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For almost 20 years, our sister publication, Canadian Business, kept tabs on the richest people in the country, an ambitious project that was last published in 2017. Seven years, one pandemic and a cost-of-living crisis later, we thought it was time to take a fresh look at the uber-wealthy—so we partnered with Canadian Business to bring the Rich List back to life.

Maclean’s new list of the 40 wealthiest Canadians—our December cover story, published today—took an army of researchers months to create. Some names will be familiar. But there are some fresh faces in the mix, including e-commerce titans, crypto cowboys, tech wizards and industry disruptors. Many are in the food or service industries: grocers, food packagers, corner store kings, alcoholic beverage innovators. The vast majority have quietly amassed wealth by building some of Canada’s biggest behind-the-scenes companies in fields such as IT or mortgage insurance.

The old adage that the rich get richer is proven true by this list. Overall, the wealth of the super-elite has ballooned over the last two decades: the combined net worth of the 10 richest Canadians is now $261 billion, compared to $60 billion in 2004.

—Sarah Fulford, editor-in-chief

FIRST PERSON

Corli Barnes dreamed of opening an innovative primary care practice, but about a year into her medical residency, reality hit: she would need at least $100,000 annually just to cover operating costs. When she found out that the small town of Madoc was offering its own $100,000 signing bonus, plus additional funding from the county and the Ministry of Health, she couldn’t pass the offer up. So in July of 2024, she and her husband sold their Sudbury home and moved to Madoc.

HABITAT

Some of Wren Silverii’s best childhood memories involve tagging along with her dad to Ottawa’s Stittsville Flea Market in the ’90s, watching him thumb through stacks of old baseball cards. “My dad and I always popped into old barns to look at dusty things when no one else wanted to,” she says. She’s now an antiques collector herself. Here’s a look inside her small Victorian home in the small town of Rothesay, New Brunswick, which she’s filled with vintage finds.

FIRST PERSON

For months, news headlines and economic pundits have been wringing their hands over Canada’s supposed productivity problem. A recent report by the University of Calgary showed that Canada’s productivity level, measured by real GDP per capita, was 12 per cent lower than the U.K.’s, 20 per cent lower than France’s and a whopping 32 per cent lower than the U.S.A.’s.

Brian Lewis, a public policy economist at U of T’s Munk School, rejects the premise outright. He argues that GDP is merely one aspect of a country’s productivity and that we must also factor in things like Canada’s public-sector output and income, health, fairness and happiness. “While GDP measures output, it misses many factors that contribute to quality of life. It turns out that when we look at other measures, Canadians are doing pretty well compared to other countries,” he writes.

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