The Pulse: June 28, 2024

When Daniel Portilla moved from Ecuador to Edmonton earlier this year, he discovered the city lacked a padel club and decided to change that.

"I started, in the beginning, kind of joking about it — 'If there's no padel then I should open a club,'" Portilla told Taproot. "And then the jokes started becoming more real."

Portilla met Diana Cevallos and Luciano Luz, who recently moved to Edmonton from Brazil and also shared his passion for the sport. The trio talked and decided to create the club they found lacking. Padel Zone, which the trio opened on June 22, is located at 3260 16 Street in Nisku.

Padel is a racket sport similar to tennis but with elements borrowed from squash. The court is enclosed in glass, meaning the ball can never go out of bounds. This makes the game fast and strategic. The sport is growing in popularity, especially in South America and Europe, and is now played by sports legends like Lionel Messi and Roger Federer.

Portilla said he was dismayed to learn upon his arrival in Edmonton that he couldn't play the sport he loved back home, though research quickly showed there were courts in Calgary and that the Alberta Padel Association existed.

Now that Portilla and his co-owners have created Padel Zone, the hope is for more people to discover the sport and for more clubs to open, even if they're run by other people. He said he's happy if there's competition as it will simply mean a bigger padel community is forming in the city.

The three founders have invested nearly $500,000 in Padel Zone, Portilla said. "The first club has the disadvantage that we are the ones who have to endure for a sufficient amount of time until the community actually gets built up," he said. "But that's completely fine because someone has to be first, and if we wait for someone else to be first, then we're never going to play padel."

• Two of the three Alberta legislature fountains are set to reopen by July 1. The reflecting pool, north cascade fountains, and dome fountain, all built in the 1970s, have been closed since 2020 because of maintenance issues. This summer, the public will be able to wade in an updated reflecting pool and enjoy the dome fountain, which is designed to resemble the legislature's dome. A new spray park with a river feature should be ready by summer 2025, officials said.
• The Edmonton Public School Board is planning to build 25 more lockable seclusion rooms in its schools despite promises to phase them out, drawing criticism from advocates for people with disabilities. Edmonton's 214 public schools could have 192 seclusion rooms by September, and the division already has 63% of the province's seclusion rooms while enrolling only 14% of Alberta's K-12 students, CBC reported. Data shows the number of students who both use the rooms voluntarily and who are confined involuntarily are rising. The NDP government banned seclusion rooms in 2019, but the UCP reversed the ban and introduced standards for seclusion and restraint.
• University of Alberta criminology professor Temitope Oriola wrote an op-ed weighing in on tensions between city council and the Edmonton Police Commission. In recent weeks, the commission has drawn scrutiny for its refusal to share auditing information about the police service that council requested. Oriola wrote that the commission is on "legally tenuous grounds vis-à-vis its belligerence towards council" and suggested that some are "genuinely confused about their role" on the civilian-led oversight body.
• Edmonton city council's decision to add a line in a district planning bylaw that addresses 15-minute city conspiracy theories could cause harm by "normalizing" conspiracy thinking, said University of Alberta professor and misinformation researcher Timothy Caulfield. Before council approved the first part of the district plan earlier this week, it added a line indicating the policy would not "restrict freedom of movement, association, and commerce." Coun. Andrew Knack said the move wouldn't change the minds of people who don't trust the government. The plan must be approved by the Edmonton Metropolitan Region Board before council can finalize it.
• The Grindstone Theatre Society has secured exclusive management of two theatres at the Orange Hub, a City of Edmonton-owned centre running out of the former MacEwan University arts campus in Jasper Place. The society's three-year contract includes the 350-seat performance theatre and the flexible 60-90 seat Black Box theatre.
• Nick Lees, a well-known Edmontonian columnist and philanthropist, died on June 24 at the age of 81. Lees spent nearly 50 years at the Edmonton Journal, where he gained a reputation for his lively writing on wide-ranging topics, including his penchant for adventures. One of his friends, Mark Scholz, appeared on CBC's Radio Active to remember the colourful stories that made Lees famous. Edify published a feature article on Lees in its January issue.
• CBC's Radio Active spoke with Marta Buryn, director of water services distribution at EPCOR, to learn whether Edmonton is susceptible to water disruptions similar to Calgary's main water break on June 5. Coun. Tim Cartmell suggested shortly after the event that something similar could happen, but noted Edmonton has two water treatment plants and reservoirs across the city, giving it more connectivity and redundancy than Calgary.
• The Edmonton Oilers confirmed that general manager Ken Holland will not be returning after his five-year contract runs out. Oilers CEO of hockey operations Jeff Jackson said Holland's departure was the plan all season, and the discussion was kept private during the playoffs to avoid distractions.
• The Alberta government released its 2023-24 financial report, which shows the province ended the fiscal year with a $4.3-billion surplus. The UCP's plan remains using most of the surplus to pay off debt and investing some in the Heritage Savings Trust Fund, which critics argue is inappropriate given the ongoing affordability crisis.
• Strike action against WestJet that could have affected flights over the long weekend was averted after federal Labour Minister Seamus O'Regan issued binding arbitration between the airline and the union representing aircraft maintenance engineers. The union said it was told by its legal counsel that there is "no modern precedent for the minister's action." Prior to O'Regan's order, observers were predicting major disruptions to summer travel.
• Alberta Innovates has appointed Michael Mahon as interim CEO following the departure of former CEO Laura Kilcrease earlier this week. Mahon has spent more than 35 years in Alberta and Manitoba's post-secondary sectors and was previously president of the University of Lethbridge. Alberta Innovates says it is undergoing a leadership transition as part of a "bold new strategic direction" and recently appointed five new people to its board of directors.

Here are some events happening on this long weekend in the Edmonton area.

• June 28: Seniors' Tour | Indigenous Artists in the Collection starting at 2pm at the Art Gallery of Alberta
• June 28: Cage the Elephant starting at 5:30pm at Rogers Place
• June 28: Tree of Life Pendant starting at 6pm at Lyall's Marketplace
• June 29: Peace and Unity Festival starting at 10am at Westridge Wolf Willow Community Centre
• June 29: City Led Bike Ride starting at 1pm at the Castle Downs Spray Park
• June 29: The Well of Souls Book Signing with Cordelia Kelly starting at 1pm at Bailey Books
• June 29: Rice Howard Way Entertainment District starting at 1pm on Rice Howard Way
• June 29-30: River Valley Songwriters Festival at Little Brick
• June 30: Japanese Tea Ceremony starting at 10:30am at the University of Alberta Botanic Garden
• June 30: Soul Speak Poetry Night starting at 8:15pm at the Grindstone Comedy Theatre and Bistro

Canada Day celebrations on July 1:

• Canada Day at the Legislature starting at 7am at the Alberta Legislature Grounds
• Canada Day at Broadmoor Lake Park starting at 8:30am
• Canada Day in Leduc starting at 9am
• Run for Reconciliation starting at 9am in Lions Park
• Stony Plain Canada Day starting at 10am at the Stony Plain and Parkland Pioneer Museum
• Canada Day in St. Albert starting at 10am
• Spruce Grove Canada Day starting at 12pm at Jubilee Park
• Mill Woods Canada Day Celebration starting at 2pm at Millwoods Park

And here are some upcoming events to keep in mind:

• July 5-14: Edmonton International Street Performers Festival at Churchill Square
• July 12-14: Whyte Avenue Art Walk
• July 18-28: Taste of Edmonton at Churchill Square

Visit the beta version of the Taproot Edmonton Calendar for many more events in the Edmonton region.