Whose Woods Are These?
Each year as summer approached, we prepared our escape. We hauled bins of dried food, boxes of tattered paperbacks, sleeping bags and an immense, hideous, grey-green army surplus tent out to our [...]
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 [...]
Where Does Your Food Come From?
Oranges from Japan, dates from Morocco, gouda from Holland—if we are what we eat, Albertans speak many languages. We fly or truck in most of our food from places we’ve never been, grown by people [...]
Painting the Province Green
A young Green politician is being interviewed by QR77 radio in Calgary. It’s November 2000, a week into a federal election. The program host’s questions are of the meatball variety, maybe due to [...]
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Mandate Creep: National Parks and Tourism
I retired from a career with Parks Canada a few years ago, not long after signing off on a management plan that prescribed a 2 per cent annual increase in visitors to Banff. Local businesses were ecstatic that the new plan seemed finally to acknowledge tourism growth as a priority ...
Take Us to Your Leader
We were expecting a brawl. When Premier Rachel Notley and United Conservative Party leader Jason Kenney faced off for the first time in the legislature on March 12, 2018, we were ready for plenty of eye gouging, hair pulling and gut punching, politically speaking.
The two had been enthusiastically on the ...
The 2019 Election
If all goes according to plan, Alberta will have a provincial election this spring. But what if it doesn’t go to plan? What if we don’t have an election this spring?
Oh, I know we’re supposed to. Heck, we have a provincial law that says the election is to be held ...