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Opinion
HELSTON: The Canadian Ski Patrol’s legacy is something that’s never leaving
It takes a certain kind of person to be a volunteer, and we’d be lost without them. From the search and rescuer who misses dinner with his family to help find a missing hiker, the listening ear on the other end of the crisis hotline, or the ski patroller who spends her weekend not knowing what kind of emergency she might be called to next — they are here for us, not for money, not for credit, but to help.
POULSEN: We are drier than before the big fire in 2003
These early worries about a bad forest fire season are well founded. The Okanagan is drier now than it was previous to the Okanagan Park fire in 2003. Here are the Kelowna airport precipitation figures in centimetres for April, May, and through June 23, 2003, compared with the same period for this year. 2003: 80.6...
LOEWEN: From Stormfront to your front: When hate gets a free ride
“Things are slowly getting better, politically, in Canada,” said “WhitePridePatriot.” “(H)ats off the (sic) Steven Harper and the Conservatives for Finlay (sic) scarping (sic) this "law"! Hats off to Ezra Levant and Mark Styne for challenging this and making this more widely known. Most importantly, hats off to unsung heroes Paul Fromm, Mark Lamiere, Doug...
ANDERSON: A tale of two scandals
To hear the mainstream Canadian media talk about the so-called Senate "scandal," one would think the Auditor General took it upon himself to clean up the Senate and in doing so caught the Tories doing... we're-not-sure-what-but-it's-probably-bad. This popular narrative is highly misleading. Moreover, it deflects from a truly egregious scandal, and one that the media...
PARKER: Snapping out of it
Over the past two weeks I have followed everyone from Justin Bieber to Kylie Jenner on Snapchat. Three weeks ago I didn’t even know celebrities used Snapchat, but this week, everywhere I look someone famous is announcing they use the medium and I can’t help but pay attention to how. Snapchat is the infamous App...
BEPPLE: The mainstage of politics
Politics, whether at the federal, provincial or municipal level, is all about theatre. That’s not to say that politicians are not genuine. It’s just that what people say, and how they say it changes dramatically when they are in the public eye. At least in certain circumstances. Take for instance this week’s council meeting. Council...
POULSEN: Or, I could be wrong…
* Our senators have to move out of their offices for renovations. Quick, lock all the doors behind them! * The Ottawa media has overloaded us with the saga of Omar Khadr. This happens when Ottawa journalists drink their own bath water, which is always. No one cares to have a daily bombardment of Khadr...
LOEWEN: Father’s Day and the ‘brief crack of light’
Several years ago, I began a “Portrait Gallery of Badasses” on my own Facebook page. Doing so gave me an opportunity to offer a little more in the way of content to my “friends” beyond my typical political postings which threatened to make me a “person of interest” to the powers-that-be way before we had...
ANDERSON: What if I fall? An answer rooted in ideology
"Every man's life ends the same way. It is only the details of how he lived and how he died that distinguish one man from another." ~ Ernest Hemingway Ernest Hemingway, who often signed his name "E.H.", revolutionized American prose with his short sharp sentences and barebones clarity. I've always been in awe of his...
PARKER: Taking the ‘i’ out of selfie
Did you know that some of the world’s toughest fire fighters are starting to think that wildfires are getting too dangerous to fight? Apparently, fire season is lasting up to seven months in some of the hotter areas of America. Now, usually I’m not one to blurt out flame statistics but, to steer clear of...
HELSTON: Not everyone is motivated by money, and we’re all better for it
You’ve probably heard your grandpa say it in a nostalgic tone: ‘Land: They’re not making much of it anymore.’ You only have to look at this Google image time lapse from 1984 to 2012 to see how much green space in Vernon has been lost in the last 30 years alone. Sure, people need houses...