The Sheepdogs Riding the Wave of Success Into Ottawa Dragon Boat Festival

 Ottawa Life’s Festival City Series is back! We'll provide a unique look at some of your favourite events. We’ll go beyond the music with artist interviews, volunteer profiles, concert reviews and spotlights on the tastes, sights and sounds of the festival season.  Your city! Your festivals and events! Like a good sunscreen,

Skyline Gallery Will Capture Canada in Stark Colour

 All photos by Mark Schacter.  After travelling the world and publishing three books of photography, Mark Schacter is putting down roots in Ottawa’s artistic scene and inviting locals to come see his work. On Saturday July 9, Schacter will open the doors to Skyline Gallery, a space set aside in

Rising Rates of Kidney Failure Signal Need for Public Health Strategy

 As many as 40 thousand people in Canada are affected by kidney failure – a problem that is increasing across the country, with significant consequences for our health system.   A report released this month from the Manitoba Centre for Health Policy projects an increase of 68 per cent in

Canadians Should Modernize not Privatize Medicare

 National Medicare Week has just passed, buoyed with optimism as a fresh-faced government takes the reins in Ottawa – elected partly on a promise of renewed federal leadership on health care.  Yet these “sunny ways” are overcast by recent developments at the provincial level that entrench and legitimize two-tier care. Saskatchewan

How Doctors Can Tackle the Their Patients’ Poverty Without Leaving the Office

 Can a question asked in a doctor’s office contribute to ending poverty for patients and their families?  This is what we asked ourselves 10 years ago, as we set out to convince health providers to tackle poverty. There were two factors that pushed us into this work: first, the evidence

Saskatoon’s housing crisis is a health emergency

 Recently, a disturbing photo of five people sleeping in a Saskatoon bank lobby became headline news and filled social media feeds. An earlier photo had contrasted the lush yards on the east side of the riverbank with tents in the bushes on the west side. A few days later, homelessness

Moving the Crops that Feed the World

 One of the romantic visions often held of Canadian railways (and American for that matter) is that of the long lines of hopper cars filled with gleaming golden wheat and other grain and oilseed crops, on their way to feed people all over the world. That vision was challenged in

Lingering legal wars of the officially recognized Métis Nation

 While Canada has made headway in addressing injustices of First Nation groups, it has largely overlooked the rights of Métis - another significantly large Aboriginal population. The Métis have been tossed back and forth between federal and provincial governments, each disputing its jurisdictional responsibility to deal with them as a

We Need Action On Land Claims And We Need It Now

 Canada's mining industry offers major opportunities for First Nations peoples. We are the larg-est industrial employer of Aboriginal peoples. We double the national aver-age, while some mines have Aboriginal workforces that are 30-40 percent Ab-original or even higher. And these are good paying jobs. The average income of Aboriginal people