June 16 Edmonton Headlines
Good morning to you, Edmonton.
When you’re driving around the city, do you find those new(ish) electronic billboards annoying, too bright, distracting?
Poverty is still hitting Edmonton’s kids, especially during the recent recession.
A new team is hitting the streets to help homeless individuals with addictions.
You can now fly from Edmonton to Cranbrook, British Columbia. Cranbrook party, anyone? Speaking of flying…the Edmonton International Airport’s new hotel will open next year…
There is a milk revolution happening at one Edmonton school.
St. Albert is losing one of its two newspapers. (The remaining paper is the twice-weekly St. Albert Gazette.)
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Alberta’s wildfire fighting budget is going to be high. And this prediction comes before summer even officially starts.
Our province has a new Chief Medical Examiner. I wonder if shows like CSI and Bones have made it easier to publish a profile like this.
The RCMP are going to look into allegations of people jumping the healthcare line. Meanwhile…the Alberta Health Services CEO can make a little extra money if he reduces some medical wait times.
An Alberta company is now facing charges in importing foreign workers, in a case that’s already seen a lawsuit and counter-suit filed.
It seems the dating website Plenty of Fish isn’t too happy about the government of Alberta’s new website aimed at increasing awareness of sexually transmitted infections; Plenty of Syph.
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That Air Canada strike appears to be over before it really got going.
Canada Post, on the other hand, isn’t going to be delivering your jams of the month anytime soon. (Unless the federal government steps in.) The Alberta government’s launched its backup mail plan!
Haha…the Conservative government might have trouble reforming the Senate because of…Conservative senators.
June 14 Edmonton Headlines
Better late then never, and all that.
The City of Edmonton could be making its way toward a smoking ban in more public places, including parks and playgrounds.
The University of Alberta is investigating a dean of the medical school after he lifted parts of another doctor’s speech for a convocation address. While it certainly wasn’t a paper or report, it’s going to be interesting to see how the U of A deals with this, since you know they’ve got to be tough on students who plagiarize.
I understand that book publishers gots to get paid, but are they really going to get rich on the back of libraries like those in Edmonton and in St. Albert?
Is Edmonton’s younger generation picking up the garden trowel?
We love to shop. Or live to shop. Or do a lot of shopping.
An Edmonton boy is off to the U.S. National Braille Challenge.
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It appears Alberta’s opposition parties agree on more things than they might think. Will they use that to their advantage to defeat the long-ruling Progressive Conservatives though?
Meanwhile…in the Hall of Integrity…the outgoing Alberta Liberal Leader wants the province to have an Integrity Commissioner to watch over the government’s actions and provide a safe place for whistleblowers to report wrongdoing and waste.
Will car insurance go up or down? Up or down?
Stop moving all of your crazy Medicine Hat plants to Edmonton.
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The consequences of indifference.
Heading out of the country this summer? Telus is going to save you some money by cutting their high roaming fees.
If you’re worried about whether you’re being scammed, there’s an app for that. (Although, wouldn’t it be hilariously ironic if the app cost thousands of dollars?)
You ever come home to find your lawn gone?
Air Canada’s got itself a service staff strike. So, keep that in mind when trying to book tickets (and keep it in mind when other Air Canada staff are grumpy).
Gimme (a reason for) Sympathy
Letter to the editor: By Janine Edwards
Where's the strike?
Alright Edmonton, I’ll admit it. I went to get groceries yesterday. And do you know where I went? Safeway.
Why Safeway? Because they don’t need me to buy cloth hipster grocery bags. They don’t charge me for the plastic ones either. And it’s about 2 blocks from my house. (See? I’m eating local.)
When I trudged home with my arms laden with groceries, a thought came into my head. Sure, there are a bunch of distribution centre workers on strike. (I think some make ice cream?) But how are they going to rally my support?
All of them are picketing in front of some warehouse I didn’t even know existed until this strike. Sure, if they were blocking the Yellowhead I’d notice. But where are they? I don’t see them, therefore they don’t want me to care.
However, I heard this morning that Safeway hired up some Scabs. Great! Now, you can picket those Scabs… OR you can rally the city by picketing rotating Safeway locations.
If I rolled up to a Safeway and there were tons of people standing with signs, perhaps chanting… my instincts to avoid conflict would kick in, and I’d immediately consider my options for other grocery stores. I don’t want to risk walking up and getting pummeled with produce, which is what I hear usually happens when distribution workers go on strike.
Even better – they could hand out hand-drawn maps to locations of other grocery stores! That would sure show Safeway! And, because they’re out where the people are, we could see them.
Who knows? Maybe that would make us start to care about the fate of these workers.
