Opinion General

In 1984, Madonna released a single that would permeate the entertainment scene like a stick of margarine on a chiffon blouse. “Material Girl” blew up — foreseeing the next 20 (maybe even 30?) years of economic dependence on department stores. While I wasn’t born until after the song left the billboards (’87), I was never...

Have you ever wondered why people need only one round of core vaccinations as kids but your dog or cat seems to need boosters until the day they depart? They probably don't and there's a way to prove it. There's now a relatively inexpensive test being offered by progressive vets that will determine if your...

On August 2nd, when PM Stephen Harper initiated the start of the Canadian federal election campaign, many of us looking at the eleven weeks looming ahead figured the guy was nuts. Eleven weeks? How could a disengaged electorate, stymied by the government’s intransigence in engaging Canadians with accountability and transparency, be expected to get engaged...

There's nothing like sitting in a cardboard castle on the shore of a lake on the edge of the Rockies late on an early September evening, reading by the soft yellow light of a Coleman gas lamp to get the mind drifting down odd alleyways. The setup finished, a soft rain ending, and my dog...

Kanye West yelled the words “f--k that bro!” into his microphone at the Microsoft Theatre in Los Angeles and proceeded to make a frighteningly thoughtful claim about the state of the arts in the modern world at the MTV VMAs last Sunday, Aug. 30. “I just wanted people to like me more,” West states, halfway...

A new study shows that tequila causes pregnancy. No, there isn’t such a study. It’s an in-joke among science researchers to suggest how cause and effect - and profit motive - can be manipulated to produce new health headlines. This has been a big year for new health studies that ostensibly debunk long established wisdom...

My obsession with observing closely the personalities and machinations at the heart of the monied classes and political power, came through a provincial employers’ grant in the early Eighties. Winnipeg's toniest men’s boutique, then as now, was Hanford-Drewitt, a long-established club of sorts for the city’s best-heeled men. And “everybody who was anybody” shopped there:...

Since my earliest political involvement in the late 1980s, I've been struggling to understand why people aren't more engaged in federal politics. I still haven't figured it out, but over twenty plus years of political engagement, I've developed a couple of notions. First, most people just don't know how government works and if you don't...