In This Issue

The Least We Can Do

Creating a minimum standard for workers.

Alberta has for a decade had the lowest minimum wage in Canada. We’ve also had the country’s highest costs of living. An Albertan working full time at $9.75 has to spend 62% of their monthly earnings for a basic apartment (based on 2012 rents). The average Canadian spends 28% of their earnings on housing. Why so many Albertans end up at homeless shelters is no great mystery.

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The Most Unsafe Workplace in Alberta

Why farm workers have so few rights or protections

There is certainly merit to the idea that everyone should have the same rights. But the paradoxical effect of refusing to distinguish among groups of farm workers in order not to deprive any group of farm workers of rights is that all farm workers are deprived of statutory safety rights.
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Out of Poverty

It's time we replaced minimum wage with a living-wage policy

A common myth paints Alberta's low-wage workers as mostly teenagers. The statistics paint a very different picture. In 2012 almost one in four employed Albertans earned less than $15 per hour. "More than three quarters of Alberta's low-wage workers are in their prime earning years," says PIA director Bill Moore-Kilgannon.

Weightless in Exile

How a Cuban star found her artistic home in Alberta Ballet

Even Alberta Ballet boasts four self-exiled Cubans in its troupe. Their strict technical training grants them a physical proficiency that excites artistic directors the world over. But Cuban dancers are no Soviet automatons. They are Latin, after all. Their indigenous emotion gilds their dance with passion and heat.

Bookshelf

Reviews of books written by Alberta authors, published by Alberta publishers, or books that focus on aspects of our province.

Embedded on the Home Front, edited by Joan Dixon & Barb Howard; The Unfinished Child, by Theresa Shea; The Lease, by Mathew Henderson.


Behind the Scenes
Alberta arts institutions unmasked

 

Historical Northwest paintings; Lethbridge's secret antechambers; maturing opera singers; Middle Earth, live; k.d. lang at the ballet...

Eye on Alberta
Clippings, Quotes and Controversies

 

The cost of journalistic integrity; a blogger urges oil sands workers to call Fort Mac home; when meat monopolies go bad...

Wit
Justin and the Pundits
No country for young men.

 

To the CBC panelists, it was as though Justin Trudeau had flown to Edmonton, climbed the steps of the Legislature, cursed and spat.

Meet the Minister
Dave Hancock
Minister of Human Services

 

Hancock was well regarded in previous postings, but now, facing cutbacks, a glut of responsibilities and a vague mandate, he has his work cut out.
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Guide
Public Gardens

 

Where to find the lushest spaces in Alberta, and what to grow at home.

Postal Code
What could your community look like?

 

One resident joked, “I grew up as a south-side snob, always rivalling the north-side thugs, but since then I’ve become a west-side punk.”
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Highlights from Past Issues

In Our Previous Issue

Notes from the Curator

Assembling the 2013 Alberta Biennial of Contemporary Art

Shifting the discourse of Regionalism to that of place-defined by human geographers as a meaningful location constructed by people and their practices-changed the subject of the artist. This shift is “The News From Here” as the title of the Biennial suggests.

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To read other "Last Issue" features click here.

From The Archives

Alberta Politics: The First 100 Years

An illustrated history

A political cartoon chronicling the diversity of leaders in Alberta’s first 100 years.

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