The Pulse: Aug. 16, 2023

Networking may be important for business, but defaulting to drinks after work is not always the best for one's body. That's why some members of Edmonton's startup community are organizing fitness-oriented ways to get people together instead.

Arden Tse, an investment manager with Yaletown Partners, and Matt Anderson-Baron, co-founder and CEO of Future Fields, put together Fit for Tech, an hour-long CrossFit training session, open to anyone in the tech or entrepreneurial community.

Booze tends to be involved in a lot of networking events, such as the TNT Happy Hour that Startup TNT holds every Thursday night. Fit for Tech offers something a bit different, Tse told Taproot.

"I thought… let's do something for networking that's healthy and that will bring our community together and isn't the standard get-together on a weekday after work and go for drinks," Tse said.

Fit for Tech isn't the only networking event in the Edmonton startup community that eschews alcohol. There's also Founder's Tennis at the Kinsmen Club tennis courts, or Community Coffee at Edmonton Unlimited, for example. However, a lot of these events focus on startup founders, and Tse found Fit for Tech attracts a wider scope of people.

"If we're going to scale up our community and grow it, we have to start including and creating opportunities for the talent that surrounds the founders," he said.

So far, Tse and Anderson-Baron have held the event twice at Black Tusk Athletics, with 22 people at the June event and 12 people at the July event, each paying a $25 drop-in fee.

Both times, Tse said, he has met people who he wouldn't have connected with at a traditional networking event. One such person had "significant computer engineering experience" but was not involved in the community "because everything is around drinking and around founders, and he doesn't drink and he's not a founder," Tse said. "When he came up to see this, he was like, 'Oh, this is fantastic.'"

• The Edmonton Elks announced they have mutually agreed to part ways with president and CEO Victor Cui, effective immediately. "This was a culmination of ongoing discussions between the board and Victor, as well as the board internally about the future of the club," said Tom Richards, chair of the EE Football Club board of directors. The decision comes as the team tries to improve its performance and break a 22-game home losing streak, the longest in North American professional sports history. The team said it will name an interim president and CEO within two to three weeks, with a permanent replacement expected by the end of the year.
• Some families could receive an additional $650 by the end of 2023 as part of the federal dental care benefit, NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh announced during a news conference in Edmonton. Singh highlighted his party's role in securing the program for Canadians and noted that more than 10,000 children and families in Edmonton have already received their first $650 benefit. The program provides cash payments to families with less than $90,000 in earnings and no private insurance. Singh said it will expand to include children under 18, people with disabilities, and qualifying seniors by the end of the year.
• The Alberta government announced it will invest $20 million over five years in the Innovation Catalyst Grant to support tech startups and create job opportunities in the province. The grant in intended to help science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) PhD and masters graduates start their own companies. The program, administered by the University of Alberta, University of Calgary, and University of Lethbridge, offers up to $250,000 over two years to successful applicants, providing mentorship and access to university labs. The deadline to apply for this year's intake is Sept. 15.
• The mayor of Enterprise in the Northwest Territories said about 90% of the community has been lost to wildfires raging in the area. "I think there's seven or eight houses left and three or four businesses," Michael St Amour said. The Northwest Territories government declared a Territorial State of Emergency on Aug. 15 as 236 fires burned in the region, including one threatening Yellowknife. More than 20,000 square kilometres have already burned, and several highways are closed because of fires, prompting the Canadian Forces to fly evacuees out on Hercules aircraft. Evacuation orders have been issued for Hay River, Kátł'odeeche First Nation, Fort Smith, Enterprise, and Jean Marie River. Evacuees of the South Slave region were asked to register at the reception centre at St. Albert's Servus Place.
• Heidelberg Materials, a multinational cement company with a plant in Edmonton, launched a carbon capture system on Aug. 15 in an effort to become carbon-neutral. The pilot system pulls 300 kilograms of carbon each day from its production facility in the city's northwest. The company hopes to launch a full-scale standalone carbon capture and storage facility by 2026 at an estimated cost of $1.4 billion. "There is no other facility in the world that is doing full-scale carbon capture on a cement plant," said project director Corwyn Bruce.

On this day in 1984, Edmonton's city council was washing away any hope of a fountain in the North Saskatchewan River.

The removable fountain flowed from the imagination of artist Peter Lewis. An Edmonton Journal article at the time describes a large flower-shaped creation that would have floated on the river near the convention centre. The fountain's plume was designed to be "about 30 feet high and glowing with colored lights which reflect the four seasons."

Aldermen (as they were called then) deemed the plan innovative, but they weren't keen on kicking in $71,000 of city money for it, which would have been added to $140,000 in private donations. Lewis took the rejection well, simply saying, "That's too bad. But life goes on."

Lewis had successfully used the North Saskatchewan as his canvas before. In 1980, to celebrate Alberta's 75th anniversary, he was commissioned to turn the High Level Bridge into a gargantuan artificial waterfall, taller than Niagara Falls.

The Great Divide Waterfall pumped 50,000 litres of water per minute up to the top of the bridge, then let it cascade back down. For 25 years, it was a staple of Edmonton's short summer season. However, in 2005, the waterfall was shut down over environmental concerns — there were worries about how the flood of chlorinated water would damage the river's health. The city spent the next few years arguing about whether to upgrade the waterfall to have less impact, but it was deemed too expensive. The High Level Bridge remained dry from that point on.

Lewis was far from done with his water-based art projects. He created more artificial waterfalls, including an illuminated project in his native United Kingdom in 2011. He created two temporary water features called Running Water for the 2012 Olympic Village in London, too.

Water was obviously a theme throughout Lewis' creations, but he did explore other media. In 1981, for instance, he arranged 1,200 bonfires across Scotland in the shape of a dove to mark the wedding of Prince Charles and Princess Diana.

Lewis retired to his home in Vancouver Island, where he built Bright Angel Garden, a 10-acre water garden that featured dozens of fountains and a thousand rhododendrons. That's where Lewis stayed until he passed away in 2020 due to illness.

Lewis's famous Great Divide is still Edmonton's most ambitious and striking artistic water feature. But we are still thirsty for a bit of aesthetic H20 in our public spaces. Earlier this year, the Alberta government released a computer-generated tour of the concept for The River, a water feature for the north plaza at the legislature grounds. That work is scheduled to finish in 2024.

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.