The Pulse: June 1, 2022

A garden designed to attract local pollinators and provide space for reflection and knowledge-sharing among visitors is returning to the Boyle Street community for a second summer.

Located at 10146 96 Street, kamâmak nihtâwikihcikan is a collaboration between the Ociciwan Contemporary Art Collective and the Finding Flowers Project, a York University-based research project. It will be open to the public from June 4 to Oct. 31.

Ociciwan is hoping to increase the presence of medicinal plants this year and further adapt to meet the needs of the community.

"This year, we expanded a little bit more. We're trying to get more traditional medicines, like sweetgrass and sage. But also to include some herbs that folks could use," said Becca Taylor, Ociciwan's executive director.

"I think with each year new things could be introduced. The community has talked a lot about food to us, and I think it'd be really interesting to introduce more food plants as well, as we build capacity and as the community takes a little bit more ownership of the space as it grows."

Part art installation and part sanctuary, the installation was designed by interdisciplinary artist and Ociciwan core member Tiffany Shaw. It expands on the work of the late Mi'kmaq artist Mike MacDonald, who created a series of butterfly and medicine gardens beginning in the 1990s.

"Mike MacDonald gardens are so rich and have really complex thought about relationships with pollinators, but also really deep reflections on colonizing plants that have been introduced into our landscape as well," Taylor said.

• Boyle Street Community Services will be operating a new Overdose Prevention and Response Program, which will see teams of medical professionals and outreach workers responding to drug poisonings in the downtown pedway system and environs. The program is a partnership with the Edmonton Downtown Business Association and the City of Edmonton, which provided a $195,000 grant to the initiative as part of its Downtown Vibrancy Strategy. The Overdose Prevention & Response Teams (OPRTs) will be active from May to September. More than 1,700 Albertans died of drug overdoses in 2021, and 55 deaths occurred in Edmonton in January 2022 alone, Global News reports.
• Mayor Amarjeet Sohi and Justice Minister Tyler Shandro both described a May 31 meeting on public safety as productive after a tense few days that saw Shandro evoke the Police Act to require Edmonton to deliver a public safety plan in response to crime in the core and on public transit. "We had good conversations about our shared responsibility," Sohi said, while Shandro defended his approach, saying it enabled the province to the province "bring some discipline to the work" the city is doing, Global News reported.
• Lawyer Kate Engel has filed a complaint calling for the removal of Edmonton Police Commission chair John McDougall and commissioner Jodi Calahoo Stonehouse, alleging that their response to Robert Houle's criticism of police funding breaks the commission's code of conduct, Postmedia reports. Meanwhile, former police commission member Murray Billett wrote an op-ed asserting that some city councillors have failed to comply with the Police Act by questioning the level of police funding. Instead of leaving the budget to the police commission, he wrote, "they chose to politicize policing by jumping on the popular anti-police bandwagon."
• Edmonton is falling behind other Canadian cities when it comes to recycling street sand, owing to a cancellation of the city's award-winning Winter Street Sand Recycling program, once considered the largest in North America. In 2016, auditors found the program was poorly managed and may not have saved money, but Calgary, Red Deer, and Lethbridge are saving millions each year with comparable programs, CBC reported. Edmonton uses thousands of tonnes of sand annually, which it pays to deposit in landfills.
• The Edmonton Police Service will be the first in Alberta to start using HealthIM, which is a tool to help police respond to mental health emergencies as part of a "recovery-oriented system of care." The mobile app will give police access to de-escalation techniques, a screening tool to determine if community-based services should be involved, and a way to share relevant information about the person in crisis with health facilities and other services.
• The City of Edmonton has released its first podcast as part of the Zoning Bylaw Renewal Initiative. The five-episode Making Space series is about how city zoning impacts people's lives, focusing on the stories of "real-life folks" and the "hard-won lessons" of how to make Edmonton more equitable. A 30-minute episode featuring an interview with a planning expert will be released every Tuesday until June 28.
• From June 23 to 24, Edmonton will host the inaugural major for the Professional Triathletes Organisation before the competition heads to Slovakia and Texas. The event builds on the city's two-decade tradition of hosting the World Triathlon, which it has done three times.
• Sports columnist Sean Fitz-Gerald thinks Edmonton is arguably "Canada's best sports town", the current Oilers renaissance marking but one chapter in a city with a history of sports dynasties.
• Travis Toews is the first person to officially enter the UCP leadership race after resigning as Finance Minister on May 31 to do so. Other ministers are thought to be considering a run, as are past UCP leadership contender Brian Jean and former Wildrose Party leader Danielle Smith.

On this day in 1967, the McDougall Memorial Church was deemed one of downtown's rare historic buildings worth protecting.

In the mid-1960s, Edmonton was in the grip of a feverish urban renewal plan. A booming oil industry and growing population were transforming the city, while politicians and planners were eager to replace downtown's "rabbit warrens" of urban "blight" with gleaming skyscrapers. In that spirit, the city's urban renewal report suggested there were "extremely few structures which merit retention for either historical or architectural reasons." The two worth saving? The clock tower from Edmonton's 1907 post office and the original McDougall Church from 1873.

When Rev. George McDougall came to the region in 1862, he and his family settled on River Lot 1, overlooking what is now Bellamy Hill. There, he built a Protestant church out of local lumber —— the first settler building constructed beyond the walls of Fort Edmonton.

The church might have been one of the first buildings in the new settlement, but it would soon have many neighbours. Edmonton's population grew rapidly, and the tiny timber church was soon no match for its swelling congregation. A new wooden church was built in 1892, and the original structure was turned into a dormitory and moved a few blocks further west.

The second church was used for just shy of 20 years before it too was replaced by a larger house of worship. Then, in 1908, construction started on a third church, this time built out of red brick and stone and touted before its completion as "one of the finest buildings of its kind in western Canada." The new McDougall Church was finished in 1910. It was rechristened as McDougall United in 1925 when Methodists, Congregationalists, and Presbyterians joined under the United Church of Canada banner. And it still stands today, protected as a historical resource in its own right.

The original building was moved again in the 1940s to a spot beside the new church, where it served as a museum for the coming decades. Finally, in 1978, it was moved to a permanent home in Fort Edmonton Park, where it offers a glimpse of the city's earliest days.

While the 1910 McDougall church has remained in the same location, unlike its predecessor, it is still changing. It is undergoing a $15-million restoration project that will transform it into a multi-faith community hub with housing spaces. Earlier this year, McDougall began hosting Muslim prayer services during Ramadan.

This is based on a clipping found on Vintage Edmonton, a daily look at Edmonton's history from armchair archivist @revRecluse — follow @VintageEdmonton for daily ephemera via Twitter.