There’s an old saying:  follow the money.  In the case of the upcoming referendum on whether or not BC should change our voting system from First-Past-the-Post (FPTP) to a form of Proportional Representation (ProRep), those most vocally opposed to a change seem to have one thing in common: they are people who think they would...

In 2007, Canada was one of four countries to vote against the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (with New Zealand, the United States and Australia). With its single-minded focus on making Canada an “energy superpower,” albeit only with fossil fuels, the Harper government feared the declaration’s concept of ...

A mind in movement across space and time:  Part III Traveller Chaos, Column Coherence This month’s column is about travel, time, and identity. I have just returned from a four-week trip by car across the nation to Ontario and back. It is not the first such trip of my life; I have logged tens of thousands of miles since my...

Last week I spent three days in Spokane at the Pacific Northwest Economic Region meetings.  Over 600 legislators, business people, and other interested folks from BC, Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Montana, Alaska, Alberta, Saskatchewan, the Yukon and Northwest Territories gathered to talk about issues important to this region....

People in Canada discard about 57 million plastic drinking straws every day. In my hometown of Vancouver, we toss out 2.6 million disposable cups every week. It’s a global problem. Plastic products are choking landfills and waterways and causing devastation in the oceans. In 2014, scientists even found a new kind of stone in...

There are large, loud and expensive ads urging people to vote against Proportional Representation in this fall’s referendum.  Are the points made in those ads valid? As citizens, or even just as residents, we should all care deeply about how well our government serves the public interest.  We need to get it ...

A Traveller’s Chaos, A Writer’s Coherence This month’s column is about travel, time, and identity. I have just returned from a four-week trip by car across the nation to Ontario and back. It is not the first such trip of my life; I have logged tens of thousands of miles since my first cross-continent drive in 1973,  many of...

Greyhound’s announcement that it will be pulling all its routes out of western Canada at the end of October came as a surprise, and for many it was more serious news.  It left them wondering how they were going to travel to work sites, to visit relatives and friends, or to go to university in the fall.  For them, the bus isn’t...

Why people defend FPTP and oppose Proportional Representation: There have been some frightening statements made about proportional representation, by a few people.  Why do they want to keep using First-Past-the-Post (FPTP)?  What are their reasons for opposing all of the three Pro-rep systems being offered in this fall’s...

Over the past few months, heat records have broken worldwide. In early July, the temperature in Ouargla, Algeria, reached 51.3 C, the highest ever recorded in Africa! Temperatures in the eastern and southwestern United States and southeastern Canada have also hit record highs. In Montreal, people sweltered under temperatures...