When the Aztecs founded Tenochtitlán in 1325, they built it on a large island on Lake Texcoco. Its eventual 200,000-plus inhabitants relied on canals, levees, dikes, floating gardens, aqueducts and bridges for defence, transportation, flood control, drinking water and food. After the Spaniards conquered the city in 1521, they...

For the first time in 16 years, B.C. workers have much to celebrate on Labour Day. Both the B.C. NDP and the B.C. Green Party campaigned for a government that would make life more affordable, fix the services people count on, create jobs, act on climate change, and build a sustainable economy that works for everyone. Now,...

In this technological age, information and innovation are seen as the key to building a strong, healthy economy, and the key to information is research.  As post-secondary education critic for the NDP, I have talked to many university and college representatives about their concerns and needs.  These representatives range...

By Andrea Germanos, staff writer for Common Dreams.  This article was originally published in Common Dreams. As Hurricane Harvey continues to batter Texas—and as the death toll from monsoon flooding in India, Nepal, and Bangladesh surpasses 1,200—experts are putting a spotlight on how climate change is linked to the "unprecedented"...

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, was released in 2016. Recently, her travelling exhibit on the Columbia River Treaty, curated for Touchstones Nelson, won a national...

At the end of this summer, Wednesday (August 30 2017), the Nature Conservancy of Canada (NCC) will mark exactly 20,000 days of conservation. This milestone provides an opportunity to celebrate and reflect on the work done by NCC and our partners each day, and the conservation we need to accomplish in the 20,000 days to come....

B.C.'s 2017 election will go down in the history books and in more ways than one. The province’s closest election also turned out to be its most expensive. While the final numbers will increase as a few stragglers report and additional candidate spending is tacked on, the B.C. Green party spent $905,000 on its campaign, the...

The opioid crisis is deeply troubling, for many reasons.  One reason is the tragic deaths of so many, so unnecessarily; another reason is the likelihood that those deaths were precipitated by pain, either physical or psychological, that caused a search for relief in the illicit drugs that were fatally used. Another reason is...

Are we entering a new Dark Age? Lately it seems so. News reports are enough to make anyone want to crawl into bed and hide under the covers. But it’s time to rise and shine. To resolve the crises humanity faces, good people must come together. It’s one lesson from Charlottesville, Virginia. It would be easy to dismiss the...

It's the prettiest crosswalk in town.  The lovely set of rainbow colours across Washington Street, by the Rossland Summit School, invites admiration.  And its message is admirable too:  it invites us to accept others without prejudice or intolerance ― without rejecting them on the basis of their appearance,  their religion,...