Growing Stronger
When the pandemic began, we rushed the seed companies, hoping to take back some control over our food supplies. We struggled to find local sources of flour so we could join the thousands of [...]
Jenna Butler
Jenna Butler
The Road From Here
Years from now we may well remember the date with a certain mythic significance. March 11, 2020: the day the World Health Organization declared the COVID-19 virus a global pandemic. I was [...]
Our Real Journey
“We have lived our lives by the assumption that what was good for us would be good for the world. We have been wrong. We must change our lives so that it will be possible to live by the contrary [...]
Saving Seeds
It’s the cusp of the growing season on our farm. The past year hasn’t been for the faint of heart, that’s for certain: another blink-and-you’ll-miss-it summer, the boreal forest lagging [...]
Washington Black
Esi Edugyan has long explored the concept of living between worlds, an identity both exhausting and destabilizing. In her 2004 debut novel, The Second Life of Samuel Tyne, Ghanaian civil servant [...]
Pay No Heed to the Rockets:
The narratives of places shattered by war are often told lopsidedly—stories of violence and destruction become the focus, while the people themselves, their daily lives, losses and joys, their [...]
On Mockingbird Hill:
Fire lookout narratives can almost be considered a niche unto themselves in literature. There’s something deeply compelling about the concept of being paid to disappear into the bush for several [...]
Our Place:
Historically it’s been all too easy to write off Alberta as a province of redneck oil mavericks in big trucks, concerned more with quadding the back forty than with environmental conservation and [...]
MOST READ
MOST READ
Missing Answers
On February 23, 2021, something amazing happened—almost a miracle, as far as I’m concerned. I got to ask Premier Jason Kenney a question during a news conference (about the upcoming legislative sitting). Before that, the last time I’d been called on to ask a question was December 18, 2020—67 days ...
The $120 Billion Question
The Alberta Investment Management Corporation (AIMCo) has lately come under intense criticism. The Kenney government’s changes to the Crown corporation’s mandate in 2019—the transfer, without prior notice, of several public pension funds to AIMCo—alarmed pension fund members who worried about ceding control of their pensions and were unsure about AIMCo ...
My Mother’s Story
My mother was a refugee, and Canada was her refuge.
My mother died this August, a few days before her 81st birthday. And as I sat down to write her eulogy, I kept thinking about the confluence of events that brought her to Alberta, and about Alberta’s legacy as a home ...