August 3, 2010
As green-collar jobs boom, Canada is mired in the tar sands
Canada and Abu Dhabi share one big trait: an economy addicted to oil. But while Canada doubles down on the tar sands, the emirate quietly plans a renewable energy hub in a gleaming zero-emissions city in the desert. Can either of these bets pay off? Artist's rendering of a Masdar public square. Click to enlarge. Looking out over the site of Masdar City in Abu Dhabi, it takes some imagination to... [More >>]
April 22, 2010
An Alberta sculptor fights oil companies to exhibit art on his own land
Peter von Tiesenhausen with one of his sculptures. Photo courtesy the artist As you walk through Peter von Tiesenhausen’s land, artwork emerges as if summoned from the ground up. Ships and nests made of willow branches appear along well-worn paths. Statues carved from logs stand watch from between the trees. In Tiesenhausen’s studio, small canvases that resemble the cracked earth of recent droughts... [More >>]
September 29, 2009
Postcard from London: On climate change, new message is “Blame Canada”
Protesters demonstrating Canada's tar sands development outside the Canadian High Commission in London. Photo by Zoe Cormier. I was pretty sure I knew what the Canadian flag, held upside down, was supposed to represent. But I had to ask anyway. Last Monday afternoon, standing outside the Houses of Parliament in London in Parliament square, I held my cell phone aloft with a hundred other protesters,... [More >>]
September 1, 2009
Hostile takeover: Canada’s outsourced war for Iraq’s oil riches
Think we never went to Iraq? Think again. In March 2008, when the invasion of Iraq by George W. Bush’s “coalition of the willing” marked its fifth anniversary, Canadian media outlets were in a self-congratulatory mood: “Canada isn’t involved” there, one reporter wrote. “The further we get away from the actual date, the better Canada’s decision to not get involved with the U.S. invasion... [More >>]
December 1, 2000
This Land Is Whose Land?
On the surface, Victor Buffalo v. The Queen is a dispute over mismanaged oil money—$1.38 billion of it, to be exact. But the deeper questions raised by the case could spark a full-on legal war across Canada, topping $190 billion in claims and changing the face of Canadian government/aboriginal relations forever I’m sitting in a Calgary courtroom looking on with disbelief at what is happening.... [More >>]
