Interview with Tim Ryan
AV: What was the inspiration for your story? The inspiration for this story was a cottage and dock that I used every summer when I was kid. I wanted to explore the thoughts that kids [...]
Jesus on the Dashboard
Gemma, the teenage anti-heroine of Lisa Murphy-Lamb’s debut novel, belongs in the pantheon of great YA protagonists. Part Holden Caulfield from Catcher in the Rye, part Margaret Simon from Are [...]
Mothers and Others:
The median woman in Western democracies was for many years a married heterosexual mother. As a result, citizens tended to use family responsibility as a prism for evaluating political [...]
Defying Expectations:
Studying a thriving labour union in Alberta is a bit like studying an organism that flourishes in scorching, sulfur-laden undersea vents. Until recently, Alberta’s labour protections have been [...]
Survival of the Richest
The newspaper business has been in trouble for a long time. One of the gaudier proofs was last year, when Torstar and Postmedia traded a bunch of newspapers for the purpose of killing them. That [...]
Gods’ Footprints
If you could hold a black-throated green warbler in your hand, it would be soft to the touch and strangely light. Barely as long as an avocado, the slender greenish bird with a black neck and [...]
The Year of Bargaining Diplomatically
Last year the government of Alberta faced a mountain of public-sector contract negotiations. A whole mountain range, actually. Collective agreements covering roughly 180,000 employees expired: [...]
Meet the Minister: Christina Gray
AV: Far more Albertans are workers than employers, but our culture really celebrates “the entrepreneur”—the job creator, the employer. What do you think about this? Well, we need both. A [...]
Essential Workers’ Right to Strike
Marni Soupcoff says workers have no right to strike. It’s true. I don’t think essential workers should have the right to strike. But before I go any further with my case for why, you [...]
MOST READ
MOST READ
How Ethical is Alberta’s Governing Party?
We should have seen it coming. The first inkling that controversy would dog Jason Kenney’s victory in the 2017 United Conservative Party leadership race came not during that contest but a year earlier, when Kenney ran for the leadership of the Progressive Conservatives.
On the evening of November 16, 2016, at ...
Inside the War Room
On the campaign trail in 2018, Jason Kenney promised that one of his first acts as premier would be to establish a “fully staffed, rapid response war room” to defend Alberta’s oil and gas sector. This was the cornerstone of his “Fight Back Strategy,” a massive shift in the tenor ...
Fates Intertwined
Line 9B. It’s not a fancy name. It doesn’t have the poetic ring of “Trans Mountain” or “Northern Gateway” or even “Energy East.” Yet the Enbridge 9B pipeline, for me, symbolizes the interconnectedness and interdependence of our country—and the urgent way we must come together to tackle the challenges we ...