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Alberta Decides: Whether or not to decide, after 9 other decisions

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Multiple beginnings                             Canada didn't begin all at once. At the 1st beginning on July 1 1867, there were the 4 founding provinces of Ontario, Quebec, Nova Scotia and New Brunswick. Manitoba, British Columbia and Prince Edward Island joined in 1870, 1871, and 1873. In the post-Victorian era, along came Alberta and Saskatchewan in 1905, completed by Newfoundland (a.k.a. Newfoundland and Labrador) in 1949.             Post war history has been an occasionally bumpy ride, most notably with unease starting in Quebec in the 1960s. Grievances in  La Belle Province predate confederation by more than a century.           More recently, regional discontent has mainly been elsewhere.  Ottawa  has virtually become a rude word in Alberta, synonymous with unwanted and damaging policies "we didn't vote for" . Consequentially,...
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World(ish) Cup

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The sport with 2 names    Whereas it is mostly known as football, in 2 of the 3 host nations of the World Cup, it is known as  soccer . The history of both terms predates English snobbery of the 1980s about the North American use of the term football. The best historic context is from Stefan Szymanski, Professor of Sports Management at the University of Michigan and former Professor of Economics and MBA Dean at Cass Business School, part of the University of London. One of the most pre-eminent sports economists took to researching the "strange" football versus soccer debate.        When the Football Association was founded in 1863 by Oxford graduates, football was perceived as a posh sport. It began as association football to differentiate it from another popular (and new) sport: rugby football . The emergence of the word soccer is potentially from Szymanski's theory that "soc" came from the middle of "association" with "er" added. While thi...
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