I ventured into our Toronto office this week – one of the few times I’ve done that since the beginning of the pandemic. The office is in the downtown core, but of course there are no crowded streets or busy sidewalks in Canada’s largest city these days. On my way to the office, I drove by the main campus of the University of Toronto. The buildings and playing fields looked lonely. I know the feeling. There are so many things about working during a pandemic that are difficult. The team at The Conversation Canada has it relatively easy because our technology means remote work is mostly effortless. But one of the things I find most challenging is not seeing my colleagues in person. We hold virtual news meetings where the necessary busines gets done, but somehow, it’s not quite the same. People don’t linger in video meetings. Casual conversation isn’t as easy. You laugh less. So, on those rare occasions when virtual meetings feel like real meetings, it can be exciting. That happened at one of our news meetings this week. We were talking about a great story we’d just published by Megan Bailey of Dalhousie University. Prof. Bailey is a Canada Research Chair on Integrated Ocean and Coastal Governance and she wrote a timely article about the dispute between Indigenous and non-Indigenous commercial fishermen in Nova Scotia. Her article provided a research-based analysis on the Sipekne'katik First Nation fishery. “As a researcher with expertise in fisheries science, fisheries economics and marine policy, I see no evidence the fishery will harm lobster stocks,” she wrote. “Conservation is not at the heart of the ongoing dispute.” One of my colleagues called it “the perfect Conversation story” because the combination of academic expertise in the form of a journalistic article really fulfils our stated mission: share knowledge and inform decisions. Inspired by those words, I’ve put together a few of my favourite “perfect” Conversation stories from the last week – articles where the academic expertise helps put timely issues into sharper focus. And for fun, I’ve thrown in some excellent stories about how to deal with Halloween during the pandemic (including one from our archives on avoiding a sugar disaster).

Have a great weekend and we’ll be back in your Inbox on Monday.