Essays
Long-form writing on the geography of the modern economy. Each essay is built to be re-read, not skimmed.
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Data hall, cable plane Geography · 18 min · Jun 9, 2026The Geography of Royalty
Alberta has extracted several trillion dollars' worth of oil and bitumen from its subsurface. The public share of that wealth is determined by a royalty system that has never collected enough — and rarely saved what it did.
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Braided river, aerial Geography · 17 min · Jun 2, 2026Smoke in the Lungs of the City
Wildfire smoke blankets Alberta for weeks each summer. Not everyone can close a window.
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Glacial valley at dusk Geography · 16 min · May 20, 2026Building for Hail
Calgary is in hail alley. The question is how much of that knowledge has been built into the roofs, walls, and deductibles of 600,000 households.
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Glacial valley at dusk Geography · 14 min · May 19, 2026Winter as a Health System
At -40°C, pipes freeze, roads close, ambulances slow down, and emergency rooms fill. Cold is not background. It is infrastructure.
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Transmission corridor at night Economy · 28 min · May 12, 2026Who Pays for Sprawl
Every new suburb generates development fees and property taxes. It also creates kilometres of pipe, road, and wire that someone will have to maintain forever. The math rarely adds up.
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Network abstraction Geography · 13 min · May 5, 2026The Measurement State
Before a government can manage a territory, it has to see it. The sensors, registries, and observation systems that make Alberta legible to the state are also making it legible to everyone else.
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Prairie section road Geography · 16 min · Apr 28, 2026The Distance to Care
Alberta has among the worst physician-to-population ratios in Canada. For most residents that is a statistic. For a growing number it is a geography — measured in hours and kilometres.
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Braided river, aerial Geography · 15 min · Apr 21, 2026Fire Country
Fort McMurray showed what happens when fire reaches the wildland-urban edge. The WUI keeps expanding. The fire climate is changing. The two trends are running toward each other.
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Data hall, cable plane Economy · 14 min · Apr 21, 2026The Insurance Geography
Insurance does not prevent disasters. It prices the geography of risk and decides who can afford to live where. In Alberta, that pricing is changing.
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Glacial valley at dusk Geography · 12 min · Apr 21, 2026Watching Water
Snowpack satellites, radar altimeters, and gravity sensors now make it possible to watch Alberta's water budget from orbit. Here is what they are telling us.
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Transmission corridor at night Economy · 15 min · Apr 15, 2026Capital Country
Canada has $1.8 trillion in growth waiting to be unlocked. Where it lives, what is blocking it, and why the province that anchors the largest sector is generating the uncertainty that kills long-horizon investment.
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Wind turbines, flat light Economy · 15 min · Apr 4, 2026The Warehouse Province
Alberta produces raw materials and exports them in bulk. Everything else arrives by truck. This is the infrastructure that makes that possible — and what it costs when it breaks.
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Fjord coastline Economy · 14 min · Mar 27, 2026After the Burning Strait
What changes when closure becomes a governed corridor
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Braided river, aerial Geography · 15 min · Mar 27, 2026Avalanche Country
The eastern slopes have always slid. What is changing is the season, the trigger, and the kind of instability now arriving from a warming mountain climate.
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Rural station platform Geography · 12 min · Mar 27, 2026The Classroom Arithmetic
Alberta's education system is building schools for yesterday's growth while a demographic pulse rolls toward secondary school.
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Glacial valley at dusk Geography · 12 min · Mar 20, 2026Storm Country
Calgary sits where Arctic, Pacific, and continental air collide — and the bill is climbing.
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Industrial town, winter Economy · 41 min · Mar 17, 2026Alberta Calling
How a province that spent a decade recruiting the world is learning to blame it for showing up.
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Hands over topographic map Geography · 12 min · Mar 17, 2026Hidden in Plain Sight
Calgary's 8,000 hectares of urban nature: what the livability rankings capture, what they miss, and what happens when a city keeps adding people.
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Transmission corridor at night Economy · 18 min · Mar 12, 2026The Ideology of Extraction
Commodity, class, and the collapse of distance — from the Banda Islands to the Strait of Hormuz.
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Wind turbines, flat light Economy · 10 min · Mar 9, 2026Rockets and Feathers
Why Alberta pump prices spike overnight but fall for weeks — and whether this week's crude crash will actually reach the forecourt.
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Transmission corridor at night Economy · 24 min · Mar 8, 2026Alberta's Pipeline Geography
A Connected Province and the Infrastructure That Makes It So
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Prairie section road Economy · 12 min · Mar 8, 2026The Checkout Problem
Alberta grows the food, drills the fuel, and still pays some of Canada's highest grocery prices. This is why.
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Port cranes, hazed Places · 18 min · Mar 8, 2026Two Front Doors and a Mountain
Alberta tourism through flight patterns, spend trails, seasonal rhythms, and the places that arrival pressure is changing fastest.
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Fjord coastline Economy · 15 min · Mar 7, 2026Landlocked by Default: The Economic Geography of Alberta's Connectivity Crisis
Why Alberta's geography is its biggest economic constraint — and what that means for the pipelines, ports, and trade deals being negotiated in its name.
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Fjord coastline Economy · 20 min · Mar 3, 2026The Burning Strait
A systems view of chokepoint activation, supply chain propagation, and the asymmetric geography of oil dependence.
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Data hall, cable plane Economy · 20 min · Feb 21, 2026Contested Ground
Global Energy Markets, War, Sanctions, and the Renewable Tide
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Wind turbines, flat light Economy · 15 min · Feb 19, 2026The Texas of the North
What the Comparison Actually Reveals — and What It Obscures
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Transmission corridor at night Economy · 15 min · Feb 17, 2026A Trade Reality Check
What the Province Produces, What It Exports, and What It Needs From Everyone Else
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Data hall, cable plane Geography · 10 min · Mar 10, 2025What Light Reveals
How a team of University of Alberta graduates put hyperspectral eyes in orbit — and made them free to use.
