Author Abigail Hing Wen discusses her NYT best selling YA novel, Loveboat, Taipei and its film adaptation Love in Taipei, based on the Taiwan summer study tour that started more than half a century ago. I had the pleasure of speaking with her, where we chatted about the crazy escapades, her own experiences with the program, how her book and the film came together, and what it's like telling this story to a new generation of diaspora youth.
Read MoreIn this episode of the NüVoices podcast, I chat with historians Arlene Chan and Melanie Ng about the first Chinese migrants who made their way to Canada in the 19th century. From there, Arlene and Melanie retrace the throughline of Chinese Canadian migration, from exclusionary anti-Chinese immigration laws to present-day sinophobia found in many Western countries today.
Read MoreThe COVID-19 pandemic is perhaps the most devastating global event since World War II, impacting billions of lives across at least 185 countries. More than 235 million cases have been confirmed and more than 4.8 million dead have been counted since January, but there is no question the real tally is significantly higher, and the human and economic cost unfathomnable.
Read MoreImagine having a potentially shorter wait time for surgery or having ready access to a second - or possibly third - opinion on your diagnosis. In many pockets of Canada’s vast and complex health-care system, physicians have worked effectively for years as a team under a “shared-care” model. Some surgeons are hoping this form of patient care can be widely adopted across surgical specialties, especially in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Read MoreWe may associate the Royal Family with strict protocols and stiff upper lips, but King Charles III and the House of Windsor can trace their lineage back through centuries of bloody wars and brutal power struggles to 1066, when the illegitimate son of a duke and grandson of a tanner ascended the throne. I tried to somehow distill a thousand years worth of dynastic lineage into as many words in this overview that traces the Windsors back to William the Conqueror.
I cover a broad range of topics as a freelance general news writer at CTVNews.ca. From the serious to the absurd, you can find a (regularly updated) selection of those stories here as well.
Read MorePivot Magazine is the award-winning flagship print publication for CPA Canada, and publishes features and analyses that focuses on the people, organizations and ideas shaping the future of business. Read about “kidult” toy trends and zero waste cleaning products here.
Read MoreFor the second anniversary of the pandemic, I spoke with several doctors about the lessons learned and compiled a summary of essential COVID-19 facts and myths about the disease, masks, and vaccines for CTVNews.ca.
Read MoreTucked slightly out of the way under the shade of a patio umbrella, federal NDP leader Jagmeet Singh is mostly left alone on this sunny July morning at a coffee house in downtown Toronto, but a casual exchange with a passerby illustrates an approachability frequently characterized by colleagues and captured in public opinion polls. I interviewed Singh this summer for CTVNews.ca’s election profile.
This and other stories from the 2021 and 2019 Canadian elections and the 2020 U.S. elections.
Read MoreFemale surgeons in Canada have long faced gender-based referral biases that result in large pay gaps, and an inequitable and inefficient environment for patients, Canadian surgeons say, but with the urgency surrounding surgical backlogs due to the COVID-19 pandemic, some say the time is ripe for major changes to healthcare.
Read MoreA flaw allowed access to sensitive customer information on Walmart's website, demonstrating the ease with which such data could be accidentally exposed. Walmart has since disabled the pages where this security flaw was found.
Read MoreAnything resembling "normal" may seem unfathomable as the number of COVID-19 cases worldwide dash past 80 million and Canada grapples with a second wave that far surpasses what it experienced in the spring.
It is a term that feels wildly out of place in 2020, but in some parts of the world where the virus has been all but eradicated, like Taiwan and Australia, life is about as close to "normal" as one can imagine during a global pandemic.
Read MoreIn exchange for open borders and peace of mind while travelling, would you be willing to spend a little extra time at the airport to get a Covid‑19 test? In Canada, airport Covid‑19 testing pilot projects are underway to see whether these travel points of entry and exit make ideal gatekeepers for containing the pandemic: Can departure tests prevent infected travellers from boarding a flight and spreading the virus? Can arrival tests shorten mandatory quarantine periods?
Read MoreWith more than a million cases and counting, COVID-19 has hit every continent except Antarctica. From Canada to South Korea, every country has responded differently - in some cases, quite significantly.
I teamed up with Jesse Tahirali, CTVNews.ca’s Digital Content Editor, to produce this interactive package to chart and compare the progression of jurisdictions that have reported more than 100 cases. I also highlighted a few countries and aggregated information on the measures they took and when to give some background and context.
Read MoreI wrote about Sacha Bond, a Quebec man who had been in a Florida prison since he was 19 - nearly half his life. Due to a series of events, he ended up in a coma, still chained to his hospital bed and under 24/7 guard. From the length of his sentence and the family’s efforts to bring him back to Canada to serve his time, to the state of U.S. prisons and issues around mental health and incarceration, it’s a tragic story on many levels. Sacha Bond died three days after this story was written, on Aug. 16, 2020.
Read MoreCries to defund the police have rung out in protests across the United States and Canada, sparked by the death of George Floyd, seen in a video pleading and gasping for air as a white Minneapolis police officer pressed a knee against his neck -- long after he had already gone silent. So what does police spending look like in Canada? I dug through budget reports and financial statements from the last five years to find out.
Read MoreSince COVID-19 was first reported in Canada, the disease has spread quickly and silently through nursing homes, leaving in its wake a devastating death toll. Stories from worried family members and reports -- including a damning one by the Canadian Armed Forces — have shocked Canadians. However, amid the alarming numbers, are the lesser-known stories of nursing homes that did not face a crisis. I spoke with several operators to see what actions they took that put them on such different trajectories. I thought a lot about what went wrong, which made me also think about what went right elsewhere. So this is a part of that story.
Read MoreFrom expats in China to those with family there, I spoke with a cross-section of Canadians and wrote about how the coronavirus outbreak has impacted their lives. Meanwhile, Canadians in China were also frustrated with the government’s lack of communication with its citizens in China.
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