A woman in a coral windbreaker peeks through cattails on the periphery of a marsh, her rubber boots camouflaged by vegetation and mud as she strains, clipboard in hand, to detect signs of amphibian life. A frog hops into a beam of sunlight through the dense flora and she marks a tick on her clipboard. […] More »
In 1999, filmmaker Xstine Cook was living in Ramsay, an inner-city working class Calgary neighbourhood, when Gloria Black Plume, an aboriginal social worker, was murdered in an alleyway five houses away from her home. Cook now lives on the property where the murder took place. She felt the need to memorialize Black Plume’s life and […] More »
Three years ago, the City of Calgary adopted a 10-year plan to end homelessness. The much-lauded, and now much-copied, program was the first of its kind in Canada. Funded by the provincial government and led by the Calgary Homeless Foundation, the plan hinges on an ambitious “Housing First” strategy, which promises to move 1,800 of […] More »
At Marv’s Classic Soda Shop, Marvin Garriott, known for his oiled handlebar moustache, is often asked to speak of politics. He’s the local prophet on the subject; all small towns have one. A two-term councillor sitting for the 1,900-person Southern Alberta town of Black Diamond, Garriott poses for tourists and reporters, mugging in a bowling-alley […] More »
It was the sort of sectarian self-destruction that’s sadly all too common in left-wing movements. After winning strong majorities on Vancouver City Council, the school board, and the park board in 2002, the Coalition of Progressive Electors alliance split in two just a couple of years later. This paved the way for the right to […] More »
Calgary is not a place to stay. A cultural wasteland with a boom-bust oil economy where hard workers can make their money before moving to a “real” city with “real” arts and culture—but not a place to stay. This is an all-too-common belief about Calgary. But skeptics should take a closer look at the Heart […] More »
Pop quiz: which major Canadian city elected a progressive, Muslim, Harvard-educated mayor last year? The answer is Calgary, and if you find this at all surprising, you may have some assumptions to explore with Geo Takach. The Quebec born author, who moved to Alberta as a teen, has long been fascinated with the mythologies unique […] More »
Yesterday Canadian economics blogger Mike Moffatt posted his thoughts about the costs of reducing the murder rate by 30 percent through water treatment. The post was based on a Big Think article that studied correlations between higher lithium amounts in public drinking water and drops in suicides and violent crime rates. Lithium, a mood-booster, is […] More »
The fight against poverty in Canada recently added a new weapon to its arsenal: the living wage bylaw. While only one Canadian city, New Westminster, B.C., currently implements the practice, the push is on to make it the norm. Living wage bylaws require that workers employed directly or indirectly by a municipal government be paid […] More »
In this edition of Listen to This — the premiere of our second season of original interviews with Canada’s most fascinating activists, politicos, and artists! — we talk with Heather Leson and Brian Chick, two of the more senior Canadian coordinators of Crisis Commons, an international online community of people who use their technology skills to […] More »
Tell someone you like science fiction, fantasy or horror films and you might get “the look.” A look that says, “Are you silly, immature or, worse, pervy?” Fans of genre cinema—the term applies to many different categories of film but is most commonly applied to sci-fi, fantasy and horror—have long had a bad rep as […] More »