“History is just one damn thing after another.” John Masefield. “Life is understood backward, but lived forward.”Soren Kirkegaard This is it, the final column of Arc for the year 2012. This is the week I have often called “dead week” in my mind but not publicly (people would misunderstand!) because of my strange sense of...

I recently had the opportunity to attend a conference in Nanaimo sponsored by the Council of Canadians.  Maude Barlow and others in this social justice organization have been in the forefront when it comes to dealing with issues that threaten the very fabric of our nation. It was very encouraging to see the strong involvement...

The Scriptures of the Christian Church tell us that the birth of the baby in the manger at Bethlehem came at the end of one era, and the beginning of another. In Luke's Gospel, the Angel Gabriel visits first not Mary, nor Joseph, but one Zechariah, a priest of the temple of Yahweh, and his wife, Elizabeth, a descendant of...

The Frontier Centre for Public Policy recently released a policy study examining the system for testing organic products – or the lack thereof – in Canada. Authors Mischa Popoff and Patrick Moore drop the bomb on organic certification in Canada by revealing that organic crops are not systematically tested by the Canadian Food...

This photo by Jonathan Provencal on Dec. 16 confirms that the animal whose den is under the Motherlode ski lift on Granite Mountain's Links' Line is, in fact, a female wolverine. “I was suspicious about the tracks,” Provencal said, referring to the widely held opinion that it was a lynx’s den. “They didn’t look like lynx...

John the Baptist--by all accounts a wild eyed, camel-haired, fire-breathing, proclaimer of the word--is most well known for the words he reserves to those who came to hear him preach. Coming to cleanse themselves in the waters once crossed by their ancestors, on the completion of the journey from Egypt through wilderness....

On the second Sunday in Advent we focus on Peace. The endless search for peace in a world still bound by war. A world sometimes mired in hatred and abuse. A world touting the ethics of the strong, justifying great abuses of power, deriding the 'self-inflicted' misery of the weak: the man on the corner; the woman at the food...

Following the city’s overzealous and incorrect use of the Freedom of Information and Privacy Protection Act (FIPPA) to withhold letters that are clearly in the public’s interest and do not “unfairly” harm anyone’s reputation, I am left wondering what, exactly, remains in the five redacted lines in Coun. Kathy Moore’s letter...

“What does not kill us makes us ___”   Nietzsche      Happiness is a warm gun.  Lennon Everybody knows how to complete the epigraph quoted at the top: “Stronger”. Poor Nietzsche, so many profound things to say, and remembered by masses of slightly-educated people for this one slogan alone. What makes us more contented, or...

As part of its annual general meeting, the Canadian Department of Peace Initiative held the last of its public consultations on the creation of a Department of Peace. The meeting which took place at St. Paul University in Ottawa featured a panel of five commissioners and interventions from the public.  (It was especially...