Once a wildfire burns down a whole neighbourhood, how can its devastated residents start to rebuild their lives? Psychological experts say that homeowners need to see the rubble of their homes to comprehend the event and begin to heal. Days after wildfires tore through suburban Halifax, the city invited displaced residents onto “grief buses” to tour their ravaged neighbourhoods. Mary Young, a teacher from Highland Park, lived a quiet suburban life with her husband, daughters and dogs until the fire of May 28 ran through her community and destroyed her home. She recently took the grief bus back to her property. It was brutal, of course, but she felt it was important to see the site with her own eyes. “In a sense,” she says, “it was cathartic, providing us with a sense of finality.”

—Sarah Fulford, editor-in-chief

Mary Young and her husband, Jason.

Ricardo Tranjan, a researcher with the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, says that the country’s housing crisis is fundamentally a class issue that pits tenants against landlords. That’s why he doesn’t think building more housing will fix the problem by itself—instead, he says, Canada’s tenants need to revolt against the system that’s working against them. In this interview with Maclean’s, he talks about his new book The Tenant Class, the proliferation of rent strikes in several Canadian cities and why rent control is a big subject in the upcoming Toronto election.

Doug Johnson, a 58-year-old retired operations manager, and his wife, Teri, a 58-year-old retired medical lab technologist, didn’t want to spend their golden years in the St. Catharine’s bungalow where they’d raised their kids. When Doug received a cancer diagnosis, they sped up their retirement plans, determined to enjoy their life somewhere relaxing. They bought a three-bedroom house in Cape Wolfe, P.E.I. for $450,000—sight unseen, aside from realtor photos—and sold their old place in Ontario for $505,000. Their new home turned out to be cozy and mellow, just as they’d planned. It even looks out over a lighthouse.

CULTURE PICK
OF THE WEEK

Korean-Canadian director Celine Song’s first film, Past Lives, has already earned huge Oscar buzz and a Sundance standing ovation. Ahead of its release, we talked to Song about the intercontinental love story and how it mirrors her own journey from South Korea to Canada to New York. “I wanted to make a movie about ordinary people doing an extraordinary thing, which is loving and caring for each other.”

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