Word Prisms

I was sad to hear about the closing of  180  provincial parks recently. The wilderness has always been an important part of my life as it was to my father and my father’s father. The love of the wilderness brought my mother and father together and so could be considered responsible for the existence of me and my siblings. They were both members of the outdoor club at university. On weekends, the club would engage in such activities as skating on Whitemud Creek in Edmonton. After the skate, they would retreat to the  club’s cabin that featured a potbelly stove used both for heat and cooking.  When my father extended his handkerchief to my mother after she’d cut her hand opening a tin of beans  to feed the hungry skaters, you could say she lost her heart.   I don’t think Mr. Kenney gets it. He pretends to  be  an Albertan and speak for us but he isn’t Kihiwin Provincial Park and he doesn’t. I support the Rachel Notley’s NDP and a progr...

This quid quo pro proviso of the United Conservative Party requires that a province must first be prosperous before a province can be caring and compassionate. From this statement, a number of questions arise. First, at what point can a province consider itself prosperous? A recent article in the Globe and Mail addressed the complaints of Alberta's UCP leadership candidates about equalization payments to other provinces. It states that Quebec receives "$11 billion in equalization payments enjoying a budget surplus while Alberta has a $10.5 billion deficit and receives none." The reason for this seeming injustice is that Quebec taxes are almost twice that of Alberta's. If both provinces were to tax their citizens at the Canadian average, Quebec would suffer a deficit and Alberta would be enjoying the surplus. However, implementing a sales tax would be tantamount to political suicide for any ruling party in Alberta. That's despite the fact that, according to...

David Staples - Hockey Report David Staples is an interesting kind of guy. His primary interest is hockey which he writes about and produces a podcast about entitled, "The Cult of Hockey." Nevertheless, that doesn't stop him from pronouncing his expertise in other areas. For the last four or five years, one of his primary concerns has been Alberta's math curriculum. Why he should write so prolifically on the subject or feel so passionately is a bit of a mystery. More mysterious is why he considers himself an expert on the subject. Alberta Education just released the results of the Provincial Achievement Tests and Diploma Exams. For the first time, the students were given a written, no-calculator portion of the test which 1/3 of Grade 6 students failed. In other respects the results for both PATs and Diploma exams were much the same as last year. Grade 9 math PAT results were slightly down from last year while the Diploma results in math were slightly up. Pretty ...

We all like to figure out how other people tick. That's what makes gossip so popular. It confirms or changes our impressions of other people and we come up with responses like, "Typical" or "You wouldn't believe what he did last night." And, if we can't figure people out, we become suspicious of them. Politicians are no different. In order to feel comfortable with them, we have to be able to understand them. Americans got to know Donald Trump on fourteen seasons of "The Apprentice." Even if they didn't get to know the real guy, they got to know a pretty well established persona. By the time he hit the campaign trail, he knew his audience and they knew or at least thought they knew the Donald. It's not any different for Canadian audiences. Albertans loved Ralph Klein as the guy you could go out with for a beer. Even when he fucked up, he'd apologize and nearly everyone would forgive him. Like the time he walked into the home...