Columns

Those of us who with with language can’t watch documentaries about the evolution of English without tears welling—ah, the beauty! But I’m blubbering for different reasons these days. A few [...]

Once upon a time a passenger train ran between Edmonton and Calgary. In 1969 the Dayliner was so popular, it ran three times a day, in each direction, carrying about 80,000 passengers a year from [...]

Jason Kenney is not the man he used to be. At least not popularity-wise. His approval rate has been falling, not sinking like a stone but deflating slowly like a balloon. It is a curious [...]

Alberta is test-driving a new curriculum and a new advisory panel for education. It boils down to a controversy over values. Whose values will the system represent? The UCP government says it [...]

The first big November snowstorm means bedtime for Alberta’s grizzly bears. This was a good berry year, so most will go to bed fat and wake up next spring healthy. And then some may die. The UCP [...]

My mother was a refugee, and Canada was her refuge. My mother died this August, a few days before her 81st birthday. And as I sat down to write her eulogy, I kept thinking about the confluence of [...]

Once upon a time, politics in Alberta was such a relatively tame affair that the leader of the Opposition was kicked out of the legislative assembly for calling a cabinet minister a “mouse.” That [...]

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 [...]

In 2017 I issued a mid-term report card on the environmental record of Rachel Notley’s government. Their performance on land use planning, parks establishment and climate change was exemplary. On [...]

In spring of 2003, in the midst of Alberta’s mad cow crisis, I found myself unexpectedly dining with the Japanese consul-general. Japan had just closed its borders to imports of Canadian beef [...]