The Pulse: Feb. 25, 2021

The past year was rife with cancelled live festivals, performances, and art shows, plus a rush of new online events, as the Edmonton arts community grappled with public safety guidelines and restrictions.

"Some of these organizations were functionally hibernating, and some were busier than they'd ever been," said Stephen Williams, grants director for the Edmonton Arts Council (EAC).

In an effort to better support arts and festival organizations affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, EAC has developed a new set of funding programs to replace its arts operating grant and festival operating grant. Williams said eligibility for the previous funding streams was dependent on a group's activity, and they did not properly account for the adjustments arts and festival groups have had to make over the past year.

"We clearly have to recognize we're in a situation where the old paradigms around activity don't work very well," he said.

EAC has proposed three new programs. The first, called Sustain, was unanimously approved by Edmonton city council on Feb. 22, and will specifically address groups that are forced to cancel most or all of their activities.

Williams expects the second, Activate, to be brought to council this spring, while the third, Invest and Adapt, only involves small investments and likely will not require council approval.

The changes do not include an increase or reduction in funds, Willams said. Instead, EAC is reallocating funds that were available under the old grant programs, and adjusting the criteria for eligibility.

• Alberta started vaccinating seniors in the province on Wednesday, causing the government website to crash and long waits on phone lines. All Albertans born in 1946 or earlier are eligible.
• Edmonton police have been called to look into five separate incidents of Black women wearing hijabs who have been threatened in recent months.
• The provincial government announced a one-time $561 child-care benefit for working parents on Wednesday. Families can apply for the benefit as of March 1.
• A trial date has been set for the GraceLife Church pastor who has been held in custody for violating public health guidelines when he held services despite being ordered not to.
• Eric Remagni, the founder of CoffeePass, spoke to CTV News about his initiative that encourages Edmontonians to check out independent coffee shops around the city.

The city is planning to do testing and commissioning work for the Metro Line alternative signaling system over the next couple of days, meaning LRT service will be disrupted between Feb. 25-28.

The Metro Line will be closed on Feb. 25 and 26, and on Feb. 27 and 28, both the Capital Line and Metro Line will be closed.

"Customers may still see trains running, but trains will not be picking up or dropping off passengers," the city said in a news release, which includes full details about alternative bus service during the disruptions.

The switch to the new signaling system could be as soon as March 1.

On this day in 1950, it was reported that the residents of West Jasper Place voted to rename their village Jasper Place, choosing that rather unimaginative new name from a ballot of nearly 90 choices, including New Edmonton, Oil City, Opportunity, Boomtown, Dogpatch, and Westmonton.

The "West" was in the moniker to start with to differentiate it from the original Jasper Place between 142nd and 149th Streets. Edmonton swallowed that Jasper Place in 1913, leaving West Jasper Place on its own along what is now Stony Plain Road between 149th and 156th streets, later extending to 170th Street.

People started moving to the area in the 1930s to escape higher taxes in Edmonton, but it really started growing after oil was discovered near Leduc in 1947, wrote Lawrence Herzog. In 1948, West Jasper Place incorporated as a hamlet with a population of 4,000. It had more than doubled by 1949 when it became a village, and in 1950, with its new name, Jasper Place became the largest town in Alberta.

The town had no sidewalks until after sewer and water lines started to be installed in 1953, and it was known for having "the worst damned mud in the country," Herzog said. There wasn't much of an industrial tax base to support the schools, sports facilities, and Meadowlark Park Shopping Centre under development by the early 1960s, and the provincial government of Ernest Manning refused to bail the town out.

Residents voted to amalgamate with Edmonton in 1962, and the deed was done in 1964, with the city assuming the town's debt of more than $8 million and welcoming more than 37,000 people.

This clipping was found on Vintage Edmonton, a daily look at Edmonton's history from armchair archivist @revRecluse.

• Timiro Mohamed talked with Tom Murray about the abundance of work for Black artists during the month of February, and her hopes for what follows her tenure as the city's Youth Poet Laureate, which came to a close at the end of 2020. Mohamed will perform live on Feb. 25 as part of Common Ground Arts's WORD*LAB.
• McMullen Gallery is showing an exhibition titled DAYDREAMS until Feb. 26, featuring the works of Yong Fei Guan and Wei Li.
• In an online talk on Feb. 27, Darren Jordan, Natalie Meyer and Monique McFarlane will discuss the origins of the annual art project 5 Artists 1 Love, and the upcoming AGA exhibition, Black Every Day.
• Spazio Performativo's front window gallery features a new visual artist each month, curated by Halie Finney. Roseanna Joy Nay is February's featured artist. Live performances will be incorporated in the artist's display Feb. 26-28.