Every year, on average, avalanches kill 10 people in Canada. In the past few days, two more people were added to this year’s tragic toll as Michel Trudeau, son of former Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau, and Susanna Donald, a University of Calgary student from Regina, became the latest victims of these deadly snowslides, also known …
Tag: science
Stem cells
Imagine being able to grow any kind of human tissue in the laboratory and using it to replace the damaged cells of someone suffering from diseases such as Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s or muscular dystrophy. Within a decade or two that science fictional dream could be reality, thanks to a breakthrough last week that scientists have …
John Glenn’s return to space
At 9:47 a.m. on February 20, 1962, John Glenn, 41, a U.S. Marine test pilot, strapped into the tiny Mercury space capsule known as Friendship 7, hurtled into space atop an Atlas rocket. In the ensuing four hours and 56 minutes he circled the Earth three times, then splashed down in the Atlantic ocean, 880 …
Canadian Nobel laureates
This is the time of year when the Nobel Prizes for science are awarded, and while there haven’t been any Canadian winners this year, for a small country, Canada has been well represented in the awards in the past few years–and can lay claim to one of the most important discoveries in medicine earlier this …
Transplants
A few years ago in Weyburn I had a role in a play called “Duet for Two Hands.” It was a grim little gothic tale of a drunken Scottish surgeon (that would be me) who had sewed the hands of a convicted murderer onto the wrists of a concert pianist who had lost his own …
Autumn
Wednesday marks the beginning of autumn, and the official beginning of that time of year when the air turns nippy, you have to scrape frost off your car in the morning, the leaves change color and drop from the trees, and the moon seems bigger and brighter than usual. Wednesday is considered the beginning of …
Digging for the Spanish Flu
In late 1917 or 1918, a new strain of influenza appeared in what is now Ft. Riley, Kansas. There’s nothing unusual about that: new strains of influenza appear all the time. At first, this one seemed no worse than any other. But something changed. As this flu spread to the east, it became seven …
Art restoration
A few years ago I had the immense pleasure of visiting the Louvre, tempered only by the immense annoyance that the choir I was touring with had to be somewhere else that afternoon, leaving us with a grand total of 45 minutes to spend in the world’s most famous art museum. Among the few paintings …
Casting bronze
Recently, the MacKenzie Art Gallery has been offering “Twilight Tours” conducted by local artists. We visited Vic Cicansky’s studio, Joe Fafard’s foundry in Pense, and even toured back lanes with Wilf Perrault. Of all the tours, I found the one to Fafard’s foundry most fascinating, because it shed some light on one of the oldest …
The science of the midway
I realized early on that I was never going to have as much fun at the midway as some people do. I was seven years old, and the county fair had come to Tulia, Texas. The tiny midway only had a half-dozen rides, but I rode them all. Then, on the way home, I threw …
Fruit
just came back from a vacation that included a brief stay in the Okanagan. Among the treasures from that visit were two containers of delicious fresh apricots and cherries, courtesy of a friend who owns an orchard near Oliver. The amount of fruit produced by the trees of the Okanagan Valley alone is staggering: everywhere …
My latest live walk and vlog
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