As the snow has been melting over these past couple of warm weeks (Is spring coming already? Did winter even really get started?) the brown land mines planted around town by our dog population have started appearing everywhere. Walking up Washington Street the other day, doing my best to keep my head up and continue a...

On Monday of this week, I went to a talk in Nelson by Chris Turner, the Calgarian author of The Geography of Hope (Note to Self: does he pay royalties to Barack Obama or is Mr. Turner just audacious?), a book that bravely attempts to grab a very ferocious bull by both horns. Unfortunately, they turn out to be the horns of a...

It’s becoming common journalistic practice to do an assessment of a new government after its first hundred days in office and that milestone will be passed this weekend here in Rossland: it’s now been three months since the election of our new mayor and council. Last November’s election followed the tenure of the previous...

A couple of years ago, in BC’s first referendum on the Single Transferable Vote system, the initiative garnered 58% of the vote, a mere 2% short of the 60% it needed to become law. In this May’s provincial election, British Columbians will be asked to vote on the STV a second (and presumably final) time. The basic idea behind...

If there’s a lesson to be learned from the current global crisis or crises, it’s that we all stand or fall together. That’s been the case, probably, since 8:15 AM on August 6, 1945 when America dropped the first atomic bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima, but the idea is just beginning to sink in now, more than sixty years...

I shed human tears twice this last week. Yesterday, I listened to Barack Obama’s inaugural address and found his words about the qualities that make America (and any democracy) great very stirring. Democracy is a way of organizing people that allows us to support one other and pursue our dreams, individually and collectively....

With the number of avalanche fatalities in the news over the past several weeks, and the volume of media coverage the incidents have received, many British Columbians and Canadians in general have been asking questions about the overall safety of backcountry travel, be it skiing, snowmobiling or other. While avalanche activity...

Another New Year and we turn to optimism as a cure for the 2008 hangover that lays coiled tightly around many of our heads this morning. The last year, 2008, was much like the couple of thousand that preceded it. In terms of genuine human happiness or contentment, one can’t argue that there’s more around today than in 1953 ...

Is the unthinkable now thinkable? “It could be.” This week, Prime Minister Stephen Harper became the first Western leader to publicly admit the possibility of a global depression: not exactly the kind of comment designed to spur on the shoppers a week before our annual carnival of conspicuous consumption. When asked if an...

A report issued late last week by UNICEF on early childhood education in economically advanced countries announced that Canada, of the 25 nations involved, was tied for last place with Ireland when it comes to supporting child care. This news, for people not intimately involved in the child care industry or without young...