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
Labour
Labour
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 [...]
The Most Unsafe Workplace in Alberta
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 [...]
Cut to the Bone
If you eat Alberta beef tonight, odds are it was processed by one of the 2,300 workers at the sprawling XL Lakeside Packers facility just outside of Brooks. The plant is the largest slaughter [...]
More than Wages
When Willa Gorman began working in the fibres area at Celanese in Edmonton in 1965, the chemical plant employed over 1,000 workers. “We worked with chemicals with absolutely no safety as we know [...]
By Alvin Finkel
Glass Ceiling
Premier Ed Stelmach chose a new Cabinet In January, and among the fresh faces was 40-year-old Thomas Lukaszuk. The new Minister of Employment & Immigration promised economic stimulus for our [...]
The Natural
Confederation Building, Parliament Hill, Ottawa. It’s dead quiet, not a soul in sight. This place is gothic, its long grey hallways a series of closed doors, each bearing a small number plate. [...]
Insult to Injury
On October 21, 2009, a man with a high-powered rifle took several hostages and held them for nine hours at the Edmonton offices of the Workers’ Compensation Board (WCB). Patrick Clayton was an [...]
Farming Out Our Future
In an increasingly urban and self-consciously cosmopolitan province, something about the word “rural” seems to make people uncomfortable. Whatever the lingering mythic importance of ranchers, [...]
By Roger Epp
Perilous Trades
On the day of the accident, an epic snowstorm swept through central Alberta. Weather reports discouraged travel except in emergencies. defeated cars dotted the ditches between Red deer and [...]
By Alison Azer
MOST READ
MOST READ
Beyond Belief
Dianne Macaulay sits at a picnic table in front of the brand new, $42-million St. Joseph’s Catholic High School at the northeastern edge of Red Deer. Across the road, new tracts of suburban housing and retail centres gradually take over slow-rolling farmland. Built to accommodate 900 students, the school will ...
Shattered Dream
Shortly after noon on July 29, 1985, a careless driver reaching for a dropped cigarette veered onto the shoulder of the Trans-Canada Highway near Calgary, slamming into a group of teenage cyclists headed to Kananaskis for a camping holiday. He killed three and injured six.
A horrified witness, Bill Pratt, president ...
Blowing Away the Magic
Why is it that we choose so often to replace the sublime with the ridiculous?
Take, for example, the miracle of photosynthesis. It arose, scientists believe, almost 3.5 billion years ago. Life was little more than a precarious experiment until organisms first began to harvest the sun’s light to create organic ...