In the 1960s Saturday Night was a very popular Canadian magazine. Much of its success was due to its editor, Ralph Allen. Unlike Maclean’s Magazine of today, it was not a voice of the political establishment.
    Allen looked at the high degree of foreign ownership and control of the economy, our heavy dependence on trade with one country, and our emphasis on exporting raw materials and natural resources and declared that Canada was “The Northernmost Banana Republic.” He looked at U.S. political domination of Canada, based in our subordinate position in NATO, NORAD, the Defence Production Sharing Agreement and other military alliances and declared that Canada had no sovereign independence. He described Canada as “Puerto Rico North.

    In its efforts to take action on climate change in California, the state had applied to have a waiver so that the state could set its own GHG emissions requirements for vehicles.  The EPA recently denied California's request.

In a report released December 10, 2007, the Greenland ice sheet has been reported to be melting at a record rate this year.  Measurements began in 1979 and this year is the largest amount ever recorded.  "The amount of ice lost over the last year is equivalent to two times the ice in the Alps or a layer of water more than one-half mile deep covering Washington DC," said Konrad Steffen, a top climate scientist at the University of Colorado at Boulder.

Greenland is about one-fourth of the size of the United States and about 80 per cent of it is coverd by the ice sheet.  Five percent of the world's ice is in Greenland.  If it all melted it would be an equivalent to a 6.4 metre global sea level rise.

On Nov. 29, the Regina Board of Education announced plans to “renew” Regina public schools by closing them. Citing increasing capital costs and declining enrolment, the board’s plan will see 12 elementary schools, primarily in the inner city, and two highschools shut their doors over the next 10 years. The move follows pressure by the Chamber of Commerce and other pro-business organizations to ‘streamline operations’ and keep taxes down.

But it appears the plan will not go unopposed. Connaught and Davin School parents who gathered at a Dec. 17 meeting vowed to fight back for the sake of all neighbourhood schools that want to stay open.

North Central's Herchmer School,
slated for June closure.