All of the recent job action talk lately has me really feeling terrible for our teachers. I don’t know a whole lot about the politics of it all but I do know that teaching is HARD! I cannot imagine what it must be like to have to sit in a room with 30-plus children all […]

New Democrat MP, Alex Atamanenko (BC southern Interior) is appalled by the reckless changes to Meat Inspection Regulations (MIR) being proposed by the Conservative government that will leave Canadians wondering if the meat they buy is actually safe. Private inspectors, who may not be qualified, would now be able to inspect ...

Who would ever have thought that a single political donor could have disclosed so much about the sorry state of affairs surrounding money and politics in B.C. In what they now call a “learning experience,” TRIUMF – Canada's nuclear physics laboratory located at the University of British Columbia – finally acknowledged last ...

My friends and I were visiting over coffee not too long ago and, as usual, the topic of parenting came up. As we chatted and exchanged funny stories, the conversation shifted into our experiences of being pregnant with our first children. Not the morning sickness and physical stuff, but the emotional experience of preparing...

Forty years ago, the Canadian government introduced a moratorium banning oil tankers from the north and central coast of British Columbia. Now with hearings taking place into the Enbridge Northern Gateway project, Alex Atamanenko, Member of Parliament for BC Southern Interior, is urging the federal government to uphold that...

Well, quite the day was Tuesday. While my wife Carolyn was in Kentucky for the famous Derby, my daughter Casey and I were in a bit of a track meet ourselves. As everyone knows by now, one of our llamas got out of her enclosure and went for a sight seeing tour of Ootischenia and Castlegar. While it has been written that Cocoa...

Anyone made uneasy by the temporary closure of Castlegar’s hospital in February and the lack of ambulance coverage in Castlegar over the holidays is going to be delighted with this latest bombshell from B.C. Ambulance Services (BCAS) – I was so horrified by what I learned here that I feel obligated to write about it […]

Ed Note: The following is a press release issued by the B.C. Teachers’ Federation A decisive 73 per cent of teachers have voted in favour of a resistance strategy to oppose Bill 22, the controversial Education Improvement Act.  In a province-wide vote conducted April 17–19, a total of 21,625 teachers voted yes and 7,846 voted […]

Despite strong opposition from conservation organizations, the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) has granted eco-certification to Nova Scotia’s swordfish longline fishery which is responsible for killing 35,000 sharks and 200-500 endangered sea turtles each year as ‘bycatch’. According to yesterday’s announcement by the MSC,...

Dear Rick Hansen: I hope that during your next 25 years of raising money for spinal cord research (SCR) we will see the end of inhumane, scientifically fallacious spinal cord experiments on animals. It was 25 years ago when Lifeforce, a Vancouver based ecology and animal rights organization, gave you extensive data about the failure […]