Editorial note: Thanksgiving is coming up; contemplating gratitude seems especially appropriate. This article suggests that conscious gratitude is an easy way to improve one’s quality of life, and discusses how that works. By David DeSteno, for Aeon For the Ancient Greeks, virtue wasn’t a goal in and of itself, but rather a...

The moment, the prospects, the significance This is my second and final column on the federal election at hand. I write this feeling very uncertain about what Canadians want from politics. I have just recently told a friend in a conversation about the election – one of many –  that I think conservatism in Canada is weak. But...

Mainstream media coverage to date of the federal election campaign has led CBC pundit Neil Macdonald to declare, “I can’t get little enough of it.”  No wonder.  Irrelevant distractions, insults, inaccurate accusations, fake videos, false social media memes, a flood of promises that few voters put much faith in anymore, and ...

To the Editor, The Fridays For the Future youth strike last Friday was inspiring. Around the world, millions of youth and their supporters marched and demanded real climate action from the adults. By ‘real action’ I assume the youth mean action that avoids the forecasted global catastrophe and delivers the Paris Accord goal...

I just published an article about prolific offenders that is going to have many locals feeling furious, and justly so. It’s about two local prolific offenders who, between the two of them, are facing 40 separate charges for crimes committed within a two-week span. Both have been arrested – within that time frame – at least ...

Tackling climate change means purging privilege from politics Our national political arena often seems dominated by unproductive partisan potshots and misplaced accountability, with corporate interests prioritized over people’s. Behind the noisy partisan sniping, a quiet majority — 70 to 75 per cent of Canadians — is largely disengaged from politics, according to McAllister Opinion Research. […]

Current and anticipatory grief The reality of the continuing extinction of many so species is profoundly upsetting.  Readers may wonder why old people should care.  For example, I’ll be dead in a few years myself;  it will be up to others to live their lives diminished by the loss of caribou and many other creatures, many...

By John Rapley, for Aeon Two questions: is it good or bad that professional athletes earn 400 times what nurses do, and is string theory a dead end? Each question goes to the heart of its discipline. Yet while you probably answered the first, you’d hold an opinion on the prospects of string theory only if you’ve studied...

Some Elections matter more: this should be one Canadians are about to choose a national, federal government on October 21. It is a more significant choice for our nation than we have faced in many elections, and not because Canada alone is facing some unusual circumstances: the entire human world and the non-human species...

The polar bear has become the poster child for climate change impacts in the Arctic. Sea ice, which the bears depend on for hunting, is melting at an ever-expanding rate. For other species, climate impacts are not as direct. The 2019 State of Canada’s Birds report found aerial insectivores like swifts, swallows and nightjars...