Bonobo Diaries: The Ravages of Development

Originally, I planned to fly from Paris to Kinshasa on January 6. There, I would meet Sally Jewell Coxe and Michael Hurley, a husband-and-wife team who have spent a decade working in bonobo conservation. We would fly to Mbandika, where the Congo River intersects with the equator, then take a motorized dugout canoe eight days upstream to the Kokolopori Bonobo …

The NDP Today: Al Ens

Chuck Strahl, above, is a former Tory MP first elected to office in 1993. Although his son now holds his seat, NDP organizer Al Ens hopes to change that soon.

In Maisonneuve’s current Winter issue, Nick Taylor-Vaisey has a feature called “After Jack,” a thoughtful assessment of the NDP’s rocky past and uncertain future. Over the next few …

Shit Presidential Candidates Don’t Say

“I mean, we did kind of steal Texas from the Mexicans.”

“I’ve never been so hung over in my life.”

“No thanks, I’ve raised enough money.”

“We’ve sort of got an open-relationship thing going.”

“9/11 was an inside job.”

“Patriarchy.”

“I’m just not sure I believe in God.”

“Yeah, Big Pharma pretty much wrote that …

The NDP Today: Brian Pollard

Brian Pollard with former NDP leader Jack Layton, from Pollard’s campaign Facebook page.

In Maisonneuve’s current Winter issue, Nick Taylor-Vaisey has a feature called “After Jack,” a thoughtful assessment of the NDP’s rocky past and uncertain future. Over the next few weeks, we’ll publish a series of short online profiles of some of the people he …

Bonobo Diaries: A Conversation With Sue Savage-Rumbaugh

Kanzi communicates with Dr. Sue Savage-Rumbaugh using lexigram panels. Photo courtesy of Liz Rubert-Pugh.

It’s three hours until my flight to Uganda, where I will visit sanctuaries and learn about conservation efforts before crossing overland into Rwanda, then into the Congo. At the moment, I’m in Doha. I arrived this morning from Paris and, with nineteen hours between …

The NDP Today: Charmaine Borg

In Maisonneuve’s current Winter issue, Nick Taylor-Vaisey has a feature called “After Jack,” a thoughtful assessment of the NDP’s rocky past and uncertain future. Over the next few weeks, we’ll publish a series of short online profiles of some of the people he spoke with. To read “After Jack,” from which this post is adapted, pick up …

Bonobo Diaries: Why I’m Writing a Book about the Congo

For years, writing fiction, I found it difficult not to feel that I was rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic. And yet optimism comes easily for me, if only because I long ago decided it’s a better evolutionary strategy than defeatism. Though I’ve read too much about the environment and listened to too many podcasts from Nature and …

Wolf Blitzer Salutes a Bunch of Other Things

Earlier this week, CNN anchor Wolf Blitzer wrote a brief blog post titled “A salute to politicians,” in which he praised “these politicians who put themselves out there before the American public knowing full well that all their warts will be exposed big time.” What some readers may not realize is that “A salute to politicians” was only the first …