The Patch:
The modernist ideal of finding novel, optimal solutions to problems, a legacy of the Enlightenment’s privileging of reason and perpetual progress, is so deeply encoded in our societal DNA that [...]
Geo Takach
Geo Takach
Unlike the Others
Examining enduring myths typifying each Canadian province—Newfoundland as a fishery, Ontario as smug and stable, Saskatchewan as agrarian socialist, et cetera—Simon Fraser University political [...]
Mythologized & Misunderstood
Trying to define anything, let alone a place like Alberta, is complicated by the panoply of perspectives involved. Like the blind bloke approaching the elephant, each of us grasps a piece of the [...]
Rattus Non Gratus
When history’s most formidable villains are tallied, we may get suspects like Caligula, Genghis Khan or even Snidely Whiplash. But history, typically written by humans, neglects an insidious [...]
The Little Series that Could
Somewhere in the jillion-channel universe, wedged between the latest stateside “reality” entry and the ThighMaster infomercials, lives a homegrown, internationally acclaimed and distributed TV [...]
Ears a Little More Open
Can you imagine a 73-year-old prairie product that people receive free but happily pay $1.3-million a year for simply because they like it so much? Something demanded by operating room surgeons [...]
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 ...