Archives

A stillness comes over the natural world each August as birds cease their territorial singing and the year’s crop of fledglings quietly fatten on the summer bounty of bugs and berries. Noise has [...]

The deep of winter would be a time of despair were it not for the sure promise of spring. The sky is empty of birds and each dawn is silent and cold. The sun barely rises before it begins again [...]

Glyphosate, better known by its trade name Roundup, is a popular herbicide. It kills almost anything green, and it’s safe too. Well, maybe not so safe. Recently courts have begun awarding damages [...]

October, for me, used to mean duck hunting: the fecund smell of prairie potholes, a spreading sunrise glow along the horizon and the whistle of mallard wings overhead. Saskatchewan describes [...]

Earth is a mess. It’s been 400,000 years since the planet’s atmosphere last held this much carbon dioxide. And we keep pumping out more. The consequences—melting permafrost, increasingly frequent [...]

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 [...]

Last summer I drove to The Pas, Manitoba, to visit my daughter. The long, hot drive went through Lethbridge, Medicine Hat and Saskatoon, the heart of prairie Canada. In part I followed the route [...]

You get what you pay for. But since tax policy is anathema to many Albertans, it seems we’d rather buy climate disaster, obesity and ill health, dead birds and damaged watersheds than pay for a [...]

With a provincial election drawing near, those who care about Alberta’s environment face the question of how to vote. But I don’t think there really is a question. At election time an incumbent [...]

I retired from a career with Parks Canada a few years ago, not long after signing off on a management plan that prescribed a 2 per cent annual increase in visitors to Banff. Local businesses were [...]