It’s never been more important for people in Canada to focus on protecting and restoring life-sustaining nature and advancing social justice. But our governments are instead fueling accelerated industrial expansion and trampling Indigenous rights. It’s dismaying. Governments throughout Canada are showing a renewed zeal for extraction, often accompanied by a failure to uphold Indigenous rights. […]

Arc of the Cognizant As a historian, I study those moments in the past… but I never expected to live through one. I should have… If history is a guide, this will not be an easy or pleasant transition. — Margaret MacMillan, Canadian The topic of today’s Arc is the colonial nature of Canada’s history […]

A few times every summer I’m riding my motorcycle and come up to a set of traffic lights and have to stop. I find myself behind a diesel pickup as we both wait for the light to turn green. When it does, the driver hits the throttle and I become another victim of “rolling coal”. […]

A climate-safe future demands the defeat of ignorance It’s hard not to conclude that much of the world has been taken over by idiots. Sure, there have always been uninformed politicians and those who let their ideology stumble ahead of their wits. And some who seem more sociopathic than stupid, waging brutal wars and massacres […]

It’s that time of year again, sunny and dry with a chance of careless smokers. I watched another one take the last puff and then toss the smouldering butt out the window onto the highway while he waited in front of me at a red light. All it needed was the breezy nudge of another […]

Spending this week in Kootenay Monashee I’ve seen people coming together to build a stronger B.C. In the face of trade tensions that threaten local jobs, our government is taking action. We know that in the years to come, B.C. will be the economic engine of the new Canada. On Wednesday, we announced investment in rural […]

Imagine the surprise of the motorist at a collision I once investigated. He parked at the side of the road, opened his door, and a passing car tried to tear it off! It’s a good thing he didn’t step out while he opened it. What went wrong here? The motorist didn’t look first, or didn’t […]

Union negotiators and the National Executive Board spent the last few days, and nights, reviewing the Employer’s last offers and preparing responses to issues in the offers and issues important to the Union that the Employer failed to acknowledge. On Sunday, the third day of a nationwide overtime ban, the parties met with Federal Mediation […]

A new Pope and an old question: must politics reject religion? The pursuit of politics is religion, morality, and poetry all in one.  — Madame de Stael Being Human, being spiritual, being political My last column was a rambling examination of democracy, because Canada was going through a federal election. Now we have a new […]

It’s tragic and frightening that we’ve reached a point where “geoengineering” is proposed as necessary to slow or reverse global heating. Many refer to it as an “emergency brake” or “last ditch effort.” The real solution is to stop extracting and burning fossil fuels and to protect and restore natural ecosystems — something we should […]