In This Issue

The Unions

On Albertans' side...whether we realize it or not.

Evan Osenton

In the winter of 1999, when Calgary Herald reporters went on strike, I had my awakening about unions. I was working at the U of C’s The Gauntlet, and since no media were covering events, I headed down to the picket line. I’d heard the strike was about seniority and wages. But in the weeks that followed, reporter after reporter told me of the paper’s falling journalistic ethics: advertorials, bias added to stories by managers, intellectual dishonesty. They described a culture of intimidation, of management toadying to the Klein government and to advertisers.

more

Hilton Pharisby Randall Adams, 1990.

 

Cut to the Bone

How changes in meatpacking have created the most vulnerable worker in Alberta

Michael Broadway
These men and woman, recruited from some of the poorest countries in the world, don't have the same protections as refugees or landed immigrants. Losing their job at Lakeside doesn't just mean unemployment, for example; it can mean being kicked out of the country.
more

More than Wages

What unions have achieved for all Albertans

Alvin Finkel
Critics of labour unions claim that unions are selfish institutions interested only in wringing higher wages for their members out of employers. But a closer examination of the history of unions in Alberta (and indeed throughout Canada and the world) shows that wages are only one focus of union efforts.

A Hymn in Aramaic

Noël Farman's dialect of sorrow, loss and faith

Marcello Di Cintio
My Catholicism never sounded like this. The Chaldeans sang together in Aramaic and seemed to draw collective breath from some distant, Eastern elsewhere. The voices chanted minor chords that drew arabesques through the aroma of frankincense and women's perfume hanging in the nave.

The Alberta Views Interview

Marche is an Edmonton-born-and-bred novelist and Shakespeare scholar;

Brian Bergman interviews Stephen Marche
...he wrote his 2005 University of Toronto Ph.D. thesis on the Bard and later taught Shakespeare at The City College of New York. In his book, Marche makes a compelling case that Shakespeare was, quite simply, the most influential person who ever lived.

Rettie on Books Broken Eggs, No Omelette

 

Ian Bullock's Romancing the Revolution: The Myth of Soviet Democracy and the British Left; Jalal Barzanji's The Man in Blue Pyjamas

Eye on Alberta
Clippings, quotes and controversies

 

What I know about unions; propaganda about public servants; the war on 66th Street; Redford vs. Klein on AISH; stressed Albertans...

Wit
Fracking Down Under

 

Fracking advocates dismiss their opponents as anti-progress hippies who would have you living in a pit house, huddled around a manure fire.

Meet the Minister
Dave Hancock
Minister of Human Services

 

"Quite frankly, it's not about expanding the TFW program--but it's about finding people who will make Alberta their home."
more

Guide
Public Gardens Guide

 

From the City of Champignons to the apple blossoms of Nikka Yuko... oh, how Alberta's indoor and outdoor gardens grow.

Postal Code
What could your community look like?

 

How is it, then, that Taber's hinterland enjoys such economic effervescence while its core is dying?
more


Highlights from Past Issues

In Our Previous Issue

Mind the Gap

In Canada the city is a poor cousin, an afterthought, a beggar.

Chris Turner

In China, the mayor of a major city is a far more powerful and more revered official than some lowly provincial apparatchik. No one was much interested in the vagaries of provincial government; the mayor was the dignitary they’d come to meet.

more

To read other "Last Issue" features click here.

From The Archives

Alberta Politics: The First 100 Years

An illustrated history

James Grasdal and Dan Rubinstein

A political cartoon chronicling the diversity of leaders in Alberta’s first 100 years.

more