Having spent the better part of my life defending my hometown, Lethbridge, against stereotypes, I am realizing I may harbour a few about Calgary. This is one of the reasons why the essays in dee [...]
There’s no scarcity of books written about landscapes and ecosystems of obvious beauty and ecological importance, such as the majesty of the Rocky Mountains or the giant cedars that stand [...]
During the second World War, Canada had a national daycare program to facilitate the participation of women with young children in a labour market emptied out by military service and the [...]
Edited by Luciana Erregue-Sacchi, a Canadian-Argentinian writer and editor, Beyond the Food Court brings together the culinary traditions of 14 Alberta-based writers who use food as a lens to [...]
All things must pass, George Harrison reminded us 50 years ago, and in Calgary that’s what they do. Here the barely old—neighbourhood confectioneries, low-rise apartment buildings with names like [...]
The Crash Palace reads like a greatest hits album of Alberta in the 2000s. Although the novel is short, Andrew Wedderburn takes us on a long journey across the province, from rough work camps in [...]
The idea of pilgrimage might sound antiquated and medieval, but it’s still very alive for many seekers across the globe—think of walking the Camino de Santiago in Spain or going on the Hajj to [...]
Michael Lithgow’s second poetry collection, Who We Thought We Were As We Fell, is not an easy read. If you are looking for blithe assurances that the world is a good place to be or that the [...]
When my dad was a little boy growing up in Round Hill, Alberta, he was immensely proud that his Pa was the Commissioner for Oats. My Jewish grandfather wasn’t a farmer. He ran Round Hill’s [...]
At the peak of last winter’s omicron wave, I found myself thinking about “The Pied Piper of Hamelin.” If you don’t know the story, here’s a short synopsis: A medieval European town has a [...]
Hugh Mackenzie
The economist and research associate at the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives says yes.
Free tuition would redress a massive intergenerational inequity created over the past 30 years. In 1990–91, average university tuition in Canada was $1,464; adjusted for inflation, that would be $2,541 in 2019–20. Today the actual average ...
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 his editorial shoot of Chrystia Freeland for Toronto Life in 2017, including the cover, was “the most memorable shoot I’ve done.” Even three ...
Either way, the three-hour drive between Edmonton and Calgary on the QEII highway has the same itinerary: nice landscape, cows, trees, pumpjack, anti-Ottawa billboard, creeping boredom, leg cramp, Donut Mill raspberry bismarck, cows, fence, pickup truck passing you at 160 km/h, horse, trees, jackknifed semi-trailer in the ditch, pumpjack, cows, full-on boredom ...