A poet’s convocation address

With great pleasure, Facts and Opinions publishes an essay by Canadian poet and writer Patrick Lane, which he delivered as the Convocation Address at the University of Victoria in November. An excerpt: It is sixty-five years ago, you’re ten years old and

Free Range: Thou Shalt Not Kill

The world might want to pay close attention to the new leader of the Catholic church, I suggest in my latest Free Range column. With his first mission statement, Pope Francis is taking his flock to war – against capitalism as it’s

Morality and killing seals

Canada’s east-coast seal hunting industry both won and lost Monday, in a ruling by the World Trade Organization. The WTO ruled mostly in favour of Europe in its dispute with Canada, upholding Europe’s ban on imported products of Canada’s east coast seal

Locke: a malaria moon

For nearly a decade Greg Locke traveled through rural east and central Africa, from his home base in Nairobi to destinations including the some of the world’s largest refugee camps in Dadaab South Sudan, Uganda, Rwanda, Lake Kivu, the eastern Congo and

Where were you when Kennedy was shot?

Fifty years ago today the world lost two major figures, two men who made a difference in the world: American President John Fitzgerald Kennedy, and British author Aldous Huxley, author of Brave New World. It is disconcertingly poignant that Kennedy’s famous death so

Who caused climate change?

Facts and Opinions reports on a new study that fingers 90 companies for some 2/3 of all emissions behind human-caused climate change. Excerpt: International debates about climate change, such as the United Nation talks now underway in Warsaw, have lately focused on

Science interpretation for dummies – from lawmakers to journalists

That science is under siege has become a truism. Every conversation I have with a scientist, almost every public issue debate, every story I do about global crises, touches on censorship, religious and ideological beliefs, and a lack of education. Three scientists aim

Book review: A Crowbar in the Buddhist Garden

Joyce Thierry Llewellyn first encountered author and convict Stephen Reid in 1988 when, as a university student, she interviewed him for an academic project. Back then  Reid had been out on parole for just a year, having spent 20 years in jail for

A hacker goes to jail

By Deborah Jones The case of Jeremy Hammond, who victimized a private American security firm, is yet another the stranger-than-fiction tales of global surveillance, activism and espionage being churned out lately in the United States. Hammond, a self-described American anarchist, was sentenced in

Gorden Pinsent

  Canadian actor, Gorden Pinsent, today, during rehearsals for tonight’s performance of A Lion Among the Ladies: Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream with Mendelssohn’s incidental music (Op. 21/61) with the Newfoundland Symphony Orchestra in St. John’s, Newfoundland and their Master Works Series.

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