Blowing Away the Magic
Why is it that we choose so often to replace the sublime with the ridiculous? Take, for example, the miracle of photosynthesis. It arose, scientists believe, almost 3.5 billion years ago. Life [...]
Kevin Van Tighem
Kevin Van Tighem
Holes in the River
Digging a mine in a river would be stupid, right? Well, in Alberta we do it regularly. Ric Hauer tells the story of a new municipal water well drilled a kilometre away from Montana’s Flathead [...]
Grading Notley and Co.
Two years ago Alberta elected an NDP government. Right-wing pundits forecast disaster. Environmentalists were optimistic. The optimists may have been right. The NDP inherited many environmental [...]
Storm Over The Castle
It should have been easy but it wasn’t. It should have been easy because the headwaters of the Castle, Carbondale and Waterton rivers were always meant to be a park. Until 1928 the windy mountain [...]
This Land: Betrayed
Friday, January 13, 2017, was not Jessica Ernst’s lucky day. That’s the day the Supreme Court of Canada handed down a non-decision in her legal battle against the Alberta Energy Regulator (AER)—a [...]
In Decline
We didn’t hike on trails to our fishing streams back in the 1960s. We followed cutlines. There were more of them every year. Oil companies would set off explosives along the bulldozed lines and [...]
Living with the Land
Almost 50 species of wildlife are considered at risk in Alberta. Some formerly common species such as the burrowing owl and sage grouse thrived here for millennia but are on course to be wiped [...]
Safeguarding the Source
Evening beside the Bow River at Calgary’s Pearce Estate Park.Gulls are returning to roost on mid-river islands. Kayakers play in man-made rapids beside a diversion weir that tilts river water out [...]
Silence in the Park
Wading a cold river in the rain was not how I wanted to start day three of a nine-day wilderness trip in Banff National Park, but there was no alternative. Since my last visit, 35 years earlier, [...]
Troubled Waters
Soon after his 1876 arrival at the confluence of the Bow and Elbow Rivers, Northwest Mounted Police Commissioner Irvine proposed that the new fort be called Calgary “… which I believe is [...]
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Beyond Belief
Dianne Macaulay sits at a picnic table in front of the brand new, $42-million St. Joseph’s Catholic High School at the northeastern edge of Red Deer. Across the road, new tracts of suburban housing and retail centres gradually take over slow-rolling farmland. Built to accommodate 900 students, the school will ...
Shattered Dream
Shortly after noon on July 29, 1985, a careless driver reaching for a dropped cigarette veered onto the shoulder of the Trans-Canada Highway near Calgary, slamming into a group of teenage cyclists headed to Kananaskis for a camping holiday. He killed three and injured six.
A horrified witness, Bill Pratt, president ...
Blowing Away the Magic
Why is it that we choose so often to replace the sublime with the ridiculous?
Take, for example, the miracle of photosynthesis. It arose, scientists believe, almost 3.5 billion years ago. Life was little more than a precarious experiment until organisms first began to harvest the sun’s light to create organic ...