The Pulse: Nov. 9, 2022

The acquisition of Champion Petfoods by Mars Petcare will accelerate the company's international growth, says the director of trade for Edmonton Global.

Manisha Arora said Champion Petfoods has been "a long-time leader in agriculture and expanding to global markets," and the acquisition announced on Nov. 1 is a great sign for the region.

"We are thrilled that the Edmonton Metropolitan Region is being noticed for its capabilities and international companies are leveraging the region's global connectivity," Arora told Taproot.

Champion Petfoods was Canada's largest independent pet food company. Founded in 1985, it has production facilities in Morinville and in Parkland County's Acheson Industrial Park, where it built a $350-million production plant in 2019. It sells "biologically appropriate" pet food under the Arcana and Orijen brands in more than 90 countries.

Champion has been one of the largest employers in Morinville. Ikdeep Singh welcomed "more than 800 talented people to the Mars Petcare family" in a news release, and Champion CEO Blaine McPeak called the announcement "a wonderful way to recognize all the employees over our history who helped build Champion into a pre-eminent global pet food company."

• The city declared a Phase 1 parking ban on major roads as of 7pm on Nov. 8. This phase will last approximately 3-5 days, during which crews will clear arterial roads, collector roads, bus routes, and roads in business improvement areas. Parking is still allowed on residential streets. There are currently no plans to initiate Phase 2, which would impact residential and industrial areas.
• City administration is recommending that council not fund the $35-million demolition of Northlands Coliseum in the upcoming budget cycle, meaning there is still no timeline to tear down the former home of the Edmonton Oilers, who moved to Rogers Place in 2016. A city spokesperson said maintaining the building in its current state will cost around $1.25 million this year. Ward Métis councillor Ashley Salvador, who represents the area including the Coliseum, expressed support for demolishing the building as soon as possible. "If we would've funded the demolition years ago, with a lower demolition cost and lower interest rates, we wouldn't be in this position now," she said.
• Air Products has announced it will receive approximately $475 million in federal and provincial funding for its $1.6-billion net-zero hydrogen energy complex. The Alberta government said the Alberta Petrochemicals Incentive Program would provide $161.5 million in grants over three years once the facility is operational. The province will supply an additional $15 million through Emissions Reduction Alberta. Edmonton Global said the funding is a "key milestone" that will "support building the world's largest net-zero hydrogen facility in the Edmonton region."
• The average price of a single-family home has fallen nearly $50,000 since peaking in April, hitting $463,000 in October, according to statistics released by the REALTORS® Association of Edmonton. The cheapest single-family homes in central Edmonton now cost an average of about $257,000.
• Alberta Health Services launched the fifth and largest instalment of Connect Care, a program designed to consolidate medical information systems, which AHS says will streamline information sharing between providers and improve public access to medical data. Around 75,000 physicians and AHS staff are now using Connect Care, which is expected to grow to 150,000 when it is fully rolled out in fall 2024. Dr. Jeremy Theal, chief medical information officer for AHS, said the program is not intended to reduce ER wait times, but times might be reduced because of improved efficiency.
• The Edmonton International Airport worked in partnership with Indigenous Box to create a new Indigenous Interpretive and Retail Centre, located next to Gate 64 in the international and domestic departures lounge. The centre will be open 24/7 for guests to buy Indigenous-made products and "experience Indigenous history and culture, including themes related to navigation, traditional travelling routes and territories, the land, animals, traditional and contemporary teachings, star stories, and more," said YEG president and CEO Tom Ruth.
• ZOE's Animal Rescue Society says it is struggling to stay afloat due to a lack of support coupled with high vet and food prices. The society took in around 800 animals in 2021 but could only rescue 600 so far in 2022. Executive co-director Kath Oltsher said Edmontonians giving up their "pandemic pets" is also creating greater need than previous years. ZOE's is looking for volunteers and has issued a callout for donations.
• Edmonton police have charged a man with theft over $5,000 for stealing a flock of pigeons. A total of 45 competition pigeons, each valued at about $300, went missing from the owner's backyard on Oct. 18. Only 12 of the birds were recovered, and two were found dead. In late October, a few of the stolen pigeons were spotted in Strathcona County.
• The Edmonton Prospects, the local collegiate team in the Western Canadian Baseball League, will sit out the 2023 season because construction of their new ballpark in Spruce Grove has been delayed until 2024. The team decided to move to Spruce Grove in 2020 so the Edmonton Riverhawks could take over RE/MAX Field.

Five proposals from researchers at the University of Alberta are among the nine selected to move on to the final phase of a competition for funding in the realm of digital health.

As part of the next iteration of the Partnership for Research and Innovation in the Health System (PRIHS), the researchers will be giving "den presentations" during the week of Nov. 14, which is Digital Health Week.

A joint venture from Alberta Innovates and Alberta Health Services, PRIHS is designed to align the work of researchers with the needs of the health system. The two entities are investing up to $7 million in the PRIHS Digital Health competition, and projects are expected to begin in early 2023 if they are approved by the selection committee following their presentations next week.

"It's exciting that the program is exploring the development of these innovative care models and leveraging digital health technologies to potentially achieve these care models," said Antonio Bruni, director of health system transformation at Alberta Innovates.

One of the projects is from Alim Hirji, an associate professor in pulmonary medicine at the University of Alberta. His project explores the use of telemonitoring to reduce adverse events for hospitalized patients.

Hirji's previous research reviewed a cohort of patients with lung disease who were transferred to intensive care or died between Jan. 1, 2020, and April 19, 2021. The study found that more than a quarter of the patients died or ended up in the ICU due to potentially preventable events, such as the inadvertent disconnection of their oxygen. "The implementation of telemonitoring in high-risk patients may reduce adverse outcomes and should be further investigated," Hirji and fellow researcher Jacqueline Tay concluded.

The other University of Alberta researchers participating in the competition are exploring a wide range of projects:

• Darren Lau is looking into an integrated digital health approach to diabetes in First Nations;
• Justin Chen seeks to optimize the management of blood infections caused by Staphylococcus aureus, an antibiotic-resistant microbe;
• Karen Wong is working on a patient dashboard to improve the management of inflammatory bowel disease;
• Maria Castro-Codesal is exploring improvements to the care pathway for children with medical complexity who may need a tracheostomy.

The rest of the projects are from University of Calgary researchers for projects related to sexual health, digital records, kidney disease, and osteoporosis. There is no maximum budget set for each proposal, but the projects must be completed within three years to qualify for the funding. Projects selected for this round of funding will be announced in the first week of January.

Image: The Partnership for Research and Innovation in the Health System (PRIHS) seeks to align research with the needs of the health system. (Alberta Innovates)

On this day in 1968, the city was issuing a perennial warning to Edmonton drivers about parking restrictions due to snow removal.

Edmonton's winters are infamous, and the struggle against the annual cold and snow has been ongoing since long before the city's founding. When European settlers first came to the area, they were generally unprepared for the winter weather they would face. Cold-weather clothing was largely a mix of local wool, hide, and fur. Many early settlers owe their survival to lessons learned over the centuries by Indigenous people living in the area.

As Edmonton grew and expanded over the decades, keeping city streets navigable by both cars and pedestrians became a daunting task. The city is in a fairly dry climate and will see an average of about 125 cm of snow each year. But there have been a few big exceptions in the city's history: the largest recorded snowfall in Edmonton's history was 287 cm — a metre-and-a-half more than usual.

A few years after that, in November 1942, the biggest snowstorm in the city's history would hit Edmonton. Over two days, 50 cm of snow dropped on the city, burying vehicles and cutting off whole neighbourhoods. Streetcars halted, food deliveries were cancelled, and some Edmontonians even resorted to skis to travel along Jasper Avenue.

The situation was made all the more difficult because Edmonton, like many prairie cities, had no municipal snowplows at the time. It was the United States Army, which had troops and equipment nearby to construct the Alaska Highway, that eventually got the city's roads clear of snow. (The city has since acquired several plows — you can even name one.)

Snow, and how well the city does at removing it, remains a constant issue in Edmonton. The past 20 years in particular have seen several changes in how much snow the city removes, what substances it applies to the streets, and how it deals with windrows. City council added $4.7 million to this season's snow removal budget, and it's still hard to keep up given the area that needs clearing. And in case you missed it, a winter parking ban is in effect to deal with the current dump of snow.

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.