Opinion General

In 1986, upon the evening of the summer solstice, Larry Harvey, Jerry James and a handful of other Haight-Ashbury beatniks gathered on Baker Beach in San Francisco, California and set a nine foot wooden man and his little wooden dog on fire. The dog has since been taken out of the equation, but the wooden...

I’ve been asking a lot of questions about herons lately, and whether or not they were in a grove of trees that got chopped down in advance of a housing development. I don’t know if the birds were ever there, but the City of Vernon, which issued the removal permit, seems pretty confident they weren’t....

* Mike Duffy smiling for the cameras is not a sight most people want to see, while they are eating or otherwise. His lawyer has been making trouble for Nigel Wright and – by extension, of course, Stephen Harper – and Duffy had the grin of a man exonerated. Not so fast, smiley face. Duffy...

It would seem that PR-massaged optics has supplanted good old-fashioned and honest content these days. Especially on the Canadian federal election campaign trail.

"As the first thousand years of our calendar drew to an end, in every land of Europe the people expected with certainty the destruction of the world. Some squandered their substance in riotous living, others bestowed it for the salvation of their souls on churches and convents, bewailing multitudes lay by day and by night...

The ten-year high school reunion is something that has gained a reputation as being both tedious and terrific, equal parts stressful and successful, both a blast and a bomb. It is something teenagers think about in the throes of being pushed up against lockers and being the chubby girl in the locker room. It is...

The actor in the Conservative's TV ad is beside himself. Hearing that Justin wants to legalize marijuana, he sneers: “Is that really the biggest problem we have?” Seeing how he asked, I sneered back: “Close to it!” Canada needs the revenue and doesn’t need the gangs to keep getting Lamborghini-rich off the proceeds. Yes, they...

In recent weeks the drib-drab-drip of Time’s passing has been most acutely observed within the confines of my father’s room at the local hospice. Death’s anteroom — thoughtfully outfitted with big-screen display, luxurious leather recliner, the convenience of a mini fridge, and a cot for my mother -- will be Dad’s last home for some...

As the federal election nears, the Liberals and NDP are scrambling for the same soft unaligned votes on the left and left-leaning center. As of this writing the NDP is in the ascendancy for a number of reasons, most having to do with Justin's bubbly campaign going flat in the absence of any real policy...

Last summer, while travelling in the UK with my 90-year-old grandmother, I had a list of things I wanted to accomplish on my trip. One of them was to take a photograph of a Highland cow — which after a series of petty crimes was finally deemed impossible — and another was to drive backwards-standard...