POLARIZED POLITICS drives a wedge between people. Perhaps you’ve been on the receiving end of disappointment & anger of friends who feel rejected or judged because you’re not joining their team.  Finding a pathway through the prickliness can seem impossible.  One of my best guides in clearing new pathways has been my mother, Eleanor. Diagnosed … More a mother of invention…

WE ARE WORRIED, very worried. And you should be too.

An image in mind that best explains what lies ahead politically is to imagine a spooked herd of bison galloping toward a cliff. … More Head-Smashed-In Politics

IT WAS CENTENNIAL YEAR when Jacques Parizeau had an epiphany.

Travelling by transcontinental train from Montreal to Banff in 1967, the future Quebec premier and leader of the Parti Quebecois realized the country was unworkable. … More Seven reasons why Canada is doomed…

THE SMARTEST GUY in the room just left the Prime Minister’s Office leaving Justin Trudeau to act on his own. This is tragic. And it won’t end well. … More Seven reasons why Justin Trudeau must resign

I don’t know Jody Wilson-Raybould personally, and don’t pretend to speak for her. But I certainly  have a sense for how she might feel at the moment, especially since she’s been castigated by some wonks as not a team player. What are her options? … More Fire me again…I dare you!

… More Fire me again…I dare you!

Today, there is a women’s movement that’s quick to rise, march in the streets, yell & holler to achieve social change (admittedly long overdue). But we — as women — have forgotten something important in the #metoo era. … More Eleanor’s Secret Army

Canadians are conditioned to look south. We must look north! Sea ice in the Arctic is heating up, and Alberta is a northern gateway. The clear & present danger of climate change is how Canadian sovereignty will survive in the new North. … More …beware the Polar Vortex [part 3]

It doesn’t make sense, they reason, to ship oil by rail when pipelines are safer. It also isn’t smart to give up market share to American competitors who frack as they damn well please. And the engineers are correct —  it doesn’t make much sense — logically. 

LOGIC CAN BE A BLINDSPOT.

Logic isn’t going to solve the present challenges facing western Canada. … More A logic bomb… [part 2]

Canada is a work in progress. And it’s the very idea of progress (as we shall discuss in this series of posts) which has put the country in the crosshairs of activists, advocacy groups, and especially our current prime minister. We believe that if unchecked, ill-defined ambitions for the prairie and the eastern slopes of the Rocky Mountains will echo a history (and a dreadful one at that) in the name of progress.  … More Clearing the Plains 2.0

When he was running for election, our prime minister never said he was going to conduct a radical experiment. He never said he wanted to be leader of the first post-nation nation-state. We thought he was running to be leader of Canada, our country! This is dangerous stuff. We can’t wait until next November to get our country back on track. … More Has Trudeau committed treason?

Justin Trudeau’s claim that Canada has no core identity, that we’re the first post-nation nation state, is reawakening dark forces thought buried in western Canada. Some believe that the Canadian confederation is at risk… … More CBC REPOST: TRUDEAU’S NEGLECT OF THE NATION HAS LED US TO THIS PLACE

My mother is 81-years-old. Graceful to a fault. And very ill with cancer.
At her most vulnerable, the conversations with Mom are not just poignant—can I say this?—they’re instructive. … More Quiet strength & manifest destiny…

WINTER in Alberta.

Right now, the NDP government—with the blessing of the official opposition in Alberta— is considering a rollback, hundreds of thousands of barrels of oil per day from the province’s production. UCP leader Jason Kenney said as much, in an extraordinary press conference… … More Trudeau, rail cars, winter…

We need to up our game.
Once again, Alberta needs to create the conditions to attract new talent and retain the very best & brightest to rebuild the (former) Petroleum Paradise. … More No more glassholes…

YOU MIGHT HATE THIS, but spectator sports — hockey, football, the olympics — are a diminishing crowd… … More Out of left field comes…

It’s known as the ‘great global game’. A daily contest that’s played with boats and shipping lanes.  A vast majority of world’s goods–including energy–are delivered via the world’s sea lanes. If you don’t have a boat that can float your stuff to markets abroad, you can’t even play to lose… … More The Great Global Game

Dear Robyn, You don’t know me, but you might know of me.  I’m the woman saddled with a political stain and chatter behind my back. I’m the gal who did what you just did… And if Premier Rachel Notley loses in 2019, you will be blamed for that (as much as I have been fingered … More oh-oh… Dear Robyn Luff

If we had a story of our province—a pragmatic dream of what we believed we could look like a decade from now here on the prairies, a story every Albertan could see themselves in–would we be having polarized debates about the 2026 Winter Olympics bid?
… More An olympic fail (or the end of an error)?

DOUG FORD has the left up in arms. The freshly-elected Ontario premier is deploying the ‘notwithstanding clause’ to disrupt a judge’s decision he doesn’t like. What’s that got to do with Alberta? The very idea of a ‘notwithstanding clause’ was invented in our Legislature. And it was Peter Lougheed, Alberta’s premier during the tense constitutional talks … More “What the hell is a not-withstanding clause?” a premier said, decades ago.

In a global environment where democracy seems to be withering, and information constrained by either/or narratives, how can Albertans make an informed decision about who or what to vote for? … More Too much democracy?