TALKING ABOUT DUCTAL CARCINOMA IN SITU (DCIS) NO LONGER SCARES THE BEJESUS OUT OF ME. That’s progress. Navigating this pre-cancer condition is kind of like reacting to the yellow warning lights flashing on the dashboard of my car. It pays to do the maintenance.  Since many of you ask—and I’m grateful for that—here’s a quick … More Some heartening news

I AM NOT checking out anytime soon. The calcification in my right breast—ductal carcinoma in situ or DCIS—mercifully is not the dreaded C-word. My surgeon Dr. Quan refers to this diagnosis as pre-cancerous.  Yesterday, there was a brilliant essay in the New York Times Not Everything We Call Cancer Should be Called Cancer. If you … More I am not dying…

Cancer Journey Post #6 RELENTLESS IS THE WORD OF THE MONTH. Relentless wildfires. Relentless cancer.  Relentless anxiety.  Harrowing updates from friends who escaped the wildfires in Lahaina have my stomach churning. And while my post-lumpectomy healing is going well (and I’ve been buoyed up by an outpouring of love), the surgical pathology report that landed … More Oh, damn…

Cancer Journey, Post #5 IN A BARBIE WORLD BARBIE’S JABS AT THE PATRIARCHY ARE SETTING OFF A FEMINIST CATHARSIS!  Could there be a better time to be thinking about breast cancer and body image?   I’m a Barbie girl in the Barbie world.  Life in plastic, it’s fantastic…. At 5:30 tomorrow morning, I’ll be heading … More In a Barbie World

Donna’s Cancer Journey Post #4 Living with Cancer Yahoo! I have a surgery date: August 3rd. The Alberta Health Services (AHS) machine is in motion and I’m being flooded with information & pre-admission logistics. The certainty is definitely comforting. But deep down, I know a lumpectomy isn’t the end of this journey.  Cancer is now … More Living With Cancer

Donna’s Cancer Journey Post #3 Within 18 hours of being home from Peru, I’m sitting in the waiting room of the Breast Clinic. The clinic is housed at the Women’s Health Centre, one of the smaller buildings tucked within the vast Foothills hospital complex in Calgary. I’m grateful to my daughter-in-law, Renee, a pediatrician; she’s … More Meet the Cancer Surgeon

Donna’s Cancer Diary: Post 2 It’s a very dry spell on the Canadian prairies and wildfires continue to burn out of control. Off-and-on, the air is thick with yellow smoke and smells like acid. A sharply-worded caution from Don cuts through the haze: Don’t put yourself in the line of fire(s).  “You are tough, yup. … More Get out of the Line of Fire

Tornadoes, distant and nearby fires, a smoke choked sky, flooding … cancer. … More Booby-Trapped

Canada will face growing pressure to share its abundant freshwater with an increasingly parched U.S. but needs to safeguard its most vital resource. We’ve written about this in previous blogs.  Research Money—a publication serving Canada’s science, technology, innovation and investment community, invited us to contribute an op-ed diving deep into this question. We thought readers … More Thirsty Yanks and Canada’s water…

CHRIST’S RESURRECTION (recently celebrated by Christians observing the Latin calendar) is a leap of faith. For believers, it’s evidence for life after death. And a promise of redemption no matter how rotten you’ve been. In the instance of Alberta’s body politic, and the last two provincial elections, is it possible to roll away the stone? … More Rachel has risen? Danielle redeemed?

Preston Manning, founder of the federal Reform Party and the Manning Centre (now rebranded the Canada Strong & Free Network) isn’t taking calls about his latest gig. The Government of Alberta, flush with petrodollars, is paying Preston over a quarter-million bucks to chair Premier Danielle Smith’s COVID-19 panel.  Donna sat with Preston on another government-appointed … More Talk to the Chair

A speech from the Throne, they called it. And you can imagine it was, if you’re sitting on a toilet … More The Throne Speech…

Danielle, we need to talk. Donna was on the Fair Deal Panel. And that’s history. What’s happening now isn’t… … More Danielle, we need to talk.

Pissing people off has its rewards. Greenpeace-style modus operandi in Canada, alongside railway blockades by activists for weeks on end, are examples for how ‘direct action’ works (especially if you’re on the right side of public opinion). But is that the way to run a country? … More Conflict, controversy, provocations sell…

THE PRIME MINISTER INSISTS he must save Canada. He cannot allow, he says, the new Conservative leader to ever run this country. Is Justin channelling the Donald? … More This movie features a bad actor…

BEWARE THE STINGERS of Alberta politics. There are two careerists vying to be the Queen Bee… … More Beware the queen bees…

COUNT YOUR BLESSINGS if you’re in Alberta. Imagine what it’s like living in Europe and elsewhere, worrying about where you can secure a reliable and readily available source of energy in the near future, in a marketplace upended by Russia’s war with Ukraine … More Feeling energy secure?

Who’s next? British Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s blunt one-liner as he stepped down from power—“When the herd moves, it moves”—will live on in infamy. We heard something similar from Premier Jason Kenney this spring after leadership review results starkly depicted the extent to which he had been abandoned by the conservative herd. And I well … More One Down, Trudeau to Go?

Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping and Winston Churchill and Franklin Delano Roosevelt share something in common: their intent to remake the world in a way that suits them… … More Lest we forget.

This won’t be funny. Cynical. Or anything with a twist. I live in Varsity, a Calgary neighbourhood. This morning, I woke up just before five—the wee hours—to the faint smell of smoke. Instinct kicked in. I raced to my bedroom window. Across the street, there were flames leaping from the roof of a home. Called … More House on Fire

DID YOU SEE Rachel Notley the other day giving it her all in the Legislature?

She was pretty pissed with Jason Kenney because he didn’t proclaim what she wanted to hear about Roe v. Wade. It’s as if she set her hair on fire … More RACHEL NOTLEY, a lady in waiting…

In the Jason Kenney playbook on how to get stuff done, the old maxim rings true: it ain’t over until it’s over. But what if the premier fails to survive his leadership review later this month and sinks to rise no more? Are you going to need a life preserver? … More MAY DAY! MAY DAY!!

Crypto! Pierre Poilievre promises to “unleash” the potential of cryptocurrency once he becomes Canada’s prime minister. First he needs to be the leader of the federal Conservative Party, but let’s not quibble over the fine print. … More HURRY! HURRY! CRYPTO is the next big thing!

Jason Kenney says, “I don’t need this job.” These most telling words uttered by Alberta’s premier are an admission of defeat. I know, because it’s what I told myself just before deciding to exit the PC leadership race against him in 2017.  … More Take this job & ??

TEACHING THE DINOSAUR TO DANCE: MOVING BEYOND BUSINESS AS USUAL—Donna’s new book—launches TODAY!  Of course, this new book looks at the challenge of moving beyond polarity, and a whole lot more. Written over the course of the pandemic, the book has been informed and inspired by Donna’s nearly 40-year career in leadership roles in the … More Teaching the Dinosaur to Dance

Bye bye Canada’s Arctic? Vladimir Putin’s handshake with Xi Jinping of China during the opening ceremonies of the Beijing Olympics was the first clue… … More Sit up & pay attention…

Ottawa has spoken. You disagree. And you think they’re coming for you next, your bank account, and your children. Tick-tick-tick … More Weekend rallying point?

Getting a grip on the trucker standoff at the U.S. border is to know what legacy media can’t tell you… … More Truck off, eh!

Erin O’Toole + Freedom Convoy = a blow job… … More Erin O’Toole: it’s a blow job…

THE TRUCKER’S CONVOY powering its way across Canada has been hijacked by radicals and aims to land on the doorstep of the federal government this weekend. The Freedom Convoy was launched as a protest against the federal government’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate for all truckers entering Canada. Extremists and fringe groups have used social media to … More It will happen here…