A while ago, I heard from a friend of mine from a little while back. It had been some time since we'd spoken, frankly I didn't even know if I would ever see or hear from her again. It was a pleasant surprise, and I'm glad I heard from her again.

I had developed a close bond with her family, and in particular her father. The last time I'd spoken with my friend, a few years ago, she had told me that her father had pancreatic cancer. I didn't need to be told what that meant, he was on borrowed time, and he had passed away 2 years ago. I supposed I had hoped for a miracle; that somehow, he had beat it, but this was not to be.

I had lost touch with him a few years before, one of my many regrets in life, and I never really had a chance to say good-bye. Obviously, I couldn't go back in time and change things, but I could remember the good times that we had together. I could also learn from the lessons I received from him over dinner, or a glass of wine, or helping him with something in the garage . He brought his values with him to Canada from Italy, values that included working hard and the importance of family. Values that aren't nearly as prevalent in North America.

My friend had an almost buddhist-like respect for life. I heard of how, when worked outside, he would go out of his way to make sure that not even the smallest ant be killed or otherwise disturbed by his actions. It was a true testament to the man that he was. He lived his beliefs, and put his values into action rather than just mouth platitudes as so many of us do.

He had compiled a great deal of wisdom in nearly seven decades on Earth, and he was a good man get advice from.

Perhaps the greatest lesson I will have learned from my friend, is to never, EVER, give up. There will be times in your life when things really aren't going your way, and ya lose it all and end up on your ass, get up and keep walking. And as you keep walking along,...

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I've lived in the federal riding of Calgary West for quite a few years in my life, and for all that time the MP as been a conservative. In fact since it became a geographic and electoral area, only ONCE has the conservative not won the seat, and that was in 1922 when Joseph Tweed Shaw, who entered politics as a Liberal, won the seat for the Labour party.


This suits me just fine since my vote goes to the conservatives, almost, always. Rob Anders has been the MP since 1997, and he was once touted as a youmg rising star, as was Rahim Jaffer and Jason Kenney. The young newly elected Reformers would find themselves involved in political scandals and dust-ups over the years. Kenney has survived his and remains in cabinet. Jaffer's gaffes may yet cost him his job, and Anders, well no one can find him. As per usual he is dodging the media, refusing to answer questions. The result of his numerous political fax pas is that he has no chance of getting to the cabinet table, and at the end of the day make life a little easier for Stephen Harper.

And so, in an effort to see this to fruition, I would ask that the people of Calgary West vote for independant candidate Kirk Schmidt. His platform is quite similar to the PC's which is why I chose to vote for him. Strictly on the issues; that and the fact I want Rob Anders to no longer be representing me in Ottawa. So having said that, Mr.Schmidt, please understand that at this point I wouldn't be so much voting FOR you as voting AGAINST ANDERS. That being said, I'm also willing to guage how Mr. Schmidt does as my representative when deciding who to vote for. Like most people in this community, I'm a true blue tory. Lots of folks out there think we're a bunch of rednecks out here in the cradle of conservatism, but lots of us bleed Tory blue. Around here, the Progressive Conservatives could run a ham sandwich and still win the next election. personally I think most would prefer the ham sandwhich to be their MP...

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As of this moment, tensions remain high in the former Soviet republic of Georgia. I’m willing to bet most people didn’t even know that it existed, and couldn’t find it on a map, or thought you were talking about the Georgia famous for peaches and Jimmy Carter. And now, an invading Russian Army has hightened tensions around the globe. So of all the invasions and conflicts around the globe, what makes this one so potentially volatile for the rest of the world?

There are a number of reasons, but we need to understand some of the history behind all this, in order to grasp the gravity of this situation. Being geographic neighbors, it is unavoidable that there would have to be at least SOME contact between the Russians and the Georgians. By the mid to late 1800’s Russia began essentially taking the area over, starting with the region of South Ossetia. Following the revolutions in which the Bolsheviks (Communists) took over Russia, Georgia became encorporated into the fold becoming one of the Soviet Socialist Republics in 1921. Following Lenin’s death in 1924, Joseph Stalin would consolidate his power and take control of the Soviet Union. “Uncle Joe”, was not Russian, he was in fact Georgian, born Josip Dzughashvili in the Georgian town of Gori, which in recent days has been under heavy attack by Russian tanks and artillery.

During the time of Stalin’s “great purge” during the last part of the 1920’s, Georgians suffered much the same as the millions of Russians, Kazakhs, Uzbeks and others that Stalin had put to death as enemies. Things got easier for the Georgians, and all the other Soviet republics after Stalin died, thus Georgia bacame yet another of a number of Soviet Republics. However it would be years before another Georgian, Edvard Sheverdnadze, would hold any high office within the party or politburea, when he became Mikhail Gorbachev’s Foreign Minister. Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, Sheverdnadze went back to Georgia, and was for a time its ...

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It’s been less than two weeks since 22 year-old Tim McLean was killed tragically on a Greyhound bus just outside Portage La Prairie, the victim of an apparent paranoid schizophrenic who would attack his victim without expression, as though he were a machine. We’ve been told the grisly and gruesome details of what happened on that bus that night, no publication bans would mean the we could hear of how Vincent Guaigong Li decapitated, and would further go on to descecrate young Tim’s body to the horror of those standing outside the bus watching it all unfold. Reports of cannibalism are circulating, and when he is caught after jumping out a side window, Vincent Li has one of Tim’s ears, his nose and half his mouth in a plastic bag in his pocket.

The story gripped us as a nation, and soon news outlets from around the world were reporting on the “Bus Horror”, re-playing the sound bites from Tim’s grieving friends and family, police, and the other passengers on the bus. It is heart-wrenching to hear them tell of their friend, taken far too soon; this was by all accounts a good kid, who didn’t deserve to die, and certainly not in the manner in which it happened. I grieve with them for the loss of their friend and loved one.

As to the passengers, some of whom saw pretty much every thing that humans were not meant to see, a lot has been written and debated. Were they reacting as anyone in a similar situation would, or were they merely cowards. Comparisons have been made with United flight 93, which did not make its target objective, because of the heroic acts of some of the passengers. People knew what was happening because they had cell-phones. they knew they were going to die, likely in the same fireball that other innocent people on the ground would die in. They made a conscious decision to make their stand.

Forward now to late July 2008. It is around 10:00 pm, and it is dark inside the bus, as it cruises down the highway, just 20 minutes after leaving Portage...

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On the morning of October 18th, 2007, 9 year old Kathelynn Occena sat on a school bus that was taking her to the Third Academy School on Crowchild Trail in Calgary. The bus carrying Kathelynn and 10 of her school-mates, including her 7 year old sister Julia, was being driven by Louise Rogers, an employee of the Third Academy school. The morning was clear and the roads dry. As the bus neared it's destination on Crowchild Trail, and travelling at approximately 70 km/h, it veered onto the shoulder and collided with the back of a parked gravel truck. The passenger side of the bus took the impact, resulting in the death of Kathelynn Occena, and injuries to the remaining children on the bus. Kathelynn's sister Julia was seriously injured and would spend weeks in hospital afterward. The other children were in critical to stable condition, Louise Rogers was unharmed.

It was terrible news to hear that October morning almost one year ago, seeing the carnage on the news, the wrecked bus, the wounded children, the distraught bus driver. In the early hours of the story, rumours were abound that Louise Rogers had been talking on her cell phone at the time of the accident and that she had been distracted. Others would even go on to speculate that Rogers, a muslim, was somehow distracted or even blinded by the hijab she was wearing. Speculation would abound for some time, until last week when Rogers plead guilty in a Calgary court to one charge of careless driving. Rogers had not been on the phone at the time of the accident, she was listening to music on her MP3, using bud earphones. She was fined $2300, had her driver's license suspended for 90 days, and will be on probation for 1 year. In the wake of the sentence many were outraged that criminal charges weren't laid, that there would be no jail time.


So I began to think, what punishment could fit this crime? First of all, Louise Rogers wasn't impaired by alcohol or drugs, and she didn't have the sudden...

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