by hospital staff turned into a detailed report about system racism in British Columbia’s health care system. The province has vowed to take action, but Indigenous people have heard those promises before. What will it take to really transform the system? How will the...
The post Will BC’s government fix the racism in its health care system? appeared first on The Big Story.
This is the time of year when Canadians traditionally up their giving. But a lot of that tends to happen in person. This year, Covid-19 has made that tough. And the big picture isn’t much better: In a year of economic hardship, fewer Canadians have money to spare for charity, and more Canadians than usual...
The post Covid-19 has hit Canadian charities where it hurts appeared first on The Big Story.
We have more doses on order per capita than any other nation. But we also have no real domestic production capacity. If you ask the Liberals, we’re among the world leaders in terms of when Canadians can expect to be vaccinated. If you ask the Conservatives, we’re well behind our peer countries already. Who is...
The post What we do and don’t know about Covid-19 vaccines for Canadians appeared first on The Big Story.
It’s a cycle that repeats itself in many ecosystems where humans live: Harmony, profit, imbalance and then a desperate need to fix things. When wild salmon runs around Wuikinuxv, BC, dwindled to almost nothing, the local grizzly bears grew hungry — and dangerous to humans. Now the salmon are returning, but the community must find...
The post A delicate balance between humans, bears and fish appeared first on The Big Story.
Last week Vancouver’s City Council voted unanimously to ask the federal government for an exemption that would allow the city to decriminalize small amounts of all drugs. The move comes amidst a surge in the overdose crisis that has killed more Vancouver citizens than Covid-19. The city is looking at anything it can do to...
The post Vancouver wants to decriminalize all drugs. Will it happen? Will it help? appeared first on The Big Story.
One thing people around the game who know Kim Ng agree on is that she should have had a top job long ago. But considering baseball’s legacy of promoting ex-players, many doubted the day would ever come. In November, the Florida Marlins made Ng the first female general manager in the history of the game....
The post Who is the woman who broke baseball’s glass ceiling? appeared first on The Big Story.
It seemed like a prank posted to social media—but there are witnesses who confirmed that the advertised fight night between McGill University students actually happened. Nobody was hurt, and it might have been a harmless enough story, but it illustrates the challenges first-year students are facing this year in dorms that they joke have become...
The post Sometimes you have to talk about Fight Club appeared first on The Big Story.
The irresponsible and illegal opening of an Etobicoke, Ontario BBQ joint this week ended Thursday when the owner was finally arrested. But in the Toronto area, it remains to be seen if he’ll be the last person to defy the province’s regulation. There’s no excuse for breaking the law and endangering public health, but the...
The post Small businesses are desperate and angry, and close to ruin appeared first on The Big Story.
For the first six months of the pandemic, Alberta was one of the best provinces in Canada at containing Covid-19. Then it all went wrong. This week alone, the province had a day in which its case count was higher than Ontario’s, despite having barely a third its population. How did it all fall apart...
The post How Alberta’s Covid-19 control crashed and burned appeared first on The Big Story.
Halton Hills is just over an hour’s drive from Toronto. Many of its residents have been working from home for months. Issues were first raised about its internet connectivity 15 years ago—and many households struggle to get reliable connections today. As the pandemic pushes everything online, regions in rural Canada struggle to keep up. And...
The post “Rural” Canada is not far from the city, and the internet still sucks appeared first on The Big Story.
Families have spent the past eight months in closer quarters than ever before. But what about people who share a home and aren’t related or dating one another? How are roommates negotiating the many precarious situations that have arisen from sharing a house amid a pandemic? With more younger adults living in roommate situations later...
The post Roommates and the global pandemic appeared first on The Big Story.
We want elderly Canadians, who are heightened risk from Covid-19, to be safe. For much of the past eight months, that has meant hundreds of thousands of grandparents haven’t seen their grandkids, parents haven’t seen their children, or their siblings — and for many of them, this has harmed them as much as a bout...
The post What will happen to Canadian seniors this winter? appeared first on The Big Story.
As you might imagine, QAnon supporters believed that Donald Trump would handily win reelection. When he didn’t, it blew a hole in the conspirac–hah, of course it didn’t. New theories popped up to take its place, new ‘loaves’ were baked. New enemies were found. What can we learn from how the world’s most dangerous conspiracy...
The post How is QAnon coping with Trump’s loss? appeared first on The Big Story.
The proposal is called the Great Barrington Declaration, and while it’s couched in lots of scientific language, herd immunity is what it boils down to. It has support from a group of scientists and is scoffed at by many, many more. But during a time when Canada’s various Covid-19 regulations, thresholds, protocols and half-lockdowns can...
The post What happens when we’re tempted by herd immunity in a dark winter appeared first on The Big Story.
At least in the spring, there was a summer to come and some sort of certainty — restaurants would stay closed until Covid-19 was under control. This Fall, in most places in Canada, neither of those things are true. Opening plans and case thresholds are constantly shifting, while cities and provinces have different opinions about...
The post How will restaurants survive the winter? appeared first on The Big Story.
The territory went more than seven months as the last Covid-19-free spot in North America, but the past weeks have seen one case turn into a couple of dozen. Why did the bubble work so well for so long? What are the unique dangers the virus poses to Northern communities? How will officials try to...
The post How Nunavut’s bubble finally popped appeared first on The Big Story.
This is the finale of our five-part series in partnership with The Narwhal. Scientists have found protecting nature can provide more than one-third of the emissions reductions required to meet the world’s 2030 climate targets, thrusting Canada — home to 25 per cent of the planet’s wetlands and boreal forests — into the hot seat....
The post Can carbon caches help us preserve a moderate climate? appeared first on The Big Story.
This is part four of a five-part series in collaboration with The Narwhal. There are no viable solutions to stop the tide of selenium leaching into Canadian and U.S. water from a 100-kilometre stretch of coal mines near Elk Valley, B.C., which are owned and operated by mining giant Teck Resources. Deformed fish, a potential...
The post It starts with a trout, and ends up a growing disaster appeared first on The Big Story.
This is part three of a five-part series in collaboration with The Narwhal. Alberta’s oil and gas workers can be underrepresented — or even maligned — in conversations about an energy transition in Canada. The Narwhal met with former oil and gas workers to learn more about their lives and personal reasons for transitioning to...
The post As oil and gas declines, where do the workers go? appeared first on The Big Story.
This is part two of a five-part series in collaboration with The Narwhal. Canada’s westernmost province markets itself as ‘Super, Natural, B.C.,’ but more than 2,000 species of animals and plants are at risk of disappearing — and unlike six other provinces, British Columbia still has no endangered species law, despite the NDP’s election promise...
The post B.C.’s looming extinction crisis appeared first on The Big Story.
This is part one of a five-part series in collaboration with The Narwhal. Two communities — one in Canada, one in the U.S. — share both a border along the St. Marys River and a toxic legacy that has contributed to high rates of cancer. Now the towns are banding together to fight a ferrochrome...
The post “Them plants are killing us.” appeared first on The Big Story.
As of Wednesday night, things looked relatively positive for Joe Biden’s bid for the presidency. But Donald Trump’s team is filing lawsuits, demanding recounts, or halted counts, and looks like it plans to scrap tooth and nail to win the election in the courts no matter the results on the ground. How successful that attempt...
The post While America counts, the world waits to exhale appeared first on The Big Story.
No, the US election is not what spawned this question. New research in a field called ‘simulation theory’ pegs the odds that we’re just AI creations in somebody’s supercomputer at about 50-50. Really? How can we possibly determine this? What does simulation theory propose? What evidence do we have? Will we ever really find out?...
The post Are we living in a simulation? appeared first on The Big Story.
Is Democracy on the ballot in the American election tonight? How real is the threat of violence at the polls? What happens if Donald Trump squeaks out a reelection victory? What happens if Joe Biden blows him out but Trump refuses to concede? What could the courts do with a close election? And what does...
The post What to expect when American democracy is at stake appeared first on The Big Story.
In a normal year, the start of November would mark the beginning of the prestige movie push, with award hopefuls, franchise films and feel-good family flocks crowding theatres. This year though, there’s almost nothing left on the calendar and the top-grossing box office list features rereleases of films from the 1990s. Hollywood has been hoarding...
The post How long can Hollywood stay in limbo? appeared first on The Big Story.
It was perfect timing, really, for OnlyFans. The website was growing in popularity because it allowed people to charge followers for exclusive content, and it didn’t forbid pornography. And then the pandemic hit, and basically every mainstream porn studios had to shut down, and the performers flocked to OnlyFans as a way to keep their...
The post Porn and the Pandemic: A study in adaptability appeared first on The Big Story.
You might think that it’s gang-related shootings in Toronto that drive gun-violence statistics in the province. You’d wind up surprised. A new study examined in detail firearms-related injuries and deaths in Ontario for 15 years, from 2002-2016. What the authors found was that while urban gun violence drives headlines, a larger part of the problem...
The post Where is Ontario’s real gun violence epidemic? appeared first on The Big Story.
Our government has spent hundreds of billions of dollars supporting Canadians through this pandemic. They’re deep in debt—but how worried should they be? Traditional economic policy would have the Liberals reign in spending and make some cuts as soon as they can to try to mitigate the damage. Otherwise we might find ourselves hit by...
The post Should Canada worry about a huge deficit? appeared first on The Big Story.
Annamie Paul made history earlier this month when she became the first Black woman to lead a Canadian party when she became the successor to Elizabeth May. Now that the party is hers though, where is she going to take it? How can she bring the Green Party’s branding beyond “the environment”? How will her...
The post Meet the new leader of Canada’s Green Party appeared first on The Big Story.
It’s called Six Mile Beach, and it sits in a remote part of British Columbia. It’s not on any of the tourism brochures. You need to know how to find it to get there, but once you do, it’s stunningly beautiful. You can stand well out from shore and a sand bar makes it feel...
The post A trip to a beautiful little deadly beach appeared first on The Big Story.
Not your pocket change, either. We’re talking about thousands of dollars in a no-strings-attached payment. A project in British Columbia did just that, and then followed 50 homeless people (as well as a control group that received nothing at all) for a year to discover what came next. The results of the study are making...
The post What happens when you give homeless people money? appeared first on The Big Story.
Trick or Treating is cancelled in some Ontario hotspots, and it’s easy to be upset on behalf of the kids and wonder why. After all, we’ve been told the safest things are done outside, wearing masks. This seems like something that kids—who are also in closed school rooms all week—should be allowed to do. And...
The post How Halloween highlights the COVID-19 communication paradox appeared first on The Big Story.
For almost two years an investigative team has been digging into into claims of child sexual assault by priests who belong to a Canadian Catholic order known as the Basilian Fathers. The results of their work form Unrepentant, a film that includes firsthand accounts from victims of abuse, the near-murder of an accused pedophile, the...
The post Alleged abuse, coverups and years of trauma: Inside the legacy of the Basilian Fathers appeared first on The Big Story.
In the early days of the pandemic, it was fun to compare crude work-from-home setups. Eight months later, with no end in sight, the novelty is long gone. What’s changed about the traditional career over the past year? How can workers do more than try to get through the day and move on with their...
The post Remote work has been about survival. What’s happened to careers? appeared first on The Big Story.
Most Canadians didn’t learn much about slavery in Canada in history class. Curriculums in this country have mostly focused on the Underground Railroad and largely glossed over the fact that slavery was legal here. That history explains much about the blatant racism that still exists in this country today, but it also explains far less...
The post How Canada’s legacy of slavery lingers on today appeared first on The Big Story.
Unless you’re lucky enough to live in some of the areas of Canada that are largely free of Covid-19, you’re likely staring down a long few months spent isolated from most of the community, and spent largely inside your house. The case numbers are rising. We’re told it’s not safe to socialize indoors and...
The post How to prepare for a winter in lockdown appeared first on The Big Story.
You have heard plenty of dire predictions and seen hundreds of horrible photographs. The Earth is in trouble, there’s no doubt. But when coverage of climate change always focuses on so-called “disaster porn”, it can create a self-fulfilling prophecy. How can reporters covering the very real danger we’re facing avoid fostering a sense of inevitability...
The post Climate change reporting needs hope as well as fear appeared first on The Big Story.
Our neighbour is in trouble. Whatever the results of the American election on November 3, there’s only a small chance they won’t be contested. The upheaval could last for months. It could get violent. It could fracture America. All of this obviously impacts Canada, so what are we doing to prepare? What should we be...
The post “All we can do is brace for impact”: Canada plans for US political chaos appeared first on The Big Story.
Many of us take pride in Canada’s diversity—but not all of us embrace it. And critics cite large numbers when discussing immigration policy. What that does is take the power of individual stories out of the equation. A new podcast examines the refugee journey through one man’s harrowing journey across borders and an ocean to...
The post What one refugee’s journey can tell us about Canada appeared first on The Big Story.
The federal government may not be working towards decriminalization of banned substances, but if you follow the proper procedures, as some churches have, you can receive permission to import and use them. Recently a church in Winnipeg became the latest organization to receive permission to use daime tea, a psychedelic substance also known as ayahuasca....
The post How some churches get permission to use illegal drugs appeared first on The Big Story.
If all goes well, sometime in the next six months, one of the many Covid-19 vaccine candidates will receive approval for human use. It will be a day to celebrate. The end of the pandemic will at long last be in sight. But what happens next? Who gets the first doses? The second batch? How...
The post How do you vaccinate an entire planet? appeared first on The Big Story.
You’re a good citizen, so you probably toss your plastic into the recycling bin. Especially if it has those little recycling arrows on it. Why wouldn’t you? Public service campaigns have been telling you to do this forever. But what if those campaigns were a lie, designed to make you feel better about the plastic...
The post Have you been sold a lie about recycling? appeared first on The Big Story.
September was a month for rising COVID-19 case counts in British Columbia. October will be a month for an election. Why now? That depends on who you ask. The NDP claim they need a mandate to govern more responsively during a pandemic. Their opponents say it’s a power grab because the NDP’s poll numbers are...
The post B.C. is going to the polls during a pandemic. Why? appeared first on The Big Story.
Cases are increasing exponentially. Hospital admissions are beginning to follow them. The doctors who oversee ICUs are nervous. And the public is looking for clear rules they can follow—only those seem to vary by public health unit. Dr. Michael Warner runs an ICU in Toronto. He can see the line from his hospital’s COVID-19 assessment...
The post On the front lines as COVID-19 surges in Ontario appeared first on The Big Story.
If you think that parents are nervous about Back To School, imagine how the kids are feeling. You’re going back to school, or maybe trying to learn from home. You’re not allowed to hang out with your friends except with masks and at a distance, yet you’re still supposed to share rooms with them. Your...
The post How are kids coping with Covid-19 and school? appeared first on The Big Story.
Last week, an unlikely research project made a startling discovery: Phosphine gas in the atmosphere of Venus. That’s something that, as far as we know, is created by living organisms. Our efforts to find signs of life on other worlds, and a lot of our space dreaming in general, tend to focus on Mars. But...
The post Is there really life on Venus? How do we find out? appeared first on The Big Story.
Since the beginning of the pandemic, Quebec police estimate threats made against public officials are up about 400 percent. Most of the people arrested for making those threats show evidence of believing in conspiracy theories. In fact, belief in these theories, as well as distrust in the mainstream media, is rising quickly in the province....
The post How conspiracy theories exploded in Quebec appeared first on The Big Story.
It’s not Donald Trump’s fault. He’s just an accelerant. America has been churning towards a crisis of democracy for decades. Our guest today created a model that predicted the 2020s would be the ultimate test for the future of America. The crisis point is here, so how will America respond? And what does it mean...
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On this show, we usually talk to experts—and that means during Covid-19 we’ve been speaking with doctors and infectious disease specialists, researchers and scientists, pundits and journalists, but not very often with average Canadians. Fortunately, someone has been. A new documentary that airs tonight follows several Canadians through the past six months, and takes us...
The post A look inside Canadians’ lives during a pandemic appeared first on The Big Story.
In 1988, Toronto lawyer Clayton Ruby represented the family of a young man named Michael Wade Lawson. Though neither Ruby, the family or anyone else involved at the time knew it, it’s a case that’s had a profound impact on how police forces in Canada’s largest province do—and don’t—hold themselves accountable. Michael Wade Lawson, you see, was 17—a young...
The post The case that gave birth to Ontario’s Special Investigations Unit appeared first on The Big Story.
This November, accused killer Alek Minassian will face trial for the 2018 Toronto van attack that killed 10 people and injured 16. In the aftermath of that attack, we learned that Minassian subscribed to the incel ideology—which has been linked to mass killings around the world. Incels entered the public consciousness as lonely people obsessed...
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There are a lot of things that provincial back-to-school guidelines don’t cover—because they can’t. Every school is different, and so are the neighbourhoods they serve. And as students return, teachers and administrators often need answers, quickly, to problems they couldn’t have foreseen. This is where a new program led by hospitals and doctors in Toronto’s...
The post How hospitals are helping teachers as kids return to school appeared first on The Big Story.
It’s been 25 years since the Ipperwash crisis and the killing of Dudley George. Long enough that there’s a generation that doesn’t remember it—but they have plenty of examples of modern-day land defenders standing up against the government. But the original protesters, who took back land the government had promised to return to them 50...
The post They defended their land, then the government abandoned them appeared first on The Big Story.
Are you addicted to the news? Don’t lie! It’s understandable. This year has been hard, and everything feels like a crisis sometimes, and some of us can’t look away. Not knowing what’s happening in the world at all is not an option, but what if we don’t have to know everything absolutely immediately? Is it...
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It’s been a chaotic and eventful—and still not yet close to done—return to schools across Canada. A majority of parents have chosen to return their kids to the classroom. Other have opted for remote learning either by necessity or preference. And then there are the private pods—small bubbles of a few families, taught by a...
The post Back to school for some. Private learning pods for others. appeared first on The Big Story.
In a large house, in a very nice area of Toronto, in the 1970s and 80s, there lived a normal family: Mom, dad, kids. Roughly thirty kids, actually, most of them adopted from all over the worlds. Thirty kids with different languages, needs, dreams and personalities. Why did they do it? What happened when they did? What kind...
The post A story about the family that just kept growing appeared first on The Big Story.
When SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy took off from a NASA launchpad this year, it marked a new era of manned spaceflight, one in which private businesses have as much of a stake in success as government space agencies. But have we stopped along the way to think about the ramifications of that? What rules do companies...
The post Will outer space become the new Wild West? appeared first on The Big Story.
A lot of Canadians are obese. That’s a fact. But a lot of the things you think you know about that fact—why they’re obese, how they could lose weight, what they need to hear from their doctors—just aren’t true. Last month Canada unveiled a new set of guidelines for treating obesity, and the biggest headline...
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It was a program created at unimaginable speed under incredible circumstances. And it has helped millions of Canadians. But six months later—two months longer than initially planned—the federal government is ending the Canada Emergency Response Benefit. So what’s next? Expanded EI qualifications, new programs for those who don’t qualify for EI and other efforts aimed...
The post Your guide to government benefits after the CERB appeared first on The Big Story.
One of the goals of the movement to defund the police is to limit a police force’s ability to acquire expensive, military-style equipment. Even if that movement is successful, however, the police have other ways of funding their purchases. It doesn’t get much attention, but police foundations across Canada have in recent years used money...
The post How police use private donations to buy big-ticket items appeared first on The Big Story.
It’s already something some people try to avoid—and the thought of spending hours in a courtroom with others, masked or not, doesn’t make jury duty any more appealing. But jury trials are returning this month, and so jury questionnaires are already on the way to mailboxes. But what’s being done to keep jurors safe? To...
The post Would you do jury duty in a pandemic? appeared first on The Big Story.
The practice of solitary confinement in Canada had been found to violate inmates’ human rights. The government had been given a year to fix it, and last December, the year was almost up. Since then, a lot has changed in the world. But it seems not a lot has changed in our prison system. And if anything...
The post Inside the Trudeau government’s own-goal on solitary confinement appeared first on The Big Story.
It sucks to think about cold weather and flu season when BBQs and beaches are still on the menu, but that’s the life of epidemiologists during a global pandemic. School starts next week. Fall is almost here. We’ve learned a lot about Covid-19 since February but have we used that knowledge to prepare for an...
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A special episode of the Big Story looks at what has happened in sports over the past 48 hours and asks a question: If it isn’t business as usual, and talking won’t get things done, what will? GUEST: None.
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You’ve probably lived most of your life with rising income inequality. The rich steadily get richer while the rest of us just try to keep up. It’s difficult sometimes to keep in mind that it wasn’t always this way; that this is a choice we made—maybe not us, but the people we put in power. What...
The post How the pandemic poured gas on the income inequality fire appeared first on The Big Story.
He loves Top Gun, but he admits he’s not Maverick. He courted the social conservative vote, then turned around and made a play for moderates. He wants a more inclusive Conservative Party of Canada, but he won’t budge on the carbon tax. How did Erin O’Toole pull off the upset victory? What’s his vision for...
The post Who is Erin O’Toole? And should Justin Trudeau be worried? appeared first on The Big Story.
The past six months have featured a lot of speculation about what the pandemic has done to the average workday for those lucky enough to have a job that can be done at home. Now we have some real data on how the lives of millions of workers have changed. Are we working more or...
The post Now we know how COVID-19 has changed the workday appeared first on The Big Story.
Anne With An E is a reimagining of Lucy Maude Montgomery’s Anne of Green Gables tales. It ran for three seasons, and then got cancelled. And the fans took it personally. This isn’t a conversation about Anne With An E, though, it’s a conversation about what happens when popular culture becomes a political identity. GUEST: John Semley
The post What ‘Anne With An E’ fans taught us about cultural politics appeared first on The Big Story.
You probably first heard it from the mouth of a losing coach or player—but that’s not where it came from. You may have noticed that US President Donald Trump used it to brush off 150,000 dead Americans, and everything that happened afterwards. It’s a phrase that means almost nothing, yet is used to describe everything....
The post What is “It is what it is”? appeared first on The Big Story.
In most places, restaurants can reopen for indoor dining—with a whole lot of restrictions. But with limited seating available, it’s going to be impossible for most places to sustain their business on diners alone. And most of us don’t feel great about going right back to a restaurant anyway. So…what next? As awful as COVID-19...
The post What does the future of dining out look like? appeared first on The Big Story.
What the Toronto Raptors are attempting has never been done before—they’re trying to shed a superstar and get even better. When the reigning champs begin the NBA Playoffs Monday against Brooklyn, they’ll do so with a better winning percentage than they managed with Kawhi Leonard shutting down opponents and filling the bucket. What makes this...
The post The Raptors are back, and ready to repeat. Here’s why this team is unique. appeared first on The Big Story.
There are lots of reasons schools should open in the fall. From parents’ sanity and productivity to the fact that without the childcare schools provide, working parents are basically screwed and economic recovery is impossible. But there’s another assumption that we make when discussing sending kids back in September: That going back will be the...
The post What if Back to School isn’t the best option for kids? appeared first on The Big Story.
Ontario’s premier won a landslide election in 2018, but by the end of last year his approval rating was underwater. It’s fair to say that when COVID-19 began, Ontarians were skeptical of his leadership. Six months later, though, Ford’s approval is sky high. So what happened? Did Ford rise to the challenge or just beat...
The post Doug Ford Vs. The Pandemic appeared first on The Big Story.
Dead sea lions turn up from time to time on beaches in British Columbia. That’s not unusual. Recently though they’ve been found missing their heads. And yes, that’s the strange part. But not the strangest part. What or who, took their heads? Before or after they died? Why? What happened to the heads after they were severed? And...
The post Why are headless sea lions being found on B.C.’s beaches? appeared first on The Big Story.
It’s worth looking, every so often, at the stories of 2020 that haven’t gotten much attention because of the…raging global pandemic, furious protests against police brutality and racism, the never-ending saga of Donald Trump somehow being President of the United States and the general 2020 news like murder hornets, plane crashes and catastrophic global warming. It’s been a...
The post Aliens in 2020: Is the truth finally out there? appeared first on The Big Story.
When they’re going through elementary and high school, nobody asks these children and teens about their immigration status. That’s policy in our system. When they graduate however, even if they’ve got straight ‘A’s, post-secondary education is just about impossible. So some of our brightest young people leave school, and take up under-the-table jobs in factories...
The post Meet Canada’s ‘Dreamers’ and the barriers they face appeared first on The Big Story.
There’s a ton of good news about various Covid-19 vaccine trials moving to Phase Three. What does that actually mean? Some companies might even begin production now, hoping for positive results, in order to meet global demand should the vaccine be proven to work. Politicians keep touting early 2021 as a target, but… What do...
The post How close are we to a Covid-19 vaccine, really? appeared first on The Big Story.