Peter Menzies
Peter Menzies writes on culture, media and communications. While he now works in the cultural industry and advises tech companies, he has in the past served as vice chairman of telecommunications for the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC). He was publisher and editor-in-chief of one of Canada's major daily newspapers, the Calgary Herald.
Bio last updated November 26th, 2021.
Articles by Peter Menzies
What People Forget About Freedoms
By Peter Menzies
October 1, 2012
The purpose of the cartoon project—"The Face of Muhammad"—by Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten was in itself driven by the desire by the editors to make a statement about free speech after hearing that writer Kare Bluitgen was unable to find an illustrator for his children's book about Muhammad The press, after all, are only one part of society, and all parts enjoy those same freedoms of speech and action
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The Pathetic Family
Peter Menzies
September 25, 2012
Intact families (children living with biological parents) constitute a mere 34.3% of Canadian census families, while step-families represent 4.9% And—now I'm going way, way out on a limb—it's worth wondering that it is not marriage that they fear so much as it is divorce/break-up of families because...
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Peter Lougheed: The Candle for His Generation
Peter Menzies
September 17, 2012
But over the years, as the Canadian Pacifics, the Imperial Oils, and many others began to move their head offices to Calgary it was clear Lougheed's mission was being accomplished Alberta then was a much smaller place but it was far from the agrarian backwater that many have assumed it to have been ...
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The Man the Hour Demands
Peter Menzies
September 7, 2012
What struck me was how so many of them are convinced that the character and the plan of a single human being can change the world, when most often it is the unanticipated challenges the world's events present that reveals our character, changes our lives, and even completely alters the mandate and t...
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What's left to be progressive about?
Peter Menzies
August 27, 2012
Yet while they may share a desire for liberal outcomes in society, those groups are actually more divided at their foundations than are conservatives and liberals/progressives who agree on markets as fundamental to economic success (Here it is worth remembering that in terms of politics, Canada's "T...
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Hats & Higher Powers
Peter Menzies
August 21, 2012
Many countries not fortunate enough to enjoy the benefits of constitutional monarchy have adapted that to be loyal to "God and my country" (whatever unfortunate republican construct that may be), and in so doing it is fair to say they have retained the original principles intended by the pledge But ...
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Who's Serving Whom?
Peter Menzies
August 13, 2012
The services of Team Canada's Stewart, for instance, were declined by Team USA, so Canada became an alternative option to not only pursue her ambitions on the field but to serve her "other" country ...
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This Was Never Going to Happen
Peter Menzies
July 31, 2012
As much as who should and should not be married and to how many people at any one time continues to be a debate in North American society, no one seems anymore to care about whether or not marriage is a useful institution and if it is, is it healthy? So, I thought it worth checking with Statistics C...
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Sneaking in the Back
Peter Menzies
July 23, 2012
So while the interview with I Dig Your Girlfriend was no doubt well-received in the lesbian and gay community, what stirred the pot among some of the 34% of Albertans who voted for Smith's party in this year's April 23 election was that when she said people of faith have to show they can represent e...
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The Highway of Death
Peter Menzies
July 11, 2012
But all during the years when the province's books were in outstandingly fine nick and $4 billion was being budgeted for trendy items such as carbon capture and storage, people were dying on Highway 63 It carries more tonnage per kilometer than any highway in the world, transferring massive pieces o...
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What Else Lives to 100?
Peter Menzies
July 5, 2012
This, after all, is an event that was started up by an entrepreneur, Guy Weadick, in order to honour the conclusion of the open range way of life that pretty much ended in 1905 when Alberta became a province and, as they say, "the barbed wire went up ...
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Social Liberal, Fiscal Conservative
Peter Menzies
June 18, 2012
Certainly the Trudeau years marked great "progress" for the nation's social liberals, but there wasn't anything remotely fiscally conservative about them ...
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Death and Getting Better
Peter Menzies
June 4, 2012
Recent events continue to confirm that media in Canada is undergoing a fundamental transformation away from dominant legacy platforms into an era of diversity and competition that should and could enrich the culture ...
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An Absurdly Large Country
Peter Menzies
May 28, 2012
Conscious of the fact Canada is a rather large country—the entire United Kingdom and its 60 million people fit into a land mass 36% the size of the province of Alberta and its 3.6 million people alone—they were curious to know precisely how far it is between Calgary and Ottawa ...
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The Soul of a City
Peter Menzies
May 1, 2012
Calgary city hall re-opens its downtown plan to accommodate people of faith. Peter Menzies reports.
How, I thought, could this have happened? Had we not just heard Peter Burgener describe how in all the world's cities—great and small—there is a temple, a mosque, a synagogue, shrine or cathedral embedded in their cores as if it were the bedrock upon which those civilizations were built? Was Calgary...
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Making this up as we go along
Peter Menzies
March 9, 2012
Being first demands less time for proof which puts being accurate at high risk ...
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Tweeted Sunday after going to church
Peter Menzies
March 7, 2012
How famous people think I know Kady ...
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Children and tears
Peter Menzies
January 4, 2012
The other is that as we entered an era in which having children was a clear matter of choice, more and more women chose not to have them, and the birth rate plunged to 1.6 children per woman ...
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A Greeting Once Rich
Peter Menzies
December 23, 2011
Stripping the greeting down to the bare bones of "Happy Holidays" does not just mask the religious meaning of the day to make it acceptable in a secular society; it buries the a-religious cultural understanding of Christmas as the one day on the statutory holiday calendar that is uniquely dedicated ...
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Brotherhood and everlasting history
Peter Menzies
December 6, 2011
Menzies but much of the young man's story was hazy and lost in the fog of time But in the days that followed last week's story and contact with the good folks in Gainsborough, the story burst to life ...
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Common Life
Peter Menzies
October 18, 2011
Eyes light up in a place of serious darkness. "Common Life" features Canadian voices articulating perspectives on those things that connect us.
Because as much as it is a clear part of the Judeo-Christian tradition to "Be fruitful and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it; have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over every living thing that moves on the earth" (Genesis 1:28), the modern sense of stewardship i...
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First day of this, last day of that
Peter Menzies
September 9, 2011
11 2001 edition of EXTRA (America Under Attack) is the last great artifact of the era when newspapers roamed the earth like the media equivalent to Tyrannosaurus Rex By noon, a single section 8-page EXTRA (America Under Attack) edition was on those presses and heading out the door and onto the stree...