Good morning, and welcome to the weekend.
Grab your cup of coffee or tea, and sit down with a selection of this week’s great reads from The Globe. In this issue, Kelly Grant, Ha Tu Thanh and Stephanie Chambers investigate a Toronto-based travel nurse agency that profited heavily from Canada’s understaffing emergency.
From the start, Ha and Grant wanted to write a story focusing on this phenomenon’s impact on the public purse, an angle which had to be supported by financial records. During their research they were shocked by the lengths Newfoundland and Labrador and New Brunswick went to in order to bring travel nurses to their provinces – and the increase in the usage of temp workers everywhere across the country.
However, Ha said there is also a story behind the story, about what it’s like to be a better-paid nurse from Toronto or Montreal arriving in small Atlantic Canada towns to help their overworked local colleagues. “A typical fish-out-of-water take,” he called it. Grant added their experiences ran the gamut: “Some got the cold shoulder from staff nurses who resented their higher pay. Others were welcomed by local nurses who were burned out from working short-staffed for months or years without vacations.” Grant noted that many of the stories of travel nurses they spoke to can’t be told, as most had signed nondisclosure agreements and feared legal repercussions.
In other stories, Salmaan Farooqui reports on the best way to spend money you never expected to receive, and Daniel Reale-Chin speaks to Canadians over the age of 80 about their secrets to remaining happy, healthy and in shape.
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How Canadian hospitals grew dependent on expensive out-of-town nurses
Emergency Department at Dr. Georges-L.-Dumont University Hospital Centre, Feb. 2023.Daniel St Louis/Supplied
Kelly Grant, Ha Tu Thanh and Stephanie Chambers delve deep into Toronto-based Canadian Health Labs, which the Globe and Mail found inked tens of millions of dollars in contracts with health authorities in Newfoundland and New Brunswick, commanding hourly rates of more than $300 for nurses in some cases, or roughly six times what a nurse on staff at a hospital in Atlantic Canada typically earns. In the process, they billed taxpayers at least $1.6 million in per diems that were never distributed to the company’s workers – and only passed a portion of those earnings (usually between $85 and $100 per hour) on to the nurses it hired.
If I had a million dollars: The Globe’s guide to daydreaming about money
Illustration by Graham Roumieu
What would you do if a pile of cash fell into your lap out of the blue? It may seem like a waste of time to think about what you’d do with an unexpected lump sum, but the thing is, it does happen, whether it’s a surprise inheritance from a distant relative or a five-figure work bonus you didn’t see coming. Salmaan Farooqui has decided to daydream with you and speaks with two wealth management experts to come up with the best uses of unexpected cash from $100 to $1-million.
We asked people over 80: What keeps you fit, healthy and happy?
Francesco and Maria Reale, hold a photo of their younger selves, at their home in Toronto, Jan. 12, 2024.Christopher Katsarov/The Globe and Mail
People want to live a long time – but they also want to age well. Daniel Reale-Chin has watched his grandparents, Maria and Francesco Reale, surpass the global and national average of 81.3 years with flair. During his visits, he’s been inspired by their fuss-free attitude toward aging, so he spoke to them and two other impressive people over 80 about the art of living longer, healthier lives.
With the warming of the Rideau Canal, we are losing another cherished winter tradition
People cast long shadows as they skate on the Rideau Canal Skateway on its opening day in Ottawa, on Jan. 21, 2024. Skaters flocked to the ice, one year after warm and wet weather prevented the 7.8 kilometre skateway from opening for its 2023 season.Justin Tang/The Canadian Press
Climate change has come for the Rideau Canal Skateway. The largest natural skating rink in the world, celebrated at home and abroad for its size and accessibly, beloved by generations of skaters, declared the emblem of the national capital, it is no longer a fixture of winter. This year, it opened Jan. 21 – actually, a quarter of its surface opened – and closed January 24. Three weeks on, in the middle of February, it remains closed. Andrew Cohen writes about a winter tradition which may become another casualty of climate change, and some creative ideas for how to make Rideau Canal still skateable in winters to come.
The answer to book bans? Read banned books
PHOTO ILLUSTRATION: THE GLOBE AND MAIL. SOURCES: GETTY IMAGES
Authors, illustrators and publishers are looking on with incredulity as new challenges to books surface in massive numbers in the United States. They are showing up in Canada, too. Book bans are nothing new. Attempts to censor literature are as old as ancient Greece. (Plato denounced poetry for its falsehoods and banished poets from the ideal society.) This type of censorship is too bad, as unfettered poetry and literature remain vital forces in finding solace, community and connection in a troubled world. Kit Dobson implores: let us keep on reading banned books, for we have much to learn.
Poet Canisia Lubrin turns fiction on its head with debut novel, Code Noir
Poet Canisia Lubrin poses for a photo at the Toronto office of publisher Penguin Random House Canada ahead of the release of her debut fiction novel Code Noir, Jan. 23, 2024.Galit Rodan/The Globe and Mail
Emily M. Keeler profiles Canisia Lubrin, whose brilliant, challenging, and ecstatic new work, Code Noir, delivers a kaleidoscopic collection of stories about Black life framed against King Louis XIV’s laws governing slavery. Keeler writes that Lubrin’s virtuosic variety coheres in accordance to its own particular logic. She is writing against, within, and around the original 17th-century Black Code.
Retiring curler Jennifer Jones says final Scotties will be surreal
Jennifer JonesPhoto illustration The Globe and Mail. Source photo Paul Chiasson/The Canadian Press/The Canadian Press
One of Canada’s greatest skips said this week that she will retire from women’s curling at the end of this season. Jennifer Jones, 49, said she wants to spend more time with her two daughters. Rachel Brady spoke with Jones ahead of the opening of the Scotties Tournament of Hearts, which will be her 18th and final appearance at the national championship event she’s won a record-tying six times.
In Toronto stage news, Mirvish unveiled its 2024-25 season this week. Which jukebox musical will open in Toronto in October?
a. Jersey Boys
b. Mamma Mia!
c. We Will Rock You
d. Rock of Ages