In 1986, while working for the BC Ministry of Forests, some of my co-workers and I were temporarily transferred to the Yukon to help battle the territory’s forest fire Bane. We spent about a week in Dawson City awaiting deployment and a couple of weeks battling a project forest fire near the Yukon-Alaska border. In… Read more »
April is the month of exams for post-secondary students across regions and academic disciplines. As a distance student of Athabasca University (AU) I have written numerous invigilated exams, but I wrote them whenever I was ready for them”?April had no special exam-related significance to me. Further, the courses that I have taken, and continue to… Read more »
How far back in your past can you remember? If you really stretch your mind, what is the earliest memory that you can muster? For me, I know that somewhere in that nascent cloud of disjointed recollections is a line between actual memory and imagined memory. For instance, I can resurrect a memory of laying… Read more »
My father has told me many stories of his youth. He quit school early, as did many of the children of his cohort, in order to enter the workforce. He was aged twelve through fifteen while World War Two raged in Europe, and a large proportion of working-class males were overseas fighting and falling in… Read more »
On Friday March 5th and Saturday March 6th 2004, I attended a conference called Employment & Labour Law & Policy for the New Millennium: Promises & Paradoxes. It was hosted by Professor Judy Fudge (1) at the University Of Saskatchewan College Of Law and was supported by the Law Foundation of Saskatchewan. Professor Fudge is… Read more »
The recent so-called Sponsorship Scandal(1) has shaken confidence in the federal Liberal government. It is but one more issue that certain partisan groups and individuals can point to in criticism of Canadian federalism under its present structure. Canadians who are even moderately informed of current events and Canadian history are familiar with Quebec-separatist’s discontent with… Read more »
Recently, eighty-seven year old Brantford Ontario nursing home resident Norma Stenson was abused by staff-members of two separate private facilities. The abuse was captured on hidden video and broadcast on CTV’s W-5 program (1). Two staff-members of Charlotte Villa Retirement Home were charged prior to airing of the videos with criminal offences: Amanda LaPierre, was… Read more »
My sisters used to love burning candles in the house when we were in our teens. I took up the practice from them and we’d visit the local hobby shop to procure raw wax, wicks, scents, colours, and moulds to make our own candles. Wax turned liquid in a pot on the stove would combine… Read more »
I usually constrain my hunting and hiking activities to areas of wilderness with which I am very familiar. However, on a few occasions I’ve allowed my arm to be twisted by an appropriate hunting partner who convinced me to strike out into places unknown to either of us. One of the earliest of these ventures… Read more »
My youth was filled with the stories of larger-than-life trappers, prospectors and homesteaders that lived and worked in British Columbia’s interior during the early twentieth century. My mother’s family lived in a small sawmill town called Penny which seems to have been the cross-roads for many an intrepid soul. Their stories of harrowing wilderness adventures… Read more »