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In the 1998 movie Shakespeare in Love, there is a scene when the financial backer says to the producer (and I am paraphrasing): “The actors don’t know their lines, the sets aren’t finished, the tickets haven’t sold and we are supposed to open tomorrow. How can that be?” At which point the producer looks him straight in the eye and responds, “I don’t know, it’s a mystery.”
These past few days, we are all feeling more and more like much of our world is living in a state of “It’s a Mystery” and, somehow, all of us are expected to believe it all and follow the rules with as little push back as possible.
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Cynicism is something that most of us try to avoid, but lately it has become harder and harder to escape it. The pandemic crisis has not helped the situation whatsoever.
No one knows exactly how things are going to look when this is all over, but there can be little doubt that we are not going back to anything resembling normal until the vast majority of us have received the prescribed amount of vaccine to hold COVID-19 at bay.
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For a long time, Alberta has benefitted greatly from oil and natural gas royalties. Today, the resource revenue, while still sizeable, is no longer adequate to support the lifestyle to which Albertans have become accustomed.
Fifty years ago, then-premier Peter Lougheed forecast that this day might come and set up the Heritage Savings and Trust Fund to get us through times like this. If our political leaders over those 50 years had stuck to the rules, raised taxes modestly and kept their hands off of the piggy bank, Alberta would have been in an excellent financial position today. But we aren’t.
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Citizens have a right to City Hall as much as business does
Re: We need to end the gloom and plan for a prosperous future, Opinion, Feb. 26
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George Brookman complains that in this time of crisis city politicians are spending time in “countless meetings … with civic groups that need money, facilities and food hampers” but not meeting with corporate leaders.
A gentle reminder for George: That first group? They’re called citizens. And in suggesting business leaders don’t get facetime with city politicians, perhaps he might want to check the visitor logs of city councillors (
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Driving past the somewhat delayed new Inglewood Bridge, I could not help but reflect on what it takes to build a bridge. Through a bit of research, I learned that Amsterdam has over 1,200 bridges, the most of any city in the world. The oldest bridge was constructed in 1648, and that the maintenance and the building of bridges in that city is a year-round and very expensive proposition costing millions of euros annually. It takes a lot of talent, time and planning to build a bridge and it takes a lot of effort to maintain them once they are constructed.