Let us consider that not-quite form, the literary excerpt. The excerpt is by definition a truncated thing. It faces its readers, as it were, stripped of its party clothes, its beginning and [...]
Emilio Picariello, or “Emperor Pic” as he was known, has garnered fascination since he was hanged, along with Florence Lassandro, at Fort Saskatchewan Gaol on May 2, 1923. He has, as this [...]
Teardown is Clea Young’s debut collection, but her work has already received much-deserved approbation, appearing in the prestigious Journey Prize Stories three times. Set in Young’s native BC, [...]
Rudy Wiebe’s new collection, Where the Truth Lies, is a volume of essays, newspaper articles and speeches, covering 40 years, that speaks with authority and feeling on a range of subjects, [...]
It should have been easy but it wasn’t. It should have been easy because the headwaters of the Castle, Carbondale and Waterton rivers were always meant to be a park. Until 1928 the windy mountain [...]
When Midfield Mobile Home Park was built in northeast Calgary in 1968 the site was then on the city outskirts. A private company developed it atop an old dry dump next to the Trans-Canada [...]
Andy, late lamented friend, celebrated author of Wood Mountain Poems, The Ghosts Call You Poor and many other texts: you were too frail and too medicated, the last time I saw you alive, to chew [...]
Just tell them we don’t have it here.” That’s what the nurse told me in Killam Hospital, an hour east of Camrose. I’d asked what would happen if a woman came into our ER asking for the [...]
Even by the dubious standards of Alberta politics at the time, it was still a brazen move. Tom Brown, an executive with Ledcor, was part of a coalition of construction companies that donated [...]
When Premier Rachel Notley presented her State of the Province address in Calgary last October, she did it in front of a hand-picked crowd of 700 supporters who applauded at all the right [...]
He is a one-man minefield—set to explode whenever Premier Jason Kenney makes a misstep. And there’s not much Kenney can do to defuse him. Say hello to Drew Barnes, United Conservative MLA for Cypress-Medicine Hat.
Barnes is that most frightening of spectres to an Alberta Conservative premier: a maverick MLA who ...
Alex Walk was captivated. He had flown to Edmonton because he had heard that Alberta researchers might have found the Holy Grail of materials manufacturing: a cheap feedstock for carbon fibre. The stakes were high. Abundant, inexpensive carbon fibre could revolutionize the auto industry, for example, by reducing the weight ...
Blood Tribe Police Chief Kyle Melting Tallow is growing his hair out. When I visited the police station in Standoff on the Blood Reserve in late September, his face was framed by a wave of black hair that extended down just over the top of his collar. It wasn’t yet long ...