Unpublished Newswire

It’s an ordinary, old black pay phone, its push buttons faded by decades of fingers pressing the numbers. But I like to call it the world’s most beautiful pay phone, thanks to its front-row view of the majestic, 300-million-year-old Mount Rundle. I first stumbled across this juxtaposition of 20th-century technology and timeless nature a few years ago at a campground just outside of Banff, Alta. Sadly, when you lift the telephone receiver now, there’s no dial tone — just dead air. Whenever I see an old, decommissioned pay phone or, even more rarely, a rotary dial phone, I’m...

Bear attacks have loomed frighteningly large in the headlines this year. The most terrifying was a grizzly attack on a group of B.C. schoolchildren and teachers out on a hike in late November...