Are you, or do you know a youth who you believe is unique, exceptional, and outstanding? Then you or they might just be qualified to receive a Youth of Distinction Award! {Source} The Youth of Distinction Awards (YODA) program is hosted by a steering committee of Youth Central. YODA gives Calgarians the opportunity to recognize…
A new Oxfam report shows that 62 billionaires have more money than the poorest half of the global population (3.5 billion). The Oxfam report calls for urgent action on the growing trend of a supermassive wealth gap. This global wealth distribution gap is growing very quickly, having seen that in 2010; 388 billionaires owned as much as…
I have a bone to pick with the #Oscarssowhite movement that has taken social media by storm for the second year in a row. Imbalances in racial diversity shouldn’t only be noticed when all the nominees for an awards show are white. Though I’m appreciative of the media and Twitter users for finally getting the…
You are going to run out of time. In today’s day and age, it’s so easy to get caught up in scheduling and missing important pivotal life moments. With Instagram and Facebook and trying to get the perfect image, we too often fail to be a part of the moment we are trying so desperately…
I have an enormous respect for anyone who has the drive, determination and motivation to make a significant change to their lives for whatever their reasons may be. However, the one issue that I find myself having a bit of a beef with is the choice to go vegan for ethical reasons, specifically for animal…
Surprisingly, this is not a snapshot from a raging nightclub that I managed to catch before my baby-faced friends and I were escorted to the exit. That’s right; this new and exciting venue doesn’t aim to attract crowds of hip, party-loving young adults, but of 6th graders. At the site of the Calgary Police Interpretive…
2016 marks the beginning of a new year for Calgary, filled with new projects and plans to work towards a stronger and more connected community. As Mayor Nenshi put it, despite the economic uncertainty, there’s great potential in Calgary. In Calgary’s 2015 Citizen satisfaction survey, a high rating of 80% of Calgarians conveyed satisfaction towards…
“People who are bisexual have to live with the knowledge that they could lose everyone they care about with just two words.” My initial research into what it meant to identify as being bisexual held terrifying promises such as these. Words that I initially dismissed as untrue or perhaps an exaggeration. When I first came…
Albert Einstein is often quoted in the saying that “If the bee disappeared off the face of the Earth, man would only have four years left to live.” Although this may not necessarily be the case, living life without bees would still be fairly different, which is why we should be worried about the steady and…
I was raised in a conservative home, with high expectations and little room for error. Although I rarely did what I was told, I forged a somewhat approvable path of relative achievement. I respected myself and despite my short dress phase, mostly my clothing reflected the seriousness to which I approached life. I began experimenting…
Dear Homophobe, He was 15 and terrorized. He didn’t even know what being gay meant. He prayed relentlessly to God, begging Him to fix him. A fifteen year old boy began to despise himself… God did not fix him. And the boy detached himself from the world. Until, God-willingly, he eventually came clean about his sexuality.…
Whether it really is that we are constantly bombarded with advertisements and movies telling us to be thinner, curvier, etc., or just that we have too much time on our hands in 2015 to NOT obsess over our appearance (plus, so many mirrors! Mirrors everywhere), the fact of the matter stands: a lot of people, especially teenagers,…
The ideals of mainstream or “white” feminism are almost as old as the movement itself. As defined by Huffington Post Senior Women’s Editor, Emma Gray, in a crash-course video on white feminism, white feminism is “feminism that ignores intersectionality”. What this means is that white feminism separates issues of gender from all other matters of…
Abdul Halim al-Attar, Syrian refugee and now the owner of 3 businesses, didn’t have a great start. A photograph of him selling pens on the street in Syria whilst carrying his sleeping daughter went viral throughout the world, sparking sympathy and grief. I remember seeing the picture online a few months ago in August, and…
Some days … are just supposed to be gloomy. For example, when you’re suddenly woken up from a sub par sleep, having the night before around 4am decided whether or not to pull an all nighter, or suffer the pain from a three hour nap. Yeah, I had one of those nights. Also keep in mind continuing…