Late one afternoon this past summer, after leaving my Winnipeg office, I came across a poster that read: “When the house of cards comes crashing down, we’ll be ready. Will you join us?” In the background of this poster, the bridge that connects St. Boniface at the Forks was visible, while in the foreground, a masked soldier […] … learn more→

Since the beginning of time, music has been a way of communicating observations of and experiences about the world. For Indigenous Peoples who have lived within their traditional territories for generations, music is a repository of ecological knowledge, with songs embedding ancestors’ knowledge, teachings and wisdom. The music carries the word of the ancestors across […] … learn more→

It’s hard to come up with a decent title for today’s post. A while back I wrote how daughters coming home with mustaches and breasts removed is a thing now. When I first heard of this, I greeted the news with skepticism because it was just so wacky…but I confirmed things as best I could […] … learn more→

The comic constitutes a unique cultural phenomenon: until very recently, it barely raised academic interest. Due to the satirical tone and the caricatural bias that cultivated in the nineteenth century; or to the childish character, often moralizing, that was in the XX; or the popularity – not free of vulgarity – that reached between 1930 and 1960, has […] … learn more→

Like so many other parents around the world, JRR Tolkien, the famous author of The Lord of the Rings , has spent a lot of time and effort making Christmas a joy for his children. Except that it is about a man whose imagination has given life to a vast world , concealing thousands of years of legends. He has brought […] … learn more→

In October 2019, a 14-year-old and an 18-year-old were charged with first-degree murder in the fatal stabbing of Devan Bracci-Selvey, who died in his mother’s arms outside his southern Ontario high school. In response, provincial Education Minister Stephen Lecce announced “new actions” to tackle bullying, notably without any new funding. These strategies include consulting with students, parents, teachers […] … learn more→

Childhood obesity is a significant problem in the United States. Many American kids are eating too much sugar and other unhealthy foods and aren’t spending enough time playing outside anymore. While some parents are making an effort to create healthier habits in their homes, it hasn’t been enough to reverse the upward trend of obesity […] … learn more→

There are so many derangements on our campuses today that it’s hard for me to cover even the most egregious of them with any regularity. One I’ve neglected is the kangaroo campus court system a quasi-court system where basically admin can do whatever they wants, with a thin veneer of legitimacy attached to it. Words […] … learn more→

The “new thing” is often declared the problem for society’s ills. Television and comic books, when they came out half a century or more ago, were blamed for why children were so disobedient, for example. A bit more recently, Dungeons and Dragons was targeted when it achieved some level of popularity in the 70s, with […] … learn more→

You may have read about – or already seen, depending on where you are – the latest tweak to Facebook’s interface: the disappearance of the likes counter. Like Instagram (which it owns), Facebook is experimenting with hiding the number of likes that posts receive for users in some areas (Australia for Facebook, and Canada for Instagram). In the […] … learn more→