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 ...
Can Climate Change Be Reversed?
When NASA initiated the Mercury Project that would send the first American into space in 1958, one of the many questions facing scientists was what to do about the carbon dioxide emissions of their astronauts. Our bodies exude about a kilogram per day of the gas, which is lethal in ...
Der Indianer
The first thing John Blackbird learned when he was growing up on the Canadian prairies was that his people were no good. Indians were history’s losers: dethroned, displaced, rounded up and ghettoized on the reserves. Raised by a white family from the age of nine, Blackbird heard from friends and ...