Opinion

As January comes to a close I feel as though 2017 has started off with the force of a tornado. In some ways it's almost as if a year's worth of events have happened in the first month.

The B.C. government may soon be looking at the possibility of increasing the tobacco purchase age in that province from 19 to 21, according to published reports. Whether Alberta's NDP government will be making a similar move remains to be seen.

The fire chief, who was very popular and well liked by his crew and volunteers, has gone. Innisfail has a very efficient fire department, a lot of them volunteers like any emergency service.

Kermit the Frog once famously sang, "It's not easy being green." But the legendary character obviously never lived in Sundre, where being green actually became much easier last summer.

"Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did," said former Nixon domestic policy chief John Ehrlichman during a 22-year-old interview published in Harper's Magazine last March.

Normally, I try to keep columns I write focused on local issues. However, what happened on the weekend in the U.S. following the inauguration of Donald Trump as the 45th U.S. president just can't be ignored.

There are a lot of skills that should be taught in grade school but for some reason have managed to be overlooked by our education system. One of the most valuable but underrated skills is critical thinking.

The provincial government has struck a new all-party ministerial panel to examine Alberta's child intervention system and to make recommendations for improvements.

In response to Mayor Brian Spiller's commentary last week (Jan.