The children taught me to embrace the gift of the moment For many people, Christmas is a favourite time of year, while for others, it is a time of great sadness. Many of us struggle to embrace its true meaning. It has cultural and spiritual significance in pagan and Christian traditions, but these are often…
It's time that Canada wakes up and does more to recognize that our brothers and sisters are starving
As a child, I was made to eat everything on my plate and was told that wasting food was affecting the starving children in China. Today, sad to say, my family and many other Canadians have forgotten the need to avoid food waste and, more importantly, have turned our eyes away from starvation in other…
Archeological detective work reveals a rare find
A University of Alberta anthropologist has uncovered the oldest human DNA yet found in Africa, shedding new light on a period of ancient human history about which little is known. Banting post-doctoral fellow and bioarcheologist Elizabeth Sawchuk found skeletal remains of a middle-aged woman on her first dig in Africa 12 years ago as a…
Canada, among other Western nations, was culpable for his murder
Malcolm X called Patrice Lumumba “The greatest black man ever to walk the continent of Africa.” Lumumba was a very principled man – and one who’s still revered 61 years after his murder. Lumumba was the first prime minister of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. He brought people together because he embraced the highest…
Artifacts dating back 50,000 years help us better understand human connections
It’s one of the most enduring craft traditions in human history, stretching back 50,000 years: tiny donut-shaped beads made from ostrich eggshells. They reveal the oldest social network ever identified, according to a study by Jennifer Miller. The beads probably originated in eastern Africa and spread west and south through the continent as people traded them…
Was Tutu an anti-Semite and bigot, as some claim?
On Dec. 26, the world said goodbye to Bishop Desmond Tutu, the 1984 Nobel Peace Prize winner and tireless advocate for human rights. He’s best known for his non-violent struggle against and triumph over apartheid, the white-only, racist system of government in South Africa that oppressed Tutu and his countrymen for decades. Lifelong activist Ralph…
Or are false accusations crowding out the truth?
No other Nobel Peace Prize winner in recent memory has endured the wrath of the international media, the fury of global think tanks, and the scolding of UN, EU, and U.S. officials as much as Ethiopia’s Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed. The Washington Post describes the decision to bestow the Peace Prize on him as “the…
COVID doesn’t care if you’re a capitalist or a socialist
As I sat recovering from the side effects of my third COVID-19 vaccine, certain things didn’t add up. First of all, I know a number of good, intelligent people who are choosing not to get vaccinated. Of course, there are some very unkind individuals among them who harass our health-care workers and people in the…
Biden risks pushing Ethiopia onto a path of destruction that cannot be reversed
The Biden administration’s pressure on the Ethiopian government to find a peaceful end to the current war is justified on moral, humanitarian, and geopolitical grounds. However, the U.S.’s threats of sanctions have come and gone without any impact, signalling a lack of understanding of the Ethiopian psyche and a failure to appreciate the complexity of…
Human remains are considered sacred by many around the world and deserve respect and protection
When Elizabeth Sawchuk started getting involved in ancient DNA research as part of her archeological research in Africa, she turned to colleagues for advice on sampling DNA from ancient human remains. As a post-doctoral fellow at Stony Brook University, she felt it was crucial to get it right. “They’re extremely precious,” said Sawchuk, now a Banting post-doctoral…