Only Leave a Trace:
Only Leave a Trace offers a series of thoughtful, poetic observations on Roger Epp’s career during a particular transitional episode at the University of Alberta. “This book of meditations,” the [...]
Clem Martini
Clem Martini
When Things Fall Apart
Life is filled with surprises. So, on the day that I drove my brother, Olivier, to emergency to be treated for a psychotic episode, during that evening when we sat in emergency for nearly 12 [...]
Green Theatre
The prototype for the ideal contemporary theatre exists and I have seen it. It’s aesthetically pleasing and a marvel of engineering. The acoustics are spectacular. It is able to accommodate [...]
Edge of the Edge
You wake up. You’ve received a phone call. Disoriented, you fight sleep and attempt to make sense of what the voice on the other end of the line is telling you. You discover that your [...]
Whose Woods Are These?
Each year as summer approached, we prepared our escape. We hauled bins of dried food, boxes of tattered paperbacks, sleeping bags and an immense, hideous, grey-green army surplus tent out to our [...]
Scared Straight?
For a number of years I exchanged services with youngsters in trouble with the law. The terms of our exchange weren’t clearly articulated, but in practice they are simple to describe. I offered [...]
Pushed to the Edge
There are two things you never want to have happen to you. One of them is to suffer a mental illness. The other is to suffer a mental illness and try to get admitted to a hospital. The problem is [...]
MOST READ
MOST READ
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 ...