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

• Where do you stand?
  Did everybody study? MP Todd Russell is testing Labradorians on the latest proposal to build the Lower Churchill hydroelectric project. He ...
• Unfounded, unsubstantiated, unjustified and unwarranted
  When four screaming police cars lead you straight to the house of one of your best friends, and a half-dozen cops with pistols and scoped rifles ...
• Long live the Queen
  A week can be an eternity in politics. In our democratic arena of votes and propaganda, so much can change so fast that we can end up living in a ...
• On sacrificing career for humour
  Frankly, I don’t know what it takes. I’ve been trying to piss Premier Danny Williams off for years, but I just can’t get the hang of it.Other ...
• Who should be training whom?
  Normally there’s little about Prime Minister Stephen Harper that deserves praise, but his decision to send almost 1,000 Canadian troops to ...
• Are they forgetting something?
  Imagine: after many tens of millions of dollars have been spent by the government in St. John’s on lawyers, consultants, bureaucrats and ...
• The joke’s on us
  A priest, a rabbi and a Newfoundland premier walk into a bar. The bartender looks up and says: What’s this, a joke?An old one, that’s for sure.A ...
• Do you smell that?
  The odour is unique: musty, but not unpleasant; distinctive, but not strong. It can be smelled in only one kind of place. To know it is to be ...
• Drivers beware
  Dirt doesn’t need long to show its quality. Labrador’s newest so-called highway is less than a year old, but it’s already in rough and dangerous ...
• There ain’t no new dawn a-risin’
  Premier Danny Williams got some bad news recently when he had his first meeting with the new grand chief of the Innu Nation.The New Dawn, ...
• Rocky times in Rocky Harbour
  Times are good for a lot of people who live and do business in the towns that have the fortune of being in the middle of one of the jewels of ...
• The benefits of just being yourself
  The people of Cartwright are learning they shouldn’t underestimate their own appeal. Life has been changing fast in this coastal community. After ...
• Another lesson in climate change
  Tuesday was not quite the largest Labrador day on record (meaning amazingly sunny and mild), but it came pretty darned close.Fall is always a ...
• Putting the patients to bed
  My high school physics teacher — who taught me a little about science, but more about the fine art of canoe paddling — owned a small ...
• Ah, the Governor General
  Michaëlle Jean left Labrador more than a week ago, yet something of her lingers. Her grace, her beauty, her intelligence and wit and the warmth ...
• Taking care of the care homes
  What the government of Newfoundland and Labrador learned a few days ago in Happy Valley-Goose Bay was that while the region’s new long-term care ...
• An uncertain future for a priceless treasure
  On that morning near the end of July, with no polar bears or human hunters in sight, that bear was taking a relatively carefree stroll towards a ...
• A Sunday drive to nowhere
  It happens almost every year. Somebody sees the mudflats at low tide and decides his truck doesn’t need a road to drive on. As long as he can ...
• A glimpse into the future of shortages
  If you wanted more than that you had to buy them on the black market, although they weren’t always available there, either. Also, if you were ...
• Dispatch from the front lines
  I hate carpenters. I say that without apology. Everyone is welcome into my house except them. In my heart, I respect all living things - except ...
• On the outs with the in-crowd
  The voice on the radio sounded disturbingly like mine. It also sounded really pissed off. The voice was responding to questions from an ...
• Beggaring the present for Flaherty's future
  Federal finance minister Jim Flaherty (the reigning Lord of All Our Money) has decreed that we Canadians are not saving enough for our ...
• Facing up to a filthy global habit
  Picture yourself in the country of Greece, where the sun is warm, the ruins are ancient and the tidy villages are whitewashed beside a sparkling ...
• Few helped by premiers Quebec tirades
  Summer has not quite arrived in Labrador, but the weather im-proved enough to allow Michel, a quarry-company worker from Quebec, to take a ...
• Magpies of the world unite
  "Dad says you can take anything you want," one of my neighbours told me, "but there's something I want." I guessed what it was. "The square green ...
• Sudden tragedy touches many lives
  After weeks of cold rain and wet snow, the sun finally emerged a few days ago to bring warmth to Labrador. But there were no bright faces ...
• Open house to the same old story
  The scene at the Labrador Friendship Centre in Happy Valley-Goose Bay last week was quite familiar. The large multi-purpose room had been taken ...
• Forty-two: a layman's view of it all
  When spring is supposed to be in the air, but instead wet snow keeps falling from the sky, where can a middle-aged man's fancies turn except to ...
• Democracy now safe for two weeks, at least
  After months of study and deliberation, the Speaker of the House of Commons has come up with a ruling blatantly obvious to anyone with any ...
• Memories lost when old buildings disappear
  A little rust-coloured squirrel sits a couple of metres away from me, chewing the husks off a spruce cone as I measure and mark a wooden plank ...