While it still may not look very much like it in some corners, winter is releasing its grip on the West Kootenay. Snowfalls turning to rain showers, songbirds returning to the trees, and creeks swollen with runoff signal the return of spring to the region. And, along with the seasonal turns, every four years also brings with...

Over the past month I have visited most of the RCMP detachments in South Okanagan-West Kootenay.  While the conversations covered some of the obvious law and order issues such as marijuana legalization, rising levels of property crime and staffing levels for highway patrol, I was surprised that one issue dominated most of my...

If you own a smartphone, you have more computing power at your fingertips than NASA scientists had when they put people on the moon in 1969! And it’s in a small device, unlike the massive hardware the space agency used. Technology moves in leaps and bounds. As someone who grew up before home computers, transoceanic phone...

As I discussed in my last column, the federal government had an opportunity in last week’s budget to finally start closing the growing income inequality gap in Canada. But, unfortunately the Liberals chose tax breaks for wealthy Canadians and giveaways to large corporations over helping the unemployed, veterans, and Indigenous...

To The Editor: More funding might help our seniors if they are in a publicly owned facility. A few more staff and maybe an extra therapist. But history shows that more funding has not improved the quality of care in "for profit" or even "non-profit" facilities. The taxpayers shelled out more money in 2010 when the client rate...

Senator Lynn Beyak's complaint that the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) "didn't focus on the good" done by Canada's residential schools has provoked calls for her resignation, and some people wonder how she is qualified to sit on the Senate's Aboriginal Peoples Committee. For any who have not yet read the letter of...

We recently highlighted the faulty logic of a pseudoscientific argument against addressing climate change: the proposition that because CO2 is necessary for plants, increasing emissions is good for the planet and the life it supports. Those who read, write or talk regularly about climate change and ecology are familiar with...

Last week I decided to write this column about income tax.  Not only is it tax time for all of us, but the KPMG tax scam story was in the news, and the Liberals had just voted with the NDP on our opposition day motion to rid Canada of tax measures that benefit only the very wealthy.

To the Editor: I was recently visited by a representative of Access Gas offering me participation in the Customer Choice Program which guarantees you stable pricing for the gas you receive via Fortis for the next five years.  The program is well presented and documented and is perfectly legitimate. But although this all sounds...

Scissors and Paste The academic supervisor for my post-grad thesis in history would not have approved of what I do in this edition of the Arc. He dismissed the method (with a curl of his lip) thus: “writing with scissors and paste, Charles.” I have looked over several pieces of writing recently, some of it my own, and I am ...