Water water everywhere…

When Tom and I heard the news earlier this week about the hundreds of ducks killed earlier this week when they landed on a Syncrude tailings “pond”, we both immediately thought of an article we had read late last year in albertaviews magazine; the article was “The Ponds” by the Calgary investigative journalist Andrew Nikiforuk, [...]

Off to see the wizard, if they can get their heads out of the (tar) sands

I’m writing about the duck deaths at the Syncrude tailings pit earlier this week not because I’ve dug out any news of my own, or have any noteworth comments, but because I’d like to help spread the news of this incident in particular and the tar sands in general beyond Alberta’s borders, especially to the [...]

Ducks in the coalmine

(illustration from the Environmental Defence website)
This past Monday, April 28, about 500 migrating ducks drowned after landing on a man-made tailings “pond” (officially, the Aurora Settling Basin), filled not with water but with toxic waste sludge from the Syncrude tar sands (the province of Alberta, Syncrude, and the other mining corporations prefer the tidier [...]

Our Maggie and Our Anne

Still plowing through weekend papers:
In The Guardian, Margaret Atwood’s salute to Anne of Green Gables and “Annery”:
Nor is this process at an end: from the Anne of Green Gables Licensing Authority that gives the nod to all collateral products, expect more Anne boxed sets, Anne notepaper and Anne pencils, Anne coffee mugs and Anne [...]

I’ll be spending tonight

at home with Paul Gross. Well, I’ll be at home, on the couch, and he’ll be on television, in the first part of the CBC political thriller miniseries Trojan Horse, the sequel to H20 (fictional but timely) the other year. Here’s the Globe & Mail interview before it disappears. If it does, try [...]

Uh-oh Canada

I forgot.
I recuperated and got busy with Easter, and then Tom’s birthday (Tuesday) and Laura’s 4H field trip to a nearby bakery (also Tuesday and delicious), and then got thoroughly sidetracked by some Spring cleaning and shopping (yesterday).
Which means I missed getting anything ready for Colleen Mondor at Chasing Ray’s literary salute to Canada. [...]

Saluting Canadian authors

Colleen Mondor at Chasing Ray has word today that
the group who organized the One Shot World Tour stop in Australia last August has decided to salute Canadian authors on March 26th. If anyone wants to participate you are more than welcome - this is 100% NOT a YA [Young Adult books] only event, so [...]

Gah

“The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter.”
Winston Churchill
Albertans re-elect historic 11th straight Tory government
(Why I’m disappointed but not surprised)

The Alberta Advantage*: Triage

The big news from Edmonton, this election day:

Don’t forget to vote today. Please.
*Alberta Advantage defined.

Looking and finding

I was beginning to despair of finding anything new and, well, unauthorized, to celebrate in this year of the Anne of Green Gables centennial, but perked up considerably earlier today upon discovering that next month will bring the publication of Looking for Anne: How Lucy Maud Montgomery Dreamed Up a Literary Classic by Irene Gammel [...]

Poetry Friday: Forcing Spring

Stop me if you’ve heard this before: it’s in the -20s, with blowing snow. A very, very nasty day.
The kids are baking apple pies today for a contest tomorrow. If we can’t get out to deliver them and get them judged, well, we’ll just have to stay home and eat ‘em.

The other day [...]

Not quite, but almost, you know

“When I lived with Mrs. Thomas [before coming to Green Gables to live with Matthew and Marilla Cuthbert] she had a bookcase in her sitting room with glass doors. There weren’t any books in it; Mrs. Thomas kept her best china and her preserves there — when she had any preserves to keep. One [...]

Trio of mad trappers

I’m not sure what the matter was with my digital camera, or why it didn’t like the new batteries I fed it.  Maybe it was feeling overworked and in need of a holiday.  At any rate, I tried the darn thing again this morning, with the very same new batteries as last time, and wouldn’t [...]

Oh no Canada

Canadian teenagers, from bad to worse. Much, much worse.
A Good Samaritan became a victim of crime himself as he went to save a woman from a mugging at a downtown [Edmonton] LRT station Wednesday.Jonas Servage’s duffle bag was allegedly stolen by three bystanders [ages 18, 17, and 15] as he attempted to catch the [...]

Paddle your own canoe

Shooting the Rapids, oil on canvas, 1879, by
Frances Anne Hopkins
We were doing farm chores and driving around in truck the other week with the radio set to CBC, as usual, when I caught a bit of music and Shelagh Roger’s comment that it was based on the Caldecott Honor book by Holling Clancy Holling — [...]

All the lost boys and girls

Laurie Gough’s article in yesterday’s National Post is one of the saddest and dispiriting I’ve ever read. Gough, an author who pays the bills by teaching, writes,
In recent days, the Canadian media has focused its collective gaze on Kashechewan, the tiny native community on the shores of James Bay in Ontario. Much has [...]