Pope Francis, who is hospitalized in critical condition with double pneumonia, has named a new archbishop for Vancouver. The Vancouver archdiocese says the Pope appointed Archbishop Richard Smith, who has been serving in Edmonton, and accepted the resignation of J. Michael Miller.

The Alberta Utilities Commission has begun its public hearing into the Fox Meadows wind farm project. From fires to toxic gas, the risks and benefits of a wind farm in the municipal district of Wainwright was up for discussion.

Brent Lakeman is being seconded from Edmonton Global to head the Edmonton Region Hydrogen HUB and shift that project into action mode.

"We call it an activation phase," Lakeman, the HUB's new executive director, who was the director of hydrogen initiative for Edmonton Global before the appointment, told Taproot. "We've done a lot of the techno-economic analysis. We understand the opportunities we have within the region. We've done some work in mobile transportation (and) heat and power opportunities. Now, we know we want to get moving on this."

The HUB launched in 2021 as a joint project from municipalities and First Nations across the region, including founding chair and Sturgeon County mayor, Alanna Hnatiw. Its goal is to advance the hydrogen economy in the Edmonton region. Edmonton Global and The Transition Accelerator, an energy-transition think tank, were founding supporters. The HUB began with $2.25 million from Western Economic Diversification Canada (which has split into Prairies Economic Development Canada and an equivalent in British Columbia), Alberta's Industrial Heartland Association, and Emissions Reduction Alberta.

Lakeman said the expectations and funding agreements from those original funders have been completed, and that the HUB is now shifting into its next phase. "(We want to) really ground it in our economic development opportunities we have within the region," he said.

What that means, Lakeman said, is that organizations including the Heartland Association and Edmonton Global will now drive the HUB — though just how the organization will be structured is not something he will share just yet. When it comes to activation, Lakeman said fuel cells for vehicles and new uses for hydrogen are things to keep on top of, but there's an immediate opportunity for "companies that don't always think of themselves as a hydrogen company" to be engaged.

"I think about what we've done, historically, in oil and gas and all that manufacturing and fabrication that goes on to support those projects," he said. "Maybe we can be part of some of these emerging hydrogen opportunities. It's not necessarily a dramatic pivot, in some cases, to start manufacturing equipment for these transportation systems that we might see, because we will be an early mover, and I think there's maybe some early mover advantages to start getting our companies prepared."

Manufacturing for the hydrogen industry was the focus of a recent symposium in Nisku, co-hosted by the HUB. Companies with existing work in hydrogen sent speakers. Among them were Aurora Hydrogen, which recently shared an update on a novel demo facility; Diesel Tech Industries, which showcased the world's first Class 8 truck powered by cryo-compressed hydrogen with Verne in the fall; and Calgary's Innova Clean Tech, which works on both hydrogen and graphite, and is building a pilot facility in Sturgeon County.

One ongoing project the HUB works on is the 5,000 Hydrogen Vehicle Challenge, which kicked off in 2023. Its goal is to get 5,000 hydrogen- or dual-fuel vehicles on the road in Western Canada by 2028. Lakeman doesn't have an exact figure on the present number, but pointed to Air Products, which is building hydrogen refuelling stations along major transportation routes, as a sign of progress.

Not every refuelling station succeeds, however. Last March, the City of Edmonton scrapped its plans for one. That same month, the first commercial hydrogen refuelling station in Alberta opened at Blackjacks Roadhouse in Nisku, with funding from PrairiesCan and fuel provided by Nikola Corp.'s HYLA brand. However, on Feb. 19, Nikola filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, a little over a year after its founder was sentenced to four years in prison in New York for fraud related to the company's technology.

"We're watching Nikola, we're in communication with them," Lakeman said. "At this point in time, I don't think that that (Blackjacks) station is really being able to be operational, unfortunately."

Lakeman said he thinks the area surrounding Blackjacks is important because it includes the Edmonton International Airport and is part of the route between Edmonton and Calgary. However, he said he thinks there will be more hydrogen activity in the area in the future.

Speaking of the airport, it already has its own hydrogen refuelling station and a fleet of at least 100 Toyota Mirais, a hydrogen fuel-cell electric vehicle that Toyota called the first of its kind in 2015.

The Mirai has been criticized, primarily, because its drivers have difficulty accessing and affording hydrogen to power it, as a class-action suit in California claims. Additionally, 120 scientists, academics, and engineers urged the organizers of the Paris 2024 Summer Olympics to refuse the Mirais Toyota supplied because, they alleged, the car's emissions claims aren't realistic for consumer use. Toyota has also endured critiques for its climate lobbying.

"The Mirai gets attention because it is, I think, the most commonly sold hydrogen vehicle out there," Lakeman said. "California's had both some positives and some challenges with their fuel supplies over the past several years, so that's triggered a little bit of commentary around the Mirai, but I don't think it's specific to that vehicle."

In the last year, Toyota has announced a new version of its fuel-cell stack and rebranded a research and development office in California as its "hydrogen headquarters."

Lakeman said other hydrogen vehicles show promise. Hyundai's Nexo SUV and Honda's plug-in hydrogen CR-V are more recent entries to the market. On a business trip to London, England, Lakeman was intrigued by a Toyota pickup prototype that uses hydrogen.

"I get companies telling me, 'We would love to buy a hydrogen fuel-cell pickup truck, if one is offered,'" he said. "There's a lot of fleets with pickup trucks (in Alberta). They're all white, so maybe we can start to have a turquoise-coloured pickup truck out there to show (off) hydrogen ones?"

Lakeman's appointment to the HUB isn't the only hydrogen news from the region this month. Edmonton Global demonstrated its hydrogen supply chain mapping tool during the manufacturing event, and the HUB has signed a memorandum of understanding with Mitsui Canada to collaborate on the production, distribution, and use of hydrogen "in Canada and beyond."

In April, the Canadian Hydrogen Convention will run its main program at the Edmonton Convention Centre. It will include a technical track, a strategic track, an exhibition, and more. Lakeman is among the scheduled speakers.

Some Calgary residents are pushing back against a proposal that could see ENMAX installing an overhead powerline — and large steel poles — through an inner-city residential neighbourhood.

As the Alberta government heads into a spring legislative sitting on Tuesday pledging to follow through with auto insurance reform and tweaking professional regulatory college powers, political observers say much of the public's focus will be on the budget.

After weighing the pros and cons of allowing a nordic spa to be built in southwest Edmonton, city councillors voted unanimously to pass a rezoning application for the project on Monday, allowing it to go forward.

The man accused of murdering the wife of an organized crime money launderer testified he shot the couple after he "panicked" while trying to carjack the victims' Bentley.

Alberta Premier Danielle Smith says her government plans to spend $180 million over three years to build the two centres, which will each have 150 beds.

Tremblay, the one-man board of directors at AHS, amended policies to effectively ensure that he'd be the only leader of AHS until agency restructuring is complete.

Three years ago today, Russia launched its full-scale military invasion of Ukraine, pushing hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians to leave their homes and leave behind family members and the lives they once knew to seek refuge in another country.

More than 1,000 CUPE staff from the city's public and Catholic schools went on strike Monday morning, joining more than 4,000 workers across the province who have been on strike since January.

A Texas pipeline company's lawsuit accusing Greenpeace of defamation, disruptions and attacks during protests against the Dakota Access Pipeline goes to trial in North Dakota on Monday, in a case the environmental advocacy organization says threatens free speech rights and its very future.

Alberta Jewish News re-printed sections from my Orchardcast interview with Asaf Elia-Shalev, who wrote the book Israel’s Black Panthers.

You can watch or listen to it in full here:

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The City of Edmonton is considering a host of measures to help make some bus routes more efficient, after new metrics showed riders on several top routes are spending too much time sitting in traffic while on board.

As the country's epicentre for winter sports development, Calgary could very well also be fuelling some of the best women's soccer in Canada. 

Residential and commercial spaces are on the rise in Edmonton and while much of the growth is being attributed to the city’s new relaxed zoning rules, some say LRT projects are driving the long-term trend in reshaping adjacent neighbourhoods. 

Outcries from the Downtown Revitalization Coalition and mayoral hopeful, Coun. Tim Cartmell, about the city's plan to fix several bridges that connect drivers to downtown don't match the facts, the co-hosts of Episode 296 Speaking Municipally said.

Co-host Troy Pavlek wrote a blog that breaks down the disruption timelines and the traffic numbers on the five bridges — the Low Level (which is split into northbound and southbound spans), High Level, Wellington, and Dawson. Pavlek's analysis was prompted by a Feb. 14 op-ed by coalition members Chad Helm, of The Helm, and Puneeta McBryan, of the Downtown Edmonton Business Association, where the two argued that rehabilitating five bridges simultaneously constitute "another devastating blow" to downtown Edmonton.

Pavlek said on the podcast that the devastation argument is a stretch. "You've heard that downtown is going to be crippled by five bridge closures," he said. "Depending on how you count, it's one to one and a half overlapping bridge closures."

Co-host Mack Male said debate is healthy, but only if it's factual.

"It's fine to have a conversation about, 'How do we mitigate the impacts of these things so that businesses are impacted as little as possible?,'" Male said. "But it's helpful if we can have that conversation from a place of truth rather than a place of fear."

Cartmell criticized civic infrastructure planning on Feb. 13 and 20 with posts on Instagram" that suggested Edmonton is facing an "unprecedented infrastructure challenge."

Pavlek said there are at least a dozen instances when Cartmell has opted not to take the opportunity to add input or dissent on city administration's plans for the bridge maintenance that he nonetheless references in the statement.

The Feb. 21 episode of Taproot's civic affairs podcast also covered Lime's winter e-bike pilot, the city's efforts to mitigate wildfires, and Edmonton Transit Service's plans for improvement based on an audit of DATS. Plus, Taproot's managing editor, Tim Querengesser, provided an update from the Taproot newsroom. Speaking Municipally comes out on Fridays. Listening and subscription options are all right here.

This week, council is set to vote on the proposed public spaces bylaw, a rezoning to allow a Nordic spa in the river valley, and establishing a new standing committee on infrastructure.

There is a public hearing scheduled on Feb. 24 and a city council meeting scheduled on Feb. 25 and 26.

Here are key items on this week's agenda:

• Council is scheduled to vote on the public spaces bylaw at a meeting on Feb. 25 after more than 50 people shared their opinions at a committee meeting earlier this month. Some speakers expressed fear the bylaw would disproportionately harm vulnerable Edmontonians, while some business leaders said the bylaw would help staff and customers feel safer in core areas. The committee removed restrictions on protests, skateboarding, and feeding feral cats from the bylaw.
• A rezoning application that would allow Scandinave Group to build a Nordic spa in the river valley is scheduled to be reviewed by council at a public hearing on Feb. 24. Residents in support of the application said it would bring a unique amenity to the city and increase neighbourhood vibrancy, while those opposed said congestion and parking are concerns, and that housing should be prioritized. The spa is proposed at the former location of Soaring House, left to the University of Alberta by Sandy Mactaggart. The Confederacy of Treaty Six First Nations opposes the rezoning. In an open letter, the group said the proposed rezoning would allow for private development below the river bank and that the application did not meet the duty to consult First Nations.
• Council is scheduled to discuss establishing a new standing committee that would focus on infrastructure and would have the same procedures as its community and public services, urban planning, and executive committees. Standing committees are typically made up of four council members who discuss reports before making recommendations to the rest of council. The proposed mandate for the new infrastructure committee includes capital project development and delivery; cost, schedule, and scope progression for both growth and renewal components of the capital plan; and progress on the capital plan. Council could create a motion to form the committee at a meeting on Feb. 25, and the committee could start holding meetings by April.
• Administration is scheduled to provide an update on major construction projects on routes in and out of downtown, including bridge renewal projects that recently drew the ire of the Edmonton Downtown Revitalization Coalition. Five bridges are slated for repair in the next few years. The coalition's chair, Cheryll Watson, said the construction could hamper downtown's recovery, especially paired with roadwork for the Valley Line West LRT along Stony Plain Road NW, 156th Street NW, and 87th Avenue NW. A report scheduled to be presented to council at a meeting on Feb. 25 clarifies that in 2025 and 2026, only a maximum of two bridges will be closed simultaneously. In 2025, the Wellington Bridge will be closed, the Dawson Bridge will have lane reductions during off-peak hours, and the southbound Low Level Bridge will have lane reductions. In 2026, the Wellington Bridge will remain closed, the northbound Low Level Bridge will be closed, and the Dawson Bridge and southbound Low Level Bridge will reopen. Administration said it does not recommend delaying renewal because the construction is needed to address safety and functional concerns and prevent unplanned closures. Troy Pavlek, co-host of Taproot's civic affairs podcast Speaking Municipally, wrote a blog post analyzing traffic volumes on the bridges set for renewal.
• Council is scheduled to review rezoning applications in Crestwood, Ritchie, and McKernan at a public hearing on Feb. 24.
• Council will receive verbal updates on Dutch elm disease, potential U.S. tariffs, and collective bargaining at a meeting on Feb. 25.

Meetings stream live on YouTube on the Chamber channel and River Valley Room channel.

Rhonda Dupuis, the manager of land and asset management for the city, said ideally a business owner who can offer something different to the area will be interested in the Triangle Space.

Some Alberta doctors are facing pay cuts for their on-call work and they're warning the changes could make staffing problems in hospitals worse.

Inflation has taken a bite out of many wallets over the last few years, whether it's the cost of beef, housing or fuel. The cost of ammunition is no exception, though the reasons for the price spike may come as a surprise.

Many Edmontonians' view of Gretzky — an almost saintly figure in this city — has become complicated. Gretzky, who has ties to U.S. President Donald Trump, has not spoken out against increasing rhetoric from the U.S. government that it wants to make Canada its 51st state.

Most of 150-person congregation at the Ukrainian Orthodox Cathedral of St. John the Baptist in Edmonton are immigrants who fled Ukraine. The families follow the war intensely, but some don't want to hear about the conflict when they attend the church's weekly service.

Canada's Abigail Strate collected bronze on Sunday for her first World Cup ski jumping medal of the season. She scored 226.6 points over two jumps on the normal-size hill in Hinzenbach, Austria.

Calgary police say 24-year-old Adonai Tekle died last week from injuries he received while trying to curb conflict during an after-hours party.

A growing number of Canadians are making questionable decisions about their health due to misinformation online. That's according to a new survey by the Canadian Medical Association. We ask two experts for tips on spotting misinformation.

Police and experts are encouraging Edmontonians to be hypervigilant when looking for places to rent as scams becoming more sophisticated.

The Jump and Bike Skills Association of Calgary says demand is growing for designated dirt jump parks "to provide safe, organized and progressive environments for riders of all skill levels."

Following a strategic game plan, Martin delivered a clean, conservative performance for a first-run score of 80.60.That proved good enough for gold, with big name after big name crashing as the course conditions deteriorated on a windy day in the shadow of the Rocky Mountains.

Some Vegreville, Alta., residents are upset about comments U.S. President Donald Trump recently made about the war in Ukraine, including that Ukraine instigated the conflict.

Tl;dr

• Internal correspondences obtained through FOIP show that in the weeks leading up to the May 9 pro-Palestine encampment at the University of Calgary, administration worked to ensure it wouldn’t be permitted.

• On April 29, the university issued a directive, which isn’t publicly accessible, that explicitly prohibited encampments and overnight protests, despite a long history of overnight encampment protests at UCalgary.

• The university’s senior leadership team received an email from a pro-Israel lobbying group on April 30, which asked administration to “take all necessary measures to prevent an encampment at UCalgary.” This was the only external email in the FOIP package that received a personal response from president Ed McCauley.

• An email from campus security to Calgary police reveals that the cops began setting up a temporary command centre at McMahon Stadium almost as soon as they arrived on campus, more than four hours earlier than was claimed in the university’s exculpatory third-party investigation.

• Two days before the encampment, student groups wrote a letter to McCauley and VP (academic) Penny Werthner outlining a list of demands, including disclosing its investments and divesting from those connected to Israel, and academic and mental health supports for Palestinian students. McCauley didn’t respond until two days after the encampment was forcibly dismantled.

• McCauley shared a National Post op-ed disparaging UCalgary and UAlberta law professors who criticized the universities’ response to their encampments with members of the executive team via email. VP (academic) Werthner called the article “excellent.”

In the early hours of May 9, 2024, a pro-Palestinian encampment was erected at the University of Calgary to protest Israel’s war on Gaza, which had killed at least 35,000 Palestinians, though medical experts would soon warn that the true figure was almost certainly far higher.

The UCalgary students and other community members involved in the protest were part of a broader movement at campuses across the United States and Canada calling for their institutions to disclose investments and divest from those implicated in Israel’s genocidal war.

These encampments lasted for varying amounts of time, but few, if any, were shorter lived than the one at UCalgary. 

Before anyone had the chance to stay overnight, Calgary police officers stormed onto campus dressed like they were going to war. The cops violently dismantled the protest camp, firing 15 pepperball rounds and four pepper grenades at the participants and using a degree of physical force that gave at least two protestors traumatic brain injuries.

Shortly after the encampment was aggressively dispersed, the Orchard filed a freedom of information request with UCalgary, seeking all correspondence from May 1 to May 13 to and from the university’s executive leadership team, which consists of the president and seven vice-presidents, regarding the encampment. 

In late January, this outlet received four tranches of internal correspondence, each about 200 pages long, including significant redactions and duplicates. 

These documents show that, even before a single tent peg was placed in the ground, UCalgary administration’s intention was to make the encampment disappear.

As early as April 29, the university executive team issued a directive expressly prohibiting a campus encampment, which UCalgary law professors say constituted a substantial revision of existing policy. 

The next day, the documents show, university leadership received an email from a pro-Israel advocacy organization demanding they prevent the establishment of an encampment, which received a personal response from university president Ed McCauley.

In the days leading up to the encampment, communications staff diligently scoured Instagram and Twitter for any indication of when an encampment might pop up at UCalgary. Once the encampment was established, social media monitoring intensified, with a significant portion of the FOIP documents consisting of screenshots of social media posts.

“What did they think we were doing there?” wondered local Palestine solidarity activist Wesam Cooley, with whom the Orchard shared the FOIP documents. 

“I went to UofC. That was the best thing I've ever seen happen on that campus,” Cooley added.

“If it hadn't been cracked down on in the way it had, I think something pretty remarkable could have emerged out of that—like a hub of political and human rights, community building. But it wasn't to be.”

This story, which focuses on the university’s decision to ensure the encampment wouldn’t even last a day, is the first of two parts. 

The second part, which will come out next week, focuses on how the university leadership, Calgary police and the Alberta government covered up police violence against the protestors.

UCalgary’s preparations for a potential encampment began in April 2024, as the pro-Palestinian student movement spread across the United States and Canada.

On April 30, an email was sent to UCalgary’s senior leadership team, with the subject: “Ensuring a Safe and Inclusive Environment for UCalgary’s Jewish Community.”

The senior leadership team appears to consist of the executive leadership, plus faculty deans, associate VP (diversity, equity and inclusion) Malinda Smith and vice-provost (student experience) Varity Turpin.

The identity of the email’s sender is redacted, but a May 10 “community bulletin” from the vociferously pro-Israel Jewish Federation of Calgary boasted that the group had been “in direct and timely contact” with university president McCauley, who assured them he “had a strong plan in place for the situation.”

The April 30 email referred to the alleged “presence of antisemitic actions and pro-terror activism” at the existing pro-Palestinian encampments at McGill University in Montreal and University of British Columbia in Vancouver.

“We ask that you take all necessary measures to prevent an encampment at UCalgary,” the pro-Israel group demanded 10 days before the UCalgary encampment was erected. 

President McCauley didn’t respond to this message via email until the morning after the encampment was torn down, promising the pro-Israel group that the school “will continue to act quickly to address threats and ensure a safe environment” 

“Please know that hate crimes and violence will not be tolerated,” McCauley wrote, ignoring the violence he unleashed on students less than a day earlier.

McCauley’s response to the pro-Israel organization was the only message included in the FOIP documents that the president sent to anyone outside the university.

The pro-Israel group’s framing of the encampments informed the way university leadership approached the issue from the outset.

The university’s preparations for the encampment would be undertaken strictly from the perspective of pro-Israel students and community members, with the presumption that any protest against Israel’s actions is by definition antisemitic and creates a hostile environment for Jewish people.

On the morning of May 2, UCalgary advisor for media, issues and outreach Brennan Black sent an email to the university’s executive leadership team, campus security and communications staff encouraging them to watch a 28-minute documentary recently posted to YouTube. 

The video, entitled, “The Emergence of Jew Hatred Across Canadian Universities,” was uploaded by a group called Students Supporting Israel a day earlier. 

In his email, Black noted that “UCalgary students are featured heavily throughout,” sharing timestamps of what he regarded as “notable quotes and moments.”

These include, in Black’s words, complaints of:

• Pro-Israel students arriving on campus after Oct. 7, 2023 to find “rocks painted with the Palestinian flag;”

• Pro-Israel groups getting “swarmed” when they table in the same building as pro-Palestine activists;

• A pro-Israel student writing a news report for local student newspaper The Gauntlet about Israel and Gaza that “was edited to look pro-Palestinian;”

• The UCalgary chapter of Students Supporting Israel being “given frozen status” and a “formal warning” after being “accused of harassment while tabling;” and

• A person who’s not Jewish claiming to have “gotten death threats” for being pro-Israel.

At no point does Black suggest these accusations warrant further investigation. They’re simply accepted as undisputed fact.

The Orchard previously reported on internal documents revealing the deliberations that went into the University of Alberta’s decision to invite Edmonton police officers to tear down its encampment on May 10, a day after campus security described it internally as “extremely peaceful.”

While UAlberta administration initially took a more hands-off approach to its Palestine encampment, the documents obtained from UCalgary show the administration adopting an obstinate zero tolerance approach to encampments.

Two hours later, UCalgary VP (services and operations) Mike Van Hee, who co-chaired the crisis management team with VP (academic) Peggy Werthner, established the administration’s mantra for dealing with the encampment for the rest of the university’s senior leadership team: “you are free to protest but you are not free to set up encampments [bold in original].”

“The individuals involved have been advised, and provided documentation, that temporary structures and overnight protests are not permitted,” Van Hee added. “The University of Calgary is working in coordination with the Calgary Police Services who have also been onsite this morning.”

Katy Anderson, a UCalgary PhD student in Communications and Media Studies who helped organize the encampment, said she and other students arrived on campus around 6:15 a.m. to start setting up the encampment.

Within 15 minutes, campus security arrived, issued trespass orders and called the police, who arrived within an hour.

She said the encampment organizers didn’t expect the university to tolerate the encampment for long, given how “beholden to corporate interests” UCalgary is. 

But neither did they anticipate the level of violence the university was willing to unleash on its students, added Anderson.

In addition to the documents the Orchard obtained from UCalgary, writer and activist Euan Thomson, who was assaulted by Calgary police at the encampment, obtained all correspondence between the cops and campus security from May 9, which he provided to this outlet.

At 7:15 a.m., Rick Gysen, UCalgary’s director of campus security, sent an email to Sgt. Quentin Blindenbach, Detective Zain Kelly and Sgt. Dan Kim of the Calgary Police Service (CPS) Emergency Management Unit to let them know that the encampment had been set up in the quad, with 12 to 15 tents, more than 20 people, wooden pallets and signs. 

Gysen added that CPS District 3 was “gathering in at the stadium, not sure what the plan is,” referring to McMahon Stadium, which was used as a makeshift CPS headquarters during the encampment. 

An exculpatory third-party review of the university’s handling of the encampment conducted by accounting firm MNP claims that while CPS officers arrived on campus around 7:30 a.m., they didn’t establish a command centre at McMahon until 11:30 a.m.—more than four hours after the director of campus security reported to police that the local district was “gathering in at the stadium.”

This basic factual inconsistency is one of several reasons that UCalgary law professors Jonnette Watson Hamilton and Jennifer Koshan recently characterized the MNP report as “thin gruel,” 

To Thomson, the early morning exchange between UCalgary’s Gysen and the CPS reveals that the university had already decided “that if an encampment went up, they were going to allow Calgary police to deploy a massive number of cops to remove that encampment, and that they were going to do it immediately.”

Which university policies did the encampment violate that warranted such a heavy police presence? 

This wasn’t immediately apparent to UCalgary director of government relations Candice Laws.

VP (communications and community engagement) , whose name you might recognize from the popular podcast The Strategists, clarified in a May 11 email to Laws that the protestors had violated the Use of University Facilities for Non-Academic Purposes Policy (Facilities Policy), Special Events Program and an ELT [Executive Leadership Team] directive.

Hogan also noted that the UCalgary Statement on Free Expression, which it adopted in 2019 under UCP pressure, notes that the university can “reasonably regulate the time, place, and manner of expression to ensure that it does not disrupt the ordinary activities of the institution.”

The Facilities Policy and Special Events Program each detail the steps required to obtain university approval for extra-curricular events on campus. 

The ELT directive, dated April 29, 2024, stated explicitly that the university wouldn’t approve “temporary structures” on campus, which Hogan claimed was done simply “to clarify existing policies.”

He attached the updated May 3 version of the directive, which specified that protests wouldn’t be allowed on campus between 10 p.m. and 8 a.m., rather than the original’s blanket ban on “overnight protests,” removes the “right to protest” and adds “the freedom to critique and contest the expression of others.”

“Failure to follow these policies and directives,” the document warned, “may constitute non-academic misconduct (students), cause for disciplinary action (staff) and/or grounds to be trespassed from the University of Calgary’s premises (all).” 

This directive preemptively banning encampments was emailed to students on May 3. Campus security mistakenly handed out the original April 29 draft to encampment protestors on May 9.

In a Nov. 5 Ablawg article, UCalgary law professors Jonnette Watson Hamilton and Shaun Fluker argue that this directive is “not a lawful exercise of authority by the University of Calgary,” and is therefore “unenforceable.” 

Watson Hamilton and Fluker note that while the directive may have been sent to students, it isn’t published anywhere, contrary to the university’s Procedure for Developing Policies and Procedures, and it’s unclear who wrote and approved it.

“It is a basic principle of administrative law, the rule of law, and procedural fairness that people must know the rules that govern their actions,” they wrote. 

Contrary to Hogan’s assertion, the law professors argue that the directive “substantially amends” the Facilities Policy, which outlines a detailed list of activities prohibited on campus, none of which have anything to do with “temporary structures.” 

Katy Anderson noted that encampment protests are somewhat of a UCalgary tradition, with students camping out in the university quad to protest tuition increases and housing insecurity in 1999, 2003, 2006, 2007 and 2008.

“I’ve stayed overnight in a tent at the University of Calgary before,” said Anderson, who also did her bachelor’s and master’s degrees at UCalgary.

The narrative that the university and police disseminated on May 10 was that police asked the protestors to disperse and, while most did, a few refused to leave, forcing a three-hour standoff with protestors that began around 8 p.m.

“This isn’t something we enjoy doing,” said police chief Mark Neufeld at a news conference the day after the encampment was dismantled. “It is something that is very necessary when individuals refuse to comply with lawful direction.”

Wesam Cooley arrived in the evening and served as one of the encampment’s police liaisons, told the Orchard that Neufeld’s account, which was echoed by president McCauley, is a “fantasy narrative.”

Cooley said he had negotiated the encampment’s takedown with the police, going back and forth between them and the students about every 15 minutes. 

“Every single tent had been dismantled,” he said in an interview, adding that the only delay was packing all the camping supplies into a moving van, which couldn’t enter the quad because police had blocked all the roads. 

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When he told the officer he was negotiating with the issue, the cop said they would just have to take their supplies by hand, giving them a final deadline of five minutes.

“There's a line of protesters standing face-to-face with the police chanting, but they're not doing anything. Behind them, the entire encampment’s being taken down,” Cooley recalled.

He provided the Orchard with a video taken immediately before and during the cops’ assault on the protestors, which occurred around 10:30 p.m. 

“You’re out of time, Mr. Cooley,” an officer says about five seconds into the video as protestors stood facing the officers while singing the African-American hymn, “We Shall Not Be Moved.” One of these protestors was Anderson. 

“We have given you enough time to move off the university campus,” another officer announces through a megaphone. 

Around 48 seconds in, the cops begin marching towards the students, chanting move in unison and, according to Cooley, “bashing us” with their shields, “then the pepper balls come out and from that point, it just devolves.”

A minute later, the video screen goes black with audible screams in the background.

Euan Thomson, who had been at the encampment on and off since around 9:45 a.m., told the Orchard that he got punched in the face three times by an officer who was wearing what felt like weighted-knuckle gloves, leaving Thomson with a concussion. 

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After he got up, another officer whisked him away to their makeshift command centre and wrote him a trespassing ticket.

“They just dumped me at McMahon [Stadium], gave me the ticket and sent me away. Nobody even asked me if I was OK, and I was visibly bleeding from the face,” said Thomson.

Katy Anderson said that once the police charged, she “got hit on the head immediately, extremely hard,” causing her to leave campus with a concussion.

“I wasn't prepared to be physically assaulted by the police at the behest of the university where I've spent my academic career,” she said.

In a May 10 news release, president McCauley boasted that there were “no injuries” from the encampment raid, citing assurances from police.

On the evening of May 7, two days before the encampment, a coalition of groups sent a petition to president McCauley and VP (academic) Penny Werthner, who also served as interim provost, demanding that UCalgary:

• disclose and divest,

• commit to an academic boycott of Israeli universities,

• adopt a definition of anti-Palestinian racism and implement a zero-tolerance policy for it,

• provide the same mental health and academic supports for Palestinian students that it does for Ukrainian students, and

• condemn Israel’s genocidal war in the same way McCauley unequivocally condemned the Hamas-led Oct. 7, 2023 attacks on Israel.

The nine signatories were the Palestine Advocacy Club, Arab Student Network, Muslim Student Association, Muslimah Empowered, Pakistani Student Society, Communist Revolution, Youth Lifting Youth, Food Justice Now, and the UCalgary chapter of Kiwanis International.

24 05 07 Email From Students To Ucalgary Admin

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McCauley didn’t respond until May 11, with a letter claiming that his office had been in the process of “confirming it came from the clubs listed (as it came from an unknown gmail address) and confirming details of our response when, as you know, an encampment was established in the early hours of May 9.”

“We wish you had provided more time - or at least a request for a meeting or clear sense of your expectation for when a response was to be delivered - before such a dramatic escalation,” the president wrote in a letter that was approved by Hogan. 

McCauley told the students that some of their demands are “within the purview of the administration” while others are the Board of Governor’s responsibility, asking the groups for “contacts to engage with.”

“I know these have been a difficult few days, and I know there are decisions we made with which you disagree. While we will continue to enforce university rules to ensure the safety and operation of our campus, we want to engage,” McCauley wrote.

When dozens of alumni wrote to the university to express their disappointment in how the university handled the encampment, with many pledging to withhold future donations, senior director of alumni engagement Colleen Bangs sent each of them an identical email repeating the president’s talking points nearly verbatim. 

The one exception was in response to a May 13 email from an alumni who wrote: “Until UCalgary makes a true commitment to listening to the students and to ensuring this never happens again, I do not feel comfortable with my likeness being associated with the university or any of its marketing [bold in original].”

Two days later, Bangs wrote that she felt obliged “to send a personal response.”

“You have generously shared your … knowledge with the university on many occasions and always represented our institution in a way that makes us proud,” Bangs wrote. “I am sorry for the way that the actions and images from May 9 made you feel, both personally and about the university.”

On May 14, law professors from UCalgary and UAlberta wrote an open letter to the presidents of their universities, the Calgary and Edmonton police services, and the Alberta Crown Prosecution Service arguing that the universities and police forces violated the encampment protestors’ Charter rights.

“We are further concerned by the excess force and violence with which the Calgary Police Service and Edmonton Police Service cleared the camps,” they added. “Video evidence suggests that police officers used force that went far beyond that which was necessary to effect law enforcement purposes.”

In response to the law professors’ petition, National Post comment editor Carson Jerema wrote a May 15 column, headlined, “Ignore left-wing 'experts,' there is no right to camp on university property.”

That evening, president McCauley emailed a link to the column to senior advisor John Kincaid, university lawyer and VP (people and culture) Jacqueline Lacasse, Hogan, and Werthner. 

Academic VP Werthner’s response to Jerema’s explicitly anti-intellectual diatribe was one word: “Excellent.” 

UCalgary communications director Dean Parthenis acknowledged the Orchard’s request for comment, but said he might need more time than the deadline provided. 

This piece will be updated in the event he responds. 

Stay tuned for Part II, which will reveal where the provincial government fits into the story.

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I’ve included the FOIP documents from UCalgary below for your reading pleasure. If there’s anything important that you think I missed, let me know.

Record 1 April Redacted

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Record 2 May 9 Redacted

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Record 3 May 10 Redacted

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Record 4 May 11 16 Redacted

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The head of the Canada Council for the Arts doesn't think Alberta's arts sector is getting an equitable share of national arts funding. Now, it's hiring two arts liaison consultants to increase awareness about funding opportunities for Alberta artists.

Expert says mitigation will only go so far, as wildfires like the one last year in Jasper continue to threaten mountain towns due to climate change.

An apartment building in central Edmonton that shut down late last year after a security guard was killed on-site may be allowed to reopen to tenants.

Daniel Thiessen, co-owner of Pete the Plumber, says any time the city experiences a wild temperature swing, there is a risk of pipes bursting.

John Sproule’s shirt was pulled over his head and he was taking punches to the face when he said he took out a pocket knife and began “swinging it frantically trying to get the attack to stop.”

Plans for what could be Edmonton's first nordic spa will be discussed Monday at a city council public hearing. Scandinave Group is looking to rezone land in the Brander Gardens neighbourhood and turn it into a health and wellness centre. CBC's Nancy Carlson updates us on the feedback received so far.

The city says construction on the new path, which will connect 33rd Avenue S.W. to the path along the south side of the Marda Loop Safeway, will begin in March.

Two senior police officers will share the role of interim chief of the Edmonton Police Service following the retirement of Dale McFee.

An Alberta judge has granted an injunction to a ministerial order that allowed the Edmonton public school division to keep some students with disabilities from going to school.

Canada's leadership will put together another best-of-the-best men's hockey team in less than a year for the 2026 Olympics.

Last week, the chief of Sturgeon Lake Cree Nation cancelled his participation in a scheduled Feb. 24 meeting with government officials, the 30-minute, online discussion gave short-shrift to the band's concerns.

Sam Jenkins, the managing partner of Punchcard Systems, says his company's new Check the Label app can help consumers get something they seek — products made in Canada that can buffer the economic effect of American tariffs.

"We can't control what's going to happen for the next 30 days or for the next four years," Jenkins told Taproot. "When I think about what is most important, one of the things that's coming out of (the threat of tariffs) is that Canadians really do want to buy Canadian on a bunch of different fronts. One, to be able to support our economy. There's also a buy local component in terms of resiliency, and certainly around things like climate change."

When Estyn Edwards, Punchcard's partner and chief technology officer, brought Jenkins the idea (via his life partner) to give consumers more information about where products come from, the two mobilized their team. The company launched Check the Label on Feb. 10 after just two days of development. The tool is free to use in a browser and in apps for iOS and for Android. It enables users to scan a barcode, learn product info, and add insights to a growing database. It also harnesses several third-party artificial intelligence application programming interfaces to add data and display findings next to user votes on a product's country of origin.

On Feb. 13, Taproot tried the tool by scanning a box of Kraft Dinner and it didn't yield any AI-supplied details. "We're hitting our limit for how many AI queries we could have at once," Edwards told Taproot about the lack of results. He also said Check the Label experienced a 7,000% usage spike compared to three days prior.

The demand may make it sound like Check the Label has the potential to be a cash cow but that's not Punchcard's goal at the moment.

"There's probably a different answer today (to if we will commercialize Check the Label) than it will be tomorrow and next week and next month," Jenkins said. "We're an organization that has clients, and we try to drive profit just like any other business, but it's really empowering for our team to get to work on something that creates value that is non-commercial. I don't think we're going to commercialize the data."

Jenkins said he doesn't see the growing buy-Canadian trend as anti-American. Ultimately, he said, the onus for equitable international trade doesn't fall at the feet of buyers and sellers.

"We're not responsible as individuals in this ecosystem, in terms of the decisions that our governments are making, in terms of their economic negotiation," he said. "As an organization, while we're Canadian based, we do quite a bit of work in the U.S. as well. From our perspective, the best situation is the really safe and economically viable U.S.-Canadian border."

Fittingly, another inspiration for Check the Label is to bring greater clarity to what a "Canadian" product is within the official designations like Made in Canada, Product of Canada, Assembled in Canada, and Imported by Canada, which all have different meanings. Jenkins said the project also allows employees to enhance their skills and live their values. The Punchcard team also did socially minded work in 2020 with the COVID Continuity tool it built with The CommAlert Group and the Canada Emergency Wage Subsidy Estimator it made with Video Tax News.

Edwards said Check the Label may have a larger spinoff benefit by demonstrating what Canadians want from their political leaders in this moment. Check the Label might help "push our politicians to have a little bit more say, and maybe hurt the people that are forcing these tariffs," he said.

Punchard emerged from a project Jenkins and Edwards worked on for Buffalo Inspection Services in 2014, ultimately growing into a company that has served more than 150 clients with more than 50 full-time staff across four provinces. Punchcard also birthed a spinoff company called Standard Field Systems that helps police services test sobriety. In both 2023 and 2024, the company made The Globe and Mail's list of top growing companies in Canada.

Jenkins has a few thoughts for bigger-picture work to address the impact of potential tariffs.

"The easiest thing to do would be to remove interprovincial trade (barriers) from many, many, many, many goods to make (trade) easier to flow," he said. "If we were to remove any of those rich barriers to commerce, that likely far outstrips any of the loss that comes along with the tariffs."

Jenkins also said Canada should work to increase trade with other foreign partners, and paraphrased someone he met with from the Edmonton Chamber of Commerce on that point.

"If you had one customer, and they made up 80% of your business, you would probably build a strategy to find more customers," Jenkins said, recalling the point. "I think this is the story that Canadian businesses need to be reinforcing with our elected officials."

Looking ahead for Check the Label, Edwards, Jenkins, and the rest of the Punchcard team are already looking at new features and improvements to add. They want to improve camera functionality, particularly on iOS, add a login function so users can track their scans and contributions, find more data sources to populate its database, and more.

"We're trying to be very focused on: "Let's only build out what we need to build now," Jenkins said. "However, we have to keep an eye on what's possible for the future."

The company also wants the tool to go into the hands of manufacturers and retailers to get even more data on where products are made.

Punchcard isn't the only organization working to empower people to buy products that benefit Canadians. Shop Canadian, by William Boytinck and Matthew Suddaby, also harnesses users to determine where a product comes from, but does not use AI. It is available as an app on Google Play and on Apple's app store. The developers of Shop Canadian placed a call on Reddit for user uptake that also previews planned new features. Made in Alberta, by the Alberta Food Processors Association, is a website that has listed Albertan food and beverage products for the last two years. It may expand to other product types.

On this day in 2014, Edmonton's Neon Sign Museum lit up for the first time.

The bright, buzzy glow of trapped neon has been a part of the city's streetscape for almost a century. The first neon sign in Edmonton appeared in 1928, along the side of Darling's Drug Store. It wasn't long before the city's business districts were awash in bright reds, yellows, and blues, all battling for the attention of customers.

Neon signs remained commonplace for decades, but they slowly began to fall out of favour. Technology such as LEDs made alternative signs cheaper and more energy efficient, and working with neon required expertise that was becoming less common. As businesses closed down or renovated, those bright neon signs were often destroyed or tucked away in storage rooms.

In 2002, city heritage planner David Holdsworth spotted an old Canadian Furniture neon sign that was on its way to the trash as the business was being demolished. Instead of letting it get thrown away, Holdsworth saved it. That sign became the first piece in what would eventually become the first neon sign museum in Canada.

Holdsworth continued to collect other forgotten neon signs. He eventually partnered with members of the Alberta Sign Association, with the goal to restore and recreate some of the damaged old signs and find a place to display them. The collection grew for years, and in 2012 the group secured funding to have the signs displayed on 104 Street.

TELUS gave permission to have the signs installed along the east wall of its brick building on the corner of 104 Street and 104 Avenue downtown. When the museum first opened on Feb. 21, 2014, it had eight historic signs — glimpses back into Edmonton's old newsstands, railways, and other long-gone businesses. Placards along the building's base told the history of each sign and its significance.

The sign museum was an instant hit, drawing both curious locals and international attention. In the past 11 years, the collection has more than doubled to 20 donated signs — enough that the collection has spread across the street to the walls of the Mercer Warehouse. It now features neon artifacts stretching back to the old Pantages Theatre, to video stores, and to bakeries.

Two decades after that first neon sign was saved from the trash pile, the Neon Sign Museum continues to grow. In 2024, it added two new pieces to its outdoor display: The cartoon cyclist from Western Cycle, and a newly-built sign to honour music icon k.d. lang.

This clipping was found on Vintage Edmonton, a daily look at Edmonton's history from armchair archivist Rev Recluse of Vintage Edmonton.

Cancellations of school facility rentals is putting some language schools and minor sports clubs in a bind — forcing them to scramble for alternative spaces, move sessions online or cancel them altogether.

Alberta is reviewing new guidance on H5N1 avian influenza vaccines, and who might get them, as shipments are readied to fan out across the country and concerns about the virus grow.

The Alberta Energy Regulator has fined an Edmonton company $303,769 for contravening an environmental protection order related to a release from an oilfield disposal well.

Calgary has its chinooks, but Edmonton also experiences winter temperature swings that can go from -30 C to 5 C within a few days. CBC's Travis McEwan looks at these different weather patterns and the health impacts that can come with the change.

Calgary Chamber of Commerce president and CEO Deborah Yedlin and Calgary Economic Development president and CEO Brad Perry will be at Tuesday's city council meeting to share their insights and answer questions from councillors about the city's response to potential tariffs.