Taking Back the Neighbourhood
When he moved into a 1960s-era northside bungalow in Lethbridge six years ago, Clint Russnaik liked his new neighbourhood. It was a “great place,” he says, somewhere where “nothing bad happened.” [...]
Magnetic North: Sea Voyage to Svalbard
From its opening lines, Jenna Butler’s Magnetic North, a poetic chronicle of her two-week-long sailing journey through Norway’s Svalbard archipelago, delivers keen, tactile observations of a [...]
The Melting Queen
Bruce Cinnamon’s debut novel The Melting Queen takes a unique approach to both historical fiction and magic realism, two genres that Alberta writers have long worked with in transformative ways. [...]
Compassion: A Global History of Social Policy
On January 1 of this year, a large number of women, estimated at “hundreds of thousands” and “five million” in different stories in The Guardian, formed a human chain that stretched the entire [...]
Leaving Canada…
The desire to leave Canada comes and goes in Alberta. But not in all Albertans. In December 2018, the pollster Research Co. tested the strength of Alberta secessionism and found that 69 per cent [...]
Paying the Piper
You get what you pay for. But since tax policy is anathema to many Albertans, it seems we’d rather buy climate disaster, obesity and ill health, dead birds and damaged watersheds than pay for a [...]
Should Alberta Have Higher Taxes?
Greg Flanagan says YES—Eventually Why impose taxes in the first place? First and foremost, to pay for the public services we all need and enjoy. In an ideal public-finance world we’d first [...]
The New Literacy
Calgary’s new public library garnered worldwide attention when it opened in November 2018. And rightly so: Its stunning, inventive design made Architectural Digest’s “most anticipated” list [...]
Back to the Garden
When I think about being an Albertan, I think about gardening with Dad. He took it up when he was 85; he’d retired and he needed more to do. But his new hobby was not for the faint of heart. When [...]
Whipsaw Change
If you think at times you’ve got a tough job, just be glad you’re not a member of Alberta’s civil service. These poor souls don’t know if they’re coming or going. They’ve spent the past four [...]
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Kenney’s War on Workers
My wife and I spent our last day of our summer vacations in 2019 on a picket line with healthcare workers at Edmonton’s old General Hospital. Most of the cleaners, healthcare aides and nurses at the information picket were women of colour. Like public-sector workers across the province, they were ...
The Story of Joseph Lewis
In 1799 Joseph Lewis, a Hudson's Bay Company employee, arrived in what is now Alberta. He was 27 years old but his life had already been crammed with adventure.
Born in 1772 in Manchester, New Hampshire, at 20 he’d made his way to Montreal, where he joined the North West Company ...
All The Rage
The tipping point came a week from the end of the campaign, and
by April 16 in the Big Four Roadhouse on the Calgary Stampede grounds, United Conservative Party supporters felt scant need for civility. Not anymore. The UCP had won the 2019 Alberta election, taking 63 seats to the NDP’s ...