Ask Questions First, Shoot Never
Blood Tribe Police Chief Kyle Melting Tallow is growing his hair out. When I visited the police station in Standoff on the Blood Reserve in late September, his face was framed by a wave of black [...]
By Doug Horner
Social Issues
Social Issues
The Orange Tent
As I back my minivan out of the garage, I roll down the window. My husband, post-call after a night of anaesthetizing patients for emergency surgeries, is blowing leaves around in the yard with [...]
Suddenly There’s Room at the Inn
On a recent Thursday outside the Coliseum Inn, a woman in wrinkled clothes balances a large blue sleeping bag atop her shoulder. In the parking lot a man pushes a shopping cart overflowing with [...]
Adam’s Choice
To understand why he told the press, in April 2018, that Alberta First Nations “want to be owners of a pipeline,” specifically the Trans Mountain Pipeline expansion (TMX), Chief Allan Adam of the [...]
Changing the Culture of Canadian Policing
Printed on yellow cardstock and taped to the wall next to the two computer monitors on Terry Coleman’s desk, the quote from Aristotle outlines a formula for success: First, have a definite, [...]
By Doug Horner
Is Poverty the Individual’s Fault?
CHRIS SARLO The economics professor at Nipissing University and senior fellow at the Fraser Institute SAYS YES I’ll answer yes—with two qualifications. First, the setting in which I believe [...]
Where Social Assistance Falls Short
Our society helps individuals and families in need through income support, part of a larger system of social assistance. The program was in the past sometimes referred to as “welfare.” “Welfare” [...]
Trauma Repair
We were seeing people come back or simply not get better,” says Robert Perry. “And then along comes the brain science and it was like holy-oley! This seems to explain it. It’s not just poverty, [...]
Big Muddy
I found him asleep at Wendy’s on a scuzzy patch of 17th Avenue, his forehead resting on the makeshift pillow he’d created from one arm. I couldn’t see his face, but I knew it was my brother: the [...]
Retrospective: A Trip Around the Bus Loop
In Grade 6, Lois told me her mother lay on the couch all day, eating chocolates and crying. Astonishing. But not entirely. I believe I knew, deep down, that the place was filled with unhappy [...]
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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 ...