While there's plenty of interest in opening new daycare centres in Calgary, the property investment firm CBRE says a lack of available real estate is posing a challenge.

A murderous fugitive who hid from American and Mexican authorities in small-town Alberta for decades was a bridge-playing, banana bread-baking former realtor, according to her former friends and neighbours.

The City of Edmonton is proposing bylaw changes to reduce fines for some offences, while other offences are being added in. As you can imagine, public opinion is mixed.

Trump said Friday the levy on oil would "probably" be set at 10 per cent as opposed to the 25 per cent tariffs on other goods, but it was unclear whether the lower rate would apply from the start.

A group of Edmonton parents is suing the provincial government over access to education for their children with disabilities who can't go to school normally while education support workers are on strike.

After what’s been a relatively mild January for southern Alberta, February is expected to bring negative temperatures back to Alberta.

The opportunity to develop the game at a global level in Canada prompted NBA coaching veteran Kaleb Canales to sign with the Calgary Surge as its new head coach. 

Walmart Canada says it will spend $6.5 billion over the next five years as it opens dozens of new stores.

Alberta’s ambitious plans to see $100 billion worth of artificial intelligence data centre infrastructure built in the province over the next five years are still on track despite a recent development that shocked technology shares earlier this week.

The right to hunt a single bighorn sheep, Alberta's official mammal, has netted the province $400,000 US at auction.

A retired judge is reviewing the "policies and practices" of Alberta's police watchdog and Crown prosecution service. The review, initiated by the justice minister, comes after three recent instances where the Crown didn't pursue criminal cases against Edmonton-area police officers, despite investigations finding reasonable grounds that they committed an offence.

Interactive Arts Alberta hopes that its newly opened Walkthrough Collaborative Centre on Whyte Avenue can help make Alberta "the best place in the world to make games," one staff member said.

Walkthrough, located at 10435 82 Avenue NW, is a coworking space for game creators that offers workspaces, events, networking, and mentorship on a by-donation basis. Amenities include high-speed internet, private boardrooms, permanent and hot desks, storage, snacks, a kitchen, and more.

While this may sound like most coworking offerings, IAA said Walkthrough is called a collaborative centre for a reason. "We don't look at this as a business," the organization's board chair, Derek Kwan, told Taproot. "This is more of a community-investment approach. (We aim to) to invest in the studios, the indies, who are building products, and make sure they have fertile ground to find talent and have a soft landing if they have hard times."

Locally and globally, the games industry is having hard times. In late 2023, Humanoid Origin closed and Inflexion Games laid off at least 66 employees. Meanwhile, Madison Côté, the executive director of IAA, told Taproot that, globally, approximately 1,000 gaming jobs "evaporated" in January alone, and that the average career for a game developer is three to five years due to burnout.

Côté and Kwan want those hardships to end and think changing culture is how they can make Alberta the best place to build games. To help achieve this, Walkthrough has a code of conduct that prohibits disrespect and harassment. It's also a dry space, based partly on instances of drugging at games events, and because some developers are more comfortable in sober environments, Côté said.

"We want the space to be as welcoming and inclusive as possible," Côté said. "(The absence of alcohol) is just a worry off of so many people's minds."

Location is also part of the cultural thinking. Kwan said downtown Edmonton, home to coworking spaces like Work Nicer and Homestead Coworking, has more of a tech culture, while Whyte Avenue is more rooted in the arts. Whyte Avenue is also apt for Walkthrough, in part, because it's home to game studios like Beamdog, which is in the space that once housed "the first real" BioWare studio, Côté said.

The IAA wants to expand Walkthrough's current hours of 10am to 6pm on weekdays, but getting there will be more feasible if the organization realizes $9,000 in monthly donations. Kwan said he doesn't know exactly how much has been pledged so far, but Walkthrough is "definitely not sustainable yet," and the next six to eight months will be critical for its future.

Another goal is to offer a studio-in-residence program, so the expertise of local game pros is available to the community. "A big part of what we want to do is institutionalize a lot of that learning," Côté said. "Having folks who can answer about the Canada Media Fund, having folks who can talk about intellectual property law (is something we want to make available)."

Walkthrough's grand opening over the last weekend in January happened alongside the Edmonton chapter of the Global Game Jam. Game jams are events where people form teams and build a game in a short time. Cozy Comet Games, a worker-cooperative game studio that Côté and Kwan are part of, participated in the jam.

Jams are often intense sprints where participants work all night, but this one was different. The IAA does not promote crunch culture because it's harmful and pervasive in the industry, Côté said.

"We know several people with post-traumatic stress from being crunched, intensively, at various studios throughout the years," she said. "It impacts their entire quality of life and changes who they are, fundamentally, as a person. There are some people, if I even mention the name of their game, they start shaking."

Kwan said Walkthrough never could have happened without a $100,000 grant from Alberta Innovates that IAA received in 2023 to conduct research, build a business case, and chart an ecosystem map. He and Côté studied collaborative spaces for games in Canada, the United States, and Japan. One that stood out is Indie Asylum in Montreal, which Côté credits with building success for studios there.

But IAA did not just copy and paste ideas, Kwan added. He said "tweaks" were needed for the collaborative centre to work in an Albertan context. "That rugged individualism of Albertan entrepreneurship is something that we've really tried to disabuse," he said. "The biggest thing (we want to change) is trying to get people to think of moving towards a more collaborative stance."

Aside from Walkthrough, another way IAA supports the local games industry is with the annual Game Discovery Exhibition, better known as GDX. It includes an exhibition for developers at the Edmonton EXPO Centre during KDays and a conference at a venue that's yet to be decided. GDX runs this year from July 16 to 27.

Here are opportunities to inform municipal decision-making about public services, policing, development, and more. Please only answer surveys from the municipality where you live.

• 2025 RCMP and Enforcement Services Priorities Survey — Strathcona County is asking residents about their priorities for policing in their community for the 2025-2026 fiscal year. A survey is open until Feb. 2.
• Public Maps: Delivering and Improving City Programs and Services — The City of Edmonton is seeking to understand how residents use its maps tool, with the aim of improving the usability of the maps. As part of this engagement, the City is also recruiting participants for future research studies. A survey will be open until Feb. 11.
• Municipal Development Plan — The Town of Morinville has begun a third phase of engagement for its Municipal Development Plan. Residents are invited to provide feedback on draft statements, expectations, and priorities, which will guide the creation of the plan's policies. A survey is available until Feb. 21.
• Caring for the County — Parkland County is inviting residents to learn more about local government and provide feedback. The county's website hosts profiles of various municipal departments, and residents are invited to complete a survey for a chance to win a gift card.

More input opportunities

• Until Feb. 14: 2024 Public Satisfaction Survey (Strathcona County)
• Until April 15: Passenger Rail Master Plan Survey (Government of Alberta)

The RCMP says the helicopter patrols are monitoring the Prairie border to search for and target all illegal activity along the 49th parallel, including illegal border crossing, smuggling and drug trafficking in and out of the country.

Calgary police are urging people to focus on keeping the roads safe after 2024 saw the highest number of fatal road collisions since 2013. 

The group representing Alberta doctors says a shortage of obstetrician-gynecologists in rural and urban areas could mean more babies are being born prematurely and could have ongoing health issues.

Dozens of Alberta scientists, doctors and researchers have penned an open letter calling on the Alberta government to reject the recommendations contained in its recently released pandemic response report.

Tensions are rising between Safeway and its Alberta workers as the company looks to claw back a wage increase after negotiations on a new collective agreement hit a standstill.

With the threat of U.S. tariffs looming, many are encouraging shoppers to buy Canadian — but CBC’s Lyndsay Duncombe breaks down why it might be harder than you think to buy Canadian.

The estimated cost of wildfire damage in the Rocky Mountain town of Jasper has ballooned to $1.23 billion, partly a result of the municipality's relative isolation making it more expensive to remove debris, say insurance industry officials.

For many people, skiing uphill sounds like nothing more than, well, an uphill battle. But for Cochrane, Alta., native Kylee Toth, gliding upwards on a mountain for hours at a time — also known as the sport of ski mountaineering — is where she finds her sense of peace.

A small plane that crashed into a lake east of Edmonton in 2023, killing two men on board, had entered a spin at low altitude moments before impact, the Transportation Safety Board of Canada has ruled.

The Ukrainian Canadian Congress is warning that many of the 300,000 Ukrainians who arrived in Canada under three-year emergency visas face an uncertain future because their temporary residencies are about to expire.

Days before tariffs that have the potential to cripple Canada's economy are expected to come into effect, the country's political leaders are still in the dark about what exactly U.S. President Donald Trump will do.

A monument to be built in Fort Chipewyan will honour and remember children who attended Holy Angels Residential School between 1874 and 1974.

Alice Cook of Pincher Creek, Alta., passed away on Jan. 22, 2025, at the age of 83 years.

A celebration of Alice’s life was held on Tuesday, Feb. 4, 2025, at the Vertical Church in Pincher Creek.

In lieu of flowers, those who wish may donate to the Windy Slopes Health Foundation, www.windyslopes.ca.

The obituary for Alice Cook appeared in the Jan. 29, 2025, issue of Shootin’ the Breeze. Condolences are extended to family and friends.

The post Obituary | Alice Cook appeared first on Shootin' the Breeze.

The building, slated for demolition later this week to make space for the Green Line LRT project, was fenced off. It was an abandoned building and there were no occupants inside.

The Bank of Canada lowered its interest rate by 25 basis points to three per cent on Wednesday, the sixth consecutive reduction since June but a more modest cut than recently. 

In 1971 in the slums of West Jerusalem, a group of young Moroccan Jews established the Israeli Black Panthers to fight for equality Israel’s marginalized community of Middle Eastern, or Mizrachi, Jews.

While initially focused strictly on domestic issues, the group eventually came to find parallels between the mistreatment of Mizrachim and the Palestinia…

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A growing number of Albertans believe local governments should instead focus their efforts on things they were elected to oversee, like taxes, snow clearing and waste collection.

City council voted to advance work on the province's proposal for the long-embattled transit line, but how the two sides still disagree on what the downtown portion of the track will look like.

The Alberta Investment Management Corporation's removal of an employee in charge of formal diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives raises questions about the corporation's commitment to fostering a positive work environment, human resources experts say.

The team behind Intent Coffee has returned with a pop-up café concept that applies the same values as before but now includes a plan to grow more sustainably.

Intent Coffee closed permanently in July 2021 after operating in Southgate Centre for 10 months. Co-owners Mavi Tolentino and Reika Herradura, both identifying as queer first-generation Philipinx, had wanted to "create a positive social and economic impact to the marginalized communities here in so-called Edmonton as well as uplift Indigenous coffee producers in the Philippines."

This month, Tolentino and Herradura opened the new pop-up, Balay Coffee, in Delavoye Chocolate's store at 10639 124 Street NW.

While the two original owners are creative and enjoy coming up with recipes and event ideas, Tolentino said they lacked financial expertise. The post that announced Intent's closure described how the owners "made bad financial decisions over the past two weeks out of desperation to keep our doors open and keep our livelihoods."

But that changed when Tolentino met their partner, Mario Pellerin, who has joined the ownership team.

"He's very much a spreadsheet guy. He loves math, he loves looking at hard facts like numbers and quantifying things," Tolentino said. "I think that was the missing element within the ownership team — the numbers person."

Another factor that has pushed the team to return was feedback from friends and former customers, Tolentino said. "I still work in the food industry, and a lot of people that I have formed connections with within the food industry, like customers or co-workers, have always been asking the past three years, 'When are you going to come back? We need it, we miss Intent,'" they said.

Tolentino works full time at Delavoye Chocolate. "At one point Antoine (Lavoie), the owner of Delavoye was like, 'We should just join, we should just merge,'" Tolentino said. The pop-up format allows Balay to start small — all the company has purchased so far is the bare minimum to make and serve coffee, and it's using Delavoye's kitchen equipment for baking.

The partnership makes sense, Tolentino said. "Chocolate and coffee, they're parallels … They're literally the two most cherished beans," Tolentino said. "They're kind of the same processes and where they grow, and also the socioeconomic conditions in the industry as well."

Delavoye is closed on Mondays, and by allowing Balay to use the space, it gets to share in a bit of profit. Delavoye's chocolate bars and other merchandise are also for sale while Balay is open. "Buying an espresso machine is like buying a car. It's not a joke," Tolentino said.

The pop-ups have so far been "freaking amazing," Tolentino added. "It was like a dream."

For the foreseeable future, Balay will operate on Mondays at Delavoye. The owners will also look for other businesses that are closed during the day on weekends and see if they can work out a similar arrangement as they have with Delavoye.

Tolentino hopes that in about a year, Balay will be able to buy a coffee roaster and rent an industrial space so that the company can roast and sell its own beans. The team then hopes to open their own café.

Kaylee Hunter, who just turned 17, has signed with AFC Toronto of the new Northern Super League. Its just the latest career highlight for Hunter, who was the youngest player invited to a Canadian under-20 camp in Germany.

Calgary's political landscape is changing. Some people think that will bring clarity of choice to the next municipal election. CBC News dropped in at a pub night to find out why.

People living near a massive development that's transforming 40 hectares in southwest Calgary say they're concerned about plans to add 2,200 homes by dramatically increasing the height of several condo buildings.

Last week's guilty plea from a former Catholic priest who sexually abused children in Nunavut has prompted one of his earlier victims to speak up. 

Local stories, news, obituaries, jobs, notices and events in Pincher Creek and Crowsnest Pass in the Jan. 29 issue of Shootin’ the Breeze.

The post News and events: Pincher Creek & Crowsnest Pass | Jan. 29, 2025 appeared first on Shootin' the Breeze.

Principled Accountable Coalition for Edmonton — also known as PACE — has became the first municipal political party created under recent provincial legislation.

As RCMP investigate and work with a hate crimes coordinator after a demonstration in St. Albert on Saturday, some residents in the region are planning protests of their own.

NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh said Tuesday he is open to working with the Liberal government to pass relief measures for workers if U.S. President Donald Trump moves ahead with devastating tariffs on Canadian goods.

Calgary-born twins Taegan and Keelyn announced their signing with the city's Wild FC on Monday. This makes them the two youngest footballers to join the Northern Super League at just 17 years old.

A former Albertan who sells real estate in Arizona vows, "I ain't going nowhere that's got hurricanes" as the costs of owning property in Florida add up.

Connor McDavid dreamt about representing Canada at international tournaments long before entering the NHL. Another item on his bucket list is set to be checked off next month — suiting up alongside Sidney Crosby.

If each of the 100,000 people who are likely to attend Flying Canoë Volant between Jan. 29 and Feb. 1 donated $5, the festival could quickly become more sustainable or think bigger, its head producer said.

"I would say 90% of my fiscal challenges would be resolved (if that happened)," Daniel Cournoyer, the executive director of La Cité francophone, told Taproot. "At the end of the day, I have to pay my artists, I have to pay my infrastructure cost, and producing in winter is not cheap."

Admission to Flying Canoë Volant is free but that increasingly creates hurdles, Cournoyer said.

"All festivals that don't have a gate admission are living in some challenging times," he said. "We're seeing public funding being rolled back — or it's just become more competitive — and we do need to look at ways in which we can create revenue within our own events."

Held in and near the Mill Creek Ravine, the festival is inspired by myths like La Chasse-galerie, which is about lumberjacks who make a deal with the devil for a flying canoe to take them home. The festival celebrates French Canadian, First Nations, and Métis cultures with art, performance, sport, and food. It is produced by La Cité francophone, a cultural organization that houses Café Bicyclette, theatre space, and other amenities among its 104,000 square feet. The organization was borne from a 1944 call from the French Canadian Association of Alberta (Association canadienne-française de l'Alberta) to create a cultural centre, which led to two phases of building in 1997 and 2010.

La Cité francophone took over what used to be called the Mill Creek Adventure Walk about 12 years ago to create Flying Canoë Volant.

Cournoyer said he's trying something new this year to inspire contribution — an interactive art project by Dylan Toymaker of LightCraft.Design, the light-and-installation artist who defines Flying Canoë Volant's visual identity. Toymaker's new work is a 16-foot tall tower that will "flash and dance" in exchange for a donation, Cournoyer said.

Spending on novel entertainment while keeping costs lean is a "balancing act," Cournoyer said. The new Toymaker work is one example. Another is a new, 360° video dome, which cost roughly $150,000. "(It's) what you would see in a planetarium or at the TELUS World of Science," Cournoyer said of the dome. "We're able to create that same environment here on our site."

Cournoyer said new features like these lead attendees to feel a stake in the event's success, but he wants to take the next step. "We've created the culture of free, but how do we translate that? How do we transition from the culture of free to a culture of contribution?"

Films that will screen at the dome include Mondes de glace (Worlds of Ice) by Philippe Baylaucq and -22.7°C by Molécule.

New for this year is an earlier start time for the festival on Friday, Jan. 31 and Saturday, Feb. 1 at 4pm. Shown at that time is an early program featuring Au pays du cancre mou (In the Land of the Flabby Schnook) by Francis Gélinas and Mimistoires (Once Upon… My Story!) from Couleur.tv.

Cournoyer also said there's a potential blueprint to bring Flying Canoë Volant's signature canoe races back to their former glory at the Edmonton Ski Club.

"It takes a whole other production team," he said. "I always say: 'If I could find $100,000, I could do it — and do it really well. I could do it for maybe a little less."

The canoe relay races were once triathlons, Cournoyer said, where competitors raced on foot to their canoes, sped down a luge-style track, and then faced an axe-throwing challenge for victory. Today's version of the race dispenses with the run to the canoe and the luge track. Instead, glory-seekers manoeuvre the canoe through an obstacle course, portage-style, before the axe challenge.

"It's definitely not as spectacular as seeing canoes run down a hill," Cournoyer said.

The ski club is "super on board" to house the races, Cournoyer said, but the problem is money and labour. The downhill course was enabled through grant funding that has since run out, he said.

Still, Cournoyer said he's grateful the festival is stable. He shared that Flying Canoë Volant has experienced "exponential" growth and breaks even every year, in part because of tourism. This year, the fête will host "12 to 15" Dutch tour operators through a partnership with Explore Edmonton and Travel Alberta, he said.

Cournoyer also said Flying Canoë Volant offers a true taste of Edmonton, and the magic of canoes speeding down a hill is something singular to the city that he'd like to see return. "I think it's just little experiences that we can create that can make Edmonton magical in winter," he said. "I'm an Oilers fan, but we're not just the Oilers. We can do other things, and I think (downhill canoe races are) one thing that we could do."

Some Albertans who have a few years of career experience under their belt say they're struggling to find mid-career jobs that match their skill level and knowledge.

Some downtown and industry groups are pushing back against the Alberta government’s plan to build elevated Green Line tracks in the downtown core.

The Edmonton Police Service wants to extradite the accused ringleader behind an Edmonton extortion-and-arson scheme from the United Arab Emirates. Experts say it will be a complex, time-consuming process that will leave Maninder Singh Dhaliwal's prosecution in Canada in limbo.

Edmonton’s trauma surgeons continue to advocate combining the city’s two trauma centres into one — which they say would improve patient outcomes and save money

Eric Bouchard, the UCP MLA for Calgary-Lougheed, said the findings of the report were “shocking” and that the information it presents to the public is “long overdue.” But NDP Leader Naheed Nenshi calls the report a waste of tax dollars.