Howdy, Margineers! Marginheads? I haven’t figured out a nickname for you yet, but rest assured, as the resident social media manager/chaos agent around here, I’m determined to find one worthy of going viral – or at least worth a spot in the “List of fandom names” wiki. (Wait, Coldplay fans really just call themselves Coldplayers? C’mon. We can do better.)

It’s been an eventful week with the start of May and the end of the Raptors’ playoff run (sigh… at least we’ll always have RJ’s buzzer-beater 🥲), but in brighter news for basketball fans, the Toronto Tempo, the city’s new WNBA team, starts their first regular season tonight. A new pro sports team brings the opportunity to crowdsource a new mascot, and thus an opportunity for ideas to go hilariously off the rails. There were many calls for a metronome (get it?!), which led the team to respond with the Metro Gnome… which they claimed was a joke, but is actually kind of incredible? As of press time, there’s still no decision, but with enough public support, maybe we can still make this happen. GnomeHive, where you at?

– Shazia Khan, Social Media Strategy Manager

The takeaway: A divergence in North American markets saw the Nasdaq and S&P 500 surge on the back of massive AI capital expenditure and blowout earnings from tech giants like AMD (NASDAQ: AMD), which was up 13.14%. The TSX, however, finished the period virtually flat. While hopes for a US-Iran peace deal initially eased inflation fears and boosted Canadian banks and miners, the resulting $10 slide in crude oil prices acted as an anchor on the energy-heavy index. Whereas US markets remain insulated by "hyperscaler" spending, Canada’s reliance on the energy sector (which fell nearly 4% this week) continues to cap its upside whenever geopolitical tensions cool.

The Bank of Canada’s overnight rate has been holding steady at 2.25% since October 2025, so nobody was very surprised when it held the rate again last week. But people did take notice when Governor Tiff Macklem testified before the House of Commons Standing Committee on Finance this past Monday and warned that if oil prices stay high and start affecting broader inflation, "there may be a need for consecutive increases in the policy rate." One increase would be newsworthy; consecutive increases would be a whole thing.

The problem is that the economy is pulling in two directions at once. Gas prices spiked more than 21% from February to March, shoving the Consumer Price Index from 1.8% to 2.4%. But US tariffs are still affecting exports and business investment, and the unemployment rate is currently sitting at 6.7%. So raising rates fights inflation, but hurts growth; lowering rates does the opposite. There’s no easy way through, which is probably why Macklem testified that monetary policy may need to be “nimble.”

It’s not time to panic just yet, though. Macklem didn’t say hikes are coming, just that uncertainty is “unusually elevated.” Which is basically a very central-bank way of saying that nobody knows what’s going to happen, not even the Bank of Canada.

by Samantha Emann

This is an excerpt of an article originally run in full on The Margin.

Miranda Priestly has never needed a sequel, and yet here we are. The Devil Wears Prada 2 hits theatres last week, and if the trailers are any indication, the editor-in-chief of Runway magazine is still terrifying, still impeccably dressed, and still the only person who can make "that's all" sound like a threat. And she's still – presumably – very well paid.

So how much does Miranda's job actually pay, and how much does it cost to keep? The fantasy has always been about proximity to beauty, taste, and power, but the reality looks a lot more like a balance sheet.

Anna Wintour is, by most accounts, the real-world Miranda Priestly – the longtime editor-in-chief of Vogue is the acknowledged inspiration for the character, and the closest proxy we have for what that job actually pays. At her peak, Wintour reportedly earned between US$2 million and US$4 million annually during her 37-year tenure at the magazine, not to mention a US$200,000 clothing allowance, a private car and driver, among a number of other perks. While the actual level of her net worth is little more than an educated guess, it's been estimated to be between US$30 million and US$50 million.

Yes, that's a huge amount of money – on paper, that salary basically justifies the terrifying, imperious energy Miranda perfected back in 2005 when the OG movie came out.

But compared to Wintour's cultural footprint, it's also surprisingly small. Thirty-seven years as the arbiter of global taste, and the salary is something a mid-level tech executive could earn in a single year. Has the job always been more about power and prestige than actual profit?

Read more

Shazia Khan, Social Media Strategy Manager: Thanks to the Musk v. Altman trial, I've been rediscovering one of my favourite niche internet experiences: the art of the live-tweeted courtroom drama. Cameras are typically banned in courts, but text-based reporting isn't, and some journalists have developed a real knack for distilling dense legal proceedings into pithy, perfectly-timed, 240-character dispatches.

If the minutiae of court procedure sounds dry on paper, I hear you – I’m the type of person who’s read federal lawsuits and depositions for fun, so I may not be normal. But thankfully, the best tweeters know that what most people want isn't just the legalese, but the absurd, unscripted human moments buried inside it. Like when a judge roasts a powerful billionaire, or when everyone in the overflow room is scrambling for lunch ideas during recess.

Luckily, a handful of reporters out there – specifically Mike Isaac at The New York Times and Liz Lopatto at The Verge – are keeping the magic of courtroom live-tweets alive while covering Musk and Altman’s slap fight. They’ve had me feeling nostalgic for the golden era of Twitter, when a random thread could turn into a monoculture moment. Anyone remember the Zola story? Or when Kanye came sideways at Wiz Khalifa out of nowhere?

The shift of Twitter into X (not to mention the rise of "For You" algorithms everywhere) kinda wrecked the thrill of watching something unfold one post at a time with thousands of strangers. I’m still a little sad about it – but maybe, as long as big-tech boys continue to throw spurious lawsuits at each other, we can still look forward to funny, dedicated courtroom reporters who’ll make A+ content out of it.

From The Margin group chat:

Last week, we asked for the best advice you’ve ever heard from a boss. Our favourite responses:

This week, we want you to answer: What money habit did you inherit (good or bad)?

Send your responses to [email protected] by next Thursday, May 14 at 12 p.m. ET – if we like it, we might feature it in next week's issue.

If you liked this newsletter, hated this newsletter, or are totally indifferent to it, hit the reply button and tell us why! We’re so lonely.

This week’s contributors: Samantha Emann (writer), Tyler Haw (audience engagement), Douglas Dunlop (content lead), Jenna Zaitchik (senior creative designer), Shazia Khan (social media strategy manager), Kat Angus (deputy editor), and Eric Wainwright (editor in chief).

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