Profile of Michael Johansen

Biography

MIchael Johansen is a resident of North West River, Labrador. His column "North of Here" appears every Monday.

All articles of Michael Johansen

• Jones leaves a good foundation
  Building a cabin is easy — building a political movement, not so much.For the former, basic carpentry skills like measuring, cutting and ...
• Boxes big and small
  Friends of mine, they have this amazing thing: a shiny metal box. You put bread inside, wait a while and then it come out as toast. Me, I have to ...
• Waiting for the foregone conclusion
  No one seems much concerned that the Lower Churchill environmental assessment panel won’t be releasing its report on time — nor should anyone ...
• Alone — or not — in the middle of nowhere
  An unwelcome visitor came into my campsite when I was away. He left it in a shambles. He first stepped on one of the tarps that make up my ...
• Travels of a misplaced stereotype
  It was a warm, sunny day in the small town of Owen Sound, Ont. I was downtown in my pickup waiting for a traffic light to change from red to ...
• If I had two million dollars …
  The people have spoken, and Labrador — or, at least, most of central Labrador — has been sold. For years, the Newfoundland government and the ...
• Mother Nature saves Quebec and Canada
  “Bonne St. Jean, monsieur!” The boy was playing on one of Quebec City’s long outdoor ...
• Water, water everywhere
  One-half hour earlier and she would have been mine.She lay on a lawn in Owen Sound, Ont. She was beautiful: a wooden-framed kayak almost 90 years ...
• Got them border-crossin’ blues
  The Canadian border guard thumbed through my already worn passport. He didn’t like the cluster of recent stamps he found on pages 6, 7, 9, 12 and ...
• Tuesday is malaria day
  Call it a case of the cure being almost as bad as the disease. Anyone visiting a tropical country knows that before you head south, you must ...
• The insidious threat of fascism
  Abraham Lincoln’s reflecting pool is dry. The much-revered former American president — captured larger than life in dazzling white marble — can ...
• Sleeping outside of the guidebooks
  The bedside table holds a message I cannot resist: “Turn over,” it instructs me.I never imagine the message is meant for me personally, although ...
• Fighting poverty with education
  Paint it a rainbow of colours; decorate it with Jesus Christ, or the Virgin Mary; deck it out with strings of lights that flash and strobe; equip ...
• End of the line
  An elderly bearded gentleman walks slowly up the aisle of the railway carriage and looks at the people sitting in the second-class seats. An ...
• What’s Labrador got to do with it?
  Labrador is actually playing an important role in the rapidly closing federal election, but not for the right reasons.In their scramble for ...
• Echoes from a distant campaign
  Like thunder rolling from the northern horizon, faint but deep, unheard by most, it calls to the weary traveller, imploring the roadbound ...
• On the bloody side of the border
  “No rats and no crime.” There’s no one like a taxi driver who can sum up his whole town ...
• America knows how to do it right
  The crowd surrounding the railway official was starting to sound like a mob. It wasn’t yet braying for blood, but the shouts were growing ...
• Perils for Canadians travelling abroad
  “Be careful!” Those are the two words most often heard by Canadians ...
• Tierra del Fuego of the waistline
  A mother — it goes without saying — can have a profound effect on a person’s life. Sometimes, it takes a decade or two of careful nurturing to ...
• Sitting out the next federal election
  Fishing shacks dot the ice of the Ottawa River for hundreds of kilometres upstream of the nation’s capital. Open water can be seen in many ...
• Top 10 reasons for Labrador to go it alone
  Something seems to be missing from the official welcome-to-Newfoundland-Labrador signs on both ends of the Trans-Labrador Highway — besides a ...
• Harper hates happy, hard-working families
  “Canada is one of the beautiful places in the world.”Jane is on the housekeeping staff of one of Happy Valley-Goose Bay’s larger hotels. She ...
• Artificial housing shortage making the poor suffer
  The operation was quickly executed with military efficiency: a large but empty block of apartments stood beside a grassy field on 5 Wing Goose ...
• Protecting humans in a snowmobile world
  Screams that sound like demented mating calls echo across the moonlit snowscape. They can be heard from far away, over hills and frozen lakes. ...
• Caribou stew, with a side order of guilt
  Anyone who thinks little is being done to protect eastern Canada’s endangered caribou herds hasn’t been for a meal in a Labrador restaurant ...
• Ode to the opposable thumb
  As Michael Johansen is still recovering from a recent accident, he was not able to write his regular column this week and instead has produced ...
• A word of warning to the wise
  Everybody wants to shake my hand. It’s nice of them, but I wish they wouldn’t, since there’s no way for me to refuse without looking rude. When ...
• A squandered chance for labour peace
  For one brief moment it actually looked like the 74-week-old Voisey’s Bay strike could finally come to an end. Unfortunately, it was just wishful ...
• Worst-case scenario
  Labrador is a winter country. It has lush springs, brilliant summers and crisp autumns, but they are the short seasons, fleeting and weak in the ...