Tonight I sat in on “public consultations” on development of Alberta’s oilsands. These oilsands, located principally in northeastern Alberta, hold some 180 billion barrels of proven oil reserves and maybe as many as 315 billion barrels altogether. This makes Canada second only to Saudi Arabia in oil reserves. However, as the Economist reported in […]

Although the U.S. Department of State has given me thousands of USD primarily to do research here, I am allowed to leave my office and try to mix in with the Candian natives. Moreover, State even had the foresight to give me some helpful “Tips for Safety,” which will hopefully keep me alive […]

Yesterday I switched on—for the first time—the TV that’s in the furnished Edmonton apartment I somehow managed to get, and I saw a guy in a robe and a wing collar with tabs standing at a podium and talking about a statute. In a few moments there was a cut to a another […]

The other day I wrote about public/community legal education and the administrative errands I was running all last week. One thing that I didn’t get to was signs. From the first day that I entered Canada for my fellowship year, travelling across southeastern British Columbia and then slowly north through the provincial parks along […]

Yesterday afternoon I went to watch the Legislative Assembly of Alberta, which is in a short session right now primarily to consider a spending bill. But yesterday afternoon was the one afternoon during this short session that private members’ bills would be considered, and Progressive Conservative MLA Ted Morton endeavored to bring up a […]

A week’s worth of relocation errands has sapped my energy a lot more than I could have expected. Some of these have involved a government agency and waiting in line, something that I would not have enjoyed one bit four years ago. But now that I’ve gone through law school, and especially now that I’m […]