As we say goodbye to 2023, we can all agree that it was a year of great disruption. Artificial intelligence moved from the fringes to the centre of all technological endeavours. Climate change shook up every arena of our lives. The global order was perilously fraught with ongoing wars that have no end in sight. And Canadians felt a growing dissatisfaction with the cost of living and the country’s ability to cope with a massive surge in immigration.

What will next year bring? In Maclean’s annual edition of the Year Ahead, we try to answer that question with predictions about the people, ideas and events that will shape Canada in 2024. I confess: it is my favourite issue of the year. The writers and editors who work on this special issue make me feel much better informed and ready to tackle tomorrow.

In addition to our writers’ predictions, we invited some of the country’s smartest thinkers to lay out what we can expect in the coming year. Ten experts with deep knowledge in a variety of fields—agriculture, space travel, political extremism, education, sports, medicine and more—contributed fascinating essays on our shared future. The Maclean’s Year Ahead issue makes an ideal stocking-stuffer (for Maclean’s readers who stuff stockings), or a holiday bathtub read, or the perfect thing to pack on a winter vacation.

You can buy the Year Ahead issue online here, and subscribe to the magazine so we can deliver you Canada’s most compelling stories all throughout 2024.

—Sarah Fulford, editor-in-chief

Nadine Green lives in an eight-by-10-foot house at A Better Tent City Waterloo Region, a community of tiny homes in Kitchener, Ontario. Residents—all formerly unhoused people—have their own insulated cabins where they can store their belongings, live with their partners and pets, and sleep soundly at night without fear. “This kind of solution works—I’ve known it all along,” says Green, who's also the project’s site coordinator. “We may not fit into the box that society wants to keep us in, but people like us have always, and will always, exist.

Radiologists David and Nadine Koff wanted a sustainable and accessible home in Hamilton. So they enlisted the help of their architect son, Nicolas. Today, their home—nicknamed the K-House—is the first electrically net-zero straw house in Hamilton. The walls are made of thick prefabricated straw-bale, and up top is a green roof, where David and Nadine have planted a pollinator garden filled with wild native plants and flowers.

FROM THE JAN/FEB ISSUE

Zulfikar Fahd was born into a Muslim family in Malang, Indonesia, in a household where his family wouldn’t even say the word “gay.” In 2014, he visited Paris and saw men kissing on the street for the first time. “On the flight back, I bawled my eyes out,” he says. “That’s when I knew I needed to leave my country.” Now, he’s settling down in Toronto, where he goes on dates and hosts dinner parties. He’s even started his own restaurant, serving dishes from his home country.

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