In Canada we have been conditioned to believe that hard work will get us anywhere.  The belief that we could all be rich someday keeps us going through the hard times, keeps us pounding the pavement looking for work, and makes those long shifts at gas stations and fast food restaurants all over the country go by a little...

Eileen Delehanty Pearkes has been researching and writing about the history and politics of water in the upper Columbia Basin since 2005.  Her book on the Columbia River Treaty, A River Captured, is forthcoming in 2016.  Recently, her travelling exhibit on the Columbia River Treaty, curated for Touchstones Nelson, won a...

Patient advocates are concerned that the BC Ministry of Health's plans to increase contracts with for-profit clinics is not an effective solution to surgical wait times. They are urging the province to scrap contract plans and focus instead on taking advantage of unused public Operating Room time. Minister of Health Terry...

Dear Editor, I've been seeing a large number of "kind people" picking up "lost pets" and posting on social media. It's a bit disturbing to me and others that people are so quick to grab the animal and take it home to keep safe until owners are located.  Last fall one of our dogs ran out our front door and down the street and...

Ed Note: I should, by rights, accompany this article with a topless photo, not a head shot. But, ironically, I believe I would be imprisoned for doing so … even though we sexualize everything from orange juice to alcohol in every media ranging from newspapers (Sunshine girls), TV, radio, etc. We spend billions of dollars […]

In my opinion, every NDP MP should be sending Justin Trudeau a Christmas card this year. Not because they like or agree with him, but because I think he just unwittingly threw an election and drastically limited left wing vote-splitting, giving the Federal NDPs their first fighting chance at really taking the House of Commons. […]

In the last dozen years, eight out of nine commissions or citizen assemblies created by governments in Canada have not only advocated getting rid of our first-past-the-post (FPTP) electoral system but have recommended adopting MMP, or mixed-member-proportional representation. In the upcoming 2015 federal election, Tom Mulcair...

In his media release on the recent federal budget, the Conservative candidate seems proud of his party’s “balanced” budget.  This budget was only balanced by raiding the EI fund (which belongs to the workers who paid dues into it) for $1.8 billion, taking $2 billion out of the $3-billion contingency fund (good fiscal managers should […]

Alex Atamanenko, MP says he is disappointed but not surprised by the Conservative Government’s continuing tax breaks for big corporations and Canada’s wealthiest few.  “This budget has nothing that will assist the middle class who are the driving force of our economy, nor does it assist those falling below the poverty line,”...

Local elections across B.C. were supposed to be buried and done with last November, but some of the fallout from a few races is still coming home to roost and there are a few lessons to learn from it. The top ones? Local elections are a perilous time to be a chief administrative officer (CAO), the passing the buck saga continues...