Why Aren’t We Free to Age on Our Own Terms?

“Being deemed incapable means that a person’s life decisions—what they spend their money on, what health care they receive, where they call home—may be delegated to a trusted party. In some cases, that proxy is a family member; in others, it is the provincial public-guardian system, whose staff may meet with the person rarely, if ever. The system is designed to protect against elder abuse and errors in judgment; it is an attempt to safeguard some of society’s most vulnerable, but it risks doing so at the cost of their liberties.”

 

Sharon J. Riley – The Walrus – March 2020

Advertisement

A mine in the middle

“We fly out of the Liard River in a float plane operated by a man named Doug. The plane glides up over the boreal forest and bogs of the seemingly endless Liard Plains, until the landscape swoops skyward like a calligraphic flourish at the end of a long, unbroken sentence. The flourish is the MacKenzie mountain range, forming part of the boundary between the Yukon and the Northwest Territories. The mountain ridges are wide, wider than freeways, and I gape at the contours of the rocky slopes. Rivers below us meander like loosely coiled ropes, their origins drooling rivulets rolling down the slopes of now snowless mountains. And then we see it. The Nahanni.”

Sharon J. Riley – The Narwhal – December 2019

After oil and gas: Meet Alberta workers making the switch to solar

“At his first job, he made $60,000 a year. In the years that followed, he made a lot of money. He partied. He didn’t vote. He didn’t care much about politics. Something started to change for Taylor as the years went on in the oil patch. He remembers the 2010 BP oil spill as a pivotal moment in his thinking. ‘It was plastered all over the news for days, and I watched this giant catastrophe just unfold in front of our eyes for days on end,’ he said. It was, he remembers, ‘a heartbreaking moment.’ Fast-forward several years, and Taylor is one of thousands of solar workers in Alberta — and one of many who has transitioned out of the fossil fuel sector into renewable energy.”

Sharon J. Riley – The Narwhal – October 2019

The story of Alberta’s $100-billion well liability problem

“He points out the site’s wellhead and flare stack, listing possible hazards: soil contamination, dust, issues with farming, invasive weeds. Then he gestures to the adjacent field, full of potatoes. ‘If there’s a leak and it gets into the potato crop, it’s going right there into the French fry factory,’ he says. The site is on a list of facilities under the management of the Orphan Well Association entitled ‘Orphan Wells to be Abandoned,’ where it has languished for at least two years. The list currently contains 2,000 wells that have yet to be properly sealed — known in the industry as ‘abandoning’ — and whose owners are now bankrupt.”

 

Sharon J. Riley – The Narwhal – November 2018