2025: The Stories That Surprised Us

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In a time of echo chambers and hyper-personalization, where algorithms narrow the focus of what we see online, The Walrus focuses on journalism that expands horizons and tells you about what you didn’t know you needed to know. Here are nine stories from 2025, as chosen by our editors, that opened up new worlds and ideas to our team and our readers.

Carine Abouseif, Senior Editor: As an editor, my ears always perk up when I hear a story described as “juicy.” That’s how we talked about contributing writer Tajja Isen’s essay, “The Publishing Industry Has a Gambling Problem,” as it made its way through our editorial process. Tajja interviewed writers, book editors, and literary agents about the concept of “sales track”—a term for the number of books a writer has sold. Low sales numbers can cut down a writer’s career before it’s even really begun, shaping how an agent pitches their second book and whether editors will buy it. It was juicy because of the voices Tajja was able to get, including an editor at a Big Five press. But I also loved it for the way it pulls back the curtain on an industry that I know little about, but whose products I consume. If I read a book by a debut author and never see a second book, I find myself wondering what happened to them. The piece answers that question: they probably didn’t get a second chance. As an editor—of journalism, not books—I’ve seen first-hand how writers find their voice: with one piece, then another, then another. It would be a shame if they didn’t get that chance.

The Publishing Industry Has a Gambling Problem BY TAJJA ISEN Companies keep betting on the next bestseller. Literature is poorer for it

Carmine Starnino, Editor in Chief: It’s rare to find a magazine story in which a writer scrutinizes her own motives as rigorously as she does her subject’s. Reporting, after all, rests on the presumption of ethical clarity, with the journalist cast as moral referee. Michelle Shephard turns that convention inside out. She is, of course, the former national security reporter who led the Toronto Star coverage of the Toronto 18, the group of eighteen Muslim men and youth arrested in 2006 for plotting a terrorist attack. After years of trials, a life term was handed to twenty-four-year-old ringleader Zakaria Amara. His release on parole in 2022 prompted Shephard to ask how he became radicalized, why he turned to violence, and whether he had truly been rehabilitated. In “How a Would-Be Bomber Rebuilt His Life,” she returns to the case she helped bring to national prominence, examining not only Amara’s transformation but also her own complicity in shaping the media portrait that defined him. The result is an extraordinary act of journalistic self-scrutiny: a story that exposes the uneasy power dynamic between storyteller and subject and confronts how those who report on extremism influence the terms of public forgiveness. Shephard’s masterwork of empathetic storytelling belongs in every journalism classroom.

How a Would-Be Bomber Rebuilt His Life BY MICHELLE SHEPHARD Zakaria Amara was jailed for his part in the Toronto 18 terror plot. Then came the hard work of redemption

Samia Madwar, Senior Editor: So far, I’ve known at least four people who’ve been stalked. Two of them were women whose partners at the time would follow them whenever the women made plans without them, claiming to do it out of love or protection. Two were university students, at different schools, each stalked by a classmate who wanted to date them. I never made any associations between these cases, because they all happened at different times. I never wondered what makes a stalker pursue a target so obsessively or why they so often confuse harassment for romance. But Sheima Benembarek did. When she approached me about writing a feature on stalking (known legally as criminal harassment), I immediately wanted to know more. For over a year, she interviewed stalking survivors and experts, weaving together horrifying anecdotes with an informed look at where stalking behaviour comes from, why we need to take it more seriously, and why it will take a concerted societal effort—that means all of us—to stop it.

Why Don’t We Take Stalking More Seriously? BY SHEIMA BENEMBAREK The law makes it hard for victims of criminal harassment to prove they’re at risk

Claire Cooper, Managing Editor: I’ve reached the life stage where a night catching up with friends inevitably includes health updates on everyone’s aging parents. The topic can easily turn a lively night sombre, which is why one particular moment from Arno Kopecky’s beautiful memoir about his father really stuck with me. In talking about his dad’s peak years as a scientist in contrast with his current struggle with dementia, Arno reminds himself—and me—that, even if these last years are defined by decline, it’s not a total loss. And it doesn’t take away from what someone achieved over their lifetime: “People lose children, lovers, siblings. Those are tragedies. This, in a strange way, is something to celebrate: my dad has lived a long life, with a successful career. He got to see his two boys grow . . . I got to have a father who loved me.”

A Son, a Scientist, and the Secret of Bioluminescence BY ARNO KOPECKY My father spent a career decoding how fireflies make light. Now, as dementia sets in, he is grappling with life’s final mystery

Dafna Izenberg, Features Editor: I spent much of the winter break in 2022 thinking about the recent death of a man named Kenneth Lee. He was killed in downtown Toronto after being swarmed by eight teenage girls, who were all criminally charged. Children, I kept thinking. Why did they attack him? Where had their anger come from? And what did it tell us about society, education, parenting? Toronto journalist Inori Roy set out to answer these questions. From April 2024 until this past May, Roy attended the girls’ judicial proceedings, carefully piecing together the events of the night of Lee’s death. She talked to experts in child development and mental health. She thoughtfully recorded her own observations about how the girls behaved in court, whether or not they seemed remorseful, as she hoped they would. Her reporting is robust, and her conclusions judicious. Her sensitivity is quiet and exquisite. Her description of Lee’s last moments—crouched on the ground, clutching the hem of the coat of a woman who tried to save his life—breaks my heart over and over.

Why Did a Group of Teenage Girls Kill a Man in a Downtown Toronto Parkette? BY INORI ROY Inside the crime that shocked a city—and the courtroom drama that followed

Harley Rustad, Senior Editor: The first building that my dad completed when he was building our house was a little sauna. It sits in a forest; it’s heated by an antique cast-iron wood stove; its interior is lined with aromatic cedar planks. It’s the most relaxing way to spend half an hour, the twin sounds of crackling fire and winter rain pattering outside. It’s serene. What I learned recently was that, around the world, sauna-lovers were transforming this calm, muted pastime into shocking levels of cacophonic performance. Enter, as writer Sarah Everts did, the steamy, sweaty, bizarre arena of the World Sauna Championships, an international competition held this year in Italy, in which competitors (often professionals who work at spas) spin towels, fan the fragrant steam, and prance around for a sweaty audience but do so through elaborate routines. Think historical novelizations or pop-culture dramatizations. Trust me: it’s weird. Countries around the northern hemisphere send their best, except Finland, which, with a haughty superiority complex, boycotts the whole thing, a fact I found hilarious.

The Steamy, Sweaty, Towel-Spinning Weirdness of the World Sauna Championships BY SARAH EVERTS Whatever you’re picturing, we promise it’s stranger

Ariella Garmaise, Associate Editor: In the vast canon of poetry and literature written about our fear of death, one is unlikely to encounter the words “terremation” (that is, “encasing the body in organic wood chips and alfalfa”) or “acquamation” (think an extra-hot hot tub). Thankfully, Ellen Himelfarb has stepped in to fill the void. Her essay about creative approaches to the expensive problem of the human corpse surprised me not just because of its macabre subject matter but because of how lyrically she describes such ungodly terms. Concepts like “human composting” and “QR codes to burial plots” might strike you askance, as will her indefatigable wit in the face of the inevitable: “Being in creative control intrigues me,” she writes of switching up her husband’s plan for burial. “Also, it’s encouraging to think that this might be the last time I have the upper hand in my marriage.”

The Dearly Departed Are Getting Creative with Death BY ELLEN HIMELFARB Goodbye, cremation and caskets; hello, human composting and aquamation

Siddhesh Inamdar, Features Editor: The story starts with an anecdote about writers Anam Zakaria and Haroon Khalid taking an Uber back home from a doctor’s appointment for their young daughter, disheartened that they remain on the lookout for an ENT specialist despite a months-long wait. As they strike up a conversation with the Uber driver, they find that he’s a recent immigrant from Afghanistan with decades of experience working at the military hospital in Kabul as—yes, you guessed it—an ENT. This state of affairs, of skilled professionals being underemployed, even in the face of shortages in the very sectors they are equipped to practise in, is surprising only in how de rigueur it is. A finding that Zakaria and Khalid note in the story, that the Canadian economy can add up to $50 billion in annual GDP by bringing immigrants up to the employment levels of those born here, makes it doubly so. The fact, of course, remains that there’s hardly been a more difficult time to be an immigrant in Canada, with the government flattening out the country’s population growth regardless of its impact on the economy—at a time it is already buffeted by a trade war with the US. It’s the most baffling part of not just this story but an ongoing grim reality. (“We have plenty of space to share, and are welcoming in our awkward, unsettling way,” Charles Foran writes in “What I Want the Animals in My Home to Know,” a poetic story I couldn’t resist including here—about sharing his home with the creatures who think of it as home too—for the allegorical reminder for Canada.)

Canada Is Wasting the Talent of Immigrants It Invites Here–Just Ask Your Uber Driver BY ANAM ZAKARIA, HAROON KHALID Skilled professionals are being forced into the gig economy while their fields face shortages

Monika Warzecha, Digital Editor: I spend so much of my life online that I’ve started to watch out for stories that really go somewhere, that pay attention to geography and physical spaces. Andrew Seale checked in on Quebec snow birds in the motels and hotels of Hollywood and Hallandale Beach, Florida (complete with a side quest to Big Daddy’s pub). This community wasn’t at all on my radar as someone from Ontario who barely got through high school French. And the story managed to be not just a fun trip south but a meditation on identity, change, and home.

Little Quebec Was Built to Escape Winter. Now It’s Melting Away BY ANDREW SEALE A French snowbird’s quest to maintain his community in Florida, one motel at a time The post 2025: The Stories That Surprised Us first appeared on The Walrus.