Columns

AUSU This Month

AUSU Election, Now Under Way The 2006 AUSU election is now open, and members can expect to see campaign materials from candidates on this website and in our forums. Below is the candidate sheet, as approved by our Cheif Returning Officer, Bevan Iwaskow. Candidates will be invited to create campaign posters for you to view,… Read more »

Stephen Harper and the Dismantling of Canada, Bit-by-Bit

Well, it’s a week or so apres-election and the world hasn’t come to an end with the handing of the mandate to the Harper Conservatives. Most of the political commentary that I’ve heard, in fact, is painting the election outcome as amongst the best of all possible worlds. The Conservative minority is not too strong,… Read more »

Welcoming the Year of the Dog

Last Saturday night, a group of us got together to celebrate the arrival of the lunar new with a good old-fashioned Chinese banquet. We gathered at 5:30 p.m. at our favourite Chinese eatery, a spacious dining room with red and gold veined wallpaper, crisp white tablecloths, and voluminous paper lanterns hanging from the ceilings. From… Read more »

AUSU This Month

AUSU Election, Now Under Way The 2006 AUSU election is now open, and members can expect to see campaign materials from candidates on this website and in our forums. Below is the candidate sheet, as approved by our Cheif Returning Officer, Bevan Iwaskow. Candidates will be invited to create campaign posters for you to view,… Read more »

Dear Barb – Doing Your Own Taxes

Dear Barb: Another year has begun and I find myself at a loss for how to do my taxes. I am a single mother and do not have much money. I cannot afford to have someone else do my taxes for me. Do you have any tips? My taxes are very basic. I have student… Read more »

Lost & Found – How Shall We Judge

Pretend you are born in the dark of night in a cold room in the shadow of an overpass. Pretend there is a single naked light bulb hanging from the ceiling. Say your mother is always pulling the thin pink blanket over your shoulders with hands still shaking from delirium tremens. In the room next… Read more »

From Where I Sit – Random Acts of Kindness

Lost in the retail waves of red Valentine’s Day merchandise is the fact that Random Acts of Kindness Week will be soon upon us. I tried unsuccessfully to research this topic on the Internet. Like so many Internet searches for information, there were dead ends (“this page cannot be displayed” messages) and just downright misleading… Read more »

Lost & Found – Resolutions

1. To pan fry more trout on that secret beach. 2. To sit on a gravestone and eat honey right from the hive. 3. To take up the accordion. 4. To swallow a diamond and let it pass right through me. 5. To spend one whole day looking at the world through yellow cellophane. 6…. Read more »

The Good Life – The Power of Art

When we were children, all of us experienced the pleasurable feelings of creating expression through visual art. Whether we were drawing, modeling with clay, gluing together collages from magazine pictures, or making papier mache puppets, these creative tasks tended to bring about a sense of concentrated bliss, a state of relaxed but intensely engaged mental… Read more »