Greetings Pine Tree Republic readers! This past week, I had the good fortune to attend a conference of the National Academy of Sciences called the Sackler Colloquium. This particular conference convened economists and ecologists to discuss how the disciplines could combine forces to attack some of our most pressing global sustainability challenges, including climate change,…
It’s been a long time since the last Pine Tree Republic post – over eight months, to be exact! I’ve experienced lots of exciting changes over that time, including travelling to China in the spring, and starting on my PhD this fall. Admittedly, I’ve let those changes knock me off course in terms of keeping a regular…
This past March was National Engineering Month in Canada, and an organization that I volunteer with, Engineers Without Borders (EWB) Canada, invited me to write a guest blog post on the importance of diversity in engineering. After some reflection, I decided to focus on how learning from indigenous cultures has affected how I view engineering…
The Story – A Chemical Weapons Attack in Syria During the afternoon of April 4, news broke in North America of an apparent chemical agent attack in Idlib, Syria. Within hours, news agencies and social media streamed horrific videos of adults and children gasping for air and being rushed to hospitals for treatment, where they were…
Sixteen years ago, a group called Tinariwen (the word for “deserts” in the Tamashek language) burst onto the world music scene with a performance at Mali’s Festival au Désert and subsequent performances in Europe. Since that time, the group has served as the unofficial musical ambassadors of the nomadic Touareg people and the “desert blues”, or assouf, music of the…
The Story After the U.S. elections last November, many Canadians half-jokingly prepared for an influx of disaffected liberal Americans fleeing the new Trump regime. And while the Canadian immigration website crashed on the night of the election, it seems that few American political refugees have indeed crossed the border. Rather, Canada now faces a much more…
Editor’s Note: Earlier this month, the Engineers Without Borders (EWB) Calgary Chapter hosted a visit from Samuel Wachieni, a Kenyan social entrepreneur. Samuel’s visit was part of EWB’s Kumvana Program – an annual exchange in which top entrepreneurs and leaders from sub-Saharan Africa visit Canada to learn from and share their own experiences with Canadian…
Canada – Not as Civil as You Might Think The past seven days were supposed to be a good week for Canada. Last Monday, Justin Trudeau went to Washington and delivered exactly what almost every Canadian was hoping for: an acknowledgment from President Trump that the U.S.-Canadian trade relationship was valuable and only needs to be…
As I browsed bookstores last December for holiday gifts (and a few gifts for myself), one book repeatedly caught my eye – The Return of History: Conflict, Migration, and Geopolitics in the Twenty-First Century, by Canadian international relations scholar Jennifer Welsh. I noticed it for three reasons: (1) the title was a clear rhetorical response to one of…
Over the last two weeks, I enjoyed a physically and spiritually restoring vacation in Costa Rica, which was particularly helpful for rekindling a connection to nature and its diverse ecosystems. In addition to rainforest canopy tours, volcano hikes, and surf lessons, one of the top highlights was a tour of the Life Monteverde coffee farm, in…
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