The Pulse: July 5, 2023

When the Strong Cities Network invited Edmonton Mayor Amarjeet Sohi to Berlin to talk about the city's anti-racism efforts, he jumped at the chance.

"Anti-racism work is a generational work," Sohi told Taproot, recalling what he said in his June 16 presentation at the Cities on the Frontline conference. "It is not a one-time event. It takes generations to dismantle the colonial system, takes generations to deal with the systemic nature of racism and how institutionalized it is."

Anti-racism was Sohi's first order of business after he was elected mayor, and he says work on the file has accelerated since. But the Anti-Racism Advisory Committee (ARAC), which was charged with shaping the city's anti-racism efforts, was told in March that its work was being paused. That has led members to question the way the city handles community involvement as it implements its strategy.

Sohi said the committee concluded its work after it helped create the city's anti-racism strategy, which city council approved in February 2022.

"The Anti-Racism Advisory Committee played a very important role, putting together our high-level strategy on the anti-racism initiative that I launched when I got elected," he said. "And they have done a remarkable job."

However, Shalini Sinha, the committee's chair, said the decision to pause ARAC was not what the committee wanted.

"It's against everything we fought for to say that the city will pause (ARAC) while the city implements their anti-racism strategy, while they determine the best way to go forward," Sinha told Taproot. "What we fought for from 2020 was partnership between people being impacted (by racism) and administration."

Meanwhile, others are wondering why some of the strategy's components haven't been implemented yet after being approved by council more than a year ago.

"There has been an anti-racism strategy for how long? We've got a strategy. This is an action plan. We need to go into action," said Africa Centre chair Kemoh Mansaray. "My fear is that it's going to be shelved and forgotten."

• The city's urban planning committee is scheduled to hear from staff on July 12 about progress on the National Urban Park Initiative to work with Parks Canada, the provincial government, and Indigenous groups to create a national urban park in Edmonton. The multi-year project is currently in the pre-feasibility phase to explore initial interest and possible support. City staff have explored three sites for designation and are recommending the North Saskatchewan River valley system over the Big Lake area (northwest) or the Emerald Crescent park system (southeast). The city released a What We Heard report containing the results of its first public engagement efforts. Council approval is required for the city to proceed to the next stage of the designation process.
• City data shows that public complaints about homeless encampments have increased 60% in the first half of 2023 compared to the same period last year. McCauley, Boyle Street, and Downtown received the majority of the 5,742 complaints this year, though the city noted the numbers include duplicates for the same encampment or location. Jennifer Flaman, deputy city manager for community services, said people often have nowhere to go because emergency shelters are regularly at or near capacity even during summer months. Coun. Andrew Knack said the situation in the west end has gotten worse since the closure of a community resource centre run by the Jasper Place Wellness Centre, along with the closure of 150 spaces in a temporary winter shelter funded by the city. According to Homeward Trust, about 3,000 people in Edmonton are experiencing homelessness, which includes people who are couch surfing.
• More than 100 members and supporters of Civic Service Union 52, which represents thousands of Edmonton civic service employees, rallied outside city hall on July 4 demanding an end to 0% wage increases. Members of the union who are employed by the city have had their wages frozen since 2018 and have been without a contract since 2020. Union president Lanny Chudyk said the affected workers include some of the city's lowest-paid staff, including many women and newcomers, and criticized council for allowing their own salaries to increase 2.4% in 2023 after a two-year freeze related to COVID-19 financial challenges. Meanwhile, Steve Bradshaw, president of Amalgamated Transit Union Local 569, told Postmedia that Dedicated Accessible Transit Service (DATS) drivers who voted in April in favour of strike action over unfair wages have put their plans on hold. Bradshaw said the union and the city are negotiating productively and that the city provided a "concrete proposal that we believe will lead us to where we intended to go."
• A severe tornado passed through a 15-kilometre stretch of central Alberta between Didsbury and Carstairs on the afternoon of July 1. According to researchers, the tornado rated EF4 on the Enhanced Fujita scale, which ranges from EF0 to EF5. The tornado is reported to have damaged 12 homes and caused one minor injury, and Environment Canada said all homeowners it spoke to received and responded to the tornado warning it sent. It was the strongest tornado recorded in Alberta since "Black Friday" in Edmonton in 1987, when a tornado killed 27 people and left hundreds homeless.
• The city's single-use item reduction bylaw came into effect on July 1. Under the new rules, businesses can no longer hand out single-use plastic shopping bags or containers, and must charge at least $1 for a reusable bag and 15 cents for a paper bag, including at drive-thru restaurants. The rules do not apply to bags for bulk items like candy or hardware, produce or baked goods, or medications from a pharmacist. Starting in July 2024, the minimum charge for reusable bags and paper bags will increase to $2 and 25 cents respectively. The federal government's single-use plastics regulations, which are similar to Edmonton's rules but focus specifically on six categories of single-use plastics, banned the manufacture of plastic shopping bags and other items nationally in December 2022. It will ban the sale of these items in December 2023.
• The province is looking to hire a company to complete a Phase 2 environmental assessment of the Strathcona Science Provincial Park just east of Edmonton after an assessment last year uncovered potentially harmful contaminants, walking paths that could collapse into mine shafts, and an "unknown, black, tar-like substance" seeping through the ground in some areas. In the early 20th century, the park was a site of coal mining, gravel extraction, concrete production, and waste disposal, and is now home to the Sunridge Ski Area, the Edmonton Nordic Ski Club's Biathlon Centre, and the Strathcona Remote Control Flyers Association. The province said the assessment will help determine future approaches to park management.
• The city is partnering with the Edmonton Arts Council to run Green Shack Shows from July 4 to Aug. 26. The free family-friendly performance events happen twice a day from Monday to Friday, excluding statutory holidays, at Green Shacks across the city. Hula hoop performer Amanda Panda said the events offer a smaller, quieter alternative to the Street Performers Festival, the Children's Festival, or similar events. A full schedule of Green Shack Shows is online.
• The Edmonton Oilers held their first practice for the team's annual development camp on July 3, which saw 29 Oilers prospects hit the ice. Among those vying for a spot on the roster was 18-year-old defenceman Beau Akey, who the Oilers selected as their second-round 2023 draft pick, and Xavier Bourgault, who was the team's 2021 first-round draft pick and spent his last season on the Oilers' farm team, the Bakersfield Condors. The development camp runs until July 6. Meanwhile, the Oilers have signed Condors goalie Olivier Rodrigue to a one-year, two-way NHL contract.
• The Edmonton Elks have traded linebacker Kevin Francis to the Ottawa Redblacks in exchange for a fourth-round 2024 CFL draft pick. Francis, who was signed on Feb. 14 of this year, had been on the team's suspended list after indicating he was unhappy with his contract and stopped reporting to camp.

The Valley Line Southeast LRT is facing yet another potential delay after TransEd said it will proactively replace 140 kilometres of oxidized and corroded signal cables prior to the line's opening, a process which is expected to take anywhere from six to eight weeks.

The company said it will finalize and submit the documentation required to certify and open the line concurrently with the replacement work, which prompted Episode 225 of Speaking Municipally to consider whether there's a silver lining to this latest development.

"So obviously, it's not the best possible news," said podcast co-host Troy Pavlek. "The best possible news is the line is open, everything's perfect."

But after a long series of delays and questions about the line's safety, it's possible that TransEd is aiming for a perfect record on their safety report prior to opening, Pavlek argued.

"I think a safety inspector might have caught those corroded cables and might not have said that this needed to delay the launch, but it would have been on the report," Pavlek said.

Either way, the latest delay has Mayor Amarjeet Sohi feeling frustrated.

"This LRT project should have been in service in 2020 and here we are in 2023, and that's absolutely unacceptable," Sohi told CBC.

He added it was "no comfort" that TransEd is covering the cost of the cable replacement.

Under the terms of the private-public partnership agreement, TransEd was to receive half of the $1.8 billion capital cost during the construction period, with the rest paid out in monthly instalments over the next 30 years of operation. But there are penalties for delays.

"The penalty structure is basically every month that the line is not open past December 2020, when the line was supposed to open, they simply forfeit one of those payments," said Pavlek, citing a Postmedia article from 2014 that was based on the request for proposals for the project.

Acknowledging that the final agreement may have changed, Pavlek said the penalties could be significant.

"My best understanding is that TransEd has given up nearly $100 million of its payments, and every month it's not open, it's another $2.5 million," Pavlek added.

Hear more about the Valley Line LRT in the June 30 episode of Speaking Municipally, Taproot's civic affairs podcast. It also looks at the mayor's panel on the economic benefits of equity, Google and Meta's response to Bill C-18, developments regarding the downtown district energy initiative, and more.

On this day in 1930, Seba Beach, the tiny summer village west of Edmonton on the shore of Lake Wabamun, was opening its new pavilion to residents and visitors.

Lake Wabamun has been drawing people to its waters for thousands of years. The lake was formed by the retreat of the Laurentide Ice Sheet, a massive sheet of kilometres-thick ice that blanketed most of North America. The receding ice left behind a lake that was both shallow and long — nearly 20 km from end to end. The lake eventually became rich in fish and a popular landing spot for migrating birds (European settlers would later call it "White Whale Lake" because of the seemingly endless number of whitefish in its waters).

The lake provided a reliable food source for Indigenous people, including the ancestors of the Paul Band. Research suggests humans frequented the Wabamun area as far back as 10,000 years ago.

The village of Seba Beach, of course, is much more recent. The first European homesteaders were R. P. Cull and Arthur Hovey, who both came west from Quebec and built cabins on the water in 1906. It would be a few years until the construction of the railroad nearby made the lake much easier to access from Edmonton. Seba Beach and other small summer villages on the lake became popular destinations for those seeking a break from city life.

The use of the lake and the surrounding area exploded. By 1914, Lake Wabamun had "the largest fleet of motorboats and launches of any lake in the province," according to the Edmonton Bulletin. A couple of years later, the Edmonton YWCA began to hold camping programs near Seba Beach, where they built a hostel building. The village quickly expanded with all the new visitors — it soon added a dance hall, a general store, and other amenities.

The railway brought tourism but also industrial development. A commercial fishing industry began to flourish, harvesting the lake's whitefish to be shipped off to customers in Canada and the United States. The demand was so great that a cannery opened for a time in Seba Beach. During the winter, the ice covering the lake was cut and transported by rail for refrigeration.

By the 1920s, sailing racing had become a popular pastime on the lake, and the Seba Boat Club formed. Given the size of Wabamun, the lake was home to several small sailing clubs, which would hold yacht races between them. The Seba Beach club would also invite other racers to Wabamun — including the Edmonton Yacht Club, which formed on Cooking Lake in 1923. Eventually, the Edmonton club would do more than just visit. In 1945, the Edmonton Yacht Club moved to its new location in Seba Beach, where it remains until this day — one of the boating clubs that continue to sail on Lake Wabamun.

Seba Beach and Lake Wabamun continue to be extremely popular places for Albertans to visit in the summer. Perhaps too popular. The health of the lake is a concern — heavy recreational use, construction, coal mining, and power generation in the Lake Wabamun area have contributed to higher levels of things like arsenic, cadmium, and copper in water samples. And in 2005, a derailed train spilled almost 800,000 litres of petroleum into the lake, which caused widespread damage to the lake and prompted a decade of rehabilitation efforts.

And like many Alberta lakes, Wabamun has seen frequent issues with Cyanobacteria (green-blue algae) blooms, which can harm people and wildlife. Algae advisories were issued in 2012 and 2022. While Wabamun has not seen any such warnings this year, blooms were spotted on other lakes nearby earlier this week.

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.