The Comedian
The Romans get bad press when it comes to literature. When (or if) we think of the culture of pre-Christian Western antiquity, we tend to think of the clever, original Greeks and the imitative [...]
Alex Rettie
Alex Rettie
At This Juncture: A Book of Letters
Dear Rona Altrows, When I was asked if I wanted to review your latest book, At This Juncture, I didn’t really know what the book was “about.” I didn’t need to know what it was about though—I’m [...]
Full Disclosure
Some people just aren’t cut out for retirement. Take Beverley McLachlin, the former, and longest-serving, Chief Justice of Canada, who retired from the bench last December. In the few months [...]
Less Painful Duties:
The once-renowned and far-from-late Calgary barrister C.D. Evans has, toward the end of his eighth decade, delivered himself of a sequel to his 2011 memoir Painful Duties. My first thought on [...]
On Not Losing My Father’s Ashes in the Flood
If you think about life enough, or too much, it looks like a series of losses. Poems can work as a reckoning of these losses or, in the case of Calgary poet Richard Harrison’s sixth and latest [...]
Party of One
Ernest C. Manning (1908–1997) was an Alberta MLA and cabinet minister for 33 years and the province’s premier for 25 years. When he first joined the provincial cabinet as provincial secretary and [...]
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Misplaced Anger
Should Alberta ditch Canada? This simple yet ominous question—blazoned on two Alberta billboards earlier this year, and asked by many in the recent provincial election campaign—reflects a deep feeling of frustration and resentment throughout the province, much of it directed at Ottawa.
Environics, in their 2019 Survey of Canadians, found 71 ...
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 ...
Is Southern Alberta Home to Canada’s Stonehenge?
Imagine you are a bird, soaring. Below you on a high rise of prairie in southern Alberta lies an elaborate arrangement of stones. With eagle eyes you see distinctive lines radiating out every which way from a huge central cairn, enclosed within an outer ring of more stones. This is ...