When my dad was a little boy growing up in Round Hill, Alberta, he was immensely proud that his Pa was the Commissioner for Oats. My Jewish grandfather wasn’t a farmer. He ran Round Hill’s [...]
Mary Beckie, the U of A professor and director of community engagement studies at the School of Public Health, says yes. This pandemic has exposed vulnerabilities and inequities in the global [...]
The rise of the right-wing, authoritarian populist movements across the Western world owes much to the support of rural citizens who are increasingly feeling left behind economically and [...]
“…If you knew how meat was made, you’d probably lose your lunch. I know; I’m from cattle country, and that’s why I became a vegetarian. Meat stinks, and not just for animals but for human health [...]
The day starts at the Cow Palace. Kids wearing shirts emblazoned with “Eat, Sleep, 4-H, Repeat” sit at round tables in white plastic chairs arranged on the arena’s concrete floor. Outside in the [...]
AV: What does a typical week look like? I’m out and about a lot. The year before last I put 100,000 kilometres on my truck, just getting around the province, meeting producers, meeting [...]
My partner Dave often laughs with anticipation in our kitchen as he unpacks grass-fed short ribs and pastured chickens from the grocery cooler and reassures me that my culinary values trump his [...]
The hamburger looked like any other fast-food burger: one patty on a bun, topped with ketchup, onions and pickles. It cost $4.15 and was served in a brown paper pouch, on a plastic tray. The one [...]
In January, Heather and John Kerschbaumer left their 7,500-acre farm near the mighty Peace River and flew to the Golden Nugget casino in Las Vegas for a conference about alfalfa. The [...]
Hugh Mackenzie
The economist and research associate at the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives says yes.
Free tuition would redress a massive intergenerational inequity created over the past 30 years. In 1990–91, average university tuition in Canada was $1,464; adjusted for inflation, that would be $2,541 in 2019–20. Today the actual average ...
Toronto freelance portrait photographer Markian Lozowchuk (disclosure: his mother and I are second cousins) has photographed Justin Trudeau for Toronto Life and Margaret Atwood for Maclean’s, but his editorial shoot of Chrystia Freeland for Toronto Life in 2017, including the cover, was “the most memorable shoot I’ve done.” Even three ...
Either way, the three-hour drive between Edmonton and Calgary on the QEII highway has the same itinerary: nice landscape, cows, trees, pumpjack, anti-Ottawa billboard, creeping boredom, leg cramp, Donut Mill raspberry bismarck, cows, fence, pickup truck passing you at 160 km/h, horse, trees, jackknifed semi-trailer in the ditch, pumpjack, cows, full-on boredom ...