As I watched team members add to the running ledger of their collective joys for 2025, it occurred to me that we might be looking in the wrong place if we want to reclaim our humanity from machines. Perhaps a more uncontroversial and profound Turing test is the mystery of the absolute arbitrariness of what makes us happy. Looking over this year’s list, patterns emerge—trips, new friends—but much more here inheres in the mundane, lowercase, sense-activating thinginess of life: walking through clouds of butterflies, eating candy alone, homemade stew, wearing pink glitter, cold clementines in a hot bath. Joy is not second-hand. Its unpredictability identifies us as precisely as our fingerprints. Let computers have mega-concepts like creativity while we claim—and celebrate—what lives in the moment, and takes its value from its vanishing.—Carmine Starnino, editor-in-chief
Carine Abouseif – Senior Editor
1. Buying a tomato plant for my balcony this summer—and picking exactly one tomato every morning.
2. Making my way through Ann Patchett’s books and essays.
3. Every song on Olivia Dean’s The Art of Loving.
4. Running into piles of crispy leaves with my son and yelling: “Splish, splash, splosh!”
5. Afternoon espressos with a dash of milk.
Mostafa Al-A’sar – Contributing Writer
1. Swimming in Lake Ontario.
2. Making new friends.
3. Watching movies.
4. Moving to a more spacious apartment.
5. And, of course, writing for The Walrus.
Soraya Amiri – Contributing Writer
1. Feeling safe and that I belong after receiving my Canadian passport.
2. Finding hope that I will see my family again.
3. Continuing my voice as a writer and journalist, reading messages and feedback on WhatsApp after our articles are published, and feeling the deep impact of these stories.
4. Meeting kind and supportive people and making new friends.
5. My marriage.
Ally Baker – Head of Research
1. Eating cold clementines in a hot bath.
2. Crate digging at Aux 33 Tours and Sonik Records in Montreal.
3. Hopping multiple trains to chart a path from Berlin to Cologne to Scotland (with stops in Brussels and London) to visit dear friends in the blistering August heat.
4. Spending an entire day in the Museum Ludwig in Cologne, the better part of it standing in front of this self-portrait by Paula Modersohn-Becker and Max Ernst’s The Virgin Spanking the Christ Child Before Three Witnesses.
5. Learning that the Truth in Journalism Project informed part of the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at CUNY’s free high school journalism curriculum, Journalism for All.
Ketsia Beboua – CIBC Digital Fellow
1. Signing the lease on my first apartment.
2. Driving along Ottawa’s Sir George-Étienne Cartier Parkway.
3. My cat, Benjamin Button (“Benji”), doing literally anything ever.
4. Adding more whipped cream to my hot chocolate every time it melts.
5. My friends’ reactions when I revealed that chickpeas are, in fact, garbanzo beans.
Marina Black – Chawkers Fellow
1. Reading over twenty books and logging them on Goodreads—I highly recommend the Dune series.
2. Photographing Dan and Eugene Levy on the red carpet at my first Toronto International Film Festival.
3. Family trip to England, and taking my dad to Abbey Road.
4. Spending time with my feline fur baby Felix.
5. Closing life chapters and entering new ones—like joining The Walrus!
Claire Cooper – Managing Editor
1. A magical trip to Scotland with my sister. It felt like a nine-night sleepover with lazy nights spent gossiping in our pajamas, and days spent exploring at our own pace.
2. Hopping on the Blue Jays fan bandwagon just in time to watch seven nail biter games of the World Series.
3. Easier mornings now that my youngest sets his own alarm clock.
4. A seafood pasta made in Margaretsville, Nova Scotia with gifted lobster (caught by my cousin’s husband and shelled by my aunt). Shared with friends I’ve been lucky to have since grade nine.
5. Night swimming in Georgian Bay during a heat wave.
Michelle Cyca – Contributing Writer
1. I gave up on tracking almost everything this year—no idea how many books I read, for instance—but I did track my mileage and was delighted to hit my 1,000 kilometre running goal for the year in early November.
2. All the nights I wondered what my kids were up to and found them snuggled up in my daughter’s bed, as she read a book aloud to her little brother.
3. My best friend started DJing one night a month and reliably draws an impeccable crowd of friends to pack the dance floor—her sets are truly perfect, and she’s often on early enough that I can still be in bed by midnight. The ideal way to party in your late thirties.
4. Deleting social media off my phone. Clarifying! Relaxing! So much more time to read books I don’t track!
5. Every swim this year, and there were so many: my annual January 1 polar dip, ending long runs on hot days in the ocean, spending the last day of summer paddling around one of the largest tidal lakes in the world, and closing out the year on the Pacific coast in Mexico.
Toula Drimonis – Contributing Writer
1. Watching the sunrise in the Sahara Desert, surrounded by nothing but sand dunes and sky.
2. Long, leisurely bike rides along Montreal’s waterfront, extended walks around the city, and time spent on the treadmill. There’s no medicine like the rush of endorphins and fresh air on your face.
3. Walking the narrow, winding cobblestone alleys in the medieval castle of Monemvasia in Laconia, Greece, at 5 a.m. all by myself.
4. Montreal diner breakfasts: bottomless cups of coffee, the weekend paper or a paperback, the endless buzz of conversations, a steady rotation of customers, the clanking of plates, the unmistakable waft of Quebecois fast food in the air.
Camille Dundas – Director of Development
1. Finding a photo of my father I had never seen before.
2. Watching my husband put on our son’s tie as he got ready to give the valedictorian speech at grade eight graduation.
3. Eating a bag of candy alone in the car. No sharing. Guilt free.
4. My alma mater, Carleton University, announced its first ever lecture series named for a woman: Mary Ann Shadd Cary, one of my childhood heroines. Then, they asked me to give the inaugural lecture. It was surreal.
5. Every time our daughter breaks out into spontaneous dance. She’s the life of our party. Every day.
Christina Frangou – Western Correspondent
1. Hiking in the Slovenian Alps. Dreamy lakes, layers of mountains, challenging terrain, and homemade stew for dinner at the finish.
2. Watching Magdeleine Vallieres shock everyone by winning the world road cycling race. No Canadian has ever done that. This photo of her riding into the arms of her teammate makes me cry every time.
3. Reading Susan Orlean’s memoir Joyride. I underlined this: “What matters in a piece of writing is to acknowledge the fingerprints the writer leaves on the story. That is what makes a piece of writing true.”
4. Returned to a favourite Alberta cycling route. You start at the world’s largest dinosaur in Drumheller, ride past the hoodoos, down a big hill, jump on a little ferry to cross the river, grind up the hill, and finish with pints at Valley Brewing.
5. My eldest nephew grew taller than me this year. His brother and sister will soon follow. They’re hilarious and sweet and crushing it in hockey.
Ariella Garmaise – Associate Editor
1. I have a new niece named Flora, and my old niece Maggie loves to pick up little forks and say things like: “It’s tiny like Flora’s feet.”
2. My friend Hannah Murray’s culinary Substack, doggy bag, where I get amazing ideas for recipes, like Caesar salad with black garlic (if you can imagine). My elevator pitch is if Addison Rae were Alison Roman.
3. Pack Animal, the reading collective run by the inimitable Emma Olivia Cohen and Emily Wood, who hosted The Walrus’s own Fall Books Party, which many are calling the Young Hollywood party of Canadian media.
4. Returning to Montreal for a few months and going to more shows, especially to see Prism Shores and Bracelet.
5. The Summer I Turned Pretty—an amazing show for adults about two brothers and a beautiful woman named Belly.
Amarah Hasham-Steele – Power Corporation of Canada Fellow
1. Seeing Sally Rooney speak at a literature festival in Galway (and staying up very late finishing Intermezzo the night before so that I’d be prepared).
2. Getting really into baking birthday cakes for my family (flavours have included confetti, strawberry shortcake, and chocolate with roasted marshmallows).
3. Finishing my master’s in literature and starting my fellowship at The Walrus––exciting beginnings and endings abound!
4. Joining a rec hockey team and getting back into playing hockey.
5. Reading Charlotte Brontë’s Shirley and rediscovering precisely what I love about literature.
Jennifer Hollett – Executive Director
1. Snowboarding on the Matterhorn, crossing over from Switzerland to Italy, meeting Brits who were asking about Mark Carney, and Americans who were apologizing for Donald Trump.
2. Creating a dance floor. Highlights this year include dance parties in my building’s lobby, a living room, and a front lawn.
3. Striking up conversations with strangers, especially seniors.
4. Touring the actual Agora and Athens as part of the Canadian delegation at the Athens Democracy Forum.
5. At a time when media is shrinking, The Walrus growing in 2025.
Siddhesh Inamdar – Features Editor
1. Stepping out of Cancun airport, the tropical wind and sounds transported me home, Mexico standing in for India, possibly the happiest I’ve felt all year.
2. Sunbathing—and getting sunburnt—on a Cancun beach for six hours, in peak summer, to stock up on enough sun to get me through the Canadian winter (which is now, and I don’t regret it). In the same spirit, spending the rest of the summer in the outdoor pool of my apartment building. Summer is joyful.
3. My father’s first visit to Canada, and showing him the life we’ve made for ourselves here.
4. Competitive badminton to bookend the week—what gets me through every week.
5. And the exhaustion probably masks the joy and gratitude, but all the time spent with my daughter.
Arno Kopecky – Contributing Writer
1. Walking through clouds of butterflies in the Baja after rains made the desert bloom.
2. Swimming in cool lakes on hot summer days with my wife and daughter.
3. Skipping school with my daughter (and work, for me) to go skating on a frozen mountain lake.
4. Dancing ’til dawn with new and old comrades at a dear friend’s wedding.
5. Reading The Dark Is Rising to my ten-year-old as winter solstice approaches and seeing her love it as much as I did when I was her age (plus relishing it anew myself—the dark is rising, but it’s done so before).
Emma Mackenzie Hillier – Senior Event Manager
1. Growing my indoor plant collection and keeping most of them alive. Especially the clover; they’re still flowering against the cold, winter window.
2. Being a maid of honour for my best friend’s wedding in North Vancouver. As we returned from taking pictures, we nearly bumped into a brown bear looking for garbage to root through!
3. Returning to reading fiction! For nearly ten years, I’ve been in a nonfiction hole about the twentieth century. But in a bid for some escapism, I returned to one of my first loves: science fiction and fantasy. I can strongly recommend Joe Abercrombie, and I’m very excited to read Philip Pullman’s conclusion to the Book of Dust Trilogy (joy to come!).
4. I’ve found solace and a lot of laughter at the ups and downs of the US’s political soap opera in satire and stand-up. Favourites include South Park and comedians like Marc Maron, Gareth Reynolds, and Gianmarco Soresi.
5. Healthy sleep habits. I hate being that smug person who espouses the benefits of getting a good night’s sleep, but unapologetically turning down social engagements, lots of bedtime reading, forcing myself to put down the phone: it makes a difference.
Samia Madwar – Senior Editor
1. Ringing in the new year with multiple generations of my extended family belting out a rendition of “The Wheels on the Bus.”
2. Asking for directions to a landmark in Old Damascus. Besides the fact that I was back home after years of war, there’s a deep joy in asking a human, not Google Maps, where to go, and getting an answer that’s essentially: “go down that narrow alley, turn left, then right, then left again, then find somebody else to show you the rest of the way.”
3. Camping with my kid for the first time.
4. Watching the kids’ reactions as my friend Chantaie read her book, Amoya Blackwood Is Brave, to my daughter’s kindergarten class.
5. Listening to my husband’s progress as he teaches himself the saxophone and Spanish.
Pacinthe Mattar – Contributing Writer
1. Adopting my chihuahua-pug puppy Hobbes, a rescue from Texas.
2. A FaceTime call from my friends in Minneapolis after the birth of their son, asking if I would be his godmother—and their subsequent trip to Toronto where all four of them squished into my one-bedroom apartment for a weekend.
3. Stepping onto the back patio of my favourite restaurant in the city, Conejo Negro, and seeing the beaming faces of the dozens of friends, all resplendent in a pop of yellow, in honour of my fortieth birthday.
4. After eighteen years of not having him in the country, being able to invite my dad to be my plus one to movie screenings, comedy shows, and more. There’s a special joy in seeing him sit front-row at events I am hosting or moderating.
5. Sandwiching together with friends in a row at Hot Docs Cinema for the premiere of For The Culture with Amanda Parris , where an episode I pitched, researched, and wrote on singlehood called “Beyond Happily Ever After” drew whoops, cheers, laughter, and knowing sighs from a packed theatre.
David Moscrop – Contributing Writer
1. Tracking down imperial stouts from Ontario brewers; drinking said stouts.
2. Building the Lego set Lion Knight’s Castle—old school fun.
3. Reading Guy Gavriel Kay’s Written on the Dark and picking out historical allusions and references and researching them until I’d burned the work day.
4. Sitting in my home office window nook with the dog, Sam, and reading books, including Written on the Dark, The Mind Mappers, Between Two Rivers, Pirate Hunters, and the Slough House series.
5. A third Christmas tree—onwards to five!
Corrie Maurik – Editorial Producer
1. Catching up to the One Piece anime (1,150+ episodes!) and influencing (okay, fine: pestering) my friends to give the franchise a shot too.
2. Seeing My Chemical Romance and Waterparks in concert.
3. Spending far too much money in various artist alleys at conventions and at the new Artist Alley shop on Yonge Street.
4. My brother and his fiancée rescued a dumpster kitten. Getting to see a teeny fuzzball grow into a handsome, goofy cat via her Snapchats has been an ongoing highlight.
5. Graduating from Centennial College’s publishing program, landing a great internship, and starting my first grown-up job as The Walrus’s first ever editorial producer!
Vikram Nijhawan – Walrus Editorial Fellow
1. Celebrating my mother’s sixtieth birthday by interviewing friends and family members for a memory album gift to her.
2. Seeing Jennifer Egan in New York and getting a signed copy of A Visit from the Goon Squad.
3. The epic French Open final between Carlos Alcaraz and Jannik Sinner—the best sports moment of the year (sorry, Blue Jays) and totally deserving of a literary, point-by-point reconstruction à la John McPhee’s Levels of the Game.
4. Catching up with old friends in Toronto and meeting new ones—watching shows, getting food, and just enjoying their company.
5. Getting to write and publish more.
Ana Luisa Ortega Juarez – Senior Designer
1. Spending time with my seventeen-year-old dog back in Mexico.
2. My parents’ visit to Canada. Taking them to Sandbanks and to Montreal for bagels.
3. Listening to audiobooks while driving up to the cottage.
4. Spending time with family and friends at the cottage—swimming in the lake and eating wonderful meals.
5. Having a delicious breakfast burrito from Masa Deli after going to pilates on the weekend.
Brett Popplewell – Contributing Writer
1. Reading bedtime stories on the floor with my wife and kids.
2. The almond croissants from the bakery by my house.
3. Every sunrise and every sunset that I’ve been present enough to notice.
4. Breakfasts with my dad.
5. Coffees in bed.
Luc Rinaldi – Contributing Writer
1. The birth of my son, and every one of his smiles, stares, coos, poops, burps, baths, and naps.
2. Reading Breakfast at Tiffany’s while eating breakfast on top of a mountain overlooking Lake Como.
3. Deleting my LinkedIn account and running around Brooklyn phone-less with the Neo-Luddites who inspired me to do it.
4. Playing the Cameron House for the first time to release my friend Mike McPhee’s brilliant album Barn Sour.
5. Finally writing fiction again after too many years reporting only on real stuff in the real world.
Rhiannon Russell – Regional Correspondent for Northern Canada
1. Wandering around Powell’s Books.
2. Singing at the top of my lungs at a Beaches concert.
3. Doing agility with my border collie.
4. Running fifty kilometres in Whitehorse with a bunch of my friends and our dogs.
5. Wearing pink glitter on my face during my trail runs.
Harley Rustad – Senior Editor
1. Watching our two-year-old fall asleep with books as blankets.
2. A week trip to England for the sole purpose of watching as much soccer as possible (seven games).
3. Our newborn daughter’s first smiles, first laughs, first scoots.
4. Launching a writing residency in Port Renfrew, British Columbia.
5. The album release concert of a dear friend: Joel In Blue.
Carmine Starnino – Editor in Chief
1. A late August night, and my wife and I breaking past the enclosure on a private beach in the Roman town of Gaeta, sneaking by a sleeping guard, and walking the length of the darkly lit, restless shore, past rows and rows of closed-up deck chairs.
2. The 6–7 meme, which I love precisely because it offers what AI slop cannot: human-made nonsense, like play, silliness, and yes, joy.
3. Teaching my son to shave.
4. The perfect oven-roasted chestnut, which was delivered onto me on Tuesday, November 4, at 7:46 p.m.
5. This opening line in Kateri Lanthier’s luminous poem “Harmonics,” which I immediately accepted: “Like a private nightclub, this bright ambulance.”
Monika Warzecha – Digital Editor
1. Ice skating in the city with friends a.k.a. Gossip on Ice.
2. A summer trip to Halifax after more than a decade away. I immediately ran into one of my former professors.
3. Picking blueberries with my mother-in-law Christine and her cat Alfie.
4. Taking my nephew to Riverdale Zoo and then going for pancakes—okay, one big pancake—at a diner.
5. Carlos’ House of Spice, a good excuse to visit Kensington Market.
Sean Young – Fundraising & Engagement Officer
1. Cycling around the Toronto Islands after the Bike Share program launched there this summer.
2. Coming to the closing chapters of I Who Have Never Known Men while the sun rose on Hornby Island.
3. Rochelle Jordan’s Through The Wall. Pristine production and my favourite album of the year.
4. Getting to DJ at so many friends’ parties, weddings, and little get-togethers.
5. Video-chatting with my niece and nephew almost every week, especially the half-dozen times I was accidentally abandoned inside the dollhouse.
