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, personal finance reporter Erica Alini digs into whether $100,000 is enough for a comfortable life anymore. During interviews with a variety of Canadians who make around that amount, she found one of the most significant factors was the cost of housing.
Columnist Andrew Coyne laments the rise of national disintegration and subsequent provincial lawlessness.
And reporter Ian Brown takes us gently down the stream while he explores how rowing is finding new fans and having a moment.
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Is a $100,000 salary enough for a comfortable life any more?
For Sonia Grossi, living alone in a one-bedroom apartment in Toronto's Yorkville district is her one indulgence, albeit for $2,600 a month.Sabrina Sisco/The Globe and Mail
A $100,000 salary is a lot of money that more than roughly 90 per cent of Canadians declared as their annual incomes in 2020, according to Statistics Canada. But has it lost its status as a financial milestone? When today’s basic living costs are tallied, there are many parts of Canada where a low-six-figure salary no longer goes very far.
Opinion: The country is falling apart. Why is the federal government so hesitant to act?
If the Trudeau government chooses to ignore the accelerating evisceration of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms at the hands of the provinces, it is only taking its lead from public opinion, writes Andrew Coyne.Sean Kilpatrick/The Canadian Press
A friend wrote to columnist Andrew Coyne recently: “More than any time in my lifetime... I feel like Canada doesn’t really exist.” He didn’t mean it literally, of course, but he was in despair over the government of Saskatchewan’s decision to void certain guarantees of human rights under the Canadian Constitution via the notwithstanding clause. Coyne discusses what that move means, along with Alberta’s threat to pull out of the Canada Pension Plan, and other signs of a disintegration of a national consciousness.
The ancient pastime of rowing is undergoing a reputational redo
Globe and Mail journalist Ian Brown learns to row on a liteboat at the Hanlan Boat Club in Toronto in September.Christopher Katsarov/The Globe and Mail
Until recently, observes Globe and Mail reporter Ian Brown, rowing was an agonizing grunt practiced by Viking-adjacent sado-masochists who rose in cold darkness at 4 a.m. and vomited after races. No more. The way rowing is taught and coached is changing, and the allegedly proto-preppy sport is now being pitched as a pastime for all. Brown recently stepped into a rowboat for the first time and found that much like in life, there is a rhythm to rowing – a repeated trying and failing – that kept him reaching for the perfect stroke.
Newfoundland singer Ron Hynes, shown in the 2010 documentary Man of a Thousand Songs.Kent Nason
The late St. John’s folk singer Ron Hynes’s 1998 song The Final Breath is a poetic call for a culturally independent Newfoundland. Hynes was born in 1950, one year after his province joined Canada, and since he never knew a Newfoundland whose identity wasn’t being eroded by outside influences, he devoted himself to creating ballads that connected a secret nation to its pre-Confederation past. Rick Mercer called him “our greatest songwriter,” writes Globe reporter Brad Wheeler.
This Newfoundland town’s old fish-sauce plant is a stinking, hazardous mess. But whose?
Rising sea level is accelerating the erosion process on the beach where the abandoned fish-sauce plant in St Mary's is located, slowly carving away its foundation.Johnny C.Y. Lam/The Globe and Mail
Locals in St. Mary’s, N.L. have complained for years about the stench from a fish-sauce plant that was abandoned more than two decades ago. Inside, flies buzz and black sludge covers the floor. Depending on which way the wind is blowing, the plant’s unbearable smell wafts up over the beach to the local elementary school and neighbouring homes. And as if the smell wasn’t bad enough, earlier this year, residents in the small town learned that effluent leaking from the plant’s main drainage pipe into the bay was deadly to fish. The Globe visited St. Mary’s to meet the founder of the defunct fish sauce business, find out why it was shut down and who’s responsible for cleaning up the mess.
Ukraine’s train crews keep the ‘road of life’ moving despite Russia’s rockets
Anna holds roses while saying goodbye to her husband, a Ukrainian soldier she married close to the front lines the day before.Olga Ivashchenko/The Globe and Mail
Ukraine’s national railway, Ukrzaliznytsia, employs almost a quarter million people. When the full-scale Russian invasion began, the national railway’s trains evacuated more than four million people and about 120,000 animals – and also helped deliver humanitarian aid. Between ferrying soldiers headed to the front and civilians rebuilding their communities, the country depends on the railway even as war makes journeys on the track more dangerous. Janice Dickson and Kateryna Hatsenko report from Kramatorsk, Ukraine, a city about 30 kilometres from the front lines of the continuing war with Russia.
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Bonus: In 2017, the late Matthew Perry revealed that he had a rivalry with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau when the two were schoolmates in Ottawa. What elementary school did the two attend together?
a. Rockcliffe Park Public School