The War on Fat
I sat in Dr. Long’s office waiting for my one o’clock appointment, alone except for the elfin nurse, not quite hidden behind a counter. By 1:45 I’d already flipped through Alberta Report, and the [...]
The Electric Saskatchewan Acid Test
Oddly, I never considered quitting smoking during all my years trying to help people beat their own addictions. I didn’t get around to it until the early 1970s, when a friend I hadn’t seen in [...]
Impaired Judgement
In the provincial referendum of 1923, following seven years of prohibition, Albertans voted for government control over liquor. They chose a distribution and sales system that promised to control [...]
Smoking on the Job
Steven O’Hearn was an unrepentant smoker for more than 30 years, one of those guys irritated by commercials warning people about the dangers of tobacco. Even losing all of his teeth to [...]
The Queen of Paradise
It isn’t easy being fat in our society, even though a growing percentage of Albertans are overweight. Ask any of us if we feel comfortable in a bathing suit. Bet I can guess the answer. Exposing [...]
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The Plans to Strip-Mine Coal in the Mountains
It looks like spectacular wild country, but some see it more as a big money sandwich.
The top layer of that sandwich is comprised of alpine grasses, forget-me-nots and stonecrop, glacier lilies and ancient, brave pines whose branches have been gnarled and weathered by centuries of wind. In summer, solitaires and ...
Part 1: A Tribute to Charlie Russell
Charlie Russell loved to fly, and he seldom phoned first those times when he would fly his Kolb ultralight airplane north from Hawk’s Nest ranch on the boundary of Waterton Lakes National Park, to our “ranchette” near the Crowsnest Pass. We would hear the thrum of the plane’s Rotax motor ...
Alberta’s Black Swan
The best evidence of our conservative government’s cluelessness before the economy tanked in 2020 is the provincial budget. It was passed in a rush on March 18, 2020, two months after the novel coronavirus, COVID-19, had arrived in Canada. Oil demand in China was already down 20 per cent. Oil storage ...