Climate change activism
The world is full of a number of things (as we keep saying), and one of them is climate change activism. Its counterpart is climate change skepticism. There’s all kinds of both swirling around and it makes you wonder how…
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Keep your vote to yourself, it’s your right
As Canadians, we are very used to the secret ballot. The cardboard booth, the pencil, the list of names and parties (which may or may not look familiar depending how closely you watched the election) and folding the slip of…
Random mail, surprising content
A community newspaper gets random mail. This includes the Alberta Teacher’s Association newspaper and Conservation. Sitting down and reading it can open new avenues of thought. The interesting thing about Conservation, a magazine put out by the Alberta Conservation Association,…
Give thanks for the land, but don’t assume it’s secure
A little farm-boy asked to say grace before dinner. Half way through, he paused to ask his dad, ‘do I ask for rain, or no rain.’ In his world, any prayer included reference to the impact of weather on crops.…
Geography makes the candidate forum important
The Peace River – Westlock riding is massive. This is not news, or even surprising, but it is a challenge for the candidates. This means that the community election forum on October 3, might be the only opportunity to hear…
Listen, think, discuss, and vote, don’t bash
We’re full tilt into a federal election. The provincial election in Slave Lake got heated, to say the least. It was downright painful, however, political discussion doesn’t have to be violent and personal. Within movies there are various subgenres. One…
No matter how you count it, kids are reading
There’s a beautiful brick library in West Seattle. In the early 1990s, it was full of books and people reading. In 2012, it was a shell, with entire sections empty. Thankfully, this is not the case for the libraries in…
Pain is assured
Governments take too much credit when the economy is good and too much blame when it isn’t. Their job when campaigning for re-election (or election, if they are out of power) is to convince voters that they have the answers…
Give this hockey project a chance
The Slave Lake Icedogs are in the final stages of putting together a Junior hockey team that will play its home games in Slave Lake this season. It’s been a long haul to get to this point, but it looks…
The scary crash
What do you do when everything depends on a computer working and it fails? When it’s a newspaper office, panic is probably the first reaction. However, that doesn’t solve anything, so you start looking around for ways to get things…
Keep your powder dry
Expectations for elected people are often unrealistic. They have a lot on their plates and most of their work is not done in public. The part that involves showing up at community events is insignificant in the big picture. Just…
‘Something needs to change’
Things are difficult in the field of health care. Everybody knows it. For one thing there’s a chronic shortage of professionals willing to work in smaller communities. That adds pressure to those who do work there – too few people…
Dollars per vote
An interesting side note to the 2015 federal election in these parts is the candidate expenditures. These have to be reported, and are accordingly presented along with the vote totals in online sources. Arnold Viersen, the winner of that contest…
Having your cake and eating it too
The old expression, ‘Having your cake and eating it too’ can apply to a lot of things and one of them is attitudes toward your community newspaper. This one, in other words. A lot of people like having it. They…
Big Brother is developing a file on you
Another example of having your cake and eating it too is local cable television. Can it survive? A lot of people subscribe to Netflix, or so it appears from the talk one hears. Is Netflix the new TV? Are people…
The good thing about bears
The good thing about bears at this time of year is they are mostly indifferent to humans. They are so focused on eating berries that they don’t care much about what else is going on. That’s why, year after year,…