The University of Calgary Dinos men’s hockey team came out of the holiday break with a two game sweep over the University of British Columbia Thunderbirds, extending their winning streak to five — tying the longest winning streak they had last season. 


The men’s volleyball season has been — to put it mildly — rocky, so far this season. After qualifying for the Canadian Interuniversity Sport championships last season, the Dinos now appear destined to miss the Canada West playoffs entirely.


The University of Calgary Dinos women’s volleyball team is currently on track to make the Canada West playoffs again this season, something the program has accomplished every year for over a decade. 


The Dinos’s 2011–12 season came to an abrupt end in a best-of- three CW quarterfinal to the Trinity Western University Spartans two games to none. 


After a fourth-place finish in the 2011–12 national championships — which the Dinos entered as the host team — the University of Calgary women’s basketball team was cautiously optimistic heading into the 2012–13 season despite losing their iconic head coach Shawnee Harle. Even with all the uncertainty of a new head coach, the Dinos have surpassed all expectations for the first half of their season, sitting first in the Canada West standings.

Canada has been incredibly fortunate. Through seas of uncertainty, Canada has proven its exceptional financial stability. Though Canada’s mighty ship has successfully weathered the economic storm thus far, the steady winds of prosperity are dwindling from its sails as growth is slowing and losing pace with the rest of the world.

Ever since Confederation, an aggressive national policy of assimilation has been pursued by the Canadian government to delegitimize aboriginal culture and rights. For 146 years, politicians have instituted laws, amendments and statutes designed to weaken the aboriginal population. Aboriginal rights to land were clearly defined by the Royal Proclamation of 1763 and reaffirmed in the Constitution Act of 1982. The only legal way Canada was able to access land was through the negotiation of treaties with Aboriginal Peoples.

A part of me really wants to love Django Unchained, the newest film by director Quentin Tarantino. It is a film that serves as a harsh reminder of the horror that was slavery in America in the 19th century, and absolutely no punches are pulled — the depiction of how slaves were treated is brutal, yet accurate, and the film is as violent as violent gets. It has a clear message, it is overwhelmingly powerful and it contains a few very strong performances. Yet it isn’t entirely successful.


In the days leading up to the release of Peter Jackson’s newest epic fantasy, The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, the big question fans were asking was how he was going to stretch such a short story into three movies. The answer: with bullshit and melodrama. 


When it became public knowledge that there was going to be another film adaptation of Les Miserables, many were pessimistic about the task of putting one of the world’s most beloved musicals properly onto the silver screen. However, director Tom Hooper — who recently won an Academy Award for The King’s Speech in 2011 — fundamentally understands and communicates the tragedy and beauty of the stage musical while grounding the film in the gritty realism of the 19th century setting of Victor Hugo’s novel.