To Me You Seem Giant
Greg Rhyno’s debut novel, which takes place in the mid-1990s and 10 years later, amounts to a painfully effective exercise in nostalgia. In keeping with a cassette-tape theme, the timelines are [...]
Naomi K Lewis
Naomi K Lewis
Wonder Women: 25 Innovators, Inventors and Trailblazers Who Changed History
Edmonton’s Sam Maggs writes for video games—an industry of almost all men, as she points out—and previously penned The Fangirl’s Guide to the Galaxy. In Wonder Women, she returns to guiding [...]
Teardown
Teardown is Clea Young’s debut collection, but her work has already received much-deserved approbation, appearing in the prestigious Journey Prize Stories three times. Set in Young’s native BC, [...]
Infectious Fear
I went to the St. Joseph’s Hospital in an ambulance on my sixth birthday, paralyzed,” recalls Maxine Madison. It was December 22, 1953, in Edmonton, and Madison had polio. That year, 1,500 [...]
Their Alberta Home
My Prairie Home, the 2013 musical documentary about Calgary-born-and-raised multi-platform artist Rae Spoon, begins with a wide-angle shot of the Alberta prairie, upside down, through the window [...]
The Assault on Science
By May 2012 morale was low throughout Canada’s scientific community—and then the country’s scientists received a swift kick where it counts. The Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO) announced [...]
No MD, No Problem?
In examination rooms across the province, patients sit in crunchy paper gowns, waiting for doctors. There’s not much to look at in the windowless rooms—perhaps some cross-sectional depictions of [...]
The Urge to Purge
“I’ve felt kind of backed up since I had my daughter last year,” an acquaintance told me, drinking herbal tea instead of her usual coffee. “I cleanse every spring,” said another, a few months [...]
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Perpetual War
I have always tried to avoid getting into arguments with Alberta premiers. After all, as a journalist it’s my job to question politicians, not quarrel with them. But sometimes premiers seem to want to get into arguments with journalists.
In 2006, for example, I got into a verbal tussle with then-premier Ralph ...
Heritage Trust Fund
A decade ago, when Alberta was debt-free and staring at a $7.4-billion surplus, Premier Ralph Klein decided it was time to spread the wealth. He announced that every person who lived in the province—and, as it turned out, more than a few who didn’t—would receive a cheque for $400 as ...
Kenney’s First 100 Days
On August 7, 2019, Premier Jason Kenney gave a press conference announcing his government’s progress over its first 100 days—“promises made, promises kept.” There’s no magic in “The First 100 Days.” It’s an arbitrary construct used by the media and political observers to measure how a new political leader is ...