Edge of the Edge
You wake up. You’ve received a phone call. Disoriented, you fight sleep and attempt to make sense of what the voice on the other end of the line is telling you. You discover that your [...]
By Clem Martini
Mental Health
Mental Health
The Turquoise Sea
As though nostalgic for his Manitoba boyhood, my father points to his beloved hunting rifle. Transforming his fingers into a silent trigger, he touches his temple and says, “Sometimes I want to [...]
The Possibility of Hope
Before she died, Anna Kessler was a promising scholar of Kant. She left Cornell University in 2004 to complete her doctoral studies in philosophy at the University of Alberta. Charming, talented [...]
By Jay Smith
Pushed to the Edge
There are two things you never want to have happen to you. One of them is to suffer a mental illness. The other is to suffer a mental illness and try to get admitted to a hospital. The problem is [...]
By Clem Martini
The Healing of Angela Bischoff
For the past few months, activist Angela Bischoff has been parked in front of her laptop, working around the clock in a small room at a house she shares in Toronto—checking e- mails, confirming [...]
Conundrum of Kites
You suicides are all alike: too strong an imagination. You did what you did, now shut up. — Samuel Beckett My 13, 1987. Six weeks left of high school, six more weeks until we were free. That day, [...]
By Sophie Lees
Tryin’ to get to Heaven
Sometimes you need to be in the hospital. Sometimes no other place—not even your own place—feels safe. In the hospital you can find that secure holding environment that protects you from your [...]
By Larry Pratt
MOST READ
MOST READ
The Plans to Strip-Mine Coal in the Mountains
It looks like spectacular wild country, but some see it more as a big money sandwich.
The top layer of that sandwich is comprised of alpine grasses, forget-me-nots and stonecrop, glacier lilies and ancient, brave pines whose branches have been gnarled and weathered by centuries of wind. In summer, solitaires and ...
Herd Memory
On a cold day in February, I flew over the tightly knit stands of black spruce and jack pine in northwestern Alberta, straining my eyes below, eager to catch sight of a woodland caribou. My dad, a wildlife biologist, called them the “grey ghosts” of the boreal. Woodland caribou have ...
An Environmentalist’s Case for Beef
“…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 and the environment.”
That was Alberta singer-songwriter k.d. lang, in a 1990 television spot for ...