Next Gen Insider

Morgan Sharp reports from Toronto on the city's young population and their civic engagement and impact on the local institutions that make democracy function.

Canada's National Observer is a proud participant of the Local Journalism Initiative, which supports the creation of original civic journalism that covers the diverse needs of underserved communities across Canada.

531 Articles

Quarantine led these teens to invent new tech that translates signing into spoken words

Two friends interested in coding and helping others have built a prototype device to turn the basics of American Sign Language into speech. It cost $40 (and took thousands of hours) to build, and with science fair winnings, they plan to tweak it and make more.

Morgan Sharp

July 7th 2021

What happened when Frank Liu and Andrew Cheng took their Ontario high school business curriculum into their own hands

Ontario’s high school curriculum for business left them unsatisfied, so Frank Liu and Andrew Cheng created a competition to help other students gain experience in the field.

Morgan Sharp

July 6th 2021

Toronto startup turning food waste into planet-friendly fabric

The young CEO of ALT TEX has a modest goal. Myra Arshad just wants to dismantle the $104-billion global polyester industry, one of the primary climate villains of fast fashion. She and her co-founder are aiming to do that by turning food waste into textiles for clothing.

Morgan Sharp

July 5th 2021

Toronto startup Flash Forest aims to regrow world’s forests with drones

The timber industry can quickly clear trees with little human involvement, but is not nearly as efficient at replanting. Flash Forest says it can do the job 10 times faster and at a fraction of the cost using drones and artificial intelligence.

Morgan Sharp

July 2nd 2021

This marine biologist is spotlighting people of colour in the climate movement

Marine biologist Anuradha Rao aims to show that environmental defenders can look like you or her with her new book, One Earth: People of Colour Protecting our Planet, which features activists of colour from all over the world.

Morgan Sharp

June 30th 2021

Visual art students’ work lights up Yonge-Dundas Square

Visual art students at Ryerson University (known as X University among some people amid a formal review of its name) have taken over the giant screens of Yonge-Dundas Square this month for a late-night exhibition of their work.

Morgan Sharp

June 18th 2021

Get vaccinated to live in dorms, Ryerson and U of T tell students

Students planning to live in residences at two of Toronto’s largest universities should get at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine before they move in for the 2021/22 school year.

Coronavirus in Canada

Morgan Sharp

June 15th 2021

This Toronto startup wants to fix gadget-making inefficiencies

Gowtham Ramachandran and Toronto startup company Trace are developing manufacturing technologies to make it faster, cheaper and more efficient for hardware teams to build electronics.

Morgan Sharp

June 15th 2021

Tough time for indie music sector gives birth to cool new collaboration

The budding career of indie folk singer/songwriter Leith Ross took a detour the day after their first show as a featured performer when the first lockdown of the COVID-19 pandemic halted touring and live shows.

Morgan Sharp

June 14th 2021

Ontario unveils new Grade 9 math curriculum

Ontario’s education ministry released its updated Grade 9 math curriculum on Wednesday, adding in coding and financial literacy components and doing away with a split that sent a disproportionate number of racialized students away from academic paths.

Morgan Sharp

June 9th 2021

Ryerson statue felled, head thrown in lake as university ponders next steps

The statue of Egerton Ryerson that stood outside the Toronto university bearing his name was pulled down and its head discarded in Lake Ontario on the weekend. A university task force says it still won’t rush a review of his legacy.

Morgan Sharp

June 8th 2021

Summer job market for Canada’s students gets off to slow start

The latest monthly jobs data show younger workers again lagging behind the broader workforce in May as provinces tightened public health restrictions due to a resurgence of COVID-19 cases.

Morgan Sharp

June 4th 2021

Climate change book project raises marginalized voices

The 20 contributors to "Our Climate, Our Stories" speak of loss and hope as young Black and Indigenous people and other people of colour dealing with the climate emergency.

Morgan Sharp

June 4th 2021

Schools in Ontario will stay closed until September

Ontario will keep its schools closed in June, Premier Doug Ford says, as he extends virtual-only learning until the summer break amid a waning third wave of COVID-19 infections and a vaccine rollout still in progress.

Morgan Sharp

June 2nd 2021

Meet the Ontario teen behind Canada’s economics Olympiad

High school student Andy Wei wants to get more of his peers engaged in economics, so he created the Canadian Economics Olympiad. Top participants in an upcoming event can secure a spot on a national team to compete in a virtual global competition.

Morgan Sharp

June 2nd 2021