The Constituency Map
On the day her mother cancelled chemo and deter-minedly pinned a new election map to the raised rose wallpaper of their dining room, Constance slammed her chair into the sideboard and took her [...]
Carissa Halton
Carissa Halton
Contacting the Premier
When I was offered the Director of Correspondence job in Premier Notley’s office in June 2015, the title triggered images of a quill pen and ink pot atop a Dickens-era desk. Reading the premier’s [...]
The Social-Industrial Complex
The first time I met someone convicted of first-degree murder, I was 19 and just starting my adult life in the city. He was 19 too but dreading his next two decades. I visited him at Edmonton’s [...]
Alberta Avenue
The woman wears her lipstick like armour and idles on the corner, fifteen blocks from the heart of the city. Simultaneously she glares and dares into each passing vehicle. I note this hooker. [...]
MOST READ
MOST READ
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 his editorial shoot of Chrystia Freeland for Toronto Life in 2017, including the cover, was “the most memorable shoot I’ve done.” Even three ...
Jason Kenney’s Vision for K-12
It was by all accounts, a fiery speech. Standing on a blue-curtained stage in front of a couple thousand supporters at the UCP’s inaugural policy convention in Red Deer in May 2018, leader Jason Kenney went on the attack against anti-oilsands activists and the foreign money he says funds them ...
Should Post-Secondary Education be Free?
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 ...