Deep in the Furrows
I’ve gone around and around fields for a week cutting winter rye and winter wheat. Divining my thoughts are earth’s invisible coils about my head. From “Swather As Threshold” in Afternoon [...]
Labour
Labour
Beyond Bill 6
A thousand angry Albertans gathered on the steps of the Legislature in late 2015. They weren’t the usual protesters—longhaired peace activists or radicals of any kind. They were solid, salt of [...]
The Year of Bargaining Diplomatically
Last year the government of Alberta faced a mountain of public-sector contract negotiations. A whole mountain range, actually. Collective agreements covering roughly 180,000 employees expired: [...]
Meet the Minister: Christina Gray
AV: Far more Albertans are workers than employers, but our culture really celebrates “the entrepreneur”—the job creator, the employer. What do you think about this? Well, we need both. A [...]
By Evan Osenton
Essential Workers’ Right to Strike
Marni Soupcoff says workers have no right to strike. It’s true. I don’t think essential workers should have the right to strike. But before I go any further with my case for why, you [...]
The Gig Economy
When Edmonton rock radio station The Bear planned to broadcast an all-night Halloween contest from a graveyard, they wanted 22-year-old student Andy Ferguson to work the shift. Ferguson had [...]
By Andrew Cash
Not Your Father’s Union
When Maria Lemus arrived in Canada from El Salvador in 1987, becoming a vocal union supporter was the farthest thing from her mind. She had just narrowly escaped being kidnapped in a place of [...]
By Jason Foster
The War on Workers
On Friday, April 26, 2013, corrections officers at the Edmonton Remand Centre began a wildcat strike. The root cause of the illegal strike, they say, was government inaction on safety concerns [...]
Alberta’s Most Unsafe Workplace
On June 18, 2006, Kevan Chandler entered a grain silo on the Tongue Creek Feeders lot, near High River. Grain had encrusted the sidewall of silo number seven—a building 90 feet high and 30 feet [...]
Welcome to Alberta
When Gonzalo Camacho left behind his wife and young daughter in Colombia to come work in Brooks, in February of 2008, the weather wasn’t his only shock. “I was a married man and suddenly I was [...]
MOST READ
MOST READ
Reducing the Harm
It's a little after 10 o’clock in the morning and Taylor feels like she’s climbing the walls.
When her name is called and the door to Lethbridge’s supervised drug consumption site buzzes open, Taylor moves quickly on her crutches. She settles into a chair at the second booth from the end ...
Should All Drugs Be Decriminalized?
Hakique Virani says yes.
Twelve-step addiction recovery programs teach that it is irrational to “do the same thing over and over again expecting different results.” This should be a lesson for legislators too. As the 4,000 Canadian families who lost a loved one to an opioid overdose last year know, our ...
Holy Healthcare
Just tell them we don’t have it here.” That’s what the nurse told me in Killam Hospital, an hour east of Camrose. I’d asked what would happen if a woman came into our ER asking for the morning-after pill. The nurse wasn’t being self-righteous, but simply explaining the policy.
As ...