19 March

Spring Equinox 2026: War and Peace

Posted in History, Nature, News, Seasonal Messages

“If you want peace, work for justice.” Pope Paul VI, 1 January 1972, World Day of Peace War in spring seems antithetical, a jarring contradiction of realities. While birds are returning north to nest (I saw my first geese on March 6th) in many places the world’s armies are sending out “drones” on attack missions. […]

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21 September

Fall Equinox 2025: Homing

Posted in Books, History, Nature, Seasonal Messages

Hundreds of millions of birds are on the move, have been migrating through Alberta for several weeks now. First the landbirds (warblers, sparrows, flycatchers, vireos, hummingbirds and others) who left northern Alberta in early August. Next the shorebirds, the raptors, and the waterbirds. The last to go (as late as November) will be the waterfowl: […]

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19 June

Summer Solstice 2025: What We Know

Posted in Books, Food, History, Nature, Seasonal Messages

“To be native to a place, we must learn to speaks its language.” Robin Wall Kimmerer The land where I now live was known as River Lot 20 in fur trade and settlement times. But of the layers (the people and their stories) “before contact,” I know almost nothing. To show these layers on a […]

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20 December

Winter Solstice 2024: The Sacred Tree

Posted in History, Nature, Photos, Reflections, Seasonal Messages, Travel
Winter Solstice 2024: The Sacred Tree

Trees have always been part of our family. My father was a sawyer as well as a farmer. My mother grew up on the “Dust Bowl” prairies of the 1930s and for all her adult life planted and nurtured trees wherever she could. We still have a “quarter section” of boreal forest in the family. […]

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19 June

Summer Solstice 2024: Land Acknowledgement

Posted in Books, History, Nature, Photos, Reflections, Seasonal Messages

Friends and taxi drivers are always getting lost trying to find my address in Edmonton. In Boyle Street, the streets and avenues seem squished together; there are no straight lines. I used to blame it on the bend in the river. Turns out, it goes much deeper than that. As we approach this National Indigenous […]

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