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Feature

Dementia Sets Lives Adrift. Research Is Finding a Better Way Forward

Reimagining the way we care for people

By Bruce Grierson, '86 BA(Spec)

Illustrations by Hugh Syme

Reimagining the way we care for people

By Bruce Grierson, '86 BA(Spec)

July 28, 2018 • 20 minute read

In June 2015, Megan Strickfaden, '89 BA(Spec), '02 MDes, and her grad student Nicole Gaudet, '15 MSc, arrived at a little village on the outskirts of Amsterdam with a Harry Potter-ish name: De Hogeweyk. An octogenarian gentleman was visibly thrilled to see them.

This called for wine.

He took Strickfaden by the arm and squired her into the village grocery store, she recalls. He found a nice red and brought it to the till. He pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and paid for the wine with it. The clerk accepted the payment, bagged up the wine and gave the man back his handkerchief as change.

To its residents, De Hogeweyk - a dead-ringer simulation of a traditional Amsterdam village - isn't a cutting-edge experiment at the frontier of humane dementia care. It is simply home. They cruise on tandem "cosy cycles" down the cobblestone streets. They munch pastries in the café, catch films at the cinema. They wander among gardens so cunningly designed as to appear limitless. They return to family-sized living spaces that closely match the tenor of the household they grew up in, whether country-cosy or artsy-cultural, full of music and light. Trained geriatric nurses and caregivers form a kind of stealth army of invisible support. They're dressed not as authority figures but as shopkeepers, neighbours, friends, perhaps relatives.

De Hogeweyk's reputation rests on what its residents don't do, says Strickfaden. Based on her observations over two extended visits to the village, residents don't fall as much or night-wander as much or take anti-psychotics nearly as much as comparable populations elsewhere.

"The place itself is medicine," she says.

The discovery that environmental "nudges" can boost psychological well-being is one of the triumphs of the last quarter-century of social science. (One of its founders, Richard Thaler, won the Nobel Prize in 2017 for contributions to behavioural economics.) And design elements are psychological levers. By manipulating colours, furnishings, acoustics or the layout itself, architects can send the human mind back in reflection or forward in aspiration. They can slow a frightened heart or stoke curiosity or foster human connection.

Dementia is a syndrome, a deterioration in the ability to process thought beyond what might be expected from normal aging. It affects memory, thinking, language, behaviour and the ability to perform everyday activities.

Source: World Health Organization

People with dementia, it turns out, are especially good candidates for such interventions. "A person with dementia is suggestible," Strickfaden says. "You work with that."

Elements similar to the De Hogeweykian approach are being introduced in care facilities around the world. One of these is Canterbury Lane, the dementia wing of the Canterbury complex in west Edmonton. Strickfaden, a design anthropology professor in the Faculty of Agricultural, Life & Environmental Sciences, has been hired to consult on the multimillion-dollar revamp. It will include features such as a garden that allows residents access to the outdoors without having to be escorted. Hallways that don't dead-end, but loop back into the heart of the action. Little designated spaces for purposeful activity, such as folding laundry. And a cottage system of living spaces divided by theme or feel, matched to the residents' upbringings.

The renovations will take close to four years. Unfortunately, the resident in one room is unlikely to live to see it completed. That's just my guess, knowing that resident quite well.

She is my mother.

More than 50 million people worldwide are afflicted with dementia right now. And since the human lifespan is increasing more quickly than medical science seems to be closing in on a cure (which is to say, not quickly at all), dementia will be part of all our stories: your story or the story of someone you love very much. "Its shadow lies over us all," writes Jay Ingram, '67 BSc, '09 DSc (Honorary), in his book The End of Memory.

So what to do - beyond saying a prayer and giving power of attorney to your most trustworthy blood relative? As recently as 20 years ago, people living with dementia who could no longer manage in their homes were simply institutionalized. In that setting, doctors were authority figures and patients were the passive recipients of meds, directives - and very little in the way of treatment.

But another paradigm is emerging. Dementia treatment is coalescing around the idea of patient-centred care.

In an analysis of dementia care studies published in 2015 in the Journal of the American Geriatric Society, researcher Hannah O'Rourke, '08 BScN, '15 PhD, an assistant professor in the Faculty of Nursing, found four things are of central importance in working with people with dementia. A sense of place. Connection to others. A sense of purpose. And shoring up those three poles of the tent supports the fourth, which is linked to physical well-being: a sense of wellness.

So, while scientists continue their search for ways to prevent and treat the disease (See The Elusive Cure), caregivers are doubling down on tactics that promise benefits right now. Call it the "3 Ws" model of dementia care: focusing on the Where, the Who and the Why of the subjective experience of this devastating syndrome.

Our questions are everybody's questions: what must it be like to be her? And what can we do to help make this a little more bearable - for everyone?


To family members, the hardest part to fathom about dementia is the staggering difference between Good Days and Bad Days. Good Days make you second-guess your decision to move your loved one out of their own home into extended care. Bad Days grimly confirm it.

On a recent visit, my mom positively lit up when I walked through her door. We spent a great day together, at the end of which I promised I'd be back tomorrow. Ten-kilowatt smile. But when I walked through her door the next day, she greeted me with a face that looked as if a bad fish needed taking out. "What are you doing here?" she snarled.

Mom was officially diagnosed with Alzheimer's when she failed the "mini-mental" exam 10 years ago, at age 84. Though in truth, we noticed her slipping as early as her late 70s, one "W" after another. The "where" seemed to go first. On an Alaskan cruise, to celebrate her "80th year," she struggled to find her way back to our cabin and had not cracked the nut even by our last day at sea.

Then the "when" became wobbly. On a visit to the West Coast, she became deeply concerned that we'd miss our flight if we didn't leave right now. So I raced us to the airport, only to hear upon our arrival: "Why the heck are we here so early?"

Social filters fell away. Mom started making derogatory comments about people standing right next to her. She began repeating herself every 30 seconds. Sometimes she noticed herself slipping. "I feel like … I'm … not right in the head!" she'd say and she could barely contain her terror.

The changes in her reflected the brutally quixotic nature of the disease. Like a tornado through a trailer park, it destroys some faculties while leaving others bizarrely intact. On a recent visit, I told Mom it was our dog's birthday - we were having a couple of the neighbourhood pooches over to celebrate.

"Penny," she said, remembering the name of an animal she'd never met. "How old is she, again?"

"She's four."

"So, our 28," Mom said instantly.

Sometimes my sisters and I leave the facility feeling gut-punched, yearning for the sweetness we know is in Mom to surface more often. And our questions are everybody's questions: what must it be like to be her? And what can we do to help make this a little more bearable - for everyone?


 

Are We Our Memories?

Who are we without our memories? For people with dementia, recovering even some of the experience they have banked is a crucial part of feeling, well, like themselves again.

One theory of dementia-related memory loss is that it's a retrieval issue, rather than a data-loss issue. In other words, the memories are still in there, only their tags have fallen off. In recent years, researchers have experimented with using sensory triggers to call some of those memories up.

In Scotland, aging soccer fans living with Alzheimer's are exposed to reconstructions of big games. In North America, people with dementia are supplied with iPods loaded with personalized playlists. Out of Sweden comes an ingenious invention called the BikeAround: a stationary bicycle attached to a wrap-around movie screen onto which a moving landscape is projected. Plug in the client's childhood-home address on Google Street View and suddenly there they are, back in the old 'hood, cruising down streets they probably haven't since they were a kid on a Schwinn.

Reminiscence therapy, this kind of intervention is sometimes called - and preliminary research suggests it can not only boost happiness levels but improve cognitive function. This year, the Canterbury Lane staff tried a simple version of it in the run-up to Mother's Day with a scrapbooking activity. Family members were asked to contribute photos of mom or dad through the years, surrounded, if possible, by the people they have loved the most. "You're really trying to get them to live in those moments," activities supervisor Mbalia Kamara told me. "And then to really validate the feelings that emerge."

For Mom, it was pretty profound. As she turned to a snapshot of her and Dad circa 1980, both of them tanned and smiling in Hawaiian sunshine, she began to cry. A staff member allowed her to sit with that sadness for a few moments, and then steered her toward the light. "He must have been a great guy," she said. "Tell me about your wedding day."

The tonic here, as much as the memory work, is the attention. People with dementia often lose their voice as the disease progresses. The world stops listening. "People used to think that because there was cognitive impairment there wasn't insight - but that's not true," says nursing professor and researcher Hannah O'Rourke. "People with dementia still know what they like and don't like." To pull that insight out is not that difficult, she says. "You ask. You just ask."

A couple of years ago, Elly Park, a post-doctoral fellow in the U of A Faculty of Rehabilitation Medicine, undertook a project with researchers from Simon Fraser University and the University of Toronto on digital storytelling. Facilitators helped people with dementia create a digital story with photos, music and narration by the participant. "Storytelling is a tool," writer Ursula K. Le Guin put it, "for knowing who we are and what we want." People with dementia are no different from the rest of us in this way. Park's research found that encouraging participants to think about and share meaningful stories enhanced relationships with caregivers, increased communication and interaction, and gave participants a sense of accomplishment. "In several cases, participants said they surprised themselves with the stories they were able to remember," says Park.

With Mom, I have found that if I press her too much for family history, she often clams up. For her, the fact-finding is stressful. This is not uncommon. That's why University of Wisconsin theatre professor Anne Basting received a MacArthur Fellowship, sometimes called a genius grant, for her invention called TimeSlips. It replaces "the pressure to remember with the freedom to imagine," as she puts it. TimeSlips is like a book club where no one has read the book, except in this case it's a photograph. Each photograph is striking and mysterious. It looks as if it has a story to tell, so everyone makes one up. There's no way to be wrong, which seems to loosen tongues. "The absolute key to the entire process," Basting says in a video about TimeSlips, "is that we validate everything they say." This sounds like - it is like - improv theatre.

Something a little magical happens when we start telling stories to each other, whether they're true or not. Neuroscience has shown that it boosts the sense of connection between the teller and the listener. As the story unspools, the brains of teller and listener sync up - a phenomenon psychologists call "linguistic alignment." Another bonus: for people who can no longer have out-there-in-the-world adventures, storytelling is an excellent proxy. It stimulates many of the same parts of the brain that light up when we are actually experiencing things - just as reading does.

For the scrapbooking exercise at Canterbury, not all the families contributed photos. So those residents instead received pages of their scrapbooks with stock photos of a random family. Which sounds a little sad but turns out to be a perfectly serviceable alternative. "Just the idea of family can get people talking about their own," says Kamara.

For some reason, my own earliest memories of Mom are all tagged to scents: the cinnamon-y Bee Bell Bakery, the chlorine of the Y swimming pool, the baseball-mitt smell of Jack and Jill Shoes. We'd march into these places hand-in-hand and, invariably, she'd spot someone she knew and tractor-beam them in with her smile. She'd let go of my hand - she needed both of hers to talk - and that would be it. I waited beside her as ice ages came and went. Eventually she'd track me down in some corner of the facility. I could smell her coming.

But wait: how many of these details are true? "Every act of memory is to some degree an act of imagination," the neurologist Oliver Sacks wrote. We're all unreliable narrators. That doesn't mean we all have neurodegenerative disease; dementia in its various forms is a syndrome with specific physiological signatures. But it does mean that people with dementia cannot be dismissed as Other. Every time we call our kid by the dog's name or drive off with our coffee cup on the roof, the difference between the two worlds, practically speaking, grows moot. And somewhere a busker plays There but for Fortune.


 

Our Purpose, Our Selves

"If the residents here were able to describe their biggest frustration, what would they say?" I asked Wendy King, executive director of the Canterbury Foundation, not long ago. "I think maybe they would say, 'You don't understand me,' " she replied.

Hence, a recent trend in dementia care toward what you might call deep client profiling. In the old days, staff received an incoming resident's medical charts, some basic biographical data and not much else. Now, families are often asked to flesh out the story of mom or dad. The more data, the greater the likelihood a resident ends up where they belong, doing things that pluck the strings of their hidden enthusiasms.

A "sense of purpose," as O'Rourke discovered in her analysis of dementia studies, can involve many things: the feeling of contributing to others; a belief in a higher power; some control over how your day unfolds. From a caregiver's perspective, restoring a sense of purpose is about reconnecting people with who they used to be - placing them back in the vicinity of that intersection where, as American writer and theologian Frederick Buechner put it, their deep desire meets the world's deep need.

Strickfaden recalls one man at De Hogeweyk who was restless and searching, and a bit aggressive and hard to approach. Staff went back into his file and discovered he'd once been a farmer. "So one day they hid a bunch of eggs all around the courtyard. And they said, 'We need you to go collect the eggs in the morning.' And he'd do that. And then he'd be wonderful for the rest of the day. It was something that validated who he was."

Alzheimer's disease is the most common cause of dementia, accounting for about 60 to 70 per cent of cases. Dementia can also be caused by stroke, injury or other diseases.

Source: World Health Organization

At Canterbury, one resident used to be a millwright, so he's routinely given things to tinker with. Another was a homemaker who raised a big family. She struggles to find words and can get frustrated and withdrawn, but she positively melts when handed lifelike "Baby Sophia." She dresses the doll in tiny clothes warm from the dryer, whispering and cooing to her and, after a while, "she's more open to the activities the rest of us are doing," says Kamara.

But there's purpose and then there is purpose - something closer to what the Japanese call ikigai. Roughly: the sense that life is worth living because we are needed here. Japanese research has found that people with ikigai live longer. A study published in JAMA Psychiatry in 2012 found that people with Alzheimer's who are animated by purpose staved off cognitive decline longer. No one knows quite why it matters to feel as if we matter - only that it does.

"Feeling you matter is at the core of being a person," British dementia consultant David Sheard often says. "Knowing you matter is at the heart of being alive." Sheard is the founder of Dementia Care Matters, better known as the "butterfly" model of dementia care. I could see its principles in action the day I visited Copper Sky Lodge, in Spruce Grove, Alta., Canada's first butterfly facility. Copper Sky's CEO is Phil Gaudet, well-known in Alberta as the former head of the Good Samaritan Society, a long-running non-profit care provider. But the lodge is mostly run these days by his daughter, Nicole Gaudet. The same Gaudet who, with her thesis advisor Strickfaden, was embedded at De Hogeweyk.

As dementia advances and individuals turn inward, they're less able to seek out the multi-sensory stimulation they may need. So the stimulation must come to them - as butterflies come to flowers. "Even things like this soft sweater I have on are part of it," Gaudet says of the fuzzy sweater she's wearing. "I've been getting lots of hugs today."

At the centre of the butterfly model is emotion. The theory: people will forget what you say, and even what you do, but they will never forget how you made them feel. That's because feeling is processed in a more primitive part of the brain; it's protected, in a sense, from the damage to the neocortex that dementia causes. And so the staff at Copper Sky are trained to circulate, alighting here and there, touching, affirming, offering a cup of tea or a taste of mint, introducing short activities. "Ultimately, we are all feeling beings," says Gaudet. "So if you can connect to what somebody is already feeling, you're four steps ahead."

But there's research and then there's practice. Changing how we care for people with dementia isn't easy. After their experience at De Hogeweyk, Strickfaden and Gaudet were gung-ho to update legislation around dementia care in Canada. They soon discovered they were facing frustrating headwinds, some of which were cultural.

By the numbers

564,000 Canadians living with dementia

937,000 Canadians predicted to have dementia in 15 years

50 million cases of dementia worldwide

US$818 billion in estimated costs of dementia worldwide in 2015

Sources: Alzheimer Society of Canada, World Health Organization


A country's dementia care can reveal a lot about its values. China, for instance, is a culture of service, notes Strickfaden. "But that can actually get in the way of good elder care. People are literally served to death." The Netherlands is big on personal liberties. How far you want to push your limits is up to you, within reason. Quality of life reigns supreme.

Canada has made a different choice. Here a dementia-care facility gets accredited or not based in part on how safe it's deemed to be, says King, head of Edmonton's Canterbury Lane. So De Hogewykian elements like cobblestones, public fountains, accessible barbecues and knives, unfenced kitchens are red flags. In Canada, safety trumps freedom. So does efficiency. Funding here is task-based. "Staff have a task list and a limited amount of time to do it," says King. "So if a resident puts up resistance, it creates stress - because the staff person knows, 'I've got to go to Mrs. Jones next.' "

The task-based funding model is, predictably, frustrating for more progressive voices in dementia care. "You're regulating to the point of strangulation," says Gaudet.

After Copper Sky received a poor grade in its first effort to become a certified butterfly facility three years ago, Gaudet spearheaded massive staff retraining. The first thing she impressed on caregivers is that human connection comes first. You are not going to be fired if you don't get this task and this task and this task done, she told staff. Even though by some measures the extra TLC means more work for them, there's evidence that such an approach leads to lower burnout, since it puts caretakers' actions more in line with the reasons they got into this work in the first place.

"I would abolish long-term care in Canada and start over," says Gaudet, "because I think we've got it wrong. We need to be given the freedom to deliver new kinds of care in inspiring environments."

O'Rourke is cautiously optimistic about the future of dementia care in Canada. "If we - clinicians, researchers, community members, society - can set aside our own fears, assumptions and stigmas about the disease, there is hope. People with dementia have identified many ways to achieve a good quality of life. We just need to listen."

One recent wednesday afternoon at Canterbury Lane, residents sat drowsing in easy chairs in front of an old Jimmy Stewart movie on the big-screen TV. My mother wasn't among them. She likes the privacy of her room and to pick her own shows - and to crank up the volume.

On this visit, I had a plan. Having steeped myself in the Alzheimer's literature and the best ideas of countless experts in multiple domains, I was eager to try a few things. I wanted to help Mom grasp where she is, who she is and why she is. I'd brought an artifact: a tennis racket. Not one of the fancy big ones people wield now but a vintage wooden one. This is what you used in the era when Mom learned to play, gliding around the shale courts of Garneau tennis club, not long after she and my dad met. People can see it on the wall and ask Mom about tennis. And maybe some of those locked-up memories - a serve tossed into the sun, the fitz of a new tin of balls, my dad so gentlemanly out there that he actually cheated against himself - will come rushing back.

Not long ago my sister Lynn Lariviere, '79 BEd, noticed Mom paging through a magazine that had a big splash about the Royal Family. Mom pointed to a gentleman in a waistcoat. "That is the man I'm going to marry," she said. A few years ago Lynn might have laughed or corrected her. But we have learned that it's not our job to pull Mom back into this world. Our job is to meet her in hers. Lynn raised her eyebrows in enthusiasm, nodded and asked for details about the wedding.

These days Mom's eyes reveal a lot. There's not much reminiscing going on. Nor is there planning. The headlights reach to the next bend in the road and that's it. But this is what people with dementia have, most profoundly, to teach us. They are champions at living in the now. The question, for all of us, is how can we make the now better?

I believe the answer is to just be there. Or in the case of my own too-infrequent visits, make sure I'm there when I'm there.

So Mom and I go for silent wheelchair tours to check out the action over in the nearby manor - past the kitchen, down the long, carpeted hallways. Little bios outside each resident's door tell of their unique strengths. That's right out of the David Sheard playbook: "Search for the treasure in each individual."

"I've learned that if I attach too much to whether she remembers my visit, I'm going to be bitter," Lynn told me on the phone recently. So you shift the bar. A cup of coffee, a stab at a cribbage game, a trip to the atrium to hear the piano player plink out Moon River: that is a win. We are not our memories.

Even though it sometimes feels that way.


Watch Nicole Gaudet's research film about De Hogeweyk.

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Just For Fun
Dodge Ball Redux
false
Just For Fun
Happy 60th Birthday Rutherford
false
Profile
Polar Attraction
false
Notes
Campus Connections
Notes
Press'd Sandwiches
Notes
An Alumni "Operation" in Ecuador
Notes
Top 40 Under 40
false
Tech
The Wayback Machine
false
Discovery
Mussel Man
false
Feature
Hall of Famers
false
Health
Magical Moments
false
Tech
Thinking Big
false
Tech
Sweet Tweet
Illustration of two men playing golf, one is a large Falstaffian character, the other is wearing a cloak and hat, resembling Sherlock Holmes
Continuing Education
Book, Meet Cover
Illustration of a woman curled up dreaming
Thesis
The Brain’s Pain
Photo of a businesswoman standing at a flip chart leading a meeting
Alumni Impact 2024
Four Ways for Women — or Anyone — to Take the Lead
false
Trails
Why Don’t Sheep Shrink When They Get Wet?
false
Alumni Impact 2024
Helping Young People Find Their Voices
false
Living
How to Face Failure
 a man doing paperwork in front of his laptop
Did You Know
Five Tips to Prepare for the Inevitable
Colourful illustration of woman’s side profile with hair flowing behind her
Feature
The Power of AI Is In Our Hands. What Do We Need to Know?
false
Health
Hope in Motion
a photo of Bruce Ritchie
2023 Distinguished Alumni Award
A Champion for People With Rare Blood Disorders
.
Thesis
For Want of a Nail
Two female businesswomen working at a desk
At Work
Who Wants To Be an Entrepreneur?
Girl with her ear up to a large metal sculpture
Living
How to Appreciate Sculpture
John Acorn holding and inspecting a rock in a creek bed
Just for Fun
Take a Walk on the Wild Side
false
Did You Know
Six Facts About Pollinators You Won't Bee-lieve
false
Profile
Legendary Links
false
Did You Know
Five Tips for Learning and Teaching Mandarin
Illustration of farmland with crops, animals, and farmers.
Environment
Pesky Pests and Other Threats
false
Tiny
Little Wonders
false
Relationships
Four Tips to Nurture a Relationship
false
Tiny
Time Machines
false
Distinguished Alumni Award
This Man Makes Medical Treatment Better For Us All
Common Vampire Bat
Continuing Education
Bloodthirsty Behaviour
false
Feature
Rural Frontiers
false
Did You Know
City Dwellers
false
Thesis
Engineering Student Groups Make Their Own Chances
false
Tech
Five Things I've Learned About Using AI for Social Good
false
Feature
The Impossible Made Possible
false
At Work
Goodwill Abounds
false
Health
Health Gets More Precise
false
Continuing Education
Think Like a Designer
false
Thesis
Where I Stop and You Start
false
Continuing Education
In the Minds of Mavericks
false
At Work
Five Things I’ve Learned About Working in the Non-Profit Sector
false
Profile
Five Things I’ve Learned About Working Together
false
Just For Fun
The Buzz About Bugs
false
Society
How To Be a Better Treaty Person
false
Health
It’s Got to Be Fun
false
Thesis
When the Master Makes Mistakes
false
Society
The Future of Food Delivers
false
Did You Know
Geared Up for Green-and-Gold
false
DIY
How to Be Wikipedia Wise
false
Society
Leadership in Times of Change
false
Technology
Better With Blockchain
false
Health
Whose Health Is in Harm’s Way?
false
Society
A Reading List for Fresh Perspectives
false
Alumni Awards
Karen Barnes Bolstered Education In the North
false
Alumni Awards
Howard Leeson Played a Key Role in Crafting Our Constitution
false
News
Restructuring Will Make UAlberta More Nimble, Efficient, Says President
false
Just For Fun
Wind Down the Year With Beer
false
Society
Three Paths
false
New Trail Classic
Do Not Bend or Mutilate — This Is a Human Being
false
Walking Together
Let’s Walk the Talk to End Racism
false
Discovery
An Inside Look at COVID-19 Research
false
Feature
The Future of Pandemics is Proactive
false
Living
'With This Hope We Can Do Beautiful Things'
false
Feature
Hope is an Overused Word, But the Real Thing Can be Powerful
false
At Home
A Common Quest
false
Living
Lawyers Get Creative As People Update Wills
false
Health
How to Neutralize Negative COVID-19 Thoughts
false
Living
Tips for Welcoming Refugees to Canada
false
At Home
Quarantine Bookshelf
false
Living
Six Things I’ve Learned About Embracing Discomfort
false
Thesis
Atypical Learning and Remarkable Results
false
DIY
Tuck Shop Cinnamon Bun Recipe
false
At Home
5 Books to Inspire Kids and Their Parents
false
Feature
A Justice for All
false
Thesis
Duplicate Studies
false
Thesis
Fair Play
false
Health
How I Learned to Ask for Help
false
Thesis
The Space Overhead
false
Tech
Inner Space
false
Energy
Indigenous Workers Tell Their Stories
false
Energy
People-Friendly Energy Projects
false
Energy
Powered Up
false
Energy
New Ways to Generate and Store Power
false
Did You Know
Meet Your New Alumni President
false
DIY
Build Your Own Robot From Junk at Home
false
Just For Fun
A Taste of Nostalgia
false
Health
How to Clean Your (Truly Gross, Germy) Phone
false
Money
How to Be Creative and Make Money
false
DIY
How to Make Your Words Last
false
DIY
How to Draw a Barn (on Fire)
false
Did You Know
How to Speak in Public With Aplomb
false
Tech
How Dylan Brenneis Built a Robot From Junk at Home
false
Living
Choose and Care for Your Perfect Christmas Tree
false
Health
Smoking Pot Behind Lister Is Legal
false
Thesis
How Long Until We Eat the Zoo?
false
Thesis
Have Your Burger and Eat It, Too
false
Alumni Awards
‘I think back with horror’
false
Trails
Tilting
false
Feature
Dementia Sets Lives Adrift. Research Is Finding a Better Way Forward
false
Health
The Elusive Cure
false
Thesis
Why You Feel Like Your Friends Are Having More Fun on Social Media
false
Thesis
Where Does Consciousness Live?
false
Living
Tips on How to Stink Less
false
Continuing Education
Five Things I’ve Learned About Perseverance
false
Continuing Education
Grant Me the Serenity to Accept My Inner Volcano
false
Tech
These Are Not Your Average Rabbits
These are not your average rabbits
false
At Work
How to Launch a Career During COVID-19
false
Profile
7 Things You Should Know About Billy-Ray Belcourt
false
Did You Know
What Do You Do When There’s No Reliable Internet?
false
Continuing Education
Check Your Blind Spots
false
Tech
They Saw What on YouTube?
false
Just For Fun
Flashback
Just For Fun
Fashion Sense
false
Discovery
Five Objects That Changed Our Lives
Alumni Awards
For giving Canadians insight into urgent global stories
false
Profile
For Fighting for LGBTQ Rights
Alumni Awards
For Bringing News and Entertainment to Canadian TV viewers
false
Feature
A Call to Bear Witness
false
Feature
Indigenous on Campus
false
Feature
Behind the Bodice
false
Feature
Reading Toward Reconciliation and More
News
Campus News
false
Did You Know
The Gateway's New Identity
false
Living
Put on Your Cape and Pants; It's Time to Go Out
false
Discovery
Research in the News
false
Continuing Education
Findings in the Field
false
Did You Know
Dark Cosmic Mysteries Illuminated
false
Environment
Alumni Among Wildfire Heroes
false
News
Research in the News
false
Discovery
'Welding' Neurons Opens Door to Repairing Nerves
false
Discovery
Paleontologists Discover Complete Baby Dino Skeleton
false
News
Alumni in the News
Did You Know
New Student Residence and Indigenous Gathering Place Coming to North Campus
false
Did You Know
Lecture Hall to Legislature
false
Health
When Food is Your Enemy
Discovery
Research Briefs
false
Environment
Our Man on Mars
false
Discovery
Who's the Boss of Evolution?
false
News
Kim Campbell Heads New College
Did You Know
From the Collections
false
Profile
Learning to Lead
false
Environment
Five Questions About Frankenstorms
false
Discovery
Blue Sky Green Moss
false
Profile
The Road to a Rhodes
News
Campus News
false
Health
A Mighty Heart
false
Did You Know
Medal of Freedom
false
Sweating the Small Stuff
false
Environment
Taking The Initiative
false
Discovery
Cell Mates
false
Did You Know
It Is Brain Surgery
false
In Memoriam
Remembering Robert Kroetch
Notes
Powerful Women
Notes
Royal Society of Canada Honours
Notes
Meet Your Reunion Organizer
false
Health
Treating the King Georges of Edmonton... and Calgary
false
Discovery
Weird Science
false
Feature
Whatsoever Things Are True
false
Feature
U of A's Newest Building
false
Continuing Education
Rhodes Worthy
false
Did You Know
Uphill Racer
false
Profile
PhD Prize Money
Illustration of people on different paths
Profile
Six Things I’ve Learned About Careers
One yellow piggy bank in a group of purple piggy banks
Money
Five Things I Learned About Managing My Money
Taylor McPherson and Katie Mulkay
Profile
Five Things We Learned Competing in The Amazing Race Canada
false
Continuing Education
Winning Actually Isn’t Everything
false
Alumni Impact 2024
Playing With Food, Seriously
Grads Matt and Jalene Anderson-Baron sitting at a table and looking at a laptop
Alumni Impact 2024
Thinking Tiny to Go Big
Glowing orb with emanating binary code and light.
Did You Know
What’s Up With Quantum Science?
An illustrated silhouette of a human head surrounded by stylized electronic waves
Discovery
AI Research in Action
a photo of Deena Hinshaw
2023 Distinguished Alumni Award
Calm in the Eye of the Pandemic Storm
a photo of Gordon Wilkes
2023 Distinguished Alumni Award
He Helped Give Patients Confidence to Face the World
Colourful grid of different coloured bananas
Did You Know
Does ChatGPT Really Understand Us?
hildren telling scary stories in a tent at night
Just for Fun
How to Tell a Terrifying Tale
Mature male adult with headphones on, taking a hearing test in a soundproof booth
Health
Breaking the Silence on Hearing Loss
Lazina Mckenzie at a November Project workout
Health
How to Become a Morning Exercise Person in Any Season
false
Profile
Nine Questions With Your New Alumni Association President
People rock climbing
Thesis
Reading, Riding and Arithmetic
false
Feature
Why You Should Care About Small Molecule Drugs
Corridor of people with a man at the center
Tiny
What Is the Smallest Small?
Helping child to read
How-to
How to Help a Child Read Better
false
Tiny
Teeny Words Expose Societal Changes
Couple walking outside
Health
One Small Step
false
Distinguished Alumni Award
Scientist-Entrepreneur Creates Drug Molecules That Can Change Lives
false
Profile
Five Things I’ve Learned About Preserving Indigenous Languages
false
Thesis
It Lies in the Making
false
Continuing Education
A Matter of Meat
false
At Work
How to Manage Imposter Syndrome
false
Thesis
Linger In the In-Between
false
Society
‘We Can Hear the Fighting From Afar’’
false
Society
Pitch Perfect
false
Society
5 Things I've Learned About Black History on the Prairies
false
Living
Let It Snow
false
Discovery
What Has a Nobel Prize Ever Done For You?
false
Relationships
Friends Forever
false
Thesis
Route of Memory
false
In Memoriam
To My Unknown Friend
false
Living
How to Be Media Literate
false
At Home
What Is the Pandemic Doing to My Young Child?
false
Continuing Education
Don't Be Boring!
false
Environment
The Future of Farming is Smarter
false
Discovery
A Nobel Search
false
Environment
How to Fashion a Sustainable Future
false
Living
See Spot Cope
false
New Trail 100
Lawnmowers and Rabbits: A Tale of Progress
false
New Trail 100
Then and Now: Discoveries That Keep on Giving
Photo of Michael Houghton
Health
In Conversation: Michael Houghton
false
New Trail 100
Mystery on Campus
false
Alumni Awards
Stanley Read Brought Compassion to Families Living with HIV/AIDS
false
At Work
How To Network
false
Thesis
Wrong Way, Again
false
At Work
Rethink Your Next Job Interview
false
Discovery
COVID-19-Fighting Tools
false
Environment
Renewable Energy Myths, Busted
false
Profile
Coming Home
false
Just For Fun
A Great Catch
false
Feature
The Virus of Social Unrest
false
Commentary
Reflections on Flight PS752
false
Money
The Dos and Don’ts of Investing After a Market Crash
false
Alumni Recommend
Feed Your Inner, Isolated Art Lover
false
At Work
Business As Unusual
false
At Work
When the Lectern Is in the Living Room
false
At Home
Tips to Help School Your Kids at Home
false
How-to
Support Your Kids During the COVID-19 Pandemic
false
In Memoriam
‘He Was One of a Kind’
false
Thesis
When Your Thoughts Run Away With You
false
Feature
Cinnamon Buns: A Love Story
false
Did You Know
What Baseball Fights Tell Us About Ourselves
false
Commentary
Opining the Opinions
false
Thesis
Seen One, Seen ’Em All
false
Thesis
More Than the Sum of Your Parts
false
Thesis
Whole Medicines
false
Environment
Tips to Free You From Plastic
false
Just For Fun
Are You a Sucker for Pseudoscience?
false
Energy
From Research to Reality
false
Energy
Lost in Transmission
Energy
Decontaminate Water With Chicken Feathers
false
Energy
Reworking the Flywheel for Better Energy Storage
false
Just for Fun
How to Start a Podcast
false
Health
New Food Labels Will Help You Choose
false
Just For Fun
How to Find a Great Podcast
false
Just For Fun
How to Skate Like Connor McDavid
false
Did You Know
How to Feed Your Inner Genealogist
false
Just For Fun
How to Make a Paper Airplane to Challenge Your Assumptions
false
Did You Know
How to Take Part in a Round Dance
false
Living
How to See Like an Artist
false
Relationships
How to Avoid Death by Small Talk
false
Health
Sugar Highs Are Not a Real Thing
false
Continuing Education
That Time I Enrolled in a Community
false
Thesis
Good News for Picky Eaters
Alumni Awards
For being a coach and a leader
false
Thesis
Deserts and Swamps
false
Just For Fun
Registration Woes
false
Environment
Not a Drop Wasted
false
At Home
How to Hang Art Like a Boss
false
Thesis
Your Tech, Your Self
false
Thesis
When Medicine Is Designed Just for You
false
Trails
In Lister Town
false
Feature
The Advance of AI: Should We Be Worried?
false
Tech
Have You Heard the One About the Robot Comedian?
Tech
Unexpected insights from an AI rock star
false
Trails
Modern Campus Life
false
Tech
Fighting Fire With Data
false
Health
Keeping Gym-Class Dropouts in the Game
false
Living
7 Things You Should Know to Rock Your Look
false
Profile
A Sport Psychologist Was Among the Supporters and Athletes Hurrying Hard in Pyeongchang
false
Health
Clearing the Smoke on Cannabis
false
Feature
Seen/Unseen
Feature
Words and Images
Alumni Awards
For finding new ways to succeed in sports
Alumni Awards
For being a powerful voice for change
Alumni Awards
For Being a Model of Leadership
Alumni Awards
For devoting his life to serving the public
false
Feature
How We Can Work Together
false
Feature
A Hard Walk
false
Feature
Facing the Painful Truth
false
Feature
More From the TRC
false
Commentary
Fake News and Surviving a Post-truth World
false
Society
A Cultural Space in a Natural Place
false
Did You Know
Salt Could Save Lives
false
Health
Research Rises From the Ashes
false
Did You Know
The Power of his Song
false
Health
A Healthier Future for Women and Children Is Closer Than Ever
Did You Know
For the Public Good
false
Tech
Changing the Game: Why Teaching AI to Play is More Than Fun and Games
Discovery
Research in the News
false
News
News Briefs
false
Living
Beyond the Books in Italy
false
Did You Know
Milk in Tea Can Reduce Teeth Stains
false
News
Campus News
false
News
Alumni in the News
false
News
David Turpin Named Next U of A President
News
University Plans Land Trust
News
News Briefs
false
Just For Fun
Hiding and Seeking Fun
Discovery
Research in the News
false
Did You Know
Alumna in Judge's Seat at Olympics
false
Just For Fun
Superlative U
false
Just For Fun
Raise a Glass for the Bears and Pandas
false
Society
The Accidental Protestor
false
Health
New Horizons in Health Care
false
Did You Know
The Alumni Effect
false
Profile
The New Kid on Campus
false
Health
Mastering Health Sciences Education
false
Discovery
Research VP Wins Top Prize
false
Discovery
Water Bearers
false
Relationships
Team Building
Continuing Education
High School Reunion
Society
Biotechnology Meets Art
false
Living
One Village at a Time
Notes
Alumni in Australia
false
News
Ultra-Sonic Performance
false
Discovery
Hot Tip
false
Feature
Easy Rider Endowment
false
Health
Master Mind
false
Discovery
Cell Mates
false
Did You Know
Mission to Mars
false
Discovery
You Do the Math