I’ve been trying for days to pen a year-in-review column, and God knows there’s no lack of material. Just within our little business world, there’s been the launch of The Trail Champion, The Castlegar Source’s Facebook supremacy (yes, that was a little bit of a brag, I’m so very delighted to see 1,632 people following […]

 “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...

Twas the week before Christmas, and all through the house there was plenty of stirring, but not one goddamned louse. I had made extra sure we would all be nit-free, just in time for St. Nick to come down the chimney. We were over the pox, and the flu, and the cold, just holding our breath, worried […]

Wally Oppal’s long awaited report commissioned in the wake of the conviction of serial killer Robert Pickton holds a surprise. Something had gone tragically wrong with law enforcement. How else could one individual have murdered dozens of women in one location over more than a decade without being caught? That Oppal’s report...

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....

Canada is blessed. God has given us so many things that other countries want. And it’s all just there for the taking. Above the ground we have trees galore, waiting to be chopped down, water waiting to be piped to California. In the ground we’ve got gold and silver, copper and iron, uranium and asbestos. The list is almost ...

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...