Good morning. Superbugs are becoming increasingly drug resistant and the market for discovering new antibiotics is broken. But last year, a Canadian lab made not one, but three, major discoveries. More on their surprising success below, along with fraud charges and firearms. But first:

• Accounting firm owned by Smith government appointee searched by RCMP
• Canada, Japan and European allies are willing to use “appropriate efforts” to reopen the Strait of Hormuz
• An extremist attack against Canada’s Jewish community is a “realistic possibility” in the next six months, warns a report obtained by The Globe and Mail

Hi, I’m Jennifer Yang, and I cover health science for The Globe and Mail.

I met Gerry Wright in 2013, back when I was still a newly minted health reporter working for a different newspaper. I walked away from our first phone conversation with two distinct impressions: Gerry was deeply knowledgeable and a ton of fun to talk to. And everything he said was terrifying.

The story I was writing at the time was about antimicrobial resistance (AMR), which occurs when bacteria and other disease-causing microbes defeat the drugs we have for killing them. Gerry, who was director of McMaster University’s infectious disease institute at the time, was an obvious person to interview, as one of Canada’s foremost experts.

It was my first time reporting on AMR, and Gerry patiently walked me through the broad strokes: how bacteria and other pathogens develop resistance to drugs; the collapse of the antibiotic development pipeline; and why a post-antibiotic era would mean returning to the dark ages of medicine when even a scraped knee or tooth infection could kill.

“It’s probably the biggest threat to modern medicine that I can think of,” he told me in one of our early interviews. “Without them, there is no modern medicine. It’s just as simple as that.”

Needless to say, these conversations scared me straight (I will never again request antibiotics for vague ailments or fail to complete a course). Like so many, I had come to take the miracle of antibiotics for granted, and it was sobering to be reminded of just how much we depend on them – and how catastrophic it would be if they stopped working.

Superbugs became a pet reporting topic of mine, and over the years I went back to Gerry several times to have him weigh in on the latest AMR study (or scare). While I had long wanted to write something in-depth about his own research, I never got the chance. In 2016 I was moved into a new reporting role focused on the intersection of identity and inequity, and over the next decade I was alternately on maternity leave or covering the COVID-19 pandemic.

Fast forward to January 2026. I had just returned from a winter break when I received an e-mail from McMaster University’s public relations department with the subject line: “A scientist’s ‘three-peat’ of discoveries – and the human story behind them.”

The pitch was about Gerry, whose lab had recently enjoyed a remarkable run of scientific success, uncovering not one but three novel antimicrobials – all published in top academic journals within the span of a year.

The field of antibiotic discovery isn’t exactly known as a fount of good news, so this lucky streak did not go unnoticed. “Everyone’s talking about it,” Manoj Jangra, a post-doctoral fellow, told me (he is a co-discoverer of one of the Wright Lab’s three novel antimicrobials). “Everyone’s just like, what is your lab’s secret sauce?”

This was exactly what I, too, found myself wondering. So in late January I took a train to Hamilton to visit the Wright Lab and see whether I could answer this question for myself.

As it turned out, the Wright Lab’s secret sauce is both simpler and far more complex than I expected. But the key ingredient is, undeniably, Gerry himself.

Since 2013, the problem of AMR has only grown more urgent and the work of scientists like Gerry has become more vital, with AMR now associated with nearly 5 million deaths every year. But in Hamilton, Gerry is getting ever closer to finding new defences for warding off the rise of the superbug – novel antimicrobials that, in one case, was found in a lab member’s own backyard.

If you want to read the secret sauce recipe for yourself, you can find my long feature about Gerry and his work. His story may leave you feeling fascinated and terrified in equal measure – but also, maybe, a bit more hopeful too.