Peatlands safely store hundreds to thousands of years’ worth of humanity’s toxic legacy but climate change and physical disturbances are putting these pollution vaults, and us, at risk.
Decisions made by those in charge of wildfire response can have a major impact on how quickly the fire is contained.
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Darryl Dyck
Zombie fires smoulder through the winter and reignite in the early spring. How these fires behave is not well understood, but they can contribute to an earlier and longer fire season.
New Brunswick Premier Blaine Higgs speaks to the media outside Government House in Fredericton, N.B., following a cabinet shuffle in June 2023.
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Stephen MacGillivray
New Brunswick Premier Blaine Higgs is pursuing a hard-right agenda without much scrutiny. He has imposed his agenda on a centrist province with barely any national media attention.
A person wearing a protective face mask looks at a street mural during the COVID-19 pandemic in Edmonton Alta, in April 2020.
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Jason Franson
The only way an Alberta COVID-19 committee can meaningfully determine how public policy should be made is if it tackles head-on the question of how to measure the psychological impacts of policy.
Former U.S. president Donald Trump gives thumbs up as he watches during the first round of the LIV Golf Tournament at Trump National Golf Club in Sterling, Va.
(AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
It will take a lot of strategic ingenuity to fight the rise of populism. And it will get harder to do so as politicians rig the game with rules designed to reduce voting.
UCP Leader Danielle Smith makes her victory speech in Calgary on May 29, 2023. Alberta’s United Conservative Party rode a wave of rural support to win a renewed majority in the provincial election — but not before the NDP took a big bite out of its support.
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Jeff McIntosh
Danielle Smith’s win in the Alberta election can be traced to her decision to moderate her stance on some extreme issues that had helped her win the leadership of the United Conservative Party.
Wildfire warning signage seen in the Blairmore area, about two hours south of Calgary, Alta., in this handout image provided by the Government of Alberta Fire Service.
THE CANADIAN PRESS
School systems need to wake up from ‘business as usual’ learning. Teachers can draw on terror management theory in their work on the front lines with students navigating the climate crisis.
A man waits to enter a supervised consumption site at a health centre in Calgary, Alta., in August 2021.
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Jeff McIntosh
Instead of forcing people into substance use treatment, provinces should work with municipalities and health boards to expand life-saving safe use sites and tackle the housing crisis.
Protesters take part in a Gay Straight Alliance (GSA) rally at the Alberta legislature in Edmonton before the United Conservative Party cancelled GSA protections in June 2019.
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Jason Franson
How Alberta votes on May 29 will either pave the way for 2SLGBTQ+ youth to be affirmed in their identities or it will create a formal pathway for homophobia, biphobia and transphobia in the province.
Surrounded by what resembles a Zoom chorus, lovers Orpheus and Eurydice descend into a digital hellscape, and later try to navigate a ‘new normal’ in their relationship.
(Nanc Price/Edmonton Opera)
After COVID-19 closures, Edmonton Opera presented a contemporary telling of the Greek myth of lovers separated by death.
The Bald Mountain Wildfire in the Grande Prairie area in Alberta in May 2023. Much of B.C. and Alberta is already experiencing higher-than-usual wildfire risk.
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Government of Alberta Fire Service
High-risk, high-uncertainty events like earthquakes tend to fall out of view when we are occupied with more predictable seasonal events like wildfires, which have very visible effects on our lives.
Satellite image of a forest fire in July 2021 in northern Saskatchewan (Wapawekka Hills). The image covers an area of about 56 kilometres in width and is based on Copernicus Sentinel data.
(Pierre Markuse), CC BY 2.0
Victor Danneyrolles, Université du Québec à Chicoutimi (UQAC); Raphaël Chavardès, Université du Québec en Abitibi-Témiscamingue (UQAT), and Yves Bergeron, Université du Québec en Abitibi-Témiscamingue (UQAT)
North America’s boreal forests have been burning a lot, probably more and more over the past 60 years. Yet the long-term trend indicates that they are burning less than they were 150 years ago.
A highway loops around a tailings pond at the Syncrude facility in Fort McMurray, Alta. The proximity of such toxic wastewater ponds to nature threatens its biodiversity.
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Jeff McIntosh
As toxic water continues to spill from tailings ponds across mining developments, decades of scientific research provides evidence of how wildlife will be affected.
A pumpjack draws oil underneath a canola field as a haze of wildfire smoke hangs in the air in Cremona, Alta., in July 2021.
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Jeff McIntosh
A series of ongoing issues in Alberta’s oil and gas sector suggest the province’s energy regulator is controlled by the industry and has lost the public’s trust.
A health-care worker appears to give the middle finger as Alberta Premier Danielle Smith announces a public health guarantee in Sherwood Park, Alta.
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Jason Franson
The 2023 Alberta election is about far more than left versus right. The UCP’s record in office means the votes of Albertans on May 29 are about choosing province over party.
The federal Impact Assessment Act, which seeks to minimize the environmental impacts of major economic projects, is at the centre of a dispute over whether it intrudes into provincial jurisdiction over natural resources development.
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Jeff McIntosh