A pre-MAID trailblazer, a Michelin-star sushi chef and one woman’s heroic escape from an arranged marriage
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UNFORGETTABLE SAGAS, SCOOPS AND SCANDALS
from Toronto Life’slong-form archives
Dear Reader,
Welcome to the inaugural edition of The Vault, a weekly collection of memorable long reads hand-picked from Toronto Life’s archives. Every Thursday, we’ll send you must-read stories with a personalized note from one of our editors, so you can plan your weekend reading accordingly. Each of the three articles you’ll find below is freshly resonant in ways we never expected when we first published it. I hope you’ll enjoy.
–Malcolm Johnston, editor-in-chief
Between 1999 and 2001, I helped eight people die, including the poet Al Purdy. Now, as I prepare to take my own life, I’m ready to tell my story
BY JOHN HOFSESS | FEBRUARY 29, 2016
Physician-assisted dying is making headlines every day. In March 2023, the framework for MAID will expand to include irremediable mental illness. Some legislators are asking for more time to consider the implications of such a major move. This incredible piece by John Hofsess was a blockbuster when we first published it in 2016. The author was a groundbreaking champion and practitioner of assisted dying long before it was legal. He flew to Switzerland and died with the help of a doctor 30 minutes before our story went live. It’s as powerful and brave now as it was in 2016.
Masaki Saito wowed New Yorkers with his old-school approach to sushi. Now he’s heading up an ultra-luxe, $500-a-head restaurant in Yorkville where food is only part of the show
BY CHRIS NUTTALL-SMITH | MAY 17, 2019
On Fifth Avenue, Masaki Saito earned two Michelin stars with his immaculate sushi restaurant, Sushi Ginza Onodera. In 2019, he decamped north to Toronto’s Avenue Road, where he set up shop under his own name, Sushi Masaki Saito. After four years of slinging otherworldly aged Edomae, he earned another two stars, the only restaurant in Toronto with that distinction. Chris Nuttall-Smith’s riveting, occasionally hilarious profile (“First order of coming to Canada,” Saito says, “get girlfriend”) brings to life the gregarious, hyperconfident personality of the exacting star at the centre of a mini fish empire.
I was 16 when I was forced to marry a stranger. Over the next decade, I was isolated, humiliated and assaulted. The whole time, I was planning my escape
BY SAMRA ZAFAR | FEBRUARY 17, 2017
At the age of 16, Samra Zafar was forced to enter an arranged marriage in the United Arab Emirates and move to Canada, where she survived years of harrowing abuse. All the while, Zafar patiently planned her escape and then bravely executed it. Her piece caused a sensation when Toronto Life published it in 2017, and it was soon adapted into a book, A Good Wife: Escaping the Life I Never Chose, which became a national bestseller.
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