My wife is pretty sure I have ADHD. She’d know; after all, she’s got an ADHD diagnosis as have two of our kids and I’m a lot like them (perhaps unsurprisingly). My mom, however, is less persuaded. I was a restless kid but I always did fine in school and wasn’t any more disruptive than…
Even if you didn’t watch the opening ceremonies of the Summer 2024 Olympics, you’ll have heard about (and probably have an opinion about) the brief tableau where a series of women and drag queens appear to recreate Leonardo da Vinci’s “Last Supper.” In this tableau a woman sits in the place where Christ is depicted…
I’ve been thinking about rules a lot lately: Robert’s Rules of Order, school board bylaws, Church order, labour codes and so on. But I’ve also been watching a lot of sports (oh, my beloved Oilers! So, so close!). Sports have rules, too. In the course of a game, sometimes the rules become a matter of…
Over the past few decades, the differences of interests, experiences and identities between rural and urban Canada have gotten starker, or at least more politically salient. In the most recent Alberta election, for example, the winning United Conservative Party formed a government with zero seats in Edmonton and only five seats in urban Calgary, while…
Brian Mulroney (1939-2024) was the Prime Minister of my earliest political memories. Through the hazy lens of childhood recollection, I remember the acrimonious election of 1988 as I struggled to understand what on earth “free trade” might be and what it might mean, if only for the price of cheese. I can still feel the…
Social media is bad and wicked and you shouldn’t be on it. But sometimes there are unexpected joys that come with being online. For instance, if it weren’t for Twitter (now “X”… ugh), I wouldn’t have heard of “bedtime abolitionism.” Apparently, there is a (pretty niche) discourse among online anarchists concerned that the regulation of…
This October, Edmonton City Council passed a renewed Zoning Bylaw that would – amongst other things – permit the construction of three-story apartment buildings, townhouses/rowhouses and duplexes in any residential zone in the city. In so doing it ended decades of restrictive zoning that made it very difficult to build anything other than detached single-family…
To students May you know that the effort you make in classes and your community are like stones thrown into a pond that ripple and have effects you won’t see at first. May you know that you have lived through things that can help you. May you remember what you know about love, yourself and…
Disagreement is good for democracy and can be a sign of health. Free people acting from their deep commitments, interests and identities are bound to come to different conclusions about what our political priorities should be and what the public good requires. Disagreements are a sign of healthy pluralism in society. If we express and pursue differences of opinion with civility and mutual concern, they enrich our political processes. They bring genuinely new ideas and correctives to our all-too-human tendency to get stuck in our own perspectives.
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