Resource Category: Popular Media

“Keeping the Marble in the Bowl” – that was the title of a breakfast briefing I gave MPs on September 29, 2009. Parliament was hosting some talks on climate change prior to COP15 (the 15th Conference of the Parties) in Copenhagen. My talk was inspired by a woman who farms near Lloydminster.

Did you ever have difficulty recognizing a familiar place because you approached it from a different direction? A few years ago, before a meeting in Sherwood Park, I had a chance to visit nearby Cooking Lake for the first time in many years. I had trouble locating our favourite duck hunting spot, because I’d taken a different approach to the lake than our dad did those many years ago.

A lot has changed over the years in farming. The equipment that producers use and the crops they plant are different. Even the weather has changed, and a recent study completed at the University of Regina looked into exactly what effect that is having on the agricultural industry.

This aerial photo of a prairie farmstead was one of many thousands taken starting in the 1950s. Companies like Continental Air of Edmonton took these images expecting that farmers would buy

The Reno Welch family ranches at the southern end of the Porcupine Hills. It’s a typical scenic southwestern Alberta ranch; rolling hills of fescue prairie with Douglas Fir forest at the higher elevations.

The earth is flat. It’s obvious. Just watch the first few minutes of any rerun of the TV show Corner Gas, filmed in southern Saskatchewan. As the camera zooms out from Brent Leroy, the gas station proprietor, we see the vast flat prairie landscape and hear the first few lines of the show’s theme song: