Both Sides Now
The winter of 1970. In “Room at the Top,” a coffee house about seven storeys up in the frigid night sky of Edmonton, a couple of folksingers are tuning up their guitars while their drummer is [...]
The Other Iraq
She arrives at the clinic before sunrise, securing her place at the head of what will become a serpentine line. At this hour, the heat is tolerable and the dewdrops make it almost humid. Habitual [...]
Cosmopolitan Alberta
The other day my curator and writer friend Diana Sherlock got back from her new flat in Berlin. In her Calgary living room, we looked at photos of the view from her Berlin window, which overlooks [...]
The Makeover
We always wanted to fix up Josephine. You have to admit she needs it, what with that ratty hair, carrot red and ratty. Bad combo. Also, that skin. White, white, white except when she has zits, [...]
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Listening to Stones
It is a brilliant way to learn. Students of Socrates used to gather around the great man and exchange heady ideas that arose out of provocative questions—what we know now as the Socratic dialogue method of education. You might think the Greek philosopher and his followers hung out in academic ...
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 ...
Who’s Keeping Watch?
As a journalist, covering Alberta's United Conservative Party government is a bit like trying to jump aboard a speeding locomotive. So much weight is moving at such great velocity that it’s difficult, if not impossible, to keep up.
Once upon a time, Alberta governments weren’t so purposeful or so quick—or, if ...