Back to the Garden
When I think about being an Albertan, I think about gardening with Dad. He took it up when he was 85; he’d retired and he needed more to do. But his new hobby was not for the faint of heart. When [...]
Katherine Govier
Katherine Govier
Retrospective: A Trip Around the Bus Loop
In Grade 6, Lois told me her mother lay on the couch all day, eating chocolates and crying. Astonishing. But not entirely. I believe I knew, deep down, that the place was filled with unhappy [...]
History of the Fantasy
When Rocky Mountains National Park was created in 1887, this beautiful part of the world was deemed empty. “The Indians seem to have feared and avoided the mountains,” wrote Mabel Williams, the [...]
The Natural
Confederation Building, Parliament Hill, Ottawa. It’s dead quiet, not a soul in sight. This place is gothic, its long grey hallways a series of closed doors, each bearing a small number plate. [...]
Both Sides Now
The winter of 1970. In “Room at the Top,” a coffee house about seven storeys up in the frigid night sky of Edmonton, a couple of folksingers are tuning up their guitars while their drummer is [...]
Rebel Daughter
When I left Edmonton for Toronto to go to graduate school, I had an assignment. It was to interview a fellow alumna of the University of Alberta, one Doris McCubbin Anderson, then editor of [...]
A Trip Around the Bus Loop
Sometimes the place you can’t wait to escape is a very good place. Perhaps it is the very best place of all. But you, because you are you, are determined to escape it. The Grade 3 class photos [...]
Wild Roses
Lucy Gray’s aunt had been an artist. Ruth Bentham was her name and she first painted the wild roses and the coulees of southern Alberta, where she had moved in 1937 as a young bride. She then [...]
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Kenney’s War on Workers
My wife and I spent our last day of our summer vacations in 2019 on a picket line with healthcare workers at Edmonton’s old General Hospital. Most of the cleaners, healthcare aides and nurses at the information picket were women of colour. Like public-sector workers across the province, they were ...
The Story of Joseph Lewis
In 1799 Joseph Lewis, a Hudson's Bay Company employee, arrived in what is now Alberta. He was 27 years old but his life had already been crammed with adventure.
Born in 1772 in Manchester, New Hampshire, at 20 he’d made his way to Montreal, where he joined the North West Company ...
Just Transition
There were times when I was taking home about $3,500 a week.” That was in the oil sands, during the boom before 2014. Lliam Hildebrand was a young welder who had come to the Athabasca oil sands for work.
Before that, the Victoria, BC, native spent his first eight years after high ...