Ears a Little More Open
Can you imagine a 73-year-old prairie product that people receive free but happily pay $1.3-million a year for simply because they like it so much? Something demanded by operating room surgeons [...]
By Geo Takach
Music
Music
300 Kids Create an Opera
The argument started over a game of kickball on the school playground. Two popular kids, Nick and Laura, were declared captains and took turns choosing players. When the teams were complete, the [...]
The New National Music Centre
I’ve known about the National Music Centre for a long time. I helped dig pianos out of the mud there after the flood of 2013. Their old building hosted a collection of odd but memorable musical [...]
By Glenn Dixon
The Long View
There must be a rule that you’re not supposed to ask executives at a commercial country music awards show to think about the oil companies in their stock portfolios. Corb Lund broke that rule. [...]
A Dose of Song
They enter the room in ones and twos, choosing spots around the semicircle of music stands while the pianist repositions her instrument for a better view of the action to come. This could be any [...]
Prodigal Band
When Nils Edenloff was a high school student in Fort McMurray, there was a minor scandal one summer involving a gaggle of teens who decided to ride their bicycles to Edmonton. It was received [...]
By Chris Turner
Both Sides Now
The winter of 1970. In “Room at the Top,” a coffee house about seven storeys up in the frigid night sky of Edmonton, a couple of folksingers are tuning up their guitars while their drummer is [...]
One of Our Own
At first the music sparkles with energy, the orchestra generating dazzling colours and frenetic movement. The solo pianist inscribes razor-sharp chords, echoed by fluttering gestures in the high [...]
Westbound Train
In the summer of 1970, a 12-coach train painted with day-glo hippie flowers carried Janis Joplin, the Grateful Dead, The Band, Ian and Sylvia Tyson, Buddy Guy and other folk-rock and blues icons [...]
Healing Sounds
She sits on an office chair—the kind that swivels around in all directions—and suggests starting the session with a piece by Joni Mitchell. An audience of 10 wheelchair-bound, brain-injured [...]
By Kim Gray
MOST READ
MOST READ
Oil Sucks
I’m an addict. I use oil. We all do. That’s how we’ve wired our economy. But the fact that we’re hopelessly hooked doesn’t mean we shouldn’t confront the issue. The first step, after all, is admitting you have a problem.
Addicts don’t make rational choices. They specialize in denial and ignore ...
Should Private Schools Get Public Funding?
Joel French, the executive director at Public Interest Alberta says no.
Our province has Canada's most generous subsidies for private schools. Setting aside those private schools serving children with special needs, many of which fill gaps in our public systems, the Alberta government spends $110-million per year subsidizing private schools. This ...
Closing Doors
No one likes having a door slammed in her face. But talking to dead people’s relatives is part of my job as a newspaper journalist. It is a skin-thickening, awkward task and I don’t relish it, but I don’t refuse it, either. I ignore the urge to back off. I ...