BRIAN BRENNAN: BRIEF ENCOUNTERS June, 2015 At age 18, Debbie Lori Kaye became the youngest performer in history to have her own variety special on CBC TV. A tiny singer with a big voice, her star had been rising steadily
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JONATHAN MANTHORPE Published: August 16, 2013. Transitions from tyranny to representative and accountable government are always uncertain and usually messy, but Egypt’s torment in the undertow of the Arab Spring is a textbook example of failure. Hundreds of people have been killed in
DEBORAH JONES: FREE RANGEPublished August 15, 2013 Two dogs who shared my home for 13 years lived a dog’s life and – more to the point – died a dog’s death. When Corrie and Morag came to live with me as roly-poly
JONATHAN MANTHORPE Published: August 14, 2013 Bo Xilai was mayor of China’s north-eastern city Dalian when I first met him in the early 1990s, and I remember thinking he was the first senior Communist Party official I had encountered who could
Canada’s demonic and blissful Sea to Sky By Deborah JonesSQUAMISH, British Columbia, Canada. March 2001 This morning, the “Killer Highway” of British Columbia looks harmless. Blissful, even. Dawn creeps across Sea to Sky country as I drive south from Whistler to Vancouver.
As a teenager in Vancouver, Dolly Hopkins was torn between athletics and drama; she spent her high school years rushing between sports-team practices and theater rehearsals. She eventually chose drama, and so it was a tad ironic that in 2004 she was invited
Ray Guy 1939 – 2013 Ray Guy goes to That Far Greater Bay By Greg LockeST. JOHN’S, Newfoundland May, 2013 Ray Guy has gone to That Far Greater Bay. The news that, at age 74, he passed on came as a shock
By Deborah JonesVANCOUVER, Canada, 2011 A simple phone call about dead sea otters washing up on the shores of Alaska after United States nuclear tests led to the birth of environmental organization Greenpeace four decades ago. Irving Stowe and his wife, Dorothy,
By Deborah JonesVANCOUVER, Canada, 2008 Wikipedia, the upstart Internet encyclopedia that most universities forbid students to use, has suddenly become a teaching tool for professors. University teachers have swapped student term papers for assignments to write entries for the free online encyclopedia. Wikipedia
Some claim that extreme downhill mountain biking is becoming mainstream. They’re nuts. By Deborah JonesNorth Vancouver, British Columbia, 2006 The start of Espresso, a gnarly mountain-bike trail on British Columbia’s famous North Shore, is unimposing. Bikers — and these are ”bikers,” whose body
What is the difference between God and a ski instructor? God doesn’t want to be a ski instructor. Students in Level One of the Canadian Ski Instructors Alliance, however, very much do — or at least earn the badge. By Deborah Jones