Home Care In Panorama Hills, AB

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Banff Sunshine Village celebrated small firsts on opening day this year.

Instead of criss-crossing through trees, they chose things that one might do when they’re not skiing: Having the first poutine and Bud Light of the season or riding up the magic carpet.

It’s been that kind of start to the winter for Alberta and B.C. ski resorts, which have faced an uncharacteristically low snowfall this year.

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“I have not seen a start to the winter like this in my adult years,” said Kendra Scurfield, vice-president of marketing brand and communications at Banff Sunshine Village.

When Sunshine opened Nov. 11, it started only with its magic carpet operating. Just over a week later, two of its smaller chair lifts had opened. Now, nearly a month since opening day, six of its 12 lifts are open, with most of the more difficult terrain still closed.

While Sunshine has been uniquely saddled by its inability to create snow, most mountains in the area have experienced below-average snowpack to start the season.

Revelstoke Mountain Resort pushed back its start date due to bare conditions, but the mountain confirmed it expects to open on Saturday. To make up for the delay, the mountain issued refunds to pass holders or rescheduled those tickets for later in the season.

“There’s definitely been an impact on tourism, although I will say we did see people still arriving to the mountain to enjoy a weekend away,” said Laura Meggs, communications manager for Revelstoke Mountain Resort.

Many resorts have also chosen to be upfront with skiers this year.

“We have said, ‘Hey, look, the conditions aren’t amazing . . . save your days for when it’s better,’” Scurfield said, adding sales have been soft but improving conditions should result in more traffic on the mountain.

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Dear Mother Nature, I hope this letter finds you well and in good spirits. I am writing to you from my post at...

Posted by Revelstoke Mountain Resort on Thursday, November 30, 2023

New data from the B.C. River Forecast Centre shows the majority of the Kootenays and B.C. Southern Interior have seen 50 per cent less snowfall than normal. In the Upper Columbia region of B.C., which includes Golden — home to Kicking Horse Mountain Resort — and Revelstoke, the area has received 39 per cent of normal snowfall.

The United States Department of Agriculture says the Kootenays — home to Panorama Mountain Resort in Invermere — have received just 59 per cent of normal snowfall.

And in Alberta, Sunshine Village’s snow-water equivalent is below 90 millimetres. At the same time last year it was just above 140 mm.

This year’s El Niño weather pattern means it will likely be a warmer winter and is largely to blame for the current mountain conditions, said Alysa Pedersen, a warning preparedness meteorologist with Environment and Climate Change Canada.

For a year with lower snowfall, you’d have to look to 2015 and 2016, Pedersen said, when El Niño conditions were similar to this year.

But those meagre conditions have been supported by an atmospheric river that’s come off the B.C. coast over the past seven days, approximately doubling a number of mountains’ base snowpack. Revelstoke, for example, has added 61 centimetres over the past seven days, making up two-thirds of its 92-cm base, while Sunshine has added 27 cm to its now 60-cm base.

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Despite the conditions, Panorama Mountain Resort is preparing for a normal opening day this weekend after spending October and November using its 350 snow-making guns. While its summit chairlift won’t be open — normal for opening day — new snow this week has nicely set up the resort for Friday’s opening, said Steve Paccagnan, president and CEO of the resort.

“You know what? We’ll take it,” he said.

With more snow potentially coming this week for Alberta mountains, many aren’t getting ahead of themselves. Pedersen, the meteorologist, said El Niño conditions typically last until early spring.

But Scurfield at Sunshine is trying to influence Mother Nature any way possible.

“I’ve got my pajamas inside out, ice is being flushed down the toilet, I’m dancing like a maniac and I’m sitting with silverware under my pillow.”

[email protected] X: @mattscace67

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Better make room for more neighbours, Albertans. So many more.

If the premier has it right, the province's population is on track to more than double in the time it will take my three-year-old to turn 30.

And in this mid-century, 10-million-person future of Smith's telling, you can take trains from Banff to Calgary and then at high-speed onto Edmonton; we'll still get most of our power from natural gas yet also reach net-zero emissions, as the "greenest energy producer in the world"; our taxes will be remain rock bottom and our public services will be world class.

This sketch of Tomorrowland, Alta., comes in this week's provincial throne speech.

By design, these speeches offer an outlook through rose-coloured glasses — every province is world class and "the very best Canada has to offer" according to its respective throne speech — but the one Smith's speechwriters gave Lt.-Gov. Salma Lakhani to read is something more.

Extra-sparkly-rosy? Well, to try another metaphor, it's certainly bullish in asserting the province's population will outstrip British Columbia and Québec by 2050.

To be sure, Alberta's currently growing at a current clip not seen since 1981, having grown by a staggering 184,400 in the last year to hit 4.7 million.

5,300,000 to go

The throne speech, however, projects that pace to continue unabated.

"As we surpass five million people in the coming 24 months, Alberta's government must set priorities and guide its work through the lens of understanding that by 2050, our province is projected to be the second largest in the country with a population approaching 10 million people," the speech states.

It's not clear where this growth estimate came from, because the premier's office didn't respond to a query Monday.

It could be that somebody just added 184,400 to Alberta's population every year through 2050. It's certainly not the government's own forecasts, which back in July projected Alberta to have 7.1 million people by 2051 — or 8.6 million in its "high" scenario.

Nor is it clear how it's posited that the province will surpass British Columbia, a province that is currently 17 per cent more populous, or Québec and its 8.9 million current residents, according to the latest Statistics Canada estimate. That agency doesn't think Alberta's outgrowing either province in its forecast, while Québec projects it will also nearly hit 10 million by 2050, with a lot less growing needed for it to get there.

Premier Danielle Smith listens to a throne speech that twice suggests a 10-million-person Alberta by 2050. (THE CANADIAN PRESS)

But according to this legislature-opening address, this new reality of boundless ultra-growth is the reality Smith believes her government should plan toward.

It's within that frame of mind that Smith referred to not one but two oft-discussed rail projects: a train from Banff to Calgary's downtown and airport, and that perennial dream of a high-speed link between Alberta's two biggest cities.

"And yes, we need to start planning for the inevitable need for high-speed rail through the Calgary-Red Deer-Edmonton corridor when six to seven million Albertans eventually call that corridor their home," the speech stated, its "and yes" perhaps showing awareness of the endless cycle of feasibility studies that keep putting off a transport idea that not even the Québec-Ontario corridor has achieved yet.

The last provincial study in 2014 concluded it wasn't a good idea, with ridership not even making it a good investment by mid-century. But a 10-million-person province wasn't envisioned in that report.

"When you have that kind of population, it all of a sudden becomes economic," Smith told reporters. She didn't say what planning work is next; a private company's 2021 proposal for a $9-billion line remains alive, its proponents told CBC News on Monday.

If Alberta seriously believes its population will somehow more than double in 27 years, choo-choos will be a lesser construction concern. We'd also have to likely double our housing stock by then too, from the current 1.8 million. That makes the province's throne-speech boast that it will support development of 25,000 more units by 2031 seem like a drop in the rose-coloured bucket.

Just think of how many homes Alberta would need to build to contain more than 5 million additional people in 27 years. (Ose Irete/CBC)

The year 2050, of course, has become an auspicious target year for Canada and Alberta — when both governments are proposing we can reach net-zero to help keep climate change in check.

Mass electrification of vehicles and heating are already expected to require a massive build-out of Alberta's power-generating capacity, even without five million more Albertans to serve.

Smith has signalled she's determined to expand the provincial fleet of natural gas generators — to prevent that more gloomy prediction she's made lately of frequent blackouts if federal clean-electricity goals are to be forced upon Alberta.

But with no private businesses vying to propose new plants right now, the premier indicated on Monday a willingness to bring government support to the generation market: "Whatever it takes to get natural gas plants built," she said, without offering specifics.

With all the headwinds facing Alberta's oil and natural gas industries, Alberta's throne speech offered another confident prediction: "Alberta's government will ensure the entire world understands that the words 'Alberta' and 'energy' are inextricably linked for generations."

It should go without saying that the future's hard to predict — the recent pace of post-pandemic growth in Canada and Alberta took demographers by surprise.

Alberta has managed to double its population since 1986 — in 37 years — so maybe this 10-million vision is possible?

But you don't have to live in Alberta multiple generations to recognize its volatility, and all the booms and busts that prudent provincial leaders would consider, and all the risks to prepare for.

Once a boomtown

Let's take a sober gander at decade-old forecasts for Fort McMurray.

In 2014, right before the Wood Buffalo region's census put its population at 125,032, a major planning study said it would keep on charging as oilsands production ballooned, on to 160,000 people by the start of this decade. This was before recession hit, and the cataclysmic wildfire; the last population count in 2021 for Fort McMurray and region was only 106,059.

As the oilsands capital continued its seemingly interminable rise, the Fort McMurray airport spent $258 million on replacing its undersized old terminal with a new facility five times its size. Randy Bachman and Fred Turner played "You Ain't Seen Nothing Yet" at its grand opening, while airport leaders plotted another costly expansion right on its heels.

That terminal was built to welcome 1.5 million yearly passengers; in 2016, airport traffic fell below half that mark and kept sinking, down to 320,319 last year, airport statistics show.

A high-speed rail link between Calgary and Edmonton could become a white elephant, or it could be the green, sensible way to get between cities, as they are in much of the world. Alberta could still be burning fossil fuel to power homes in a net-zero world, and maybe the United Conservatives are not just at the start of Alberta's next multi-generation political dynasty, and some Gen-Z teen will be its premier in 2050.

Or maybe not. Figuring this out perfectly now is a low-odds proposition, something like one in 10 million.

The new Calgary high school will open to 1,300 Grade 10 and 11 students, and expand to 1,800 total students (including Grade 12) for the 2024/25 school year.

By Darren Krause

Friday, August 25, 2023

With public schools set to welcome learners on Aug. 31, media were given a tour of the new $70 million high school that will finally serve teens in the Calgary communities of Country Hills, Country Hills Village, Coventry Hills, Harvest Hills, Hidden Valley and Panorama Hills.

Aliza Lakhani will be entering Grade 10 at the school this year. The former Riverside Grade 9 student was thrilled to be part of the first students attending North Trail.

“It’s really amazing, all the architecture and the work that’s been put into it,” she said.

“A lot of things are green and new and modern in the school to accommodate new learning styles and I think it’s just really cool. It’s going to benefit the students a lot.”

For many students, the prospect of a long commute to high school loomed. Lakhani was prepped to attend either John G. Diefenbaker High School or James Fowler – a respective 15-minute commute to one and 25 minutes to the other.

Her last school was 40 minutes away and it prevented Lakhani from participating in before and after school activities, she said. She just wasn’t able to get there on her own.

“I think with the new high school being so close, I’ll be able to do a lot more clubs and get to school earlier and do more classes,” she said.

Fellow upcoming Grade 10 student Maya Stewart was looking at a 45-minute commute each day to Crescent Heights High School.

Now her school is within walking distance.

Stewart’s parents were among those who rallied to have the new school built, she said. She’s excited to be a part of North Trail. She loves the new building.

“It’s really open and there’s lots of windows so it’s nice and bright in here,” Stewart said.

“The gym. I like the gym. And there’s a theater here, too.”

Students will bring the school to life: Principal Bester

For the first year, North Trail will welcome Grade 10 and 11 students only. Students will progress from there and the first Grade 12 classes will happen in 2024/2025.

Even though it’s only two grades, they’re expecting nearly 1,300 students. Once you add in next year’s freshmen, it will be at 1,800. That’s already near capacity.

New principal Mike Bester said for a lot of parents in the community, this building is a long time coming. He knows there’s been a need in the area for years.

It’s a big and beautiful building with a lot of great open space, but Bester said that it’s the students that bring the most light to the building.

“It will feel smaller once we get all of our students here,” he said.

“That’s the most exciting part. It is an amazing, beautiful building, but it comes to life when the kids come.”

Bester said the building has tremendous new educational features, too. It’s filled with advanced technology, land-based learning opportunities, natural sciences (with an outdoor, rooftop garden), and a massive learning commons.

One of the science learning leaders, Rachel Gustafson, said the science facilities in the building are state-of-the-art. They have a ton of space and many things that most high school labs in the city don’t have: 3D printers, UV sanitation, fume hoods and cabinets.

“I mean, the opportunity for us to be part of the process where we’re able to actually select materials and instruments that we want to have our students experience has been the biggest opportunity for us,” she said.

“It has just been groundbreaking.”

Home of the Nighthawks

Tim Mo teaches Design Thinking for Innovation at the North Trail High School. He’s as excited as the rest of the staff and students to be in a new, cutting-edge building.

“I think definitely it opens up a lot more options, opportunities for us to use new equipment like this,” he said.

“For us teachers, we are probably conditioned to be accommodating in the teaching tools that we get. So, to be able to use new tools like this is definitely a huge advantage when it comes to the stuff that we can offer to the kids and that gets me super excited.”

Mo teaches, but he also had an interesting additional role to tackle with the school. He helped design the school’s new Nighthawks logo.

The Nighthawks name was chosen through a selection with the community, in consultation with the Indigenous Elders in the area, Mo said. It’s a blue and green motif for the main school logo and a simplified design of a hawk for the school athletic uniforms.

Mo said he has dozens of different design sketches that he made.

“We really wanted to narrow and have a distinct logo for our school,” he said.

“So, we narrowed down to one would be for the athletics – a more simple and modern one – and one for the kind of overarching what the school encompasses.”

Bester said everything’s pulled together for that first day of school. He expects a sleepless night before school starts on Aug. 31.

But then the magic happens. It’s something he experienced only once before, fresh out of university as a brand-new teacher. He was a part of the Lester B. Pearson High School opening in Calgary back in 1990. It’s a career come full circle for him and he’s excited to get started.

“I’m really just humbled to be here, and to have this opportunity,” he said.

“It’s not an opportunity that occurs often in a career.”

The school was built by Bird Construction through Alberta Infrastructure.

After years of community struggle, the building was finally funded in the 2019 provincial budget.

More photos of the new school

If you're taking a walk just east of Calgary's Coventry Hills neighbourhood, you may dismiss it as a regular old rock covered in graffiti.

But to Lincoln Friske, it's a local treasure.

A large erratic boulder sits just past Nose Creek Park. Friske visits the massive rock on his daily dog walks, and he decided recently to create a digital 3D model of it so others could appreciate it, too.

"It's set up just like an anomaly in the middle of this massive park," he said in an interview on the Calgary Eyeopener. "Most people didn't even know there was this graffiti erratic in our own backyard."

Erratics are stones, boulders or big blocks picked up and moved by glaciers from one place to another during the last ice age.

There are thousands dotting the Foothills, part of a 600-kilometre section known as the Foothills Erratics Train. It runs from about Hinton, Alta., all the way down to the Montana border.

WATCH | Check out Friske's 3D rendition of the erratic below:

Eva Enkelmann, an associate professor in the University of Calgary's department of geoscience, says the boulders typically look out of place.

"It almost looks like it fell out of the sky. What that means is it doesn't really match with the rocks you find in that area," she said.

The stones are typically white, grey or slightly pink.

They're made of quartzite — or cemented sand grains — dating back some 500 million years, according to Dale Leckie, geologist and author of The Scenic Geology of Alberta: A Roadside Touring And Hiking Guide.

Researchers have traced the material back to Mount Edith Cavell in Jasper National Park, about 300 kilometres northwest of Calgary.

"They are a very distinctive type of rock," Leckie said.

"You can see features inside them, which geologists call cross-beds. They're structures from the waves and the tides when they were deposited."

So how did they get here?

About 20,000 years ago, a landslide occurred in Jasper National Park.

The tumbling boulders fell onto valley glaciers in the Athabasca River valley. They floated north, then east, then bumped into the Laurentide ice sheet, which covered most of Canada at the time, and were redirected southward, Leckie said.

Over time, they became scattered across the Foothills.

"When the ice melted, eventually it just let them down, I'll say almost gently, onto the landscape, slipping, sliding back and forth," Leckie said.

Most of the erratic boulders landed in their current resting spots about 16,000 years ago.

Another distinctive feature is how solid the erratics are, Enkelmann said.

"Only rocks that are very, very hard actually survive such a long transport," she said. "The river would usually round the boulders and eventually they turn into pebbles."

If you look closely, though, some of the boulders do have some round edges along their lower portions.

That's because hundreds of years ago, bison used to rub up on the boulders to get rid of their winter coats, Leckie said, creating more polished bits. They also created depressions around the boulders known as buffalo wallows.

Where are they?

You can stumble upon an erratic boulder in many farmers' fields running along the Rocky Mountains, Leckie said, but some of the rocks have become famous landmarks.

The largest and most well-known example would be the Okotoks erratic — also known as Big Rock — which is about the size of a three-storey apartment building. A 3D model of the erratic is also available courtesy of the University of Calgary.

The province designated Big Rock a provincial historic resource in 1978 to protect its geological and cultural importance.

"I think they're so interesting because they're just giant blocks," Leckie said.

"They really grab your attention … they just jump out in the landscape because they're standing high almost like sentinels."

Several notable erratics are located in Calgary, including the one documented near Coventry Hills.

One sits on top of Nose Hill Park. Another, known as Split Rock, is in the city's northeast, just off Harvest Hills Boulevard and Beddington Trail N.W.

L eckie has seen others in a McKenzie Lake playground and a Tuscany rest area. In Panorama Hills, there's an erratic — sometimes referred to as crater rock — in a small park.

There are hundreds more, says Enkelmann, and once you're aware of them, you'll start to notice them everywhere.

"For me, it's fascinating that you can weave this whole story by looking at these erratics here in the city, where we are relatively far away from the mountains but we have this evidence," she said.

With files from Nathan Godfrey, Loren McGinnis

Calgary’s southeast streets had ‘Turk’ to call their unofficial mascot, but now, residents in the city’s northeast communities have an ambassador of their own.

“It's fun to see him,” said Paul Caddigan, who lives in Harvest Hills. “He’s pretty relaxed, and he’s pretty agile.”

Caddigan is talking about a three-pawed bobcat. He first spotted the feline outside his front window last month, lounging in the sun on his patio furniture.

“He had its head up against the pillow,” said Caddigan. “He was here for about three, four hours.”

Caddigan says the animal has been making its rounds through the northeast like Coventry Hills, Panorama, Country Hills, Hidden Valley and Sandstone, so he’s not sure when or if it will return to their porch.

“I'm just gonna let him be and he'll grab his birds or rabbits or whatever he does,” Caddigan said. “And if it comes back, (I’ll) just let it do its thing again.”

The sex of the bobcat has not been confirmed, but according to Caddigan, area residents believe it is male and have named it ‘Stumpy.’

The feline’s fame took off online in a community forum called Nextdoor.

“There’ll be pictures posted of the cat online all the time,” said Lloyd Koshman, another resident of Harvest Hills.

Adding, he doesn’t mind having Stumpy around. “We’re perfectly fine with it, we moved into his territory,” he said.

While residents are leaving the bobcat alone, there are other tips on how to be a good neighbour to Calgary’s wildlife.

“We just advise people to give (animals) space,” said Holly Lilly, the executive director of the Alberta Institute for Wildlife Conservation. “And not to have attractants in their garden, whether that’s food or garbage and things like that, so that you can provide that humane exclusion if you don't want them.”

Removing sources of food, water, and shelter, will help keep bobcats and other wildlife away, according to a spokesperson with Alberta’s Justice and Solicitor General. If there is concern for an animal's well-being, it’s best to leave it alone, and call the nearest fish and wildlife office for advice.