Columns

The year is 2045, and the Performance Hall of the venerable Calgary Central Library is full to the rafters with citizens come to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the Return of Hope. Others know [...]

As we head toward the upcoming Alberta election, two words give hope to political underdogs and strike fear into the hearts of the overdogs: minority government. Our province has never had a [...]

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 [...]

Long ago, in this column, I wrote about the corporate men-in-suits whom democracies have elected ad nauseam in my lifetime. I called such a man Captain Denial, because so much of the political [...]

If you want to see elk or wolves in Banff or Jasper National Parks this winter, here’s a tip: look on an alluvial fan. Alluvial fans develop wherever a creek running down a steep drainage flows [...]

If all goes according to plan, Alberta will have a provincial election this spring. But what if it doesn’t go to plan? What if we don’t have an election this spring? Oh, I know we’re supposed to. [...]

This past September I signed up for a volunteer work bee with Trout Unlimited Canada (TUC) and spent a day with about a dozen people I had never met before, including an oil engineer, a banker, a [...]

Plastic was the result of humanity’s long search for a material that could be bent back and forth without breaking. It’s a long history, but things moved quickly after Hermann Staudinger fathered [...]

Each November I hunt elk. In the eerie darkness I set out into a silent world, hoping to spot elk feeding at first light. After that first hour or two, the animals retreat into dense cover to bed [...]

So, we are finally doing it: legal marijuana. Mind you, I feel I’ve experienced this twice before. In 2003 the Chrétien government had a bill in the House to decriminalize the possession of up to [...]