Новости за 21.05.2016

By Ron Kneebone In 2009, an estimated 147,000 people, or about one in 230 Canadians, stayed in an emergency homeless shelter. It is important to emphasize this is not the number of people experiencing homelessness; it is, instead, the number of people without a home who have exhausted all other options, and so been forced […]

Garry Ryan had two models for Andrew Pierce, a sinister professor at the heart of his new Detective Lane novel Indiana Pulcinella. Both were professors. Only one was a criminal, although his crimes certainly paled in comparison to Pierce’s activity in Ryan’s book. It was in the early 1970s when one of Ryan’s university instructors was revealed […]

Downtown Calgary has a problem: too much office space, not enough butts in office seats. There might be a more eloquent way to say it, but the imagery is apt. Calgary is grappling with a glut of vacant space in downtown office buildings, those towering structures that are home to many of Canada’s largest energy companies. During the past three decades, the dazzling buildings […]

Kuir Garang was a teenager in a refugee camp in northwest Kenya when he began writing poetry. While the other kids played at recess, he would sit under a tree “in the cold breeze or in the dust and look at things, describe the landscape, describe the people.” He would write in scrapbooks, inspired by […]

How schools are performing across Calgary Hover over the icons to see how the Fraser Institute rated schools in the 2015 academic year; the darker the colour, the higher the rating. Not every elementary school appears on the map. Schools without Grade 3 or Grade 6 enrolment, or if those grades have fewer than 10 students, […]

Principal Melina Akins laughs as she seeks shelter from a light rain, as a recess at her school ends on a drizzly morning. A mosaic of multicultural students surrounds her, exchanging smiles and hugs. Akins says the diversity benefits everyone at St. John XXIII School — students, staff and the volunteers that sit with kids […]

Diving into the thorny issue of same-sex marriage among America’s church-going Methodists does not sound like an easy, peaceful topic for a documentary film to explore. But these things are relative. Kate Logan, one of the producers of filmmaker Scott Sheppard’s An Act of Love, said she was attracted to the quiet heroism of the story, which chronicles the holy war that erupts when […]

A rising number of elementary school students are failing provincial achievement tests across Alberta, as educators face increasingly complex classrooms with more special needs kids and English-language learners. According to the 2016 Fraser Institute’s Report Card on Alberta Elementary Schools, nearly 16 per cent of Grade 6 student exam scores fell below the provincially-accepted standard. At […]

Lori Suba sits with her son to tackle Grade 4 math every day, but she knows she’s only got 20 minutes. There’s time for a bit of geometry, fractions or word problems. Then, he’s done.  “He’s such a good kid; he gets along with everyone,” Suba says. “He’s kind, he’s creative, and he always loved […]

I wake to an assertive knock on the door at 10 a.m. the day before I’m set to fly across the Drake Passage for a 10-day expedition cruise in Antarctica. I groggily stumble out of the bed and crack the door open to find a member of the staff from the cruise company. He rapidly […]

Spain has a long history of producing sparkling wine — the majority of which is sold as Cava — and as a category it represents some of the best value out there for bubbles. For starters — unlike Prosecco, for example (which is fermented in a large tank) — it is made in the same method […]

When Neil Egsgard rode his first wave more than a decade ago, it wasn’t on the sandy beaches of Tofino or the rugged coastline of Halifax. It was on the Bow River in downtown Calgary. “My roommate at the time was on the LRT and he saw some guy surfing by the tenth street bridge […]

The United Nations was a terrible employer. I know: I spent the better part of a year working for them in what was then called Zaire in the mid-1980s. Of all the things that frosted me, the worst was that someone came around the office twice a day and took attendance. If you weren’t at […]

In a normal economy, when a recession hits and the amount of money sloshing around shrinks, companies economize on everything from staffing costs to paper clips. They have to, because with reduced cash flows and with profits slim or non-existent, companies must do more with less. That’s not a fun choice — everyone prefers expansion […]

The Sir Winston Churchill Society of Calgary, established in 1966, promotes students’ facility in the use of the spoken and written word emphasizing oratorical and communication skills as exemplified by the debates, speeches and writings of Sir Winston Spencer Churchill and in so doing commemorate his leadership and achievement. The society’s annual dinner has featured […]

Just as the badlands are the bedrock upon which dinosaurs once roamed, a major new exhibit at the Royal Tyrrell Museum lays the groundwork for understanding paleontology. Aptly named Foundations, the exhibit is the first new major display since 2010 and is the precursor to a $9.3-million expansion at the Drumheller museum. Alberta Culture and Tourism Minister Ricardo Miranda, who was on hand […]

One day before the season opens, a battle over access to an iconic whitewater river is raging again. Rafting companies in Golden, B.C., this morning discovered a locked gate had been installed at the only access point to the Lower Canyon of the Kicking Horse River. There had been an agreement-in-principle reached April 26 to […]

SASKATOON — The players were toeing the line with politically correct answers, careful not to provide much bulletin-board material. Sure, there’s a natural rivalry thanks to five meetings already this season — all wins by the Saskatchewan Rush — in addition to a playoff hatred that has carried over from meeting the past two seasons […]

SASKATOON — It’s the scariest 10 minutes in lacrosse. There’s no other way to describe the mini-game mayhem of the NLL playoffs. The Calgary Roughnecks have been on both sides of it, none more heartbreaking than what transpired almost exactly two years ago in upstate New York, when they choked away a one-game series lead, […]

This is not exactly a matched set. Not all championships, it appears, are created equally. Especially when a club’s off-ice fortunes are in transition. So Ryan Huska’s ring from the 1992 Memorial Cup triumph – at a time when the Kamloops Blazers were operating out of the cramped and dated downtown barn – reflects the […]

BANFF NATIONAL PARK — It’s a trek for the ages by a young male wolf in Banff National Park. No. 1505, a member of the Fairholme pack, was one of six wolves from three different packs captured and fitted with GPS collars last winter to monitor their movements and get information for several research projects. They’re numbered 1501 to 1506. […]

Alberta’s two conservative parties are determined to go their own way, but a key figure in uniting the right on the federal level says they are ignoring the lessons of the past. Wildrose Leader Brian Jean said this week that unification with the Progressive Conservatives is dead and he pledged, instead, to make Wildrose a more […]

At the opening night after party for Vertigo Theatre’s Sherlock Holmes and the Case of the Jersey Lily, a gentleman was overheard remarking that watching the play was the most fun he’d had with his clothes on in quite a while. Given the raucous laughter and enthusiastic applause that filled the theatre for two hours […]

Travelling to BC this long weekend? Here is what you need to know about the RCMP's new distracted driving scopes.

Chase Marchand is the Cinderella of the ball. No one, for the longest time, would give him the courtesy of an invitation to the dance. But the Rouyn-Noranda Huskies goaltender has already pulled on one glass slipper, and he’s hoping to hold onto the other one when the clock strikes midnight at the conclusion of the Memorial Cup.