Happy Mother's Day

Please, Grow a Row for the Cranbrook Food Bank

Gordon Terrace School Celebrates Art, Mother's Day and raises funds for Nepal

The Annual Gordon Terrace Art Show was held on Thursday May 7th and the sale of jewelry, flowers and hand made gifts raised over a $1000 for Nepal.  The day celebrated poetry, music and dancing as well as the visual arts including some work of the staff.  The school in Nepal,  built with funds raised by Gordon Terrace students, is currently housing families who have lost their homes due to the earthquake.

What's Happening...

Thursday May 7-10

Mt Baker School presents

The Drowsy Chaparone

a Musical

7:30pm

Key City Theatre

Saturday May 9th

Cranbrook Farmer's Market
10:00am - 1:00pm
Ktunaxa Gym

Children's Festival
10:00am - 4:00pm
Mt Baker Secondary School

Cranbrook Go Go Grannies
Glitz and Glamour Luncheon
Heritage Inn
Tickets $25 Lotus Books

Quilt Show
Alliance Church

Cranbrook and District Arts Council Gallery
Tanya Lipscomb and Maddi Keiver

Sunday May 10th

Fort Steele Mother's Day Tea & Fashion Show
Treat your Mother or that Special Lady to a wonderful day at Fort Steele Heritage Town.
Fine Loose Leaf Teas, Tasty Delights, Vintage Fashion Show,  Etiquette Lessons, & More!
Reservations are required.
Please call for more information ~ 250-417-6000
Location: Fort Steele Heritage Town, Coventry Opera House

Tuesday May 12

North Star Rails to Trails Society meeting
7:00pm
Heritage Inn

Thursday May 14th
Art Reception
Cranbrook and District Arts Council
Youth Arts Exhibit
7;00 -9:00pm
Cash Awards will be presented.

Telling the Truth is Dangerous in Alberta

Telling the truth is dangerous in Alberta

Perceptions by Gerry Warner

Catastrophic defeats like the one that toppled the Progressive Conservative Kingdom of Alberta Tuesday happen for a reason and that reason is often a careless statement made in the heat of the campaign.

Just ask former Alberta Premier Jim Prentice.

Prentice, who resigned both his leadership of the PC Party and his seat before the votes were fully counted, was careless with his words when he told Albertans during a CBC phone-in show March 5 to “look in the mirror” if they wanted to know who was to blame for the province’s fiscal plight. And it didn’t help he was telling the truth.

Albertans, after all, have been on the prosperity wagon for quite a run – at least 20 years – thanks to all those petro-dollars gushing out of the ground and 20 years should have been ample time to put something away for the proverbial rainy day when oil prices crashed and the gusher turned into a financial trickle. It wasn’t always this way. Under the astute leadership of former Premier Peter Lougheed, the Alberta Heritage Fund was set up as a kind of an insurance policy to protect Albertans when oil prices dipped as they inevitably do. But somehow or the other the Heritage Fund got frittered away and when the storm struck Albertans were left without an umbrella. So when Prentice, who spent most of his political career in hated Ottawa, told Albertans what they didn’t want to hear they got hot under the collar and let him know at the ballot box.

Prentices’ comments, sincere and as truthful as they may have been, were quickly dubbed “Blame-gate” and the Twitter universe went wild with thousands calling for him to apologize, including Wild Rose house leader Shayne Saskiw, who  called Prentice “elitist, arrogant and out-of-touch with the rest of Albertans.” Ouch! NDP leader, now Premier-elect, Rachel Notley also called on Prentice to resign after he tried to make a joke out of the incident, saying he’d suddenly developed an aversion to mirrors. But Prentice, perhaps displaying the arrogance his critics accused him of, refused to resign and only dug himself in deeper by calling the incident a “Twitter tempest.” Then when he released his budget, taxes and fees went up for everyone, but not for corporations. Obviously, Albertans got the message and on Tuesday they threw Prentice and his Progressive Conservatives out after 44 years of uninterrupted power in one of the greatest political upsets in Canadian history.

Oh, but it has happened before and I remember it well during the 1972 BC election  when the Social Credit dynasty of W.A.C. (Wacky) Bennett was rudely thrown into the dumpster after 20 years of uninterrupted power in Victoria. And what was the careless statement that time that lead to political perdition? It was uttered by one of the most colorful and controversial politicians in BC political history – “Flying Phil Gaglardi” – who said, as only Phil could, "If I'm lying, it's only because I'm telling the truth." Actually Phil dropped a few more gems like that when he referred to the stench caused by pulp mills as “the smell of money” in the air and long before junk bond king Ivan Boesky was on the scene Gaglardi spoke of the virtue of “greed” to succeed in business.

It’s a rare politician that can make inflammatory statements and get away with it. Ralph Klein could when he berated men in a homeless shelter for being homeless. Pierre Trudeau in his immortal “just watch me” before he imposed the War Measures Act and Bill Vander Zalm telling unemployed young men to “pick up a shovel.”

It worked for them, but it didn’t for Jim Prentice, who found out the hard way that the truth really hurts.

Gerry Warner is a retired journalist and a former politician, who has made a few inflammatory statements of his own over time.

Compost Workshop

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Mother's Day Compost Workshop with Mike Dorian of Living Soils Solutions

Register Now

With spring in full swing and summer fast approaching, this is the time to get your hands dirty in a rich, nutrient-filled compost pile! Join Wildsight as we welcome Mike Dorian of Living Soils Solutions for this afternoon workshop based in the Cranbrook Public Produce Garden. Come out and enjoy a great Mother’s Day activity for all levels from novice to seasoned expert and every point in between. There is always something new to learn about the composting process and how it benefits our plants, air, and soil. Mike Dorion will touch on areas such as backyard composting tips and tricks, compost tea, and vermiculture. We encourage you to bring a shareable snack to enhance the feeling of community among each other on a special day.

Mother's Day Compost Workshop with Mike Dorian of Living Soils Solutions

Sunday May 10th 2015 from 12pm - 4pm

Cranbrook Public Produce Garden

Composting has numerous benefits including:

• creating nutrient-rich soil that increases its water holding capacity
• acts as an organic fertilizer
• keeps organic material out of landfills, reducing greenhouse gases
• is a sustainable, renewable resource
• improves soil structure

“Our business is about stepping away from the modern conventional ways of gardening and bringing traditional solutions and methods back to the mainstream.  There is much more life going on under our feet than we can even imagine, and that is what we reclaim in your soil - Natural Living Nutrients. By using high quality composts and vermicomposts, we are able to provide a large diversity of microbiology back into the soil food web and bring a state of natural balance to your backyard or back forty.  We strive to educate on the importance of the life factor that belongs in all soil.”  Mike Dorion, Living Soil Solutions.

“I enjoy working with people who appreciate and want to be educated on natural options to enhance their soil and plant life. This is where Living Soil Solutions likes to pass on those skills and share that knowledge with our clients. A sense of ease can be found when one understands the results that can be achieved in a way that is healthier all around. This is when conversation starts and people can be brought together on common ground.”  Mike Dorion, Living Soil Solutions.

When

May 10th, 2015 12:00 PM   through   4:00 PM

Location

Cranbrook Public Produce Garden
18th Ave North between 6th and 8th Street
Cranbrook, BC
Canada

Contact

Gordon Terrace Art Show, Mother's Day Sale and Fundraiser for Nepal, TODAY

All day TODAY 'til 6:30pm

Calypso Time

It is Calypso Orchid time.

These delicate beauties live symbiotically with specific, soil mycorrhizal fungi.  Calypso orchids are also known as Fairy Slipper or Venus Slipper orchids.  They are so sensitive to disturbance that just picking a flower will likely kill the plant.  They cannot be transplanted and they are classified as endangered in many areas of North America. 

Calypso orchids are in flower now in their favoured woodland environments.  

Council ignoring democracy in favour of in camera decsions

Council ignoring democracy in favour of in camera decisions

Perceptions by Gerry Warner

Our City Council, elected only a few months ago, has developed a bad habit – an in camera habit – that leaves the public in the dark when important or controversial decisions are to be made and democracy goes out the window.

This was the case in February when council decided in camera to decommission the Idlewild Dam and inform the public by press release why they made the decision. Except they didn’t do that. The release said the decision was based on “findings and recommendations” of the Dam Breach Inundation Study, but those findings and recommendations don’t appear anywhere in the release!   

So what’s this? Government by press release? Surely the public deserves to know what the “findings and recommendations were? Do they justify tearing down the dam and draining Idlewild Lake – the main attraction of the park – for an unknown length of time? Maybe they do. But the public will never know because they weren’t let in on the decision. Does this council not trust the public to think for itself?

At a recent Sunrise Rotary meeting, I asked Mayor Lee Pratt if the Dam Breach Inundation Study was going to be made public. He didn’t give me a direct answer, but said the “highlights” of the study were in the press release. Read it yourself. It’s on the City’s web page. But the “findings and recommendations” aren’t there. All that appears are some fear-mongering comments about what might happen if the dam is breached which hasn’t occurred since the dam was built more than 80 years ago. Maybe the dam should be replaced on the basis of age alone. But we don’t know that because council made the decision in camera and didn’t bother to tell us the reasons.

That’s no way to run the farm! It’s also possible that the dam and it’s concrete core is still secure and the public doesn’t deserve to be deprived of Idlewild Lake for up to two years as Mayor Pratt said at the Rotary meeting. Draining the lake could also be fatal for the blue-listed, Western Painted Turtles that live in it and will be left without a home. Did council take that into consideration when they made their in camera decision?  We’ll never know, but I’m thinking of making a Freedom of Information application to find out. Stay tuned.

Fast forward to the present and we have the simmering controversy over the City’s repurposing of its unused, heritage fire hall. For the record, I would like to see the ornate, old building repurposed as an art gallery if that’s feasible, but that’s not the issue here. Once again the issue is the process by which the City made this difficult decision. And you know the rest. It was made in camera by a council that lacks the courage and integrity to discuss controversial issues in public and instead chooses to hide behind closed doors and hand out another lame press release at the end of a council meeting to cover its tracks.

So what’s the purpose of City Hall? Is it a chamber where the public’s business is done in public? Or is it a medieval star chamber where the public is only fed what Mayor and Council want them to know? The Community Charter, which governs the actions of all city councils in the province, lists several clear reasons for holding meetings in camera. The fact that a decision is difficult or controversial is not among them.

I, therefore, lay down a challenge to this council. At a recent meeting of theColumbia Basin Trust’s Community Initiatives Committee, one City councillor recused himself from the meeting when a funding application was made by the Cranbrook District Arts Council to repurpose the fire hall, which indicates a potential conflict of interest. Did that councillor recuse himself again when council made its in camera decision to sell the fire hall to the private sector instead of retaining it for repurposing.

The public deserves to know.

                                           

Gerry Warner is a retired journalist and former Cranbrook City councillor.

What's Happening....

Friday May 1st

Cranbrook Community Theatre
"Skin Flicks"
ribald comedy
running May 1st - 16th
Tickets Lotus Books

Wednesday May 6th
Information Session
Hospice
7:00-9:00pm
College of the Rockies

May 9th

Go Go Grannies
Glitz and Glamour
Light Luncheon
$25 Lotus Books

Sunday May 10th

Fort Steele
Mother's day Tea and Fashion Show