***This article originally appeared in Healthy Debate*** Hospitals sit at the heart of our healthcare system, acting as a vital access point for lifesaving and critical care. However, across Canada, an unfortunate feature of almost every hospital is a crowded emergency department (ED). With crowded EDs come long waits for…

I remember the beginning. I was young, but I remember. I remember being drawn to the striped orange ball, before knowing what it was going to mean. I remember dribbling alone in the driveway, while the scraping of hockey sticks on asphalt echoed elsewhere. I remember Damon Stoudamire, the Mighty Mouse, the Rookie of…

Why simply making primary care more convenient will go a long way in reducing overcrowding in the ED — We live in an economy that is defined by convenience. The success of today’s most notable companies is based on their ability to save you time, money, and/or effort. Uber and Lyft can get you from Point A to Point B faster (and cheaper) than a traditional cab; Foodora and…

Educators are essential to America’s future, so why don’t we treat them as such? — In the United States, public education typically finds itself in the news for all the wrong reasons: American students testing poorly against its peers; stark inequities between schools based on neighbourhood; teachers — across an increasing number of states — constantly on the verge of striking. Many of the issues…

Acknowledging there is an issue is easy; fixing it is a bit more complicated — It was one of the most anticipated college basketball games of the year — Duke vs North Carolina. Two top-10, powerhouse, and longstanding rival programs that have given us some of the greatest and most memorable college and professional basketball players of all time: Vince Carter, Grant Hill, Sam Perkins…

Every winter, Canadians get hyped up for the IIHF Ice Hockey World Junior Championships. A two-week tournament showcasing the best under-20 hockey players from around the world, it has grown in profile year-over-year to the point that the participating young men are treated like international celebrities (even though many of…

At the season’s quarter-way mark, the Toronto Raptors are the #1 team in the NBA. As a lifelong — and sometimes obsessive — Raptors fan, few things are as satisfying to write as that sentence. The Raptors are 19–4(!), have a true superstar in Kawhi Leonard (a fact that was…

Dear Masai (and I guess Dwane), I want to start by taking a step back and thanking you both for what you’ve done for the Raptors, Toronto, and basketball as a sport in Canada and beyond. The past five years have brought something that I — as a Torontonian born in the 90s — have never…

Last week, BlackBerry announced that John Chen, their CEO, was getting a five-year contract extension to continue his transformation of the once-smartphone-titan into a more lean, focused software company. BlackBerry is in a fairly stable — and vastly different — place these days, but it is still hard to believe…