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
Why She Runs
It's a half hour before dawn when Rachel Notley emerges from her hotel elevator, and I barely recognize her. She’s wearing her running clothes and a battered pair of Asics Gel running shoes. Despite having arrived in Calgary late the night before, she has a schedule to keep and she’s eager ...
The Plans to Strip-Mine Coal in the Mountains
It looks like spectacular wild country, but some see it more as a big money sandwich.
The top layer of that sandwich is comprised of alpine grasses, forget-me-nots and stonecrop, glacier lilies and ancient, brave pines whose branches have been gnarled and weathered by centuries of wind. In summer, solitaires and ...
Suddenly There’s Room at the Inn
On a recent Thursday outside the Coliseum Inn, a woman in wrinkled clothes balances a large blue sleeping bag atop her shoulder. In the parking lot a man pushes a shopping cart overflowing with clothing. Outside the lobby doors, a man asks, “Hey, got a dollar?”
The scene is at odds with ...