The Pulse: April 26, 2022

The founders of Felice Café, a new café and market located near Commonwealth Stadium, are hoping their love for local is infectious.

Felice (the musical term for "happy"), which opened on April 25, is the brainchild of couple Michelle and Tim Brouwer.

In addition to serving drinks and treats, Felice features a market where local vendors can display and sell their products for a flat monthly fee. This support of entrepreneurs extends to allowing participating businesses to access a devoted loft space at Felice where they can network, have meetings, and host classes.

"I just wanted to create a place where local businesses can come together and support each other better," said Michelle Brouwer. "Across my vendors, under this one roof, the support they're offering each other is overwhelming."

So far, Felice has partnered with 20 local companies, ranging from food to personal goods. The café side will serve locally-sourced products to enjoy on-site, in addition to housing items from the same brands for customers to buy for at-home consumption. The companies include Bakenary, Benny's Bread, Caramunchies, DRTY Ice Cream, The Cove Tea Company, Mala Foods, Mama Han Pastries, Maestro's Empanadas, and On the Edge Coffee.

"We purchase items wholesale and don't rebrand," said Brouwer. "We sell everything under that local business's name. We want them to increase their sales, and assume the food wastage costs on our end."

Felice is the Brouwer's first foray into food and hospitality and came as a result of the pandemic.

"I was raised in an entrepreneurial family as my mom owned a local home decor store," said Michelle Brouwer. "I worked in health care and never owned a business before. I took stock of my life during COVID and thought about my passions. Music and love of local were the main things. A café seemed to fit the model where I could wrap all of these passions in."

• This winter, the city spent $57 million on snow and ice control though only 57% of its equipment was used due to a lack of money to pay for staff to operate it. City council's community and public services committee voted unanimously to request a detailed cost breakdown and a list of options to improve service. "Let's see what we can do when we activate all of the equipment we own, and that tells us what we're capable of," said Coun. Tim Cartmell, who put the motion forward. Among the options to be considered, enhancing service on roads and active pathways would cost an additional $42 million, while blading residential roads after every snowfall would cost an estimated $143 million every winter.
• Four people have died in police officer-involved shootings in Edmonton this year — more than anywhere else in Canada — reports CBC News. Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver, Ottawa, and Winnipeg have reported no fatal police shootings this year, and only Surrey, B.C. has reported more than one. According to CBC's Deadly Force database, Edmonton's total this year is already at a 22-year high.
• The seven youth charged with second-degree murder for the death of 16-year-old Karanveer Sahota have been granted bail and will appear in court again in May. Police said the attack outside McNally High School on April 8 that led to Sahota's death was part of an "escalation of violence" between groups of students, Postmedia reports.
• The Edmonton Historical Board has raised concerns about preserving historical structures after the city considered demolishing the High Level Bridge in a recent report. While that is unlikely, the city has approved demolishing 28 buildings in its historic property inventory between Jan. 1, 2019 and Dec. 31, 2021 while adding only eight. "We're trying our best to provide as many incentives as we can to help owners (preserve) but it's getting harder and harder," David Johnston, principal city heritage planner, told Postmedia.
• Teamsters Local Union 362 has filed an application with the Alberta Labour Relations Board to secure a vote for unionization at the Amazon warehouse in Nisku. A previous attempt at unionization last fall failed due to not reaching the necessary number of signed cards from workers.
• Greg Gorecki, drawing on decades of military and paramedic experience, is teaching Edmontonians how to survive the apocalypse with his two-day Apocalypse Preparedness and Survival school, which takes place both indoors and outdoors on site in the Cooking Lake area. Topics covered include fire-starting, shelter-building, compass-reading, and surviving a natural disaster or nuclear attack.
• HomeEd, a non-profit that provides affordable housing in Edmonton, announced in its 2021 annual report to the community that 83% of its residents considered it to be a good landlord and 80% were satisfied with the value they receive.
• Some Beaumont residents are upset that their houses have been hit by golf balls, which they suspect were launched by "a couple of young fellas" using the adjacent Coloniale Golf Club after hours. Residents said they've contacted the police, who have joined property owners on their "sting operations," but the golfing teenagers remain at large.

In this final week of Ramadan, it's a good time to draw attention to The Halal Gap, a podcast that offers "an open discussion with creative individuals highlighting the wealth of talent and diverse voices of Muslims from around the world."

The Halal Gap is a project of The Mosquers, which started in 2007 as a short-film competition to showcase the local Muslim community. That event has since grown into a full-fledged film festival that attracts attention from all over North America.

You can get a sense of the festival from the final episode of Season 3, featuring a panel discussion on representation in film and television, the realities facing Muslim artists, and advice for those who want to break into the industry. Sikandar Atiq moderated the conversation with writer and director Sahar Jahani, actor Hamza Haq, Little Mosque on the Prairie creator Zarqa Nawaz, and the National Film Board's Claude Joli-Coeur.

Other episodes are more traditional interviews, with guests such as pop musicians Fajjr + Ali, calligrapher Karim Jabbari, and comedian Zainab Johnson.

You can find this and the rest of Taproot's podcast picks in our Listen Notes list.