Dead Parrot
Nostalgia consists of sentimental longing for a time with pleasant associations. Think of a party where boomers sing Beatles songs and someone recites Monty Python’s dead-parrot skit. The [...]
Cranes On High
Calm September days can feel almost surreal in central Alberta. A sleepy stillness lies over the aspen groves and prairies. Time seems suspended. That breathless autumn beauty surrounded me the [...]
Thin Power:
Andy Marshall’s study of James Rodney Winter Sykes, Mayor of Calgary from 1969 to 1977, has more perspective than most books about landmark political careers. As Marshall recounts, when Rod Sykes [...]
Searching for Petronius Totem
Peter Unwin’s new novel, Searching for Petronius Totem, is a grand and bewildering off-road trip into Canadian weirdness. A dystopian kitchen sink domestic drama by way of private-eye-era noir, [...]
One Day We’ll All Be Dead
Intuition says that personal essay should come easily to authors who’ve grown up in the Internet age. What better incentive to hone your craft than a constantly connected audience hungry for a [...]
Tar Wars:
From an outsider’s perspective—in my case, glancing in from Saskatchewan—it remains a mystery as to why the government of Alberta’s messaging about the oil sands often misses the mark. Or, [...]
Profile: Tsuut’ina Nation
Some call it “the great upheaval.” It started back in November 2013, when the Province of Alberta signed an agreement with the Tsuut’ina Nation to build an extension of Calgary’s Stoney Trail—the [...]
In Focus: Alberta Craft Council Calgary
The Alberta Craft Council has at last realized its goal of creating a physical presence in the southern half of the province. The council, which was founded in 1979 and operates Edmonton’s [...]
Baba’s Other Children
Last summer Deron Bilous, Alberta’s minister of economic development and trade, announced 2016–2017 would be the year of the Ukrainian-Canadian. Weeks later he declared that every September 7 in [...]
Head Bangers
Tristan Rice didn’t remember the hit. He didn’t remember much of the rest of the game either, only that sometime in the third quarter one of his fellow offensive linemen asked him, “What the hell [...]
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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 ...
Herd Memory
On a cold day in February, I flew over the tightly knit stands of black spruce and jack pine in northwestern Alberta, straining my eyes below, eager to catch sight of a woodland caribou. My dad, a wildlife biologist, called them the “grey ghosts” of the boreal. Woodland caribou have ...
The Big Man in Cargo Shorts
Leonard was the first to find him. The man was face down in the school’s outdoor learning space, next to a planter of basil. He was fat, his calves the size of a turkey dinner, his hair a gnarled mess of seaweed. Leonard wondered if the man was dead and ...