The Last Mean Sunlight of Spring
It cleared again, the last mean sunlight of spring. It was summer now. The crows flew away from the river mouth, inland over the church, above the house, high above the white pine, and past [...]
The Social-Industrial Complex
The first time I met someone convicted of first-degree murder, I was 19 and just starting my adult life in the city. He was 19 too but dreading his next two decades. I visited him at Edmonton’s [...]
Breaking the Cycle
To echo the poet Audre Lorde: this has all been said before, many times and in many ways. A sense of inevitability has settled around the idea of poverty, a sense of inevitability also at the [...]
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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 ...