From Grey to Green
Every year, the world uses an estimated 10 trillion kilograms of concrete. Nearly every major construction project makes use of the stuff. It’s in everything from office buildings, dams, bridges [...]
Is Recycling Futile?
We Albertans find it hard to resist the allure of produce perfectly packaged in plastic clamshells. The containers are convenient—the strawberries, cherry tomatoes and blackberries are gloriously [...]
Frontenac House Poetry Quartet 2019
Frontenac House has published its Quartet 2019, a suite of four books of poetry, as they’ve been doing annually since 2001. The release of four poetry books by four authors simultaneously is a [...]
Power Play: Professional Hockey and the Politics of Urban Development
Rogers Place officially opened in downtown Edmonton in September 2016. The arena—the new home of the Edmonton Oilers—cost $483.5-million to build, and, along with hundreds of millions of dollars [...]
Chinatown
Calgary’s Chinatown has been relocated twice—first in 1886, after a fire on Stephen Avenue destroyed half the neighbourhood, and again in 1910 when a CPR proposal to build a hotel in the vicinity [...]
Bears and Brains
Winston Churchill said “History is written by the victors.” In other words, consider the source before believing an assertion. Another example of “he who holds the pen” relates to intelligence. [...]
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 [...]
Initiation
I first skated in 1969 on a frozen slough at the mouth of the Fraser River, so far west of our nation’s capital that you could taste the brine of the Pacific on your tongue and hear Tokyo accents [...]
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The Dramatic Fall of Jason Kenney
Subsequent events have cast shadows over the jubilant atmosphere at the BMO Centre in Calgary on October 28, 2017. This was a banner night for conservatism in Alberta as former federal cabinet minister and movement leader Jason Kenney rode to the stage in a signature blue pickup truck to claim the new ...
Professors Pushed to the Edge
It's a cold winter's day in Lethbridge, the sky a kind of pot-metal grey. The flags fly stiff at the university’s main entrance. In normal times my faculty colleagues and I would be in our offices. I’d be just getting back from teaching my 9:00 a.m. Canadian Society class. But nothing about the ...
Let’s Debate CanCon
When the Senate returns to work in September, one of its first orders of business will be to debate and study Bill C-11, which amends Canada’s broadcasting legislation. Our Broadcast Act hasn’t been changed in a serious way in over 30 years. Back then we watched shows on TV, listened to music on the ...