Frontenac House Poetry Quartet 2020
The book launch for the 2020 annual Frontenac House Poetry Quartet, which the publisher is calling its “COVID quartet,” was understandably virtual. So, in honour of the wine and cheese [...]
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Raise Revenues!
Three weeks after the UCP formed government in 2019, Premier Jason Kenney struck a “blue ribbon” panel chaired by Janice MacKinnon to recommend ways Alberta could address “a critical fiscal [...]
Ours By Every Law of Right and Justice: Women and the Vote in the Prairie Provinces
On June 7, 1917, for the first time ever, (some) Albertan women headed to the polls for a provincial election. Their counterparts in Saskatchewan followed 19 days later, and before the end of the [...]
We Remember the Coming of the White Man
We Remember the Coming of the White Man is an extraordinary, educational account told by Sahtú and Gwich’in Dene Elders who witnessed the meeting of two worlds—Indigenous and settler—at the dawn [...]
Relax, Dammit!
Wake up. Wipe your eyes. What next? If you are like 64 per cent of people, your next step is to reach for your phone. You probably still have the device in hand by the time you visit the loo, [...]
Should Alberta Have Its Own Pension Plan?
Niels Veldhuis, the economist and Fraser Institute president says yes In June 2020 Alberta’s “Fair Deal” panel recommended that a comprehensive plan be developed to withdraw Albertans from the [...]
Not a White-Bread Childhood
Toronto freelance portrait photographer Markian Lozowchuk (disclosure: his mother and I are second cousins) has photographed Justin Trudeau for Toronto Life and Margaret Atwood for Maclean’s, but [...]
Arborescent
Marc Herman Lynch’s debut novel, Arborescent, is a triptych—three distinct novellas connected by setting (a rundown apartment building) and a dark, magical atmosphere. In a wintery Moh’kíns’tsis [...]
Stories of Ice: Adventure, Commerce and Creativity on Canada’s Glaciers
In Stories of Ice, Canmore-based author Lynn Martel explores glaciers in Western Canada from numerous angles. While many Albertans may not give these huge masses of ice much thought—aside, [...]
Once Were Mountains
The democracy thing. Here in 2021 the Alberta premier was having trouble getting his mind around it. In his Ottawa days he’d been taught to forget the concept of government by the people. His [...]
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The Lesson of Lougheed
For 100 years, between 1905 and 2005, Albertans changed their government only three times (1921, 1935, 1971). The last of these elections, the most portentous, happened 50 years ago this August. Alberta has now changed government twice in the past six years. The next election may see yet another new government—meaning ...
The Assault on Higher Education
The Kenney government proclaimed in fall 2019 that Alberta’s post-secondary institutions were “overly dependent” on government funding—which is an odd thing to say about a public good. Then it declared that the province’s grant to the schools should be reduced by 20 per cent by 2023. The rationale for this ...
Rediscovering a River
The Cree called it Kisiskâciwanisîpiy—the swiftly flowing river. For the Blackfoot, it was omaka-ty—the big river. It starts in the Columbia Icefield, at the toe of the Saskatchewan Glacier, and cuts the province in half as it flows through Banff and Jasper national parks, northeast to Edmonton, then east-by-southeast across the ...