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 […]

Unless I get killed, do something very stupid, or miss my flight to Boise, I will soon join the world’s most consistently detested profession. All that’s between me and a license to practice law is my swearing that, among a few other things, I “will never reject, for any consideration personal to myself, the cause […]

I just got back from the Canada-U.S. Fulbright orientation in Ottawa, so as you might expect I have a thick lip, a slight limp, and a busted thumb. Don’t believe anybody who tells you that the Canadian Foundation for Educational Exchange can’t throw a first-rate three-day party.
All great times, of course, start with a […]

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 […]

It’s my first full week of full-time research, and I’ve been spending some grueling hours coalescing with my laptop, a web-based citation manager, and the NEOS Library Consortium’s catalogue. The University of Alberta Libraries, a part of the NEOS Consortium, hold what are very possibly the world’s largest archives of community and public legal […]

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 […]