When discussing morality, people typically focus on the big questions and ignore the decisions we make at nearly every moment of our lives. We are not often asked to choose between a baby's life and an animal, whether to cheat on a loved one or betray a friend, but we are constantly bombarded by opportunities to act either ethically or merely self-serving.The stories in this collection are more concerned with the everyday events which try our values, the choices we are faced with on...

The Bio Park is the ultimate playground. A fully functioning ecological system almost a mile underground--later converted to an amusement park--it took years to build and hundreds of millions to develop. Unfortunately, it is losing money, so Linked Corporation has decided to seal the thirty foot doors with thousands of tons of blasted earth until the park has accrued in value.The closing party drew a huge crowd of sightseers, thrill seekers, and partiers, even at a thousand dollars ...

Telling the other side of the adoption and fostering process in Manitoba perhaps inevitably ends up questioning the failures of the government child care system. In this study, I itemize the difficulties dealing with the foster care system that ultimately led to my unsuccessful attempt to become a Manitoba foster parent.Like the impoverished child in the candy store window, both systemic and personal barriers prevented me from becoming a parent. Although I began this journey innocen...

Thirty years have passed since I went to the Cook Islands and Fiji, and although the original record of my voyage has long been lost, when I sifted through my memories of that most seminal time in my life, the entire trip was still there waiting for me. My first time overseas, teaching, and living with a family, I found that what I'd been taught about people from other countries was vague and largely untrue. Instead, the tapestry of the Islanders' way of life was much more complex, subtle,...

The stories of Winnipeg are as varied as the city itself. Caught in the middle of the continent by the amber of its past glory and its current penury, Winnipeg occupies a rare and beautiful place in the Canadian landscape. Winnipeg is defined by its main road, which merely circles the city, and its tottering buildings sitting on pylons driven deep into the mud of the ancient lake-bed. The principal streets crook across the flat prairie following the ancient whims of cattle and the people m...

My forty-day trip involved both Silvio and the Canary Islands. The outside world was still struggling with Covid, but the Canaries were a kind of haven. We moved in a complacent bubble through historical villages and freshly painted hotels and poolside bars. We traveled to lush and beautiful La Palma and more rustic and traditional La Gomera, but mainly we spent our days on Tenerife. As we had on the other islands, we drove every road and path on Tenerife, returning to favourite spots unti...

My latest trip to South East Asia differed from other trips in that I was older, my traveling companion was younger, and Thailand had changed. I didn't plan to return to the country, but my friend had taken a teaching practicum in Bangkok, and we both thought we would enjoy exploring the north of the country before her term began. We laid our plans a few months in advance, but like most trips, it didn't turn out exactly as we had planned. We learned to manage each other's foibles and annoy...

The last few years I've been spending my summers and, as you read below, one Christmas, in the forest in central New Brunswick. I bought a large wooded acreage, built a cabin over a summer, and since then I've returned every year, discarding the attraction of the phone and the internet, and immersing myself in the forest.I first lived on the land in a shack I built in a handful of days, although it was November and below freezing every night. By the following summer, I built the mai...

Long ago Glooscap promised to return if his people were in need, but it was only when he learned of the destruction of the Atlantic Provinces that he made the journey back to the Minas Basin. There, learning about the mines and clear-cuts, the factory farms and failing fisheries, and woken by the Jackie Vautour standoff in Kouchibouguac Park, and inspired by the Burnt Church Rebellion, he has returned with a plan that will return the provinces to a prosperity they have not seen in over thr...

After his daughter coughed herself to death and his wife left for the city, Frank hid in their house. Even while riots captured the downtown, smoke rose from the neighbourhood, and his water was cut off, he refused to leave. With only a pool in his basement and a huge bag of rice to survive, he is coming apart as rapidly as his society.When he goes down an alley to kill a dying cat and finds a child, Kaela's need rescues him from the flames that reach out from the increasingly dange...

Our world is dying, people are starving and fighting wars over the few remaining resources. World Builder Corporation says it has developed the technology to build new worlds and is recruiting thousands of volunteers to train on its state-of-the-art space station.Vincent Cosa accepts that challenge. Unable to find work, despised by his ex-wife, and seeking a better life, Vince volunteers to be a World Builder recruit. Once he arrives at the space station and is given a number, howev...

This annotated edition of H. G. Wells' first and justly most famous novel, The Time Machine, is meant to encourage the pursuits of scholars who are either encountering Wells' influential classic for the first time or are returning to it in order to delve more deeply into its antecedents and influences.In a story that continues to have resonance for the modern reader, Wells imagined his future world deeply divided along class lines which had split the human species into two: the Morl...