Northside Delacroix
A homeless man once grabbed Shannon by the ponytail and tried to drag her into the trees in Rundle Park. It happened a few months after her mom drank herself to death; Shannon was just eighteen [...]
The Sandbox
The earth is a reluctant storyteller. Unless prodded by a backhoe or the blades of a plough, the soil retains its secrets. Perhaps today our inquisitive shovels will loosen its tongue. The [...]
Economic Diversification
When I sat on the Alberta Treasury Board, but a few short years ago, we were talking about investing provincial surpluses in the Heritage Fund. Today? Our oil-and-gas-dependent economy is in free [...]
Beer Boom
Lacombe, just north of Red Deer, may not be the first place you think of when the conversation turns to craft beer. But these days some good brewing is definitely happening in town. In fall of [...]
It Takes A Village
During the Second World War the Ernest Manning government refused to invest in wartime day nurseries for Calgary and Edmonton—despite the fact that so many Alberta women with young children had [...]
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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 ...