Some reading suggestions for the new year
Welcome, dear reader(s) to my annual look at the best books I read last year. I do this not to brag about how many books I read (22, but who’s…
Sherlock Holmes
Media readers deserve the whole story about the sources reporters quote in public policy stories
PHOTOS: The question isn’t just whether Alberta’s students are getting the information they need, but whether media is giving the rest of us all the facts we require when we…
The Last Case of Sherlock Holmes
Sherlock Holmes. Iconic detective, 93 years old. Tending his bees in bucolic self-exile near the Dover coast. Mycroft gone. Watson gone. Mrs. Hudson gone. Even the band of villains and…
A meditation on the parlous state of the prime ministerial belfry: is he batty, or what?
Psychological-political portrait of Prime Minister Stephen Harper by Edmonton artist William Prettie. (Used with permission.) Below: The young Vladimir Putin; the young Stephen Harper. When I ponder our prime minister’s…
A mystery that won’t go away: Why do Alberta patients still face such long waits for lung surgery?
A horse with a silver blaze, curried mutton and a dog that did nothing in the night-time helped Sherlock Holmes get to the bottom of a mysterious death. Will it…
Education minister’s bluff called by apoplectic schoolteachers! Now what?
The trading pit: Is this what Alberta Education Minister Jeff Johnson sees when he thinks of the Alberta Teachers Association? Actual Alberta schoolteachers may not be exactly as illustrated. Then…