Barnes, as Alex Wong writes, was drafted onto a team in search of an identity. And after a few years in which the Raptors vacillated between contending and pretending, management finally stripped the team of its parts and handed the future to Barnes. Now, with the Raptors in full rebuild mode, we check in with Barnes to find out what life is like when the hopes of an impatient, basketball-mad city rest on your shoulders.

Also in this issue, you'll find a spellbinding investigative piece on the Olympic equestrian Eric Lamaze. It starts with a litany of court cases related to Lamaze's dubious horse trading practices and continues with his mysterious—and equally dubious—diagnosis of glioblastoma, a disease with a microscopic survival rate that Lamaze claims to have somehow beat. Next up, Kate Lunau examines the issue of bikes lanes in extraordinary detail, spending time with entrenched factions on both sides of the debate, examining the political forces at play, and placing it all in the context of a city trying to drag itself into the transit future. Elsewhere, we've got a Q&A with the controversial new union boss of the Toronto Police Association, a piece on the city's most dedicated watch collectors, pasta dishes worth the price tag, and a neighbourhood crawl with the National Ballet's Guillaume Côté.

Happy reading,

Malcolm