MacClean's Magazine

Cub and Len resting in a hammock outside the Keith family home
Havelock, New Brunswick, circa 1915 to 1916
This is one of the earliest photos of the boys together. A second photo taken shortly after
shows Cub and Len huddled together on the hammock lighting two cigarettes. Some of
their later photos were taken with a self-timer, but it’s more likely that a friend or family
member took this shot.

i Prisoners of War
Amherst, Nova Scotia, circa 1915 to 1919
While I was working at the archives, I came
across an album that had belonged to John
Muir McKinley, a First World War photographer.
It included photos of German POWs at the
Amherst Internment Camp, many of which
featured men in drag. The images prompted
me to ask if there was any other queer content
in the archives. A colleague pointed me in the
direction of a collection she had accessioned
into the archives in 2011, which turned out to be
the photos of Len and Cub.

The Dumbells
Circa 1917 to 1919
This vaudeville group formed during the First World War to entertain the troops, and it
continued performing after the war ended. I love how these photos challenge the idea of
war veterans being a “certain type” of man—that is, cis and straight. Queer experiences
get lost in the mythology of war. The Dumbells are also a great reminder that people from
the past found comfort, comedy and joy in the art of drag.

MACLEAN’S 51

52 AUGUST 2022

g Len and Cub outside Len’s garage Len and Cub on an outing
Circa 1919 Near Jemseg, New Brunswick, circa 1916
In 1931, Len was outed for his sexuality and driven out of town. By August of that year he Len’s father, Hilyard Keith, had enough disposable
had signed over control and ownership of his business to his sister, Lucy. We lose track of income to buy the first automobile in Havelock—
Len until his mother’s death in 1948, when her obituary notes that he is living in Longueuil, a Ford, which Len drove more than anyone else.
Quebec. Cub, meanwhile, continued to live in Havelock, seemingly untainted by the scandal. The family also bought a Kodak camera in the
In 1940, he moved to Moncton to marry Rita Cameron, a nurse. early 1910s (Len’s images make up the bulk of the
Keith family albums). Thanks to these purchases,
the boys could travel out of town to be alone
together and capture their adventures.

Cub and Len at training
Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu, Quebec, spring 1918
In 1918, Len was happy in Havelock, running his
own garage and enjoying his time with Cub. In
April, he received his call-up papers, and was
forced to enlist. Cub was old enough to enlist on
his own, but young enough to avoid conscription.
Two weeks after Len was drafted, Cub enlisted
and followed Len to Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu for
training. The boys didn’t fight in any battles—the
war was already winding down by the time they
arrived overseas—but they worked as engineers,
responsible for cleanup and repairs.

MACLEAN’S 53

Science,
technology,

trends,
art, books,
personalities,
ephemera ...

54 AUGUST 2022

Photographs by Tenille Campbell BOOKS

CREE IS
CANLIT

In Making Love With the Land, Joshua
Whitehead moves between genres and
languages in a series of essays that open
up a whole new window on the meaning

of Canadian literature

BY BRIAN BETHUNE

I T HAS BEEN AN INTENSE five years for Joshua Whitehead, marked by
both personal loss and remarkable literary achievement. Since 2017, the
Oji-Cree writer has published the poetry collection full-metal indigiqueer
and the novel Jonny Appleseed, winner of both the 2019 Lambda prize
for gay fiction and Canada Reads 2021. He’s also experienced the end of a
long-term relationship, deaths in his family and, of course, the pandemic.
Now 33 and a newly minted assistant professor of English at the Univer-
sity of Calgary, Whitehead has come out on the other side and continued
his run of creative brilliance with Making Love With the Land, a collection
of linked essays set for an August 23 release. 

Making Love defies categorization, with elements of manifesto, memoir,
apologia, literary theory, experimental writing and interior conversation
colliding on almost every page. Throughout the book, Whitehead resists
the strictures of Western genre and what he sees as the intrusive demands
of readership and media. Equally striking is an effect he never set out to
achieve: the whole of Making Love’s extraordinary parts comprise a book-
end companion to Margaret Atwood’s 1972 classic Survival, the best-known
and most influential book about literature in Canada ever published. Where
Survival argued that Canadian writing was defined by settlers’ antagonistic
response to this country’s harsh topography and climate, Making Love
suggests that what shapes Indigenous literature is a much more mutually
sustaining relationship with the land. 

A child of Peguis First Nation in Manitoba, Whitehead was raised in the city
of Selkirk, the son of a trucker father and a mother who worked at a shelter
for Indigenous women. Growing up and attending school in mostly white
Selkirk, Whitehead would beeline almost daily to the local library. He wasn’t
there for the books, much as he liked to read, but for the internet access that
allowed him to join online role-playing games and create digital personas. In
his Making Love essay “The Year in Video Gaming,” Whitehead writes about
his avatar, Zoa, in the game Lineage II, a character who later gave birth to
the protagonist of the poems in full-metal indigiqueer. Zoa—“a muscle queen
with a red mohawk”—enabled Whitehead to ignore a body the world around
him didn’t value: “I was queer, Indigenous and fat,” he says. 

MACLEAN’S 55

IDEAS

He had another foot in Peguis, spending the Whitehead, his sexual identity. Though others saw him, rightly
better part of his summers there with his mater- by the book enough in his opinion, as a gay fem cis man, he did
nal grandmother and cousins of his own age. “My not find a true fit with these identifiers. “ ‘Gay’ was
grandmother and aunties would sit around a table, full-metal too white. It was too classed. It was able-bodied,”
drinking Red Rose tea and eating bannock, telling indigiqueer, he says. “You look at Pride festivals—which I do
stories about snakes—you’ve got to visit Narcisse Talonbooks, 2017 completely understand and I do partake in—but
Snake Dens during mating season, it’s a wild sight— they’re just slashed by whiteness, slashed by mas-
or about certain people they slept with at the bingo Jonny Appleseed, culinity. The participants are dancing on the back
hall,” Whitehead says. “Sometimes it was horrific Arsenal Pulp of these banks that are actively putting pipelines
and sometimes it was fantastical and sometimes Press, 2018 through Indigenous communities.” He tried out
someone saw a UFO or dreamed of a thunderbird.”  being “queer,” which was better because it was
Love After the more politically radical, but in the end, it didn’t
Whitehead himself was a born storyteller—his End: An Anthology have the ancestral credibility he was seeking. The
parents still keep a box of stories and poems he told of Two-Spirit and iconic 1969 Stonewall riots in New York City, which
them. “They’re very secretive about it. I’m always Indigiqueer Speculative are widely considered the birth pangs of contem-
trying to find it,” he says. He describes himself as a Fiction (edited by porary gay liberation, are only minutes in the past,
muckatoon, using a Cree term he defines as mean- Whitehead), Arsenal Whitehead says, compared to the long history of
ing “unabashedly verbose.” But his Cree remained Pulp Press, 2020 thinking about gender and sexuality and community
rudimentary through his youth, and he was drawn among Indigenous people. In “two-spirit,” which
to the likes of Ursula K. Le Guin, Jack Kerouac and Making Love With the reflects these concepts, Whitehead found the lan-
Allen Ginsberg. “I was trained, like we all are, really, Land, Knopf, 2022 guage he needed. He also applies Indigiqueer, a
to write white,” he says. more sexualized and Westernized term, to himself.

After graduating high school, Whitehead Whitehead’s evolving ideas about language
attended the University of Winnipeg, majoring and literature, along with developments in his
in psychology. By 2010, he had dropped out and was life—including debilitating bouts of insomnia and
working the night shi at Subway. (“I was basically anxiety—are all visible in Making Love. But for sheer
paid to read and eat subs,” he fondly recalls.) But he cerebral and emotional rewiring, little matched his
soon grew restless. He returned to the University 2018 promotional tour for Jonny Appleseed. The novel
of Winnipeg and enrolled in a course dedicated to tells the story of a two-spirit Indigiqueer youth who
Toni Morrison. “We read Beloved first, and every- leaves his Manitoba reserve and becomes a cybersex
thing kind of clicked in my brain,” he says. “I will worker in Winnipeg. Whitehead allows that he and
always credit Toni Morrison, all of her work—the Jonny are “embryonically tied,” but he is adamant
vernacular use, the morality, the use of temporal- that the character is not him.  
ity to mix past, present and future—as teaching me
how to not write white.”  Yet,whiletouringforthebook,Whiteheadwaso en
addressed as “Jonny” by interviewers. (“I should have
In 2017, he began studying for his Ph.D. at given him a different consonant,” he says.) Some-
the University of Calgary, where his department times they probed for revelations of real-life trauma
required a second-language credit, which presented that could explain the Jonny’s experience. Whitehead
a conflict—and an opportunity. “I refused to have calls this “extractive questioning”—focusing more
another colonial tongue,” Whitehead says. He on biography than text. As a novice writer who was
enrolled in a Cree course at the university, his first eager to please, Whitehead automatically responded
and only formal one. Now he tries to practise every to these questions, often to his regret. After he
day and describes the My Cree app on his phone as answered a journalist’s question about the possible
one of his best friends. “I grew up listening to a mix influence of his paternal grandmother’s murder on
of Cree and Anishinaabe. There’s quite a bit of cross- Jonny Appleseed, Whitehead was racked by grief and
over between them, with small inflection changes. anxiety. He reeled around downtown Toronto until
Learning unlocks a lot of memories from childhood. he found himself in the Eaton Centre, sitting in the
Even the alphabet felt like it was lying dormant in food court, sobbing uncontrollably. 
me.” His full-metal poem “mihkokwaniy” is about
his paternal grandmother Rose Whitehead’s 1962 The tour was a lesson in the quid pro quo of
murder; the title means “rose” in Cree. Some of its a writer’s life in a market economy. Whitehead
most plangent lines intertwine personal tragedy and describes author and book as being laid out on
cultural genocide: “what would life have been like / a slab, open to what he flatly calls an autopsy. “It
if you had lived beyond 35? / would i be able to speak happened with any type of reporting or Q&A or
cree / without having to google translate / this for you?”  book signing: ‘Tell me something real about your
life. What limbs have you lost? What pain have you
Whitehead looked outside of contemporary experienced that will legitimize this book for me?’ ”
Western terminology for the best way to express

56 AUGUST 2022

All authors are open to that kind of metaphorical And he’s a doctor: aggressors in my life, and some very specific writers
autopsy, but BIPOC authors far more so, and—in In 2010, Whitehead and audience members at festivals. Just levelling
Canada at least—Indigenous ones most of all, even the playing field,” says Whitehead.
when their forensic dissectors are sympathetic was a university
readers. Whitehead points to what he calls the dropout working Cree also bolstered his defences. It doesn’t have
non-Indigenous “starving hunger” for residential at Subway. Today genders, which is liberating for a two-spirit writer,
school trauma narratives. “I definitely have the and it animates things like rocks, mountains and
utmost respect for residential school survivors, and he has a Ph.D. waters. This led Whitehead to think about animat-
I think their stories should be told,” he says. “But and a post as an ing his experiences of insomnia and anxiety, seeing
Indigenous writers have so much more to give. assistant prof at them as symbiotes that bring benefit along with their
I don’t want residential school stories to be the the University damage. Insomnia is a tool of the writerly trade,
synecdoche for Indigenous writing.” for example, and anxiety an ancestral warning to
of Calgary. stop what he is doing. Even rendered in the Roman
For a writer repelled by the idea of having to reveal alphabet, Cree words like nicimos (lover), which read-
all to the world, adopting a universal second-person ers can translate online with relative ease, offered
in Making Love was an effective way of presenting Whitehead some protective distance from the text. 
an authorial persona rather than a real and vul-
nerable person. “I love, love the pronoun ‘you.’ I So did Cree syllabics, the building blocks of its
began using it in the essays to address ex-partners, written form. “A Geography of Queer Woundings,”
one of the book’s more visceral personal essays,
opens with a bureaucratic-sounding list of pain:
“Loss, mourning, sexual assault, abandonment,
colonial violence, imperialism, state-sponsored
genocide—all of which, for me, normalizes an absurd
fact of Indigenous life: it hurts to live.” The essay is
also full of syllabics, making it nearly impossible to
read for those who don’t know the Cree alphabet.
That is on purpose. “To remove myself from the
autopsy table,” Whitehead says, “I had to ghost
myself into Cree.”  

Whitehead has been straddling borders his whole
life. That experience is what he wants to write about,
and on his own terms. “From an Indigenous per-
spective, he’s asking you as a reader to make incred-
ible leaps, between languages, between experiences,
between histories,” says Lynn Henry, Whitehead’s
editor at Knopf. “He is not only breaking down
genre, but breaking down language itself—putting
Indigenous words alongside English words and
allowing them to disrupt each other.” 

For all its subtly expressed thought, intense
personal detail and unconventional storytelling, for
all Whitehead’s success in portraying himself as an
indefinable “mirage in the middle space between
languages,” what makes his new book so compelling
is the way it matches up with Atwood’s Survival. The
two books can seem like polar opposites—one the
settler colonial tradition, the other the Indigenous—
right down to their titles. But they share profound
similarities, too. They speak for literature that
almost always carries a note of “we are still here,”
and make the case that the stories and writing they
describe are at once distinct and universal. That is
the core of Whitehead’s new book. It makes plain
that Indigenous literature arises from very different
ways of thinking, feeling and living but that it’s also
as Canadian as Atwood and Munro, and as univer-
sal in its meaning and importance. Q

MACLEAN’S 57

IDEAS

ART The first NFT was minted in 2014 by digital art-
ist Kevin McCoy, and excitement grew in 2017 with
TOKENS OF the advent of an online game called CryptoKitties,
APPRECIATION which allowed players to “breed” and sell cartoon
cats on the Ethereum blockchain. NFTs exploded
NFTs are great for artists: there’s no shipping in 2021, when the equivalent of $17.6 billion USD
required, brokers are on board and collectors was traded in NFTs—a 21,000 per cent increase
are ready to pay big money for what amounts over 2020. OpenSea, the largest NFT marketplace,
to a digital receipt. So is blockchain the future recorded $8 million USD in NFT sales in January of
of art—or a bubble that’s about to burst? 2021; in August, it recorded $3 billion USD.

BY MICHELLE CYCA Mosquera’s decision to try his hand at NFT art
was born of curiosity and pandemic boredom. His
L  ike most people, artist Victor Mosquera Born in Bogota, good friend Frederic Duquette, who creates art as
had no idea what an NFT was two years ago. Victor Mosquera Fvckrender and is also based in Vancouver, was dip-
Mosquera, who is 32, was born in Bogota, was recruited by ping his toe into the NFT waters at the same time.
and growing up in Colombia provided him the video game “We’re a very tight group of artists, and everyone
with an unusual motivation to pursue his passion company Ubisoft was becoming interested in this,” says Mosquera.
for art and music. “The economy there is really and moved to “It turned out we were kind of like a first wave.”
bad. There are lawyers and doctors driving Uber Toronto in 2013
because they can’t get a job,” he says, sipping an Mosquera’s first NFT was for an animated work
iced coffee on a windy June day near his studio in called “Patterns Unfolding.” It was typical of his
Vancouver’s Yaletown. “I thought, If I study some- style, which features human figures and other-
thing I hate just because it’s ‘safe,’ I might still end worldly landscapes in a sunset-hued palette of
up as an Uber driver. So I’m just going to do what- oranges, pinks and cool blues, o en set to his own
ever I want.” ambient musical compositions. He posted the
piece on an NFT marketplace called SuperRare
He taught himself how to make art—both tra- and announced the sale on Instagram, where he
ditional and digital—and posted his work online, has more than 112,000 followers. A er a flurry of
eventually catching the attention of the video game bids, “Patterns Unfolding” sold for 11 ether to an
company Ubiso , which relocated him to Toronto NFT creator and collector who goes by the name
in 2013 to work as a concept artist. “I moved with no Gold Tree. At the time, a unit of ETH was worth
family, no friends, never having been to the coun- about $762 CAD. Mosquera, watching the auc-
try,” he says. A er work, he would make his own art tion unfold from a friend’s house, was stunned. “I
until two in the morning, and through Instagram was like, what’s going on? This is insane,” he says.
he developed an audience and befriended other
artists who eventually convinced him to move to Since then, Mosquera’s NFTs have sold in the
Vancouver. Four days a er he arrived in November mid-five figures at Sotheby’s and Christie’s and
of 2020, he was minting his first NFT. have been featured at Art Basel Miami; he has also
collaborated with Time magazine to create an NFT
An NFT, or non-fungible token, is a very long in support of Ukraine. His journey illustrates the
number added to a decentralized ledger. Think of dramatic ascent of NFTs into the rarefied world of
it as an entry in an enormous spreadsheet, which is art collecting—as well as the public consciousness—
collectively driven by thousands of powerful com- over the last 18 months. Today, Nike is selling NFT
puters solving immensely difficult mathematical sneakers called CryptoKicks, which have fetched up
problems. When an artist like Mosquera “mints” to $129,000 USD. Celebrities, including Gwyneth
an artwork, they are prompting those computers Paltrow and Paris Hilton, have begun hawking NFTs,
to generate a new token that represents posses- redirecting the scripted enthusiasm they typically
sion of that work; it’s a kind of digital certificate use for bottled water and skin care products to six-
of ownership that can be bought and sold using figure monkey cartoons released by the Bored Ape
cryptocurrency. Yacht Club. Even Charmin has released digital toi-
let paper NFTs.
58 AUGUST 2022
NFTs offer distinct benefits to artists, allowing
them to avoid the hassles and expense of shipping
physical pieces and to place value on digital artwork.
What’s more, each time an NFT is resold, the art-
ist can automatically collect royalties. NFTs have
also been very good for fine art brokers: Sotheby’s,
Christie’s and Phillips all reported record-breaking

The first NFT Mosquera minted, “Patterns Unfolding,” fetched over $8,000 There are many NFT skeptics who point out the
environmental costs of the medium and its mar-
The art world is obsessed with ket: a single auction can have the same carbon
verification. It’s no wonder footprint as a long-haul flight, due to the energy-
NFTs appeal to collectors. intensive mining process that requires specialized
computers to solve complex math problems in
sales in 2021, thanks in part to debuting NFTs in highly publicized auctions. order to generate an NFT’s unique digital signa-
NFTs brought an influx of media attention and new, young bidders to these ture. Even when they are not minting new NFTs,
houses: Sotheby’s reported that 78 per cent of their NFT bidders were new and the computers need to continue their competitive
more than half of them were under 40. In April of 2021, Phillips sold a “multi- problem-solving so as to maintain the integrity of
generational” NFT by Mad Dog Jones (the alias of Thunder Bay artist Michah the distributed ledger. On June 21, the annualized
Dowbak) called “Replicator,” depicting a copy machine that looks like it came total footprint of the Ethereum blockchain was
straight from the set of Blade Runner. The auction closed at $4.1 million USD more than 52 terawatt hours per year, comparable
from an unnamed buyer, making Dowbak the highest-paid living Canadian artist. to the nation of Singapore.

What’s harder to grasp is the benefit of NFTs to buyers, who are spending Then there are the recurring scandals that high-
enormous sums on what is arguably a digital receipt for an image or video file light the fallibility of NFTs. The Bored Ape Yacht
that anyone could download for free, in cryptocurrencies that are highly vola- Club, a collection of monkey cartoon NFTs, has
tile. Why do they do it? Presumably for the same reason a person might buy been hacked twice in recent months, leading to the
an Andy Warhol original for $47 million USD, as one collector did in 2015, the of hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of
despite the fact that you could purchase a convincing facsimile from Etsy NFTs. The actor Seth Green’s Bored Ape cartoon was
for less than $100. The art world has always been full of frauds, from forged “kidnapped” through a phishing scam, and Green
Vermeers to fake Banksys, and its obsession with verification is perhaps why discovered there is little legal recourse for a victim
NFTs—each of which has a singular digital signature—have been so successful of NFT the —the market is unregulated. (Green
among artists and collectors. later paid 65 ETH, then worth close to $300,000
USD, to buy his Ape back from the user who pur-
chased it from the hacker.) As an investment, an
NFT’s long-term value is unknown, and its short-
term value is unpredictable: a Bored Ape valued
at $350,000 USD in August of 2021 was auctioned
for just $115 USD in March of 2022. Because NFTs
are traded in cryptocurrency, their values fluctuate
with the volatile crypto markets. Bitcoin plunged
to its lowest value in 18 months in mid-June, and
ether has lost 75 per cent of its value since Novem-
ber 2021. Even Mike Winkelmann, a.k.a. Beeple,
who sold a single NFT for $69 million USD last year,
has said he believes NFTs are a bubble.

Mosquera, who collects NFTs made by his friends
as well as emerging artists, is motivated by his con-
fidence in both the creators and the technology.
“You’re supporting someone’s career,” he says.
“You’re saying, ‘I love your stuff, I believe in you,
and because I believe in you, I believe that maybe 10
years from now this investment will be worth double
or triple.’ ” He’s not concerned with the cryptocur-
rency crash or people who believe NFTs are a scam.

The perfect faith of converts to the crypto world
is as striking as the vehement opposition of its crit-
ics. One side believes NFTs are the future of art, the
internet, and the global economy; the other side
believes they’re a disaster. At this point, what is
certain is that they are inescapable and increasingly
enmeshed with our tactile reality. Whether that’s
exciting, terrifying, or merely confusing depends
on your point of view—like a work of art, it’s all a
matter of perspective. Q

MACLEAN’S 59

IDEAS W  hen single-sport onlinegambling
became legal in Ontario in April, I
ESSAY received text messages from many
friends asking how I felt about the
AGAINST barrage of online casino ads popping up all over
THE ODDS Toronto like whack-a-moles.

Ontario’s newly legalized online I would write back a quip about how much I was
single-game sports betting—and the learning. For example, I’ve learned the precise spot
flood of ads promoting gambling— to cross the street so that I don’t come face-to-face
puts recovering addicts like me at risk with the large banner ad for the MGM Casino prom-
ising to bring Las Vegas to Toronto, which hangs on
BY ADAM PETTLE the side of the bodega at the end of our street. I’ve
also learned to mute the TV while backing out of
60 AUGUST 2022 the room as soon as the third out is recorded dur-
ing Blue Jays telecasts to ensure that I don’t catch
the first commercial (there’s an even-money prop-
osition that it’ll be for a betting website).

When you’re in recovery for a gambling addic-
tion in this new era of mainstream sports betting,
lessons like these can save your life—or at least go a
long way in combatting all those other things you
learned all those years ago. Don’t be a wuss. Run
from negative emotions. Put the house in your
wife’s name. Look for horses claimed last time out.

I learned all of this from my father. He learned it
from his father, who got it from my great-zayda Jack,
a four-foot-nothing pugilist with a face like an old
boot who famously once put a Warsaw anti-Semite
in a garbage can. He lost his only pair of shoes to a
straight flush in a floating shtetl poker game. You
could say I come by my gambling addiction hon-
estly. Which is ironic, because gamblers don’t come
by anything honestly.

When I was six years old and my brother was
eight, my father, an obstetrician in Toronto, taught
us what Leonard Cohen calls “the holy game of
poker” in a makeshi poker pit in the basement
of my family home, where my father would set up
a puke-green collapsible bridge table. On top of it
sat a fresh pack of blue Bicycle playing cards, pur-
chased on his way home a er delivering a baby.
The chips were salvaged from a banged-up box of
tiddlywinks and stacked evenly in front of each
of our spots.

“The game is five-card draw,” he said. “Straight
seven and its high-low variation. A flush beats a
straight. Unless you’re playing three-card poker.
Remember: never fold unless you’re facing a bet.”
Check. He also taught us five-card stud and the
Bathurst Manor wrinkle (four flush beats a pair),
and the astronomical odds against that final show-
down hand in The Cincinnati Kid.

Just like that, I was under a spell that only inten-
sified when my father got up from his seat at the
table and le our family for good. He even took the
bridge table with him.

Photographs by Claudine Baltazar

Gamblers are like geometrists in velour tracksuits: In my first year So how do I feel about the online gambling explo-
always looking for an angle. One of the angles I always of recovery, sion? I’m scared. Sad. Enraged. I o en feel self-pity,
played was that I was just a guy who loved watching which, as swi ly as the turn flows to the river, can
sports, when what I really loved was betting on them. I couldn’t even morph into shame. I read John Bradshaw’s Heal-
flip past TSN ing the Shame That Binds You, where he writes
Secretly, I prided myself on being able to wager or Sportsnet. that shame is at the root of most addictions. I can
on any event—even darts. On one particularly grim The carousel at name all the feels, but for my recovery, I have to
and grey November trip to Sault Ste. Marie in 2005 Wonderland was let myself feel them.
to visit my in-laws, I watched the entire World also a trigger.
Darts Championship with my late father in-law, Dealing Uno Locked in the grips of active addiction for nearly
John—the only person I ever met who rivalled my for my kids? four decades, I numbed my pain like Dennis Hopper
sport-watching prowess. Unbeknownst to John (or in Blue Velvet, feeling like I had the backing of
his daughter), I was pulling hard Trigger.
for Martin Adams to stick a 180. I the culture around me. It seems
didn’t know who Martin Adams to me that online gambling has
was. But that hadn’t stopped me already become the latest trend
from laying a sizable bet on him. in over-access. And why not?
Just look at who’s endorsing this
If the game—any game—was brand of “fun.” Jamie Foxx, Paris
on, it was a solid bet that I had Hilton and Usain Bolt, plus Wayne
action on it. That’s just how it Gretzky and seemingly every other
went until December of 2020, Canadian sports personality, have
when the addiction that had been hopped on the bandwagon to
steadily beating up on me since acquire their own medium-sized
my bar mitzvah 35 years earlier stack of chips. I get it—money was
finally knocked me down to one my drug of choice too. And there’s
knee, which, it turned out, was big money on the table.
the perfect position to nail the
“for sale” sign on the front lawn A recent report from Deloitte
of our family home. A er I sold the house to pay Canada predicted that the legaliz-
my debts, I got serious help. Miraculously, I still had ation of online gambling nationwide could explode
people in my corner—my wife, my two kids, my big from what is currently a $500-million industry into
brother (who recently turned down an audition for a a $28-billion one within just five years. The pan-
potentially lucrative voice job for an online casino), demic has absolutely crushed addicts and created
a recovery community and an amazing therapist. I countless new ones. It figures that online gambling
stopped gambling and hiding. in Ontario was legalized at this exact moment in
time—as if we weren’t all feeling isolated enough
(A note about my bar mitzvah year: I blew the already. It was this isolation that, less than 18
$4,700 I “earned” croaking out my Ha arah in a months ago, had me pinned on my side of the 50,
particularly bad run at the end of 1986 on lemon staring down a fourth with a mile to go and just a
gin and losing football parlays.) few ticks le on the clock. It was Hail Mary time for
me but I decided to back a different prayer: “God,
In my first year of recovery, I couldn’t even flip grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot
past TSN or Sportsnet to arrive at the crackling change, the courage to change the things I can and
calm of the fireplace channel without getting lit up the wisdom to know the difference.”
myself. Televised sports were an enormous trigger What can’t I change? That online gambling is
for me. So was the carousel at Wonderland—I was here to stay, and that there’s a swarm of betting
an avid horseplayer. Dealing Uno for my kids? websites directly targeting the next generation of
Trigger, because I also loved cards. potential addicts. I’ve been around long enough to
know that the house always wins.
My son, Lev, is eight now. He’s the same age my What can I change? My actions. No bets or lies
brother was when my father broke free of—and today. And I can choose to speak openly to my
broke—our family. Lev comes from four generations children and anyone else who will listen about my
of compulsive gamblers (the addiction has yet to tumultuous, decades-long love affair with gambling,
skip a generation, like the books always promise it and everything it cost me. And then I can feel the
might). Since I got clean, he and I talk openly about pain rushing through me as I do.
it. So much so that every time one of those cheesy, Anyone who has ever suffered from addiction,
neon betting site ads flashes on his YouTube feed or loved someone who has, will recognize this pain.
he flinches, half-squinting through splayed fingers I’d be willing to bet on it. Q
like he’s watching a horror movie. In my version of
things, that isn’t far from the truth.

MACLEAN’S 61

so do you

we will face today’s
challenges together, using them as an invitation
for growth and innovation.

Live, interactive virtual classes, engaged and experienced professors, intuitive course
design, and collaborative group work are all elements of the platform we provide to
elevate your potential. At UFred, online learning never means learning alone.

apply today at ufred.ca/mba

SPECIAL ADVERTISING FEATURE

MBA Special Feature 2022

How to Choose the MBA Program for You
Important Benefits of an MBA

Why Canadian MBA Programs Appeal to International Students
How to Impress MBA Program Recruiters

SPECIAL ADVERTISING FEATURE

Courting Appeal

How MBA-program applicants can impress admissions recruiters

Y ou’ve decided to pursue an MBA— Be responsive
great! Now comes the hard part: im- The MBA admissions process is interactive. Recruiters want to see
pressing the admissions team and evidence that you’re engaged and committed to the task. Check
earning your acceptance letter. While GMAT your email regularly and respond promptly to their requests for
scores and relevant work experience are obvi- information; attend in-person events hosted by the school and
ous standards, recruiters at Canadian univer- introduce yourself to alumni and faculty; and, of course, meet
sities look at more than just grades and your HYHU\ GHDGOLQH VHW IRU \RXȠLW UHˌHFWV KRZ ZHOO \RXȢOO PHHW GHDG-
resumé. So, how can you boost your chances lines throughout the program.
of making a great impression?
Be authentic
Be passionate In your application and at your interview, tell your story your
Be it a cause, a club or your hobbies, demon- way, in your own words. Don’t try to deliver what you think a
strating passion and dedication to something recruiter wants to hear—be honest and sincere about your expe-
outside of the business world can showcase rience, your goals, your strengths, and even your weaknesses or
your collaborative capabilities, creativity, any gaps in your resumé. “Whatever your motivation to pursue
leadership skills and problem-solving acu- an MBA, we want to hear it!” DeCoffee says. “Your attitude and
men. “We look at our applicants holistically,” overall motivation for continuing your education is a good indi-
says Brittany DeCoffe, manager of student cator of the value you will bring to the program.”
recruitment at the University of Fredericton.
“It helps to demonstrate experience related Believe in yourself
to managing people, projects and budgets.” 7KHUH LV QR RQH VL]H ˋWV DOO ȤSHUIHFWȥ DSSOLFDQW 5HPHPEHU WKDW
Equally important? Being able to explain how students accepted to Canadian MBA programs have vastly differ-
an MBA aligns with your passions. ent backgrounds, skill sets, goals and experience, so don’t worry
about “measuring up”—recruiters want to see that you believe
Be prepared you have what it takes to succeed. “One of the biggest recom-
Learn everything you can about your school of mendations is not to count yourself out,” says DeCoffe. “An MBA
choice before you apply. “Don’t assume that FDQ EH LQWLPLGDWLQJ EXW LWȢV LPSRUWDQW WR KDYH FRQˋGHQFH LQ \RXU
everything you need to know about the pro- abilities and all that you bring to the table.”
gram is on the [school’s] website,” says Tere-
sa Pires, the associate director of recruitment
for the MBA program at Queen’s University
in Kingston, Ont. “Do your due diligence and
connect with as many people as you can to get
to know the program.”

Fine-tune your resumé to highlight your
accomplishments, proofread your application
documents to eliminate any typos or errors,
and have someone you trust give you feedback
on your admissions essay. “Being unprepared
and showing a lack of interest during the ap-
plication process will be noticed by the ad-
missions committee,” says Rima Vasudevan,
director of recruitment and admissions at Si-
mon Fraser University in Burnaby, B.C.

Choose the
MBA that’s
best for you.

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Accelerated MBA

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Find the program that’s
right for you. Take our quiz.
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