{"id":601839,"date":"2023-12-20T19:46:50","date_gmt":"2023-12-20T16:46:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/en.buradabiliyorum.com\/best-of-2023-macleans-must-read-interviews\/"},"modified":"2023-12-20T19:46:50","modified_gmt":"2023-12-20T16:46:50","slug":"best-of-2023-macleans-must-read-interviews","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/best-of-2023-macleans-must-read-interviews\/","title":{"rendered":"#Best of 2023:\u00a0Maclean\u2019s must-read interviews"},"content":{"rendered":"
\nIn 2023, Canadians had the tough conversations: on AI, housing, immigration, labour, the opioid crisis, Indigenous sovereignty and other hot and fraught topics. In many cases, we were conversation-starters ourselves\u2014best-sellers, decision-makers, government ground-breakers, tech titans and Hollywood heavy-hitters who got the world talking.\u00a0Maclean\u2019s<\/i>\u00a0was able to chat one-on-one with many of these personalities, with captivating, controversial and often entertaining results. Here, our must-read interviews with the country\u2019s story-shapers from the last 12 months.<\/p>\n
\"\"<\/p>\n

(Photograph by Wade Hudson)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

In his Giller Prize\u2013winning short\u00a0<\/span>st<\/span>ory\u00a0<\/b>collection,\u00a0Bloodletting & Miraculous Cures<\/i>, Toronto physician Vincent Lam\u00a0took readers behind the exam-room cur<\/span>tain and into the hectic, heart-straining lives of young doctors. His fifth book,\u00a0On the Ravine<\/i>, out this month, plunges readers into the opioid crisis, via two of\u00a0Bloodletting<\/i>\u2019s most memorable characters. One of them is the considered, compassionate Dr. Chen\u2014thought to be Lam\u2019s alter ego\u2014who is determined to save his patients, no matter the personal cost.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

It\u2019s a dynamic that Lam knows well. In 2013, as opioid use exploded across Canada, he pivoted from emergency medicine to addictions and, in 2017, opened Toronto\u2019s Coderix Medical Clinic. There, his team takes a two-pronged app<\/a>roach to substance-abuse treatment: pharmaceuticals\u00a0<\/i>and therapy. Lam believes the problems proliferating in Canada\u2019s ERs and addictions clinics\u2014crowded waiting rooms and lack of consistent access to GPs\u2014are intertwined. Regardless, he is determined to provide quality care, to his patients\u00a0and<\/i>\u00a0himself.<\/p>\n

READ THE INTERVIEW<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

(Photograph by Daniel Ehrenworth)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

The robots are coming.<\/span>\u00a0Well, technically, they\u2019re already here, but Martin Kon just arrived. Fresh off a stint as YouTube<\/a>\u2019s chief financial officer\u2014where he and his team launched the platform\u2019s TikTok-esque video Shorts\u2014the Ontario-bred tech exec hopped back over the border and became president and COO of the mega-successful three-year-old AI startup Cohere, based in Toronto. Its mandate? Commercializing better human-computer conversations. Basically, they want a word.\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Cohere\u2019s recent US$125-million funding boost, and Kon\u2019s pivot, coincides with the recent popularization of natural-language processing, or NLP, the branch of AI that\u2019s teaching computers to digest and produce speech and text with the sophistication of human beings. As everyday websurfers use NLP-based tools like ChatGPT to produce A-plus college essays, the founders of Cohere are hoping to revolutionize the way the world does business. I spoke with Kon about all things AI during his first week back in Toronto. He had just finished setting up his new work computer.\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

READ THE INTERVIEW<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

(Photograph by Erin Leydon)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Jay Baruchel is everywhere: in slashers, sex farces and sports movies<\/a>; opposite mythical lizards in Disney\u2019s\u00a0How to Train Your Dragon<\/i>\u00a0franchise; and he\u2019s worked with directors as varied as David Cronenberg, Judd Apatow and even himself. If you\u2019re wondering how an Ottawa-born, Montreal-raised kid with a Gumby body and a voice like a twisted balloon has been working steadily since 1995 (he\u2019s now 40 and busier than ever), the answer is simple: Jay Baruchel loves movies\u2014loves<\/i>\u00a0them.<\/p>\n

Baruchel loved his BlackBerry, too. He hung on to it until 2019. It makes sense, then, that his next movie is, well,\u00a0BlackBerry.\u00a0<\/i>The film, out this month,\u00a0chronicles the rise and fall of Research in Motion, the Waterloo moonshot whose founders had the zany idea to merge computers with cellphones. Baruchel plays Mike Lazaridis, the engineering student turned RIM co-founder who watched his dreams get gobbled up by the iPhone, but not before they made him a billionaire. Playing the more level-headed partner gives Baruchel a chance to showcase his dramatic chops. It also demonstrates why, unlike the now-obsolete gadget, his success continues.<\/p>\n

READ THE INTERVIEW<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

(Photography by Richmond Lam, hair and makeup by Catherine Laniel)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Sarah-\u00c8ve Pelletier has no bad memories. The pool-deck hijinks, the contagious pre-performance euphoria, the sequins\u2014that\u2019s what she recalls about her decorated five-year artistic swimming stint with Canada\u2019s national team. That golden time left such a mark, in fact, that every one of Pelletier\u2019s career moves since has allowed her to keep a toe in the world of sports. After retiring in 2007, Pelletier, a Quebec City native, earned back-to-back law degrees, eventually working as in-house counsel for the Canadian and international Olympic committees.<\/p>\n

Now, Pelletier is nearly a year into a role that\u2019s forced her to confront the ugly underbelly of Canadian athletics. Last June, she was appointed the country\u2019s first sport integrity commissioner, leading a new federally funded office meant to manage complaints about alleged abuses and institutional rot within the country\u2019s national sporting organizations.\u00a0(In mid-May, Sports Canada announced the creation of another oversight body to ensure the commissioner\u2019s recommendations\u2014and any sanctions\u2014are carried out.) Horror stories have come in waves, recounted by athletes from sports as varied as soccer, gymnastics, water polo and bobsleigh. Pelletier\u2019s less focused on restoring their glory than their humanity. Until then, she says, she can\u2019t stop.<\/p>\n

READ THE INTERVIEW<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

If you believe the early hype, Maitreyi Ramakrishnan rolled off her parents\u2019 couch in Mississauga, Ontario, and into a star-making lead role in Netflix\u2019s hit high school rom-dram\u00a0Never Have I Ever.<\/em>\u00a0It was 2019, and a friend sent the tweet announcing Mindy Kaling\u2019s casting call. Ramakrishnan, then 17 and tired from a long day at real-life Meadowvale Secondary School, went, so it goes:\u00a0Eh, why not?<\/em><\/p>\n

In truth, Ramakrishnan, now 21, has always had big plans. Okay, maybe \u201cpreferred manifestations.\u201d She hadn\u2019t banked on besting 15,000 other young girls to play the now-iconic teenage try-hard Devi Vishwakumar. Acting wasn\u2019t her first dream; she wanted to be an animator. Later, she was cast as Priya Manga<\/a>l, an (animated) South Asian tween, in Pixar\u2019s\u00a0Turning Red<\/em>. Things have a funny way of working out\u2014just rarely in the way she imagines.<\/p>\n

The final season of\u00a0Never Have I Ever,<\/em>\u00a0set in Devi\u2019s senior year, streams this month. Another freshly adult actor who\u2019s had less success with serendipity might dread an open schedule, but Ramakrishnan is mostly relaxed. What\u2019s the next big thing for the erstwhile \u201cnext big thing\u201d? A university degree? A stint as a Disney princess? She\u2019ll figure it out\u2014or the universe will.<\/p>\n

READ THE INTERVIEW<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

(Photograph by Allison Seto)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Fires are burning all around Jyoti Gondek. There are the actual fires, blazing wildly across Alberta, but also transit violence, empty office towers\u2014the same sticky issues facing most big-city mayors in Canada. See also: the shock-jock politics that railroaded Alberta\u2019s last election.<\/p>\n

Gondek, a former policy analyst turned city councillor, has become a standout progressive in a province that\u2019s mostly gone UCP blue. She\u2019s allergic to lofty ideological pronouncements, but you can discern her stance from her strategy: pushing mobile crisis-response teams to fight homelessness; courting young workers, a move that has drawn record venture-capital dollars to Calgary; and exploring green energy sources, placing her in the crosshairs of Alberta\u2019s oil industry.<\/p>\n

Calgary recently threw $200 million into a visionary downtown turnaround, converting vacant offices into housing\u2014a plan that\u2019s attracted \u201chow\u2019d she do that\u201d inquiries from American mayors and supercharged a city once speculated to become the next Detroit. Gondek isn\u2019t trying to burn down Cowtown\u2019s establishment\u2014even if her name is Punjabi for \u201clittle flame.\u201d She\u2019s trying to do her job.<\/p>\n

READ THE INTERVIEW<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

(Photograph by Darren Calabrese)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

On the off chance you overhear a Canadian bragging, it\u2019s usually to say that this is the greatest country in the world. It might violate our national modesty policy to add that we\u2019re now also one of the most desirable, but the data\u2019s there: in 2022, we welcomed close to a million newcomers (a record) and, a year prior, unseated the U.S. as the number-one destination for international workers. People want to come to Canada, and Canada really wants them here.<\/p>\n

In June, staring down the ongoing labour shortage, the federal government announced a revamped federal express-entry system, complete with shiny new expedited pathways to permanent residency for U.S. H-1B visa holders and immigrants with sought-after expertise in fields like health care, tech and, crucially, the trades. Prior to a surprise cabinet shuffle by the Prime Minister in late July, the man responsible for delivering on the government\u2019s ambitious target\u2014500,000 immigrants annually by 2025\u2014was Sean Fraser, then the minister of immigration, refugees and citizenship.<\/p>\n

Fraser, a trained lawyer and loyal Nova Scotian, spent his whole life watching talent flee his home province for more promising opportunities elsewhere. His old office is facing a backlog 800,000 applications deep\u2014not to mention newly urgent questions about Canada\u2019s affordability,\u00a0thanks in part to our bonkers real estate market. Those same questions follow Fraser into his new role as minister of housing, infrastructure and communities. When\u00a0Maclean\u2019s\u00a0<\/i>spoke with him in the weeks leading up to his new appointment, Fraser was convinced that Canada is the place to be, warts and all.<\/p>\n

READ THE INTERVIEW<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

(Photograph by Bryan Schutamaat)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

When Toronto native Peter Attia was working as a surgical resident at Johns Hopkins, he was haunted by a very specific stress dream: he\u2019d see himself frantically running around a city sidewalk, trying to catch eggs that were falling from the sky. Many times, they\u2019d splatter on the pavement\u2014and all over his scrubs. Attia, who was training to be a cancer surgeon, later realized the eggs symbolized patients, people whose disease had advanced too far to treat.<\/p>\n

That helplessness caused Attia to quit medicine for a time, eventually returning to practice armed with a fresh idea he called \u201cMedicine 3.0\u201d\u2014a visionary approach to health care that manages disease before it starts, using a combo of exercise, nutrition, sleep, the occasional supplement and emotional wellness. It\u2019s also the thesis of\u00a0Outlive<\/em><\/a>, his new, wildly popular, death-defying book.<\/p>\n

Between\u00a0Early Medical<\/a>, his Austin-based clinic (where he\u2019s treated several members of the Marvel Cinematic Universe) and\u00a0The Peter Attia Drive<\/em><\/a>\u00a0(his podcast, downloaded 75 million times), Attia is widely regarded as a rare credible voice in an easy fix\u2013filled health climate, one packed with rapidly aging boomers way more likely to see Dr. Google before their own GP. But Attia\u2019s biggest selling point is, perhaps, his vulnerability. As a physician, he can prevent the worst. As a man, he knows all too well that he\u2019s fallible.<\/p>\n

READ THE INTERVIEW<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

(Photograph by Wade Hudson)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Every night is a blockbuster night for Shawn Levy. Coming up in the \u201990s, the Montreal-born director, screenwriter and producer mastered the buttery box-office banger\u2014think\u00a0Date Night<\/em>,\u00a0Cheaper by the Dozen<\/em>,\u00a0Night at the Museum<\/em>\u00a0and\u00a0The Pink Panther\u00a0<\/em>(Beyonc\u00e9\u2019s version). Even now, it\u2019s virtually impossible to escape his creations. Perhaps you\u2019ve heard of\u00a0Stranger Things<\/em>? He produced it.\u00a0Deadpool<\/em>? He\u2019s partway through directing instalment three.\u00a0Star Wars<\/em>? Ha! In development.<\/p>\n

Hollywood\u2019s franchise fetish certainly shows no signs of abating, but, lately, Levy\u2019s had to evolve his oeuvre along with a shifting industry, one disrupted by streamers; a new wave of scrappy, Macbook-owning Canadian talents; a contentious SAG-AFTRA strike and, relatedly, AI. Even the crowned emperor of family comedies is wading into more dramatic fare, with this month\u2019s\u00a0All the Light We Cannot See<\/em>, a Netflix miniseries based on Anthony Doerr\u2019s Pulitzer-winning novel, set during the Second World War. In fact, Levy\u2019s production company, 21 Laps Entertainment, has more than 10 Netflix vehicles in the hopper. He\u2019s going to make it impossible for you not to love them, too.<\/p>\n

READ THE INTERVIEW<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

(Photograph by Wade Hudson)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Last year, Hockey Canada\u00a0was in hot water. That July, news<\/a> broke that the organization had pulled money from its National Equity Fund\u2014which includes player registration fees\u2014to settle an alleged sexual assault case involving members of Canada\u2019s 2018 men\u2019s world junior team. The fallout was swift: faithful sponsors, like Canadian Tire and Tim Hortons, bailed, the entire board of directors stepped down, and Sport Canada temporarily froze federal funding. Even the Prime Minister weighed in: Canadians were right, he said, to be disgusted.<\/p>\n

SIGN UP TO READ THE BEST OF MACLEAN\u2019S:
Get our top stories sent directly to your inbox twice a week<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Katherine Henderson was saddened too. In September, the devoted hockey mom and high-level sports exec\u2014previously at the Pan and Parapan American Game<\/a>s\u2014became the first female president and CEO in Hockey Canada\u2019s history. In her most recent gig as CEO of Curling Canada, Henderson fought for (and won) pay equity for the sport\u2019s female players, so she\u2019s certainly equipped to correct hockey\u2019s festering bro culture. Consent training, governance reviews and a new dressing-room policy are a few measures meant to right the ship. Will they be enough to take Hockey Canada off ice?<\/p>\n

READ THE INTERVIEW<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n