Views from the Beltline

The idea that trees have personalities may be offensive to science, but sometimes they just do. Such is the massive elm that sits in the…

Among the numerous seriously unpleasant men leading countries in the world today, Rodrigo Duterte, president of the Philippines, must be included. Perhaps his most odious…

If anything scares China’s formidable president, Xi Jinping, it’s probably democracy. The idea of the Chinese people choosing their own president must be nightmarish to…

It’s taken a while but finally Erin O’Toole has a climate change policy to present to the voters. The most intriguing bit is his acceptance…

A recent survey by the Pew Research Center of the four major Western powers turned up some interesting if not altogether surprising results. The goal…

I was surprised when Naheed Nenshi won Calgary’s mayoral race in 2010. The odds-on favourite, a well-known alderman, had been running for years and, due…

According to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Covid shrunk the global economy by 3.3 percent in 2020, the worst downturn since 1980. Almost 100 million…

The richest man in the world wins again. Earlier this week, workers at an Amazon warehouse in Bessemer, Alabama, voted overwhelmingly against joining the Retail,…

To comment on the new school curriculum proposed by Alberta’s Department of Education, I’ll do something it apparently didn’t. I’ll rely on experts. Specifically, four…

For some time, corporations have had things their way. With globalization, which was largely designed by and for them, they were able to slip the…

Nuclear technology does more than make powerful weapons. It also makes for powerful politics. It allows Kim Jong-un, ruler of a sordid little dictatorship, possibly…

The Covid pandemic has, among other things, reminded us that we are indeed “all in it together,” requiring government leadership and assistance unprecedented in recent…