Pique'n Yer Interest

Awards are, at least supposedly, about honouring the best of the best. But it's easy to feel that that's not always the case. A number of Academy Award Best Picture winners, for example, don't hold up well in the light of day.

Iknow the look on the server's face. She is tired. Over it.

For over five years now, five days a week, I've been making the 53-kilometre mad dash up the Sea to Sky Highway from Squamish to Whistler and back again. Lately, the highway has been a ride to remember.

Over the course of reporting a recent feature on drink spiking for Pique ("Invisible violations," Feb. 2, 2017), I was disheartened by how common the problem appears to be in Whistler.

We're losing sleep. Studies routinely depict a population that struggles with sleep, and the term sleep hygiene has been coined to describe how we are failing ourselves by not taking this seriously.

We're all hypocrites. Each and every one of us has an occasion where we'll say the right thing and urge others to do that action, but when push comes to shove, we can't be bothered to do it ourselves.

On one hand, Facebook is a proven time-waster packed with ridiculousness, false news and the trivial machinations of friends. On the other, it occasionally lives up to its raison d'être of creating community and conversation.

I don't know about you, but I like to find out how an important story ends. Last March, I wrote an op-ed in support of two community health nurses in Nova Scotia and their fight to create new laws in Parliament to combat non-state torture.

We are a society that loves a quick fix. It's why the Internet and late-night TV are littered with ads promoting get-rich-quick schemes, fad diets and questionable lifestyle gurus hawking their own personalized brand of reinvention.

I'm not supposed to be writing this here. Or if I'm writing it here, I'm not supposed to be writing it now. It's Boxing Day and I'm still in Winnipeg. And not leaving until tomorrow.