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

• Not such fine work after all
  It had seemed like a job well done at the time, but it didn't last very long. Now, instead of being a fine example for all road builders in ...
• The premier's wearing the wrong hat
  Somebody - not the left-leaning columnists Danny Williams doesn't read, but someone he'll listen to - should remind the premier of Newfoundland ...
• Finding forgiveness on the hardtop
  You can't blame politicians for trying, but sometimes even their best intentions go awry. All Lake Melville MHA John Hickey wanted was to get a ...
• Council silent on future of fire service
  For almost two hours everyone gathered around a burning house in Sheshatshiu several weeks ago expected that the firefighters would be pulling ...
• Labrador with a Scottish brogue
  What makes a nation? The Compact Edition of the Oxford English Dictionary (which has been previously quoted in this column on this very word) ...
• Stealing from the poor
  You can give yourself a lot of reasons for taking something that doesn't belong to you - some can be good, but more often they're bad. You can ...
• Ottawa comes to the Big Land
  Prime Minister Stephen Harper paid a visit to central Labrador on July 11, but he didn't stay long enough to say hi to very many people. Lots of ...
• Finally, the truth comes out
  Is anyone really surprised to learn that Premier Danny Williams is more interested in money than in preserving a healthy environment? Businessmen ...
• Little cause for celebration
  Thunder was the first sign - or rather, the first step. No rain was in the forecast for North West River a week or so before Canada Day, but ...
• Just pave the thing already
  The truck was lying on its side in the ditch with all 14 wheels exposed to the overcast sky. The truck had been heading north towards Labrador ...
• Following my homeward star
  In the woods of Ontario, an hour or two northwest of Ottawa by car, the mosquitos are out, but they're hardly any bother at all. After 20 ...
• Time for a leader from the north
  In all the mess the federal Conservatives have been creating for themselves in the past few weeks (and months) they may have actually found their ...
• Third side to the Hubbard story
  The old journalistic adage that there are two sides to every story is wrong. There are usually many more. Take, for example, the story of the ...
• Further adventures in dentistry
  "I don't care," said the dentist. It was not what I expect to hear from a health-care professional and it caught me off guard, but it turns out I ...
• Retired from the ring, but still fighting
  George Chuvalo is 71 years old, but he looks like he could still defend his title as Canadian heavyweight champion. The retired boxer is short ...
• My Canada includes 'Travian'
  The blood is on my hands. The loss of lives was horrendous. I had grown over-confident and so I sent 100 good soldiers, hardy macemen, to useless ...
• A fine standard to follow
  Blind Hill is no more. Blind Hill was not a town. It played little or no part in the rich history of Labrador. It was not an old community ...
• Double flat tax on the self-employed
  Low-paid, self-employed workers (of whom, according to the 2005 national census, there were 807,030 in Canada with an annual net income of less ...
• And then there was one
  The ether is crowded in most of the world, with the AM and FM bands packed with signals from dozens of broadcasters in any given area, but in ...
• The politics of woodland struggle
  Caribou are getting killed, Quebec Innu look like the bad guys and the Quebec government is losing face. The only ones getting anything good ...
• The cost of blood on the snow
  Full Story: By the time these words are published, all 100 caribou in the Joir River Group - which has been meandering through the woodlands ...
• Racing on the cheating edge
  All is not well in the land of Cain. As anyone who follows the Cain's Quest endurance race already knows, things were going quite well in the ...
• Transgressing the unwritten law
  I was about as far away from the wooded trails and bogs of Newfoundland and Labrador as I could get. I was in the middle of a small German ...
• March is snow month
  Once, some years ago, a friend called for me on a sunny March morning, inviting me to come along with him on a trip across the Mealy Mountains. ...
• More dam words
  A lot of people in Newfoundland and Labrador, especially those living on the island's west coast, have finally gotten a long-needed eye-opener: ...
• Dam talks, dam money, dam proponents, dam pollution
  Battlelines are about to be drawn in meeting rooms across Labrador between those who want to build more hydroelectric dams on the Churchill River ...
• Taking a walk on the Norwalk
  No matter how much I wanted to, no matter how much I dreamed for it to happen, I could not bring myself to vomit. I had some friendly, graphic ...
• Ottawa on the brain
  Deadline is noon. It's time to write a column, but about what? Not politics. Everyone's sick of politics. The weather is a safer bet: Winter is ...
• A question of respect, so-called
  One cold winter day I returned to my North West River home to find a haunch of caribou waiting for me on my front step. At first I thought it was ...
• A Labrador stimulous wish list
  Christmas seems to be coming early this year, or maybe just a little bit late. At least that seems to be the national hope. People all over ...