The Pulse: July 13, 2022

A Fort Saskatchewan distillery that has had success getting its product into the United States is celebrating a more local coup: getting two of its offerings into Rogers Place. The Fort Distillery's Mountain Pass Whisky and a mixed-cocktail beverage called Tumbler & Rocks are now available at the arena.

"It speaks to the quality of our product," CEO Nathan Flim told Taproot. "Rogers has some serious protocols; you can't just walk in and sell them something."

Tumbler & Rocks, which offers bottled cocktails such as cosmopolitans and daiquiris, was in development when the pandemic hit. It launched in May 2020, just in time to help takeout-only restaurants offer cocktails to customers, who in turn could enjoy a fancy drink without buying all the ingredients and learning how to mix them.

"I get it," said Flim. "I would go home at the end of the day and drink a beer instead of a cocktail because I was tired. We wanted to offer another option that tastes good."

Tumbler & Rocks has also been key to The Fort Distillery's ability to penetrate the American market, gaining a foothold in eight U.S. states, which helped the company not only survive but thrive during the pandemic.

As happy as Flim is to have local support for the distillery, which he founded in 2018 after earning a chemistry degree, he said he has realized that leaning into the localness of his product has its limits.

"I would go down to Calgary and say, 'We're a local Edmonton distillery,' and be told, 'Why do we care? We have distilleries in Calgary.' So we branded our product on its quality."

Mountain Pass will be the house whisky at Rogers Place, and Tumbler & Rocks cosmopolitans will be available throughout the arena. Two bars on the suite level will also offer a wider variety of cocktails from the distillery.

Now Flim just needs to make sure his supply chain can handle this success. "Expanding too quickly is always on my mind," he said. "The last we want is to fill a Rogers order and then not be able to fill an order for New York."

Photo: Nathan Flim, CEO of The Fort Distillery, enjoys some of his product. (Supplied)

• A program based out of the Royal Alexandra Hospital is receiving $1.1 million from the federal government to provide community-level overdose response training and trauma support as well as direct at-risk people to treatment and prevention resources. The government said in a release that the Preventing Drug Poisoning in Edmonton project will "provide support to those disproportionately affected by substance use issues or who face barriers accessing services." Last year, 674 Edmontonians died of drug poisoning.
• Nine new transit peace officers graduated in a ceremony at city hall on July 12, bringing the city's total to about 90 officers, Postmedia reports. "I feel like being a transit police officer is the best way to connect with the vulnerable population in the city," said graduate Jethro Dagas.
• Edmonton's formula for determining the value of trees — which comes from the Guide for Plant Appraisal from the Council of Tree and Landscape Appraisers — fails to reflect environmental benefits, according to a handful of experts including Jacqueline Butler with the city's forestry department. While the formula allows courts to easily determine a tree's monetary value as property, some municipalities have begun assessing urban forests for their carbon storage capacity. Nature-based carbon sequestration is a key part of Edmonton's City Plan, which contains a goal of two million new trees by 2050.
• The Semi-Social Cycling Club is offering casual guided bike rides in Edmonton, which range from 10 to 30 kilometres and always end at a local brewery. Paul Manning-Hunter said he started the club as an alternative to conventional cycling clubs that require tryouts and a regular commitment. "We just wanted it to be for everybody," he told CTV News. "No pressure on skill level, age, ability, or anything like that."
• Two University of Alberta astrophysicists are among the Canadian scientists guaranteed 5% of the new James Webb Telescope's working time. Erik Rosolowsky intends to study how diffuse clouds of gas become stars while Gregory Sivakoff will look for the "stellar undead" — former stars that have exhausted their fuel and collapsed.
• Duncan Keith has announced his retirement after 16 years playing for the Chicago Blackhawks followed by one for the Edmonton Oilers. The 38-year-old from Winnipeg won three Stanley Cups, two Norris Trophies, and the Conn Smythe Trophy, and played for Canada in the 2010 and 2014 Olympics.
• Beginning July 18, Albertans who need a COVID-19 PCR test to inform their clinical treatment must get a medical referral. Some PCR testing locations have also changed. "These updates to our PCR testing program help facilitate care closer to Albertans' medical homes, allow us to direct Alberta's testing capacity toward those who are most at risk, and allow some health-care workers who have been deployed to assessment centres for the last two years to return to their regular roles to support other health services," said Health Minister Jason Copping.

Alberta's health-tech sector has grown by 130% since 2018, with 40% of those companies based in Edmonton, but those companies often must look outside the province or even the country to find customers, says a report from the research arm of the Information and Communications Technology Council.

A Resilient Recovery: Alberta's Digital-Led Post-COVID Future, which the Ottawa-based Digital Think Tank by ICTC released on June 30, calls health tech a key subsector that is poised to drive the growth of high-quality jobs in Alberta. But it identified some factors holding the industry back.

Participants in the study felt the health-care sector is reluctant to work with private companies, preferring to deal with foundations or not-for-profits instead. When the sector does invest in new technologies, those contracts tend to be given to large companies rather than local talent, participants surveyed for the report complained.

"One of the biggest threats to Canada, not just to Alberta, is that if we are not able to engage our startup companies — in any sector, but health being a key one — we'll have to outsource everything, and that's what we currently do. We outsource everything," one focus group participant said. "We have tier-one, world-class companies right here in Canada that, based on what I'm seeing, have to sell around the world."

Canada has been slow to adopt health-tech innovations in comparison with other countries, the report said. Telehealth services and online booking tools were identified as two technologies that have been more integrated into health-care systems in other markets. Software and information systems companies made up only 15% of Alberta health-tech companies in the 108-company dataset analyzed in the report, a distant second to biotechnology, which accounted for 65% of the companies.

"The provincial government faces pressure to improve Alberta's health-care system, expand access to health-care services, and adopt new technologies, all while keeping health-care spending in check," the report said. "Health technology is therefore both an additional spending pressure, and — through big data and AI, telehealth, and automation — a way to mediate spending."

Another factor limiting health-tech success is the availability of talent for in-demand roles such as software developers, business development managers, and full-stack developers. These shortages are felt throughout Alberta's digital economy, where industry growth has outstripped the pool of qualified employees. Between 2015 and 2020, Edmonton added 5,522 tech degrees to the labour market, while at the same time adding about 12,000 tech jobs, according to CBRE.

On this day in 1966, people were debating the future of Sir Winston Churchill Square.

The area had been Edmonton's central gathering spot since the city's earliest days. The current square, along with the spot now occupied by the Stanley Milner library, was the site of the original market that served as one of early Edmonton's most vital civic places.

As the city grew, so did its government. By 1912, public servants worked in offices scattered around the city. Council finally decided that all the various departments needed to be under one roof. So they commissioned the Civic Block, Edmonton's first city hall, to face the market square. Over the decades, other municipal staples were built in the same area, cementing it as the seat of Edmonton's civic services.

In the early '60s, there was a desire to develop the square to celebrate Canada's centennial. But Edmonton's city council was unsure what to develop it into. The idea dismissed as an "odd deal" in the newspaper would have seen a shopping mall, rink, restaurant, and theatres beneath the square and a peculiar arrangement with the Montreal developer. Eventually, a plan to build a park was settled, creating a simple space with trees and a plaza on the south side.

The park was named after British Prime Minister Winston Churchill shortly after his death in 1965. It was the first in a curious wave of Churchill namings across Alberta, a province he had briefly visited once 30 years prior. In 1982, a local Churchillian historical society funded the statue of the man that stands in the square's northwest corner. The granite covering the plinth it stands on was part of the old city hall building.

Churchill's reputation is both as an instrumental wartime leader during the Second World War and as a racist and fervent supporter of colonialism. So it is no surprise that his connection to the square has been a source of controversy and protest. In 1969, Cree women's rights activist Lillian Shirt drew national attention after she erected a teepee on the square. She lived there with her children for 12 days to protest discrimination and inadequate housing options for Indigenous women. Demands to change the name of the square continue to this day.

Churchill Square received another overhaul in the early 2000s — this time for Edmonton's centennial. The original plan traded grass for cement and closed off the square from the civic buildings around it to create an "urban room." It was not well received: some compared it to a sacrificial temple, while Edmonton Journal columnist Paula Simons wrote that some elements had a "disturbingly fascistic air." City planners rethought the design, which got a warmer reception. Construction finished in 2004, giving us Churchill Square's current look.

Churchill Square is long removed from its days as the city's market square. But it remains a central spot for Edmontonians to gather, hosting scores of celebrations and demonstrations. This week, the square is pulling double duty to host both the Works Art & Design Festival and the Edmonton International Street Performers Festival, with dozens more events planned throughout the summer and into the fall.

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.