Photo by Katie Rainbow via Pexels

On a cloudy February day in Edmonton, Alberta, a giant trans pride flag flies over Dr. Wilbert McIntyre Park, marking the meeting place for a rally in support of the trans community. It’s days after Premier Danielle Smith, in a seven-minute video posted online, announced the most restrictive gender policies in Canada under the guise of “preserving choice for children and youth.” Alongside my 15-year-old daughter, who has many non-binary friends at school, and my best friend, whose child is gender diverse, I join the growing stream of people heading to the gazebo at the centre of the park.

The crowd eventually balloons to over 1,000 people as we wait to hear from the speakers—politicians, Two Spirit Elders, and organizations fighting for trans rights and reminding us to celebrate trans joy. Everywhere are Pride and trans colours and handmade cardboard signs. Some are cheekier than others, like the one that says, Someone come get your ‘Auntie’ Marlaina, she’s harassing the youth again. Marlaina is the premier’s given first name, but she prefers to go by Danielle—an irony she failed to appreciate while telling Alberta’s youth that all name and pronoun changes at school need to be approved by their parents.

While it’s a scary time for young trans and gender-diverse kids and their families, protests like the one happening today show how much solidarity there is in the community, letting these students know they’re not alone. There’s also a clear message that, no matter what policy the province tries to implement, those who know and love them will not stop seeing them for who they are. All around us, clusters of teachers hold signs saying they will never out their students. We run into the parents of a trans kid who lives in our neighbourhood and have a big group hug.

We’re all in need of comfort. At their AGM in November 2023, the United Conservative Party (UCP) overwhelmingly adopted three policies all related to “parental choice.” An opt-in consent for “any subjects of a religious or sexual nature,” including enrolment in extracurriculars or distribution of instructional materials relating to them; one supporting parents’ rights to be informed of and in charge of all decisions to do with all services paid for by the province; and the requirement for parental consent for name or pronoun changes for anyone under 16.

The UCP government wants to take things even further. They are proposing legislation to restrict gender-affirming healthcare for minors—no puberty blockers for anyone under 15 years of age and no gender-affirming surgeries for anyone under 18.

In her video, Smith said that gender-affirming care “poses a risk to [children’s] futures that I, as premier, am not comfortable permitting in our province.” It’s horrifying to know that Smith believes her feelings override actual medical evidence and best practices, or that parents, doctors and minor patients need her permission to choose the right treatment plan for any health concern.

There is a real fear, echoed by many health-care associations and gender-supportive services across Canada, that these policies will result in more harm to this vulnerable and at-risk community. In the Canadian Paediatric Society’s position statement on caring for trans and gender-diverse youth, they clearly state that adolescents who have access to gender-affirming medications have “lower odds of suicidal ideation over the life course.” Denying trans and gender-diverse youth access to the care they need when they need it is the real risk to these children’s futures.

Regardless of Smith’s position on the matter, many caring adults know this, and are fighting for students’ rights to be themselves. In a powerful member statement on the first day of the spring legislature session, Brooks Arcand-Paul, Alberta New Democrat MLA for Edmonton-West Henday and a Two Spirit person, stood proudly, wearing a floral and rainbow ribbon skirt gifted to him by his community, and condemned these policies and the divisiveness they are stoking.

Arcand-Paul says he’s pleased that many Albertans and organizations like labour unions are coming together to support the trans community. The vice president of the Alberta Teachers’ Association spoke at the rally in February, and the United Steelworkers, the Alberta Union of Provincial Employees and the Canadian Union of Public Employees all came out with strongly worded statements denouncing the proposed policies.

But Arcand-Paul also warns, “if this government intends to take rights away from one group, it’s certainly not going to stop there.” He says Albertans need to continue to contact their MLAs and voice their concerns about the proposed policies. “Sometimes we say something once and think it’s good enough, but we have to keep pushing the gas on this one and we can’t lose steam.” Arcand-Paul suggests people donate to organizations like Skipping Stone and Egale Canada, who are establishing legal advocacy funds and gearing up to challenge these policies in the courts if necessary.

As we left the rally, I still had the progressive Pride flag pinned to my jacket. We headed to the Old Strathcona Farmers’ Market for a pre departure coffee. Within minutes, three people stopped me, curious about the flag and the rally. I gladly answered their questions. It made me realize how powerful the simple act of showing up can be—and that we can’t assume everyone knows what’s happening in Alberta politics, or that they don’t care.

The queer and trans community have been fighting for their rights for a long time, but for some of us, this is new territory. It’s imperative that progressive Albertans continue to show up and commit to defending the Charter and human rights of all people, and to keep the pressure on this government with individual calls and letters, attendance at rallies and protests, and donations to the grassroots organizations leading these actions.

Given their track record, it’s hard to say if these actions will be enough to force the UCP government to change its course. But we have to try.

Photo courtesy Afros In Tha City

“Our goal was amplifying Black voices,” says Ado Nkemka, deputy editor of Calgary-based media collective Afros In Tha City. The media collective is the only one of its kind in Mohkínstsis/Calgary, exploring topics relevant to the Black experience and supporting the voices of Black journalists in a hegemonically white media landscape.

Founded in 2016, it was originally events-based, offering community discussions, panels, and events and began writing and publishing in 2020, following the death of George Floyd in the U.S. and the racial reckoning that was happening in Canadian consciousness as well. The platform has come a long way since then and published its first piece in October 2020.

The topics covered by Afros In Tha City include music, lifestyle pieces, social commentary, articles about race-based data, environmentalism, artist profiles, and much more. Writers from the collective have gone on to publish on other mainstream platforms such as the CBC and Huffington Post.

“I think that there is a balance,” says Nkemka, “of, like, trying to be a legitimate business, but also not just spitting information out for the sake of spitting it out but [to be] intentional. I think intentionality has to come with that social consciousness that we’re trying to develop.”

An example would be Afros In Tha City’s use of slow journalism, a practice featured at another Calgary-based independent publication, The Sprawl, which Afros In Tha City is affiliated with. When journalists thoughtfully craft an article on an issue, it acts as a resistance to capitalist practices in mainstream journalism, says Nkemka.

“The reader reads through it and knows that,” Nkemka explains, “‘Okay, this isn’t rushed’. I took my time. This wasn’t some—and this is totally shade—but this isn’t some like, ‘Oh, I’m trying to get five articles out in a day type thing ‘cause, you know, business.’”

According to Nkemka, there may be multiple visions in the expansion of the media collective, including panel discussions, a podcast, a spoken word night in collaboration with other organizations in the city, and a future iteration in their ongoing collaboration with The Sprawl. All of these plans further the goal of cementing Afros in the Calgary arts scene.

“We’re hoping that through our work, and hopefully through non-editorial events where we can really engage with the community, people begin to trust us,” Nkemka says. “And not only support but feel like they can come share their stories with us and know that we want to do those stories justice.”

“I think if you’re not leaning into transit as a reliance or as your first choice, you don’t really know how these fare impacts can really hit you,” says Danika McConnell, an organizer for Free Transit Edmonton (FTE).

In spring 2021, Edmonton was set to raise adult cash transit fares to $3.75. It would have made Edmonton’s single adult fares more expensive than cities like Vancouver and Toronto, two places with more developed transit systems.

That price hike, scheduled for May 2021, did not occur. It was temporarily halted by a vote of 12–1 on Edmonton’s city council, which froze fare prices until next year. Before that council vote, a petition signed by more than 1,800 citizens demanding a fare freeze was delivered to city hall.

That community petition was organized by FTE, a collective of organizers, activists, high school students, and self-described transit lovers. Although their short-term goal of freezing fares was achieved, FTE’s larger mission is made obvious by their name.

FTE launched in February 2020. One of the first actions taken by FTE was to challenge city leaders to use transit for a week.

McConnell argues free transit is fiscally sustainable for Edmonton considering the money handed out to developers and other industries.

“It’s the will of those in power, and it is possible, and we’ve seen it possible,” says McConnell. “We’ve seen it in smaller societies, in smaller cities or countries like Luxembourg.”

According to McConnell, Edmonton’s movement for free transit is part of the class struggle, which is connected to the movement for climate justice.

“I don’t think you can appropriately talk about climate justice without applying the class struggle that intersects with it,” says McConnell. “To move forward to the benefit of our climate, we have to make sure that we don’t leave anyone behind.”

Edmonton’s city council only voted to delay the fare hikes until next year and McConnell says FTE has more work ahead of them.

“It’s a freeze, it’s not forever,” says McConnell, who wants the issue on top of Edmontonians’ minds. “We’re definitely going to be forcing ahead to make sure, especially coming up to this 2021 municipal election, that this becomes a ballot box issue.”

In These Lifeless Things, by Edmonton writer Premee Mohamed, a character looks at her partner in a post-apocalyptic landscape. “We could make love right here!” she thinks. “Who, in this dead city, would stop us?”

Amid pandemics, rising fascism and climate disaster, science fiction writers are imagining new futures in new ways.

Mohamed is a 40-year-old Indo-Caribbean scientist and writer. Her debut novel, the cosmic horror Beneath the Rising, is currently shortlisted for Canada’s Aurora Award. She has several novels and novellas published or forthcoming, including this summer’s And What Can We Offer You Tonight, set many generations from now, in a city-state in which the government can hunt and kill anyone who isn’t employed.

This September, ECW Press published The Annual Migration of Clouds, set in a struggling post-collapse community in what was once the University of Alberta, where Mohamed did two degrees. Though remnants remain, universities have become distant dreams.

“The truth is, of course, that the chain did break,” thinks Reid, the young female protagonist in The Annual Migration of Clouds. “And not once but again and again and again; and not just in the transmission of knowledge from the learned to the unlearned but also parent to child, elder to youth, country to country, every way you could think of. We live in the scattered links that remain.”

Mohamed grew up reading science fiction, with influences stretching from Neal Stephenson’s Seveneves to H.G. Wells’ 1895 novella The Time Machine, which shows a deeply divided future humanity.

“I was really struck by that, as a kid,” Mohamed says. “It must have formed part of my fictional DNA, because I guess I was thinking, what does drive us as we go along, as humanity goes along, to a common cause? Rather than splintering like that into more and more distinct groups that have less and less contact with each other?”

When Mohamed was a kid, the disaster looming over every imagined future was nuclear war. Now, it’s climate change. Mohamed’s job as a reclamation and remediation policy specialist in the Alberta public service includes “future proofing” policies related to the impacts of industrial activity on the land, looking at trends, modelling and tipping points.

“I realize now that the only thing that is positioned to make the needle move on climate change, the only thing that’s big enough, is government. And governments have to coordinate to do that together.”

Governments did not coordinate to prevent millions from dying of COVID-19, Mohamed notes.
“So I’m unfortunately profoundly pessimistic about humanity’s ability to stop climate change, rather than just come up with increasingly baroque ways to deal with it, that will be increasingly segregated into: who has the money to survive the effects of climate change in their area, and who doesn’t.”

The Annual Migration of Clouds is not alone among recent science fiction in exploring the future at a local level; another example is Waubgeshig Rice’s Moon of the Crusted Snow, in which an Indigenous community finds its own ways to deal with widespread disaster.

The choice of whether we splinter or work together is before us. But even in a fractured future, stories such as Mohamed’s show how community persists in the cracks.

Photo by Leonid Iastremsky/Alamy Stock Photo

The COVID-19 pandemic uncovered some of the many disparities affecting Canadian society today. One of the most outstanding examples of this are the deficiencies exposed in senior care facilities and the subsequent calls for aging in place from experts and seniors alike. (Quebec, Manitoba, and Alberta observed the highest rate of seniors who perished as a consequence of COVID-19 while living in long-term care or retirement homes.)

But according to Sue Lantz, founder and managing director of Collaborative Aging, a Toronto-based consulting firm helping seniors “shape [their] own aging experience,” the options available to age in place are limited—and the price tag high.

To age in place, seniors need more than wheelchair- accessible ramps and automatic doors. “You also need to combine that with the right support. And those right supports take the form of social connections, a caregiving team, including home care, and your healthcare access,” Lantz says.

In Options Open, her five-strategy framework, Lantz defines the foundations to age in place as health, housing, social networks, caregiving teams, and resources. “The resources can be everything from your money—but also government funding or insurance plans, or other ways to resource the care or even the house,” she says, highlighting that housing is “like the platform on which the other supports can be mixed and matched.”

As nearly 50 percent of millennials in Canada seem to be delaying their entry into the housing market for various reasons, their retirement options may be undermined. In Canada, access to home ownership is increasingly limited by student debt and precarious employment. For many Albertans, the boom-and-bust economy in the province makes home ownership even harder to attain.

To thrive, seniors need to live in accessible and affordable housing located in walkable neighbourhoods with easy access to services and amenities. But if finding these conditions can be a challenge for anyone earning less than the median income in Alberta’s largest cities, what can less affluent millennials expect when they start turning 65 in 2046? Many young Albertans are anxious for what lies ahead.

For Inés Hernández-Virla and her husband, Luis Virla, home ownership seems a far-fetched dream. Originally from Venezuela, the couple has lived in Calgary since 2014, when Virla was accepted to a PhD program in chemical engineering at the University of Calgary.

Seven years and two children later, they’re still unable to afford a home in any of the walkable neighbourhoods that suit their needs and aspirations in Calgary. Part of the problem, Hernández-Virla says, is that many immigrants are starting from zero. “People born here started working and accruing wealth very young.… This is very difficult for immigrants who arrive here when they’re 30.”

Despite both being employed in chemical engineering, the couple worries about their future prospects—and their children’s. “Lacking access to home ownership limits the capital our children will have to thrive when they grow up,” says Virla.

But at least the Virlas don’t have outstanding debt. For other young Albertans, such as Mitch Dexter, paying back student loans undermines his expectations for building a future. “I don’t feel that it’s really a financial feasibility for me to be planning more than a year in advance,” he says.

After completing a bachelor’s degree in education at the University of Alberta in 2014, it took Dexter two years to land a position in his field of study. “I spent five years not paying those loans back, so now I’m a little bit behind some of my peers,” he says.

Dexter thinks that when he settles his student debt in the next decade, he’ll be able to think about the future—and perhaps even home ownership. “The stability offered by owning a home would be spectacular,” he says. “Especially the sense of pride of ownership, of building a space,” he says. By the time he pays off his student loans, he estimates he will be in his early forties.

But if millennials like the Virlas and Dexter aren’t eventually able to afford to buy a home, their retirement prospects are discouraging .

Today, Alberta is the province with the youngest population in Canada. It also has the highest rate of home ownership among seniors in Canada, but as the province’s population ages, some have raised concerns about dealing with a larger and less affluent senior population today and in the future.

“I don’t feel at all that this government is doing what it needs to do to support seniors in Alberta,” NDP MLA Lori Sigurdson told the Edmonton Journal in February, highlighting the need to support Alberta’s growing senior population. “A lot of housing is quite old, and we need to make sure that those are properly maintained.”

In Alberta, seniors on average spend nearly half their monthly income on expenses related to housing: rent, taxes, and household operations. Furthermore, seniors living in rental accommodations are more likely to live in inadequate housing due to issues related to affordability and dwelling conditions.

With the Alberta government seemingly planning to offload the provision of affordable housing to private organizations, co-operative housing could be part of the solution to a looming problem and allow millennials to age in place when the time comes—even without a nest egg.

Designed with community in mind, co-operative housing offers an alternative to home ownership that’s affordable, accessible and stable. According to Blair Hamilton, program manager at the Co-operative Housing Federation of Canada, “[co-op housing] looks at a different set of priorities and gives people the freedom to still exercise together some of the responsibilities and decision-making without having the personal wealth that [home ownership] requires.”

To become a co-op member, all residents have to do is purchase a share. “It’s sort of a cross between renting and owning, and so when you leave you get your share back,” says Beth Nielsen, the president of Sundance, a housing co-op in Edmonton. A share in Sundance costs $2,000.

While co-op members don’t have any equity in their homes, they get “sweat” equity, explains Catherine Leviten-Reid, an associate professor of community economic development at Cape Breton University. “You’re actually contributing some of your time to the functioning of the co-op.”

Housing co-ops are democratic organizations that rely on their members for decision-making, as well as for the operation and maintenance of their premises. According to Hamilton, co-ops allow members “to get a level of control that you won’t get in the rental market.”

Sandra Kendrick has lived in Sundance since 1978 and she’s never felt like a renter. “I believe that a big part of that is that every member has the right to participate in the decision-making. So if something was happening that I didn’t agree with, I had a voice.”

Furthermore, the ability of a housing co-op to remain affordable depends on the volunteer work of members who join the committees that help manage and operate the co-op. And often, the value of this “sweat” equity exceeds the financial benefits for members, as collaborative work helps members develop a strong social capital and a sense of ownership, Leviten-Reid says.

Nielsen describes co-op housing as a big family. “Everybody looks out for one another, and you have some of the family members [you] don’t necessarily get along with so well, like most families. But we all try and look out for one another,” she says.

Co-op members look after one another not only by participating in the upkeep of the co-op, but also by providing internal subsidies that allow for a healthy mix of incomes and backgrounds. “I think the biggest reason that I love living here is because I can help somebody who can’t afford to live here,” says Sherry Kozak, a resident of Sunnyhill Housing Co-operative in Calgary. (The average rent of a two-bedroom apartment in Sunnyside, the neighbourhood where Sunnyhill is located, is $2,000; in Sunnyhill the monthly housing charge for a similar unit is $982.)

This model helps house a segment of the population that would struggle to find suitable housing within their price range: households whose earnings are below the median, yet above the provincial low-income threshold.

“Many of our members, even though they’re not in the subsidized units, are still working class, lower-middle-class families without tons of money, and so they need affordable housing,” says Hamilton. “There’s a benefit to making sure that that proportion of the market is served, and [co-ops] are really good at serving that portion of the market,” he says, noting that housing co-ops give people stable housing, improving educational outcomes for children and community engagement—which also allows members to age in place.

“We’ve got members in different co-ops who’ve been there 25, 30 years,” Hamilton says. “They have their friends, they’re used to their neighbours, they’re active in their co-op and sitting on the board sometimes—and they don’t want to move, but age catches up with all of us.”

For this reason, Sundance members worked to develop senior-friendly, accessible units in their co-op. “We wanted to have a place where we could say, ‘Well, if I can’t do the stairs anymore, I’d like to be able to move over to a building with an elevator and lots of room to turn my wheelchair around if I needed it,’” Nielsen recalls.

Having lived in a townhouse in Sundance for 30 years, Kendrick developed health issues that compromised her ability to go up and down the stairs. “I didn’t actually have to leave my community in order to find accommodations that suit me, which was wonderful,” she says. She was able to remain in her community by moving to an accessible unit in the new building as soon as it was completed in 2009.

For Kendrick, it wasn’t just the accessibility features that allowed her to stay—affordability played an important role too. “I would probably be in an apartment in not a great neighbourhood. And probably just a studio instead of a one-bedroom,” she says. “I honestly don’t know how I would have coped if I didn’t have the co-op.”

Sundance is in Riverdale, a central neighbourhood in Edmonton, located in the city’s river valley and adjacent to downtown. Its location allows residents easy access to an assortment of amenities and activities, important factors for aging in place, according to Lantz. But while it can be hard to find a one-bedroom rental in Riverdale for under $1,000, the monthly housing charge for a unit like Kendrick’s at Sundance is $884.

Similarly, in Calgary, when Kozak lost all her income and savings due to health issues, she was able to remain in her home of nearly 30 years, but the financial aspect was only part of the support she received. “I don’t know how I could have managed if I was somewhere else, because all my neighbours here at the co-op were just so incredible about helping me,” she says. Her neighbours helped her with her groceries, brought her food when she couldn’t cook, and drove her to doctor’s appointments. They still do. “Paying someone to look after you is not the same as your neighbours caring about what happens to you,” she says.

The social component of housing co-ops is especially relevant in provinces that, like Alberta, lack tenants associations, Leviten-Reid says. Both Kendrick and Kozak benefit from remaining active in their communities, being surrounded by a diverse mix of incomes, backgrounds, and ages. This diversity keeps Kendrick feeling young and energized, she says.

Moreover, the nature of the community ensures everyone is looked after. “I love the fact that if my washer breaks down, I just call somebody in the co-op and arrange to have it fixed,” Kendrick says, aware that if she were a homeowner, she wouldn’t be able to afford to pay for any repairs.

“When I’m in the co-op I don’t need to worry about those things because the co-op has put aside money to do that kind of stuff,” she says. “For somebody like me … sort of on the lower end of the income scale, the co-op life was so much better than being a homeowner.”

Co-ops have the potential to effectively support the needs of an aging population, Lantz says. This is especially true if they are based on a solidarity model that includes municipalities and senior services in decision-making, as recommended by Leviten-Reid. Building more co-ops would add to the existing range of housing options—the problem is getting in. Both Sundance and Sunnyhill have long waiting lists ranging between 2 and 10 years, especially when it comes to senior-friendly and subsidized units.

“Sundance doesn’t have a lot of turnover, we generally have maybe two or three moves in a year, which is partly why we have such a long waiting list,” says Kendrick, who also chairs the residence committee. “But what it says to me is that people are here for the long term.”

One of the problems with that is, compared to B.C., Quebec, and Ontario, the number of housing co-ops in Alberta is small. Hamilton says this is because home ownership remained relatively affordable in the Prairies, “but that’s changed over time.”

The main challenge to developing new housing co-ops, and to expanding existing ones, is funding. Since the federal program that supported the development of existing co-ops ended in the 1990s, “there wasn’t a lot of investment in affordable housing for quite a while,” Hamilton says. And while the adoption of the National Housing Strategy (the federal government’s program meant to fund the provision of affordable housing across Canada) may help, to reap the benefits provinces and municipalities should be on board. So far they have been slow to recognize housing co-ops as affordable housing providers because of the existing income mix. Co-ops’ target is at 80 percent of the median market, Hamilton says. “We need to keep talking to municipalities that don’t understand [the co-op model] and be our own best spokespeople.”

If more government funding were available to develop new non-ownership co-ops in Alberta, in which shareholders aren’t required to pay a hefty down payment, millennials like the Virlas and Dexter would have fewer reasons to worry about the future. According to Hamilton, “if [millennials] organize in co-ops now, and they build ones that they think about in terms of aging in place—they won’t have to leave when they get to be 55 or 60.”

PHOTO BY ROB MOSES PHOTOGRAPHY

Jason Kenney, the United Conservative Party (UCP) premier of Alberta, is the best thing to happen to The Sprawl, says Jeremy Klaszus, the publication’s editor-in-chief.

Under Kenney’s leadership, the UCP’s approach to controversial issues such as the COVID-19 pandemic and climate action has divided Albertans. Polarization is especially evident between rural and urban residents.

Individuals who have resisted the premier have found comfort in The Sprawl, which offers a progressive perspective and in-depth analysis on social issues that’s hard to find in the publication’s competitors.
“A lot of people support The Sprawl because they feel alienated here in Alberta,” Klaszus says. “People tell us over and over again … ‘It gives me hope. It helps me feel a little bit better about living here.’”

Klaszus founded The Sprawl in 2017, two years after Fast Forward Weekly—Calgary’s alternative weekly newspaper—shut down. Klaszus, a graduate of Mount Royal University in Calgary and two-time National Magazine Award winner, was a staff writer at the weekly several years before it closed.

“After Fast Forward folded, there was basically a gap in news coverage in the city … lots of people who went to Fast Forward for the non-mainstream news and analysis now didn’t have that anymore,” he says.

Working solo, Klaszus covered Calgary’s 2017 municipal election on Facebook. He continued this pop-up journalism model, reporting on one issue at a time, such as city hall’s budget and Calgary’s bid to host the 2026 Winter Olympics.

Now, The Sprawl relies on crowd-sourced funding instead of ads or a paywall. As of March 2021, it has gained more than 2,100 paying members across Canada since its inception; membership more than doubled in 2020 alone.

The rising membership has allowed the outlet to grow its staff and content. Although the publication has a Calgary focus, the number of supporters in Edmonton has grown considerably, which is why The Sprawl is adding an Edmonton-based editor to expand province-wide coverage.

“We’ve evolved out of this pop-up model to be more ongoing,” Klaszus says. “But the idea is … slow journalism, not the daily news grind. We don’t try and keep up with whatever is in the news that day; we intentionally leave all that and step back, and then do more in-depth stories that people aren’t going to find elsewhere.”

Slow, constructive, and solutions-oriented journalism is emphasized in the outlet’s manifesto, which guides the publication’s coverage and allows readers to hold it accountable, Klaszus says.

This strategy is showcased in stories about for-profit care homes ravaged by COVID-19 and the barriers immigrants face when searching for employment in their profession, for example.

“Focusing on doing a few things well can be quite powerful,” Klaszus says. “That’s really where we’ve been able to connect with our audience, is through quality over quantity.”

One benefit of being a new arrival in Canada’s news media industry is having the opportunity to learn from the industry’s mistakes, including the systemic racism that continues to impede journalists of colour.

The Sprawl publicly endorses the seven calls to action on media diversity from the Canadian Association of Black Journalists and Canadian Journalists of Colour, and will also start collecting information on the demographics of its staff and editorial contributors. The results will be published in an annual transparency report.

“At The Sprawl, we recognize that systemic racism and discrimination have created a society where the voices of many Albertans aren’t uplifted. We are committed to amplifying these voices by publishing the work of journalists and writers from a variety of underrepresented backgrounds,” the publication’s website says.

While already unique in its ad-free, curiosity-driven approach to journalism, Klaszus says The Sprawl also offers its audience a taste of playfulness with the use of comics.

“We try to carve that out too, where we’re doing some playful stuff, amid the more serious and weighty coverage that we do.”

Even as the publication grows beyond Calgary, Klaszus says he doesn’t see it leaving the province any time soon—if ever.

“I think part of what works about The Sprawl is that it is local, and that people … identify with it and are proud of it.”

PHOTO BY KAREN MILLS

The Premier of Alberta is a Conservative. Every single seat in the province bar one went blue in the last federal election. Despite the severe lack of representation in government, those with leftward ideologies still exist in Alberta. Where can they turn to hear friendly voices? The Alberta Advantage podcast.

The bi-monthly podcast was born in 2017 out of a local Jacobin magazine reading group’s desire for political representation at home.

“We found there was a real lack of any kind of conversation about topics from a left-wing perspective,” says Joël Laforest, producer and panelist with the Alberta Advantage. “We figured we could use the ability to have discussions that we built up as a reading group and try our hand at putting it into a podcast.”

Since then, Alberta Advantage, whose name is a play on a 1990s Tory moniker for the province’s unique tax structure and non-renewable resource-derived revenue, has been lauded as Calgary’s best podcast and now receives over $1,700 a month through Patreon.

It isn’t all awards and donations, however.

“Being left-wing in Alberta has real challenges and material consequences,” says host and sound engineer Kate Jacobson. “We face real risks to our employment and our physical safety…. The right in this province is very organized.”

Jacobson says she’s fortunate enough to have secure employment outside the podcast, but others on their team of about 20 volunteers have to be more clandestine about their work on the Advantage.

“Sometimes it can feel very difficult to live here,” she says. “You’re basically swimming against a tide. There are all these ideas that people have been trained to believe about the oil industry, trade unions, socialism, and the government. You have to counter those at every level.”

Jacobson and Laforest say they’re both particularly proud of a November episode that tackles an advertisement they refer to as “oil propaganda.” Presented by representatives from the Birchcliff Energy and Tourmaline Oil companies, published by a group called Canadians for Canada’s Future and endorsed online by premier Jason Kenney, the ad in question says oil companies have been taken for granted for too long by “all too many people who vigorously condemn what we do while relishing in the fruits of our labour.”

The ad goes on to marry the narrative that oil companies keep the country running with emotionally arresting imagery, such as workers embracing their children.

For nearly an hour, Advantage dissects the ad, which they refer to as a “crypto-fascist piece of media” and part of a concerted effort to make the rest of Canada feel a protective, nationalist pride for the oil industry, as they say Albertans have been trained to do.

Looking forward, Jacobson and Laforest say the Advantage plans to begin producing video and text content for their online audience. They say the latter is particularly important after the folding of StarMetro, Calgary’s only liberal-leaning daily newspaper.

Photo courtesy of Miistakis Institute.

A woman in a coral windbreaker peeks through cattails on the periphery of a marsh, her rubber boots camouflaged by vegetation and mud as she strains, clipboard in hand, to detect signs of amphibian life. A frog hops into a beam of sunlight through the dense flora and she marks a tick on her clipboard. She takes a picture, records her observations, and continues strolling along the wetland.

The woman is one of 82 citizen scientists volunteering with Call of the Wetland, a Calgary-based project that measures amphibian activity in local wetlands to better understand urban ecosystems and, by extension, inform developers before they build on sensitive lands. The group will monitor 60 of Calgary’s 4,000 wetlands from April to August over the next three years.

The presence or absence of amphibians “can tell you a lot about the water quality and general health of the ecosystem,” says Lea Randall, a conservation research population ecologist with the Calgary Zoo.

“[They] are among the first species to disappear when ecosystems are unhealthy or fragmented and thus can be important first indicators that an ecosystem is losing biodiversity,” she says. Currently, there are six amphibian species in the Calgary area, three of which are labelled at-risk. The biggest threat to these species, and wetlands in general, is development.

Canada has a poor track-record of protecting or even documenting wetlands. Local governments long considered wetlands to be wastelands, and a number of them in southern Canada were drained or filled for agriculture or development. About 90 percent of pre-settlement wetlands have been lost in Calgary. Today, many wetlands, particularly small ones called ephemeral wetlands, are threatened by development simply because there’s no record of where they are.

“That’s a huge issue, because we have dry years where ephemeral wetlands don’t show up, and then if they’re not mapped, it’s awfully difficult when you’re making decisions about development,” says Tracy Lee, senior project manager at the Miistakis Institute, a natural resource and land management non-profit organization and a coordinator for Call of the Wetland.

The City of Calgary plans to use the citizen scientists’ database to inform where developments are permitted without destroying sensitive ecologies.

“I think Call of the Wetland will draw attention to [wetlands] as an important feature in the landscape, and will hopefully create a culture of caring about them,” says Lee. “If you have people that are knowledgeable and care about something, then it has a voice.”

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Canada now has a working group dedicated to figuring out bee mortality. On July 9, environmental group Sierra Club Canada shared a press release announcing the group’s formation, which is made up of beekeepers, farmers, scientists and others in agri-business. The press release mentions the recent loss of 27 million bees near Elwood, Ont. In the release, Sierra Club Canada’s executive director John Bennett says, “This working group is the first real recognition of the impact of neonictinoid on bees,” referring to a pesticide still used in Canada, though banned by the European Union.

According to the Canadian Honey Council website, Canada’s bee population has dropped by 30 percent in the past year. Globally, bees are disappearing by the millions; detrimental news for our food supply—pollination is responsible for 70 percent of plants grown for produce—and agricultural business. A brochure from the council states, “In Canada it is estimated that the value of honeybees to agriculture is $1.3 billion.”

Both Ontario and New Brunswick have seen a decline in their bee populations, as have Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba – the provinces responsible for 80 percent of the country’s honey production. Both honeybees and native bumblebee populations have been affected.

Hives have been found near void of working bees, leaving only the queen and immature bees. Though bees are social creatures that stay near their hives – the workers’ bodies are not found near the homes. Predators of abandoned hives, like hive beetles and wax moths, will not even enter the affected hives. This strange phenomenon has been dubbed Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD).

Since 2006, different theories have circulated regarding the cause of CCD. They range from viruses, such as the Israeli acute paralysis virus and the nosema virus, to cell phones and even Osama bin Laden (yup).

Now, neonictinoid pesticides are being looked at. Used for corn and soybeans, the pesticide was authorized for commercial use by Health Canada’s Pest Management Regulatory Agency in 2004. It replaced lindane, which was taken off the Canadian market after it harmed bees, birds, and other wildlife. Research published in the online journal Nature Communications says neonictinoid blocks a part of the bee brain, disabling them from linking floral scents to nectar. This research contributed to the EU ban, which upset neonictinoid companies Syngenta and Bayer. In a company statement, Syngenta disputed research findings: “The proposal is based on poor science and ignores a wealth of evidence from the field that these pesticides do not damage the health of bees.” Both companies warn the ban will cost billions of euros.

And now, we’ll get to see what Canada’s new working group determines in regards to this controversial pesticide.

Photo Credit: Ian McCormick, Meat of the Matter

Ian McCormick is one of the new generation of Canadian farmers.  Thanks to programs like FarmStart and CRAFT (Canadian Regional Alliance for Farmer Training), new farmers — young people and folks who often didn’t grow up farming — are trying their hand at small-scale production.  FarmStart helps develop a new generation of farmers by leasing small parcels of land and facilitating training.  CRAFT is a well-developed network of Ontario organic farms that offer comprehensive internships to aspiring farmers.

McCormick has been raising grass-fed beef cattle for just three seasons in southern Ontario, and is now looking after a small herd of 18 cattle that he keeps on host farms.  He’s also finishing a Masters of Science at the University of Guelph, having completed a BSc in Environmental Biology at Queen’s.  He’s 26.

So why did he start farming?  “Environmental studies can be a bit of a downer at times,” he explains.  “A lot of the jobs I was looking at after school were in the consulting world and involved telling people what they could not do.”

I asked McCormick if he could weigh in on the Alberta beef recall from his perspective as a newbie beef producer.  “The recall is obviously big and sad news for beef farmers.  I expect there will be some herd liquidations going on as people try and get out of cattle. Beef cattle make little money in a good year, in a bad year you lose quite a bit.”

When asked whether small beef farmers are immune to the XL-type disasters, McCormick replied:  “E. coli 157 and other pathogens don’t discriminate between big processors and small processors. No food is 100 percent safe from contamination, whether it be carrots, lettuce, pork or beef.  That being said, small-scale farming and processing significantly lowers the risks.”

So what’s the difference?  “When you have a plant like XL that’s processing thousands [4,000] of cattle a day all it takes is for one animal to be sick or infected and you can contaminate all the beef processed with the same knives and other tools.”  At a small abattoir, though, the smaller volume of meat allows inspectors to be so thorough they can examine each side of beef, McCormick explains.  Furthermore, small abattoirs are usually family run, says McCormick, so “maintaining quality is crucial and failing to do so could ruin the family business.”

Even with his own small herd, McCormick has had a tough year.  “My experience with the drought this year has been painful. The pasture’s produced half as much grass as last year so I had to feed more hay (dried grass). As you can imagine everyone was doing this so the hay price more than doubled. Just when everything looked like it was going to calm down we get the news from XL.”

Would he like to be a full-time farmer?  Well, yes, but he explains “that’s a hard reality to achieve in your twenties unless you are born into it or win the lottery.”  In the meantime, McCormick is going to finish up his masters in soil science and keep working as the start-up farm coordinator at FarmStart until he can meet his 10-year goal of working as a full-time, self-sustaining farmer.

Recent news suggests that the XL plant is set to reopen Monday, under the new management of Brazilian-based JBS USA and under the watchful eye of the Canadian Food Inspection Agency.  Fully  2,000 employees were laid off in September and it is unclear how many will be rehired. Tragically,  in one load 500 to 600 tonnes of beef — wasted animal lives — were sent to a local landfill as a result of the recall, with more to come.

For more on beef, check out my last post, “A rare treat: The perks of local beef.”