Author: Robin Rowland

Snow snow and more snow

El Nina and the Pineapple Express brought heavy weather to Kitimat over the past few days. Neighours and friends say it is hard to remember so much snow in a few days even in Snow Valley, home  of People of the Snow. I heard there were 30 centimetres at the local firehall overnight Saturday to […]

Browsing the State Department’s old style analog paper Wiki

 Back in the  1980s when I first embarked on historical investigations,  the US State Department had its own analog, paper-based Wiki that covered almost every diplomatic dispatch going back centuries, millions of three by five inch index cards. And  each told a story. It was amazing to go through those old cards to find what […]

Remembrance Day, Kitimat, BC, Nov. 11, 2010

Snow began falling in Kitimat, BC, for the first time this winter, at about 9 in the morning Pacific Time. and by the time the residents gathered 90 minutes later for the Remembrance Day ceremony at the cenotaph, it was still snowing.  In Kitimat, children lay the wreathes for those who cannot attend, which is […]

One more suggestion about the “mystery missile”

The media has  been in a big flap recently about the so-called mystery missile that a KCBS cameraman shot off the coast of California.   The experts now say the missile launch was most likely a contrail  of an aircraft,  an optical illusion created by the setting sun, but as David Martin of CBS News […]

The G20 and the police. A massive intelligence failure

 Two days after the G20 disturbances in Toronto, it is clear, just from the statements made by police (not demonstrators nor lawyers nor journalists) that there was a massive failure of intelligence by the Integrated Security Unit. That failure of intelligence lead to unjustified mass arrests, imprisonment, and according to a growing number of reports, […]

I’ve been pirated!

I’ve been pirated. Wow. Does that mean I’ve made it as an author? It appears that Google image search has changed its algorithm, because when I doing a search last night, a lot more of my photographs showed up. I was doing a routine check to see who had used legitimately, borrowed or stolen my […]

The silver lining in the Canadian prorogues, and a black eye for UK democracy

Here in Canada, Prime Minister Stephen Harper has twice prorogued parliament to avoid  political challenges, first the threat of a coalition of the three opposition parties and second a rather unsuccessful attempt to avoid nasty questions about the treatment of Afghan detainees. When Harper porogued  parliament, all the government bills on the order paper died […]

Photoblog: Olympic torch relay disrupted by demonstrators

I wasn’t assigned to cover the Olympic torch relay on the evening of Thursday Dec. 17, 2009, but ran right into it as I was heading from work to work out at the downtown YMCA. I got to College subway station and saw the crowd waiting for the torch. As I was preparing to make […]

Shooting scary: available light on a dark Halloween night

In Toronto, the place to be late on Halloween night–for adults–is Church Street, the heart of the city’s “gay village” (although most gay people who live in the neighborhood  still call it “the ghetto”). Just a few years ago, when the city began closing off Church Street for the traditional gay and lesbian celebration of […]

The CBC logo is a real smart idea, IBM “smattah planet” borrows the pizza

  IBM’s smarter planet ad campaign had been on television for sometime, with “ordinary” folks from around the world talking about smarter cities, smarter everything, to be answered by others saying “I’m an IBMer.” While I am a CBCer and have worked for many years under the expanding C logo of  Mother Corp,  also known […]