The Big Story

After a fire forced their high school to close, the Toronto District School Board decided to relocate the roughly 900 students and teachers from York Memorial Collegiate Institute to the nearby George Harvey Collegiate Institute. But George Harvey wasn't equipped to absorb all those new kids, and students showed up in September to find a school that was over-crowded, under-staffed and unsafe for t...

If you're a newer listener to The Big Story, you may not know about The Gravy Train, a podcast we released in 2019 chronicling the meteoric rise, and tragic downfall of Toronto's most notorious mayor, Rob Ford.  With Toronto in the midst of its first wide-open mayoral race since 2010, we thought now would be an opportune time to revisit this narrative, which captures a moment in politics with some...

You know how sometimes you notice that it's eerily quiet? That's because we're so accustomed to the background noise of life in a city of any size, that sudden silence catches our attention. From cars and trucks to neighbours and kids, modern appliances to incessant TV, music or videos, we rarely have a silent waking moment. New research is beginning to discover exactly what that's doing to us, an...

Right now, Canada is working on a process to improve our tracking and reporting of sightings of Unidentified Flying Objects. In late May, NASA and the US Department of Defence help a joint public meeting, where it was revealed that the Five Eyes—an alliance of intelligence agencies including the US and Canada—held a private forum about the sightings, which have included, specifically, metallic orb...

This is an immigrant's story. A Canadian story. A mystery. Six months ago, Eduardo Malpica went missing after a night at a bar in Trois-Rivières, Quebec. Last week, his body was pulled from the St. Lawrence RIver. Was he hurt by men he argued with outside the bar? Did he wander off, embarrassed and drunk, and kill himself? Was his drink spiked? Nobody's sure. But Malpica came from nothing, built a...

Two weeks ago, special rapporteur David Johnston said nothing would stop him from completing his work investigating foreign interference in Canadian politics. Friday, he stopped. A surprise resignation meant a weekend of confusion in Canadian politics, followed by a chaotic Monday when the house resumed. Why did Johnston quit? Will Canada now finally get the public inquiry many have lobbied for? W...

Sam Altman, the CEO of Open AI, the company behind ChatGPT, has co-founded a cryptocurrency project called Worldcoin, which is currently scanning people's eyeballs using an orb and digitizing their irises for use as identification. Currently more than 1.8 million people have had their irises scanned in exchange for the promise of some Worldcoin later (it doesn't exist yet), local currency, or smal...

If you're a newer listener to The Big Story, you may not know about The Gravy Train, a podcast we released in 2019 chronicling the meteoric rise, and tragic downfall of Toronto's most notorious mayor, Rob Ford.  With Toronto in the midst of its first wide-open mayoral race since 2010, we thought now would be an opportune time to revisit this narrative, which captures a moment in politics with some...

Right now, the federal government is reviewing the laws that made recreational pot legal in Canada. Everything is theoretically on the table, even if the basics of the act are unlikely to change much. But there are things we could fix that would make the system work better—and more fairly—for everyone. From the pardon process to the makeup of the industry and who gets licenses and sits on boards,...

For the past few years, orcas off the coast of Portugal and Spain have been attacking, and sinking, small boats. At least three boats have been completely sunk, and many more have needed urgent rescue. This behaviour doesn't occur in other orcas, and nobody can figure out exactly what's changed. There are some theories regarding trauma, or differences in their habitat. There are very real things c...

For the past few weeks, military analysts have been expecting a Ukrainian offensive in the conflict with Russia, one that might the tables on the Russians, break past the front lines and bring the war home to the aggressors. That offensive might still happen, but a more immediate problem emerged Tuesday—a collapsed dam releasing a torrent of water, endangering civilians, military, home and infrast...

In the grips of a deadly emergency, Canada's health care system stood on its head. It's what the people who sign up to save lives do. But after three years of fending off both a virus and systemic problems, our capacity is at an all-time low. ERs are closing—some temporarily, some permanently. Family doctors in some places are impossible to find. In Lethbridge, AB there is precisely one OB-GYN for...

A policy in New Brunswick that took 10 years to create, and was implemented by a Conservative government three years ago, is now being “reviewed” by that same government. Policy 713 was designed to provide safety for LGBTQIA+ kids in public schools, from washroom use to students being able to change their names or pronouns without parental contact. Premier Blaine Higgs has been vague about what th...

If you're a newer listener to The Big Story, you may not know about The Gravy Train, a podcast we released in 2019 chronicling the meteoric rise, and tragic downfall of Toronto's most notorious mayor, Rob Ford.  With Toronto in the midst of its first wide-open mayoral race since 2010, we thought now would be an opportune time to revisit this narrative, which captures a moment in politics with some...

Last week it was The Little Mermaid. The week before that, the tenth Fast and Furious movie. Soon, it will be Spider-Man and then Barbie's turn. Until the next comic book movie shows up. Reboots, remakes and familiar characters can sometimes feel like the only things on screen. They're not, of course. They just get all the marketing money. What began as a profitable sideline for Hollywood has come...

They were born in the early days of Facebook. Now they're becoming adults and have spent the past few years realizing just how much of their lives their parents turned into content—in many cases, embarrassing, humiliating content. And they don't own or control any of it. Some of these kids have convinced their parents to remove it. In some cases it has fractured the relationship. Some of them have...

Canadian households owe more in debt than the total of Canada's GDP. That's first among the G7 and near the top of all the world's developed countries. And as the cost of living increases, if we can't afford to service that debt, things could get bad, quickly. How did we get ourselves into this situation? Why do we see household debt as a moral failing instead of the product of the country's econo...

It happened so, so fast. Less than an hour after the first spark, thousands were evacuating, and crews were racing to close thew roads behind them on their way out. One of the fastest fires the province has ever seen was just outside the city, in no time at all. Since yesterday afternoon, more than 14,000 people have been evacuated, resources have been deployed fro other provinces—at least those t...

It's a rarely used program—little-known and tough to qualify for—that allows children under five to live inside Canadian women's prisons with their mothers. And a look inside those prisons at the moms and their kids offers a glimpse we don't often get inside Canada's institutions. How does this program work? Is it better for the kids than living outside prison, but without their moms? Who can qual...

If you're a newer listener to The Big Story, you may not know about The Gravy Train, a podcast we released in 2019 chronicling the meteoric rise, and tragic downfall of Toronto's most notorious mayor, Rob Ford.  With Toronto in the midst of its first wide-open mayoral race since 2010, we thought now would be an opportune time to revisit this narrative, which captures a moment in politics with some...

Harm reduction programs in general tend to be divisive, but safe supply might be the most controversial of them all. It involves providing drug users with, well, drugs—in the hopes they won't use more dangerous ones. The programs have been criticized by politicians, "exposed" in long newspaper features and serve as an easy target for anyone focused on "getting users off drugs" as a strategy to fig...

The climate is changing, so wildfires are changing too. The "unprecedented" fires of the past few weeks, won't be unprecedented when they happen again, and again. And the conditions that created them aren't going away. But we aren't helpless against them. The way we fight fires is changing, too. From earlier detection, more accurate predictions, a different approach to management and ways to get b...

Despite the controversy dominating federal politics for months now, Canadians will not get a public inquiry about Chinese government interference into our democracy and elections. That's one of the takeaways from former Governor General David Johnston's report on the affair, which was released yesterday.  So why did Johnston decide it wouldn't—or couldn't—happen? What did we learn from the report...

It's not easy to make yourself notorious among the more than 40,000 McDonald's franchises in the world—but Ottawa's Rideau Street location accomplished it. From dangerous violence, to drug use, general chaos and viral incidents that became world famous (like the raccoon fight...) the recently closed restaurant earned the moniker given to it by a former police chief. But the story of this McDonald'...

Right now, while controlling our own food security becomes more important than ever, Canada's farming industry is in transition. An older generation of farmers are ready to retire—but many of them don't have anyone ready to take over the family business. Meanwhile, corporate megafarms are scooping up farmland where they can and a younger generation of farmers is desperately trying to get ahold of...