The Pipelines We Need
Read any of Alberta’s daily newspapers and you will know that our province’s only hope is new pipelines. Nothing else will save us. I took some convincing, but I’m in. In fact, I’d like to [...]
Water
Water
Deliverance from Flood
When the June 2013 flood hit Calgary, Tony Morris was sitting at his desk in a downtown office tower. He looked out a window and could see the Bow River was rising. Morris left work and met his [...]
In Decline
We didn’t hike on trails to our fishing streams back in the 1960s. We followed cutlines. There were more of them every year. Oil companies would set off explosives along the bulldozed lines and [...]
Gender-bending Water
Drive south on Calgary’s Macleod Trail. Catch the left onto 194th Ave SE and follow it down into the valley toward the Blue Devil golf course. Before you get there, turn right onto an unnamed [...]
By Chris Wood
Safeguarding the Source
Evening beside the Bow River at Calgary’s Pearce Estate Park.Gulls are returning to roost on mid-river islands. Kayakers play in man-made rapids beside a diversion weir that tilts river water out [...]
Diminishing the Demand
A couple of years ago I found myself sitting at a table at the University of Alberta with Greg Goss, an expert in aquatic toxicology. Goss had recently been named executive director of the [...]
By Kerry Freek
Cash Flow
Alberta is Canada’s driest province. That’s not obvious, however, as I cruise the corridors of the province’s newest mega-mall, CrossIron Mills. Touted as a “celebration of all things Alberta,” [...]
By Lynn Martel
High and Dry
Booming Alberta is headed for a dry awakening. The black gold that has made the province so prosperous may also lead to its demise. The burning of fossil fuels is largely responsible for global [...]
High and Dry
The current drought on the western prairies is the most intense since consistent weather records began to be kept, over a century ago. Most wetlands are dry. River flows are 40 to 80 per cent [...]
Water in the Well
Real or imagined, the links, the link exists—firmly entrenched in the minds of many Alberta farmers, ranchers and town councillors. Few will claim that the oil and gas industry is directly [...]
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The Lesson of Lougheed
For 100 years, between 1905 and 2005, Albertans changed their government only three times (1921, 1935, 1971). The last of these elections, the most portentous, happened 50 years ago this August. Alberta has now changed government twice in the past six years. The next election may see yet another new government—meaning ...
The Assault on Higher Education
The Kenney government proclaimed in fall 2019 that Alberta’s post-secondary institutions were “overly dependent” on government funding—which is an odd thing to say about a public good. Then it declared that the province’s grant to the schools should be reduced by 20 per cent by 2023. The rationale for this ...
Rediscovering a River
The Cree called it Kisiskâciwanisîpiy—the swiftly flowing river. For the Blackfoot, it was omaka-ty—the big river. It starts in the Columbia Icefield, at the toe of the Saskatchewan Glacier, and cuts the province in half as it flows through Banff and Jasper national parks, northeast to Edmonton, then east-by-southeast across the ...