In Lands of Lost Borders, Kate Harris ruminates on 10 months aboard a bicycle along the Silk Road once conquered by Marco Polo
Lands of Lost Borders: Out of Bounds on the Silk Road By Kate Harris Knopf Canada, 2018 Kate Harris is a Canadian Rhodes Scholar who studied the history of science at Oxford, dropped out of her microbiology PhD at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and instead has found her métier as a modern-day explorer. Channeling…
The parallels between Russia more than 20 years ago and the United States today are deeply disturbing
When the horrible first reports of the school shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., began hitting my smartphone feed, I somehow involuntarily reconnected with feelings that I associate with the societal chaos I experienced working in Russia more than 20 years ago. It was the post-Mikhail Gorbachev era, when communism had…
Part 2: Albertans can lead the next economic revolution by pioneering new energy enterprises
Should Alberta be allowed to move its unrefined diluted bitumen to British Coumbia’s tidewater in Burnaby via pipeline and then quadruple tanker traffic through Vancouver harbour, the city that bills itself as the world’s greenest? And does the pipeline proponent, Kinder Morgan, have the permission of the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh First Nations, the unceded…
Part 1: The wine versus oil showdown in the West has exposed some fundamental differences – but it's nothing other generations haven't seen
There was only one other car at the Earls Cove ferry terminal last week as I headed home to Powell River. It was a brand new Jeep with a white-and-red Alberta licence plate grinning from the rear bumper. I say grinning because on my part of the Sunshine Coast, you rarely see an old beater…
As the midterm U.S. elections in November loom, the battle ramps up between positive financial numbers and fairness in a true democracy
Does a spate of positive economic news mean that America is really going to be great again? Will President Donald Trump’s fortunes and polling numbers rise as a result of the economic good news? The Dow Jones industrial average regularly trades over 26,000 and our retirement investments are up significantly over the first year of…
Four authors who lay bare a depressing world of plutocrats, oligarchs and the international kakistocracy
January is book month in our house. It’s when we finally come to grips with reading all the titles that accumulated over Christmas and, in my case, a January birthday. I’ve read Ta-Nehisi Coates’s We Were Eight Years in Power: An American Tragedy, Chrystia Freeland’s Plutocrats: The Rise of the Rise of the New Global…
At 67, I'm focusing on the things that are most important: family, friends, and challenging physical and mental pursuits
I turned 67 today. It's kind of an odd birthday. You’re not yet 70 and certifiably old (according to some of my 69-year-old pals), but you’re creeping up the ladder and are two rungs above 65. So what does it all mean? It seems kind of like a rest-stop. A space between retirement and more…
Let's be honest, most of B.C.’s artistic community has always lived on the Gulf Islands, on Vancouver Island, up the Sunshine Coast, in Haida Gwaii rather than in Vancouver
My grandfather arrived in Vancouver from England, via the Empress of Canada and the fledgling Canadian Pacific Railway in September 1909. At a goodbye dinner in London, he had been advised by a family friend to “Stay out of the towns – find your fortune in the countryside.” He took that advice literally and found…
Great uncertainty faces Canada and the United States, but Canada seems better equipped to adapt and flourish
So how did you like last year? Did it advance your favourite causes? Did it fatten your assets? Did it leave you feeling like the world travelled a few metres forward on the roads that counted? Would it be enough if the 2017 trajectory simply continues for the next 12 months? Not from the perspective…
The power of intuition flies in the face of western society's current fascination with mathematical algorithms
What works better: emotion or logic? Revelation or rationality? Intuition or algorithms? I started thinking seriously about these different ways of living in the world after reading Catherine Mayers’ new book, Charles: the Heart of a King. Her painstakingly detailed biography about the heir to the throne of the House of Windsor reveals a whimsical…
Lands of Lost Borders: Out of Bounds on the Silk Road By Kate Harris Knopf Canada, 2018 Kate Harris is a Canadian Rhodes Scholar who studied the history of science at Oxford, dropped out of her microbiology PhD at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and instead has found her métier as a modern-day explorer. Channeling…
