The WNBA is coming to Toronto. Its new president, Teresa Resch, is determined to make it a slam-dunk success.
Teresa Resch Is Calling The Shots |
This year, elite women’s sports will cross the billion-dollar mark. Whether you call it a golden age or a moment of glory, there’s no denying that female athletes are finally getting their due. In Canada, they have funding, rabid fans and a slate of brand-new pro teams in hockey, soccer and, soon, basketball. This past May, Larry Tanenbaum, MLSE’s billionaire chairman, announced his intent to bankroll the WNBA’s Toronto franchise, the first expansion team outside the U.S. He then put in the call of a lifetime to Teresa Resch, the Raptors’ former VP of operations (and Masai Ujiri’s influential right hand), and asked her to be WNBA Toronto’s first president. Resch, a former Division II volleyball player from Minnesota, has held positions at Disney, Life Time Fitness and the NBA. Now, she’s building a team from scratch. For Maclean’s, I spoke to her about this pivotal moment in sports history and what she needs to do leading up to the team’s 2026 tipoff: sort out jerseys, sponsors, a name and prepping Coca-Cola Coliseum (a.k.a. home court). “We want everyone to be a fan,” Resch says. “Our players are going to be aspirational for a lot of girls and boys across the country.” —Katie Underwood, managing editor |
Teresa Resch is WNBA Toronto’s first president |
Sarah Marie Wiebe’s son, Forest, was born in the spring of 2021: the summer that B.C. stared down a deadly heat wave, devastating floods and the destruction of Lytton by wildfire. She held her newborn and wondered what kind of world her child had just entered. But no matter how frightening it is to parent through the climate crisis, Wiebe believes nurturing the next generation is a worthwhile endeavour. “Raising children can be a radical political act when we transform homes into environments of care and community-building,” Wiebe writes in an essay for Maclean’s. “This is the best chance we have to collectively and continuously strive for climate solutions.” |
Several provincial governments now mandate parental consent for kids to change their pronouns in school. Who gets to decide a child’s gender? From the October issue of Maclean’s, read Simon Lewsen’s feature on one of the tensions tearing Canadian classrooms apart. “It’s tempting to write the conflict off as yet another inane culture-war crack-up,” Lewsen writes. “But the truth is more complicated.” |
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