St. Albert news

• Don Iveson says prying memorial plaques off benches was insensitive

  07-08-2018 21:48 via edmontonjournal.com
  Prying memorial plaques from park benches was an insensitive move that Edmonton city council wasn’t asked to consider, Mayor Don Iveson said on social media Tuesday.
  Iveson was responding to complaints over a change to the city’s memorial bench program that required families to pay for upkeep every 10 years, as opposed to paying a one-time fee. That change is now being reconsidered, city officials said.
  In April, Barbara Dalton received a letter from the city saying she would have to
  
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• Big Valley Jamboree arrests drop but police still busy with fighting, public urination

  07-08-2018 21:46 via edmontonjournal.com
  This year’s Big Valley Jamboree reported a significant decrease in arrests, though police were still busy with revellers whose partying crossed a line.
  Festival producer Mike Anderson said Tuesday that 25 arrests were made during the four-day country music event, down from 46 in 2017 — a 46 per cent drop. The festival draws about 80,000 people annually.
  “We feel we have the strongest security team in the country when it comes to making sure everybody follows the rules and
  
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• Two drivers, five-year-old child die in Sylvan Lake long weekend crash

  07-08-2018 19:41 via edmontonjournal.com
  A five-year-old child and two men are dead after a horrific head-on crash near Sylvan Lake Sunday night, say RCMP.
  A seven-year-old boy who survived the 9 p.m. collision on Highway 781 south of the Township Road 382 intersection was airlifted to hospital in Edmonton by STARS and is listed in stable condition.
  The five-year-old died at the scene along with the 39-year-old man driving the SUV in which the child and surviving seven-year-old were passengers. The 30-year-old man in the second vehicle
  
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• Olivier Rodrique is years away, but already represents an important piece of Edmonton Oilers' goaltending future

  07-08-2018 18:17 via edmontonjournal.com
  2018 Edmonton Oilers prospects#13 Olivier Rodrigue
  Previously: Unranked, drafted #62 overall in 2018Make no mistake that the Peter Chairelli-era Edmonton Oilers have made goaltender acquisition a priority, and have been prepared to pay the price in draft picks to stock up. One of Chairelli’s first trades involved three picks going to New York Rangers to acquire Cam Talbot, who has become the mainstay between the pipes in Edmonton. More recently he sent a draft pick to Montreal in exchange
  
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• Fighting, urinating, attacking officers: Camrose Police Service busy with the downside of Big Valley Jamboree

  07-08-2018 16:44 via edmontonjournal.com
  While a majority of the patrons at this year’s Big Valley Jamboree enjoyed some good old fashioned country music and glorious weather, some revellers revelled a little too hard.
  Camrose Police Service made numerous public intoxication arrests over the three-day event and the service also reports several arrests for assaulting police officers.
  Some of the cases involving police include:
  • A female reported that someone had entered her unlocked holiday trailer at the BVJ campground and
  
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• Edmonton weather: Another Tuesday, another heat warning yay

  07-08-2018 15:36 via edmontonjournal.com
  A look at today’s Edmonton weather by Environment Canada.
  Tuesday morning temperatures at the Edmonton Blatchford station measure 16 C with a 3 km/h wind coming from the southwest. Environment Canada has also issued a heat warning for Edmonton, St. Albert and Sherwood Park. Warnings are issued when maximum daily temperatures reaching or exceeding 29C and minimum overnight temperatures of 14C or above. This heat is expected to last until Friday.
  People are advised to take the following prec
  
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• Tuesday's letters: Don't blame Trudeau for Phoenix

  07-08-2018 14:00 via edmontonjournal.com
  Re. Malcolm Mayes cartoon, Aug. 3
  The cartoon is not based on fact. It was the Harper government who instituted the Phoenix System in Canada even though the Australian government scrapped it because of the problems it had created for them.
  The cartoon should be showing Harper driving forward with the Phoenix System car and Trudeau trying to drive it without any wheels. It disappoints me that the Journal would let an untruth of this nature be carried out.
  Steve Shamchuk, Sr., Edmonton
  Wood buildi
  
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• Editorial: Blame game not constructive

  07-08-2018 14:00 via edmontonjournal.com
  From the ringside seats, it’s difficult to tell who’s in the wrong when it comes to the increasingly bitter fray between the provincial government and the contractor building the troubled Grande Prairie Regional Hospital.
  As often happens when deals turn sour, both sides accuse the other of misbehaviour while professing their own good conduct in a back-and-forth squabble that went public starting on Monday.
  That’s when Infrastructure Minister Sandra Jansen held a news conferenc
  
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• Paula Simons: Privacy commissioner's investigation brings us face-to-face with our technology fears

  07-08-2018 11:00 via edmontonjournal.com
  Peek-a-boo!
  They see you!
  Friday morning, Jill Clayton, Alberta’s information and privacy commission, announced that she is opening an investigation into reports that two Calgary shopping malls were using facial recognition software to observe customers.
  The facial recognition technology was embedded in map kiosks. When people looked at the screen, the screen looked back at them.
  Customers received no notice that their faces were being scanned.
  The public only learned they were being scann
  
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• Memorial bench sticker shock: Families asked to pay upkeep decades after original purchase

  07-08-2018 11:00 via edmontonjournal.com
  When longtime Edmontonian Nora May Dalton (nee Crossley) died in August 1996, her family scattered the 82-year-old’s ashes in Queen Elizabeth Park, where she often played as a child.
  Her children also purchased a memorial bench in the park from the City of Edmonton. It was installed in the park in 1997, bearing a plaque with Dalton’s name and overlooking the North Saskatchewan River.
  Twenty-one years later, Dalton’s bench plaque is gone, replaced by a City of Edmonton advertise
  
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• Alberta gains better access to tuberculosis drug that can cut treatment times

  07-08-2018 11:00 via edmontonjournal.com
  Alberta has received easier access to a tuberculosis drug that remains unlicensed in Canada but is touted to be a more successful option than the conventional treatment, the provincial health ministry says.
  Rifapentine, also known by its brand name Priftin, is used to treat latent tuberculosis in populations that face a high risk of progression to an active disease, including some First Nations communities.
  A course of the antibiotic can be completed by taking one dose per week for 12 weeks, sub
  
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• Fire destroys house under construction in Griesbach

  07-08-2018 05:07 via edmontonjournal.com
  A fire in a north Edmonton neighbourhood has left little remaining of a house under construction.
  Fire rescue arrived at 2:15 a.m. Sunday to a blaze along Veterans Way in the Griesbach neighbourhood. Crews brought the fire under control within approximately a half-hour, said spokeswoman Suzzette Mellado. Crews said the only part left standing was the basement siding.
  The cause of the fire is under investigation.
  
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• Animethon kicks off its 25th year starting Friday

  07-08-2018 04:57 via edmontonjournal.com
  Edmonton’s long-standing anime convention hits 25 this year, all grown up from a small gathering of aficionados to an Albertan pop culture staple aiming for 10,000 attendees.
  When Animethon began in 1994, it occupied just a few lecture theatres at what was then Grant MacEwan College. But this year for the first time, the annual convention will shift from MacEwan University to the more large-scale Shaw Conference Centre.
  “With that many bodies swarming over … four buildings at
  
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• Heritage Festival boss saw easier access for crowd upward of 300,000

  07-08-2018 03:42 via edmontonjournal.com
  Although it began with some lousy weather, early word on this year’s Heritage Fest was far from negative.
  In preparation for the 2018 event, festival organizers put together a plan with the city and transit to address problems with record-setting attendance and transit delays on the sunny Sunday of last year’s event.
  “It was actually probably easier to get in this year than in the last 10 I’ve been involved,” said executive director Jim Gibbon early Monday
  
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• Bangladeshi-Canadians respond to Dhaka student protests

  07-08-2018 03:19 via edmontonjournal.com
  Tens of thousands of students continue a protest that has halted traffic for the past week in Dhaka, Bangladesh. In Canada, their counterparts from Edmonton watch from afar.
  Students have flooded Dhaka’s streets in protests that began last Sunday after two college students were struck and killed by a pair of buses racing to collect passengers. Student protesters have been demanding transportation reform by halting vehicles to check for registration papers.
  Traffic safety in the country has
  
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• Nick Lees: Pea soup to power 100th marathon for Edmonton man, 73

  07-08-2018 02:43 via edmontonjournal.com
  If he can find a can opener when he wakes up Aug. 19, Ken Davison, 73, should finish his 100th marathon with a grin.
  “When I began running marathons in the early ’80s, I ran out of energy at about the 30-kilometre mark,” says the retired automotive mechanic.
  “Family physician Dr. Harvey Sternberg suggested I try downing a can of Campbell’s French-Canadian pea soup with toast the morning before a 42-kilometre marathon.”
  Davison began rising at 4:30 a.m. on race
  
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• Nick Lees: Pea soup to power retiree's 100th marathon in Edmonton

  07-08-2018 02:32 via edmontonjournal.com
  If he can find a can opener when he wakes up Aug. 19, Ken Davison, 73, should finish his 100th marathon with a grin.
  “When I began running marathons in the early ’80s, I ran out of energy at about the 30-kilometre mark,” says the retired automotive mechanic.
  “Family physician Dr. Harvey Sternberg suggested I try downing a can of Campbell’s French-Canadian pea soup with toast the morning before a 42-kilometre marathon.”
  Davison began rising at 4:30 a.m. on race
  
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• We're having a heat wave, an Edmonton heat wave

  07-08-2018 02:19 via edmontonjournal.com
  Environment Canada issued a heat warning for Edmonton and area Monday as high temperatures are expected to bake much of the province for the rest of the week.
  The region is predicted to have daily highs above 30 C starting Wednesday and peaking at 32 C Friday before cooling on the weekend, Environment Canada said.
  The record high for Edmonton was 34 C set in 1998.
  Temperatures are expected to dip in central Alberta Tuesday, but residents should expect daytime highs in the low to mid 30s for the
  
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• Luxury Westridge home demolished after fire

  07-08-2018 01:07 via edmontonjournal.com
  A vacant luxury Westridge home has been demolished after a fire ripped through the structure Sunday night.
  Edmonton Fire Rescue Services received a call at about 7:30 p.m., district Chief Scott Mead said. Despite the work of 24 firefighters and five fire trucks, he said the home was “probably going to be a loss.”
  By Monday afternoon, it had been razed.
  When firefighters arrived at the fire, the flames were already well advanced. The roof was damaged, making it too dangerous for
  
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• Rally organized at Edmonton school in wake of 'abhorrent' swastika vandalism

  07-08-2018 00:56 via edmontonjournal.com
  Edmontonians are being encouraged to attend a rally this week to protest a spree of swastika graffiti that continues to draw condemnation from affected communities.
  “There is no place for these illegal and disturbing acts in our communities or anywhere else in Alberta,” Edmonton-McClung MLA Lorne Dach said in a Saturday Facebook post. “I, along with the vast majority of Albertans, strongly condemn these acts of hatred.”
  Dach thanked residents who “acted qu
  
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• We're having a heatwave, an Edmonton heatwave

  07-08-2018 00:40 via edmontonjournal.com
  Environment Canada issued a heat warning for Edmonton and area Monday as high temperatures are expected to bake much of the province for the rest of the week.
  The region is predicted to have daily highs over 30 C starting Wednesday and peaking at 32 C Friday before cooling on the weekend, Environment Canada warned.
  The record high for Edmonton was 34 C set in 1998.
  Temperatures will dip in central Alberta Tuesday, but expect daytime highs in the low to mid 30s for the rest of the week.
  Heat warn
  
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• Lightning strikes twice for one Edmonton neighbourhood

  07-08-2018 00:07 via edmontonjournal.com
  Lightning has struck twice in a southwest Edmonton neighbourhood.
  Around 7 p.m. Saturday, fire rescue was called to an address near 29 Avenue and 30 Street in Silver Berry for a home struck by lightning. When crews arrived, they didn’t find a fire but did see smoke and a hole in the building’s roof, fire rescue spokesperson Suzzette Mellado said.
  Fire investigators were assessing the extent of damage, she said, but it was mainly localized to the roof. There were no injuries and
  
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