The Pulse: Nov. 29, 2024

The 121-year-old Conservatory of Music is being absorbed by the Winspear Centre in 2025 as MacEwan University drops it from its portfolio.

This follows discussions between MacEwan and the Winspear that Taproot previously reported on. In 2023, after running the conservatory since 2002, MacEwan sold the Alberta College building where the conservatory was operating to Edmonton Public Schools for $22 million. The board bought the building to house Centre High Campus. The school board gave MacEwan until 2025 to move the conservatory. At the time, MacEwan told Taproot that it intended to divest the conservatory to Winspear, but an agreement had not been reached.

The deal is now done.

"The (Winspear) will start to be used by the conservatory instructors and students right as of July 1st in 2025, but we're working through the details on how it will be used and what sort of access will be offered at that time," Alyssa Paterson, the director of operations and strategic initiatives for the Winspear and the Edmonton Symphony Orchestra, told Taproot.

The move coincides with the Winspear Expansion Project, slated for completion in 2026. The expansion will boost the venue's square footage by 50,000, to a total of 215,000. Its $110 million cost is being split between the City of Edmonton, the provincial government, the federal government, and fundraising. The expansion will include a new venue called the Music Box, spaces with daily public access, and education spaces that can accommodate 50% more youth than Winspear's current facilities as part of its Tommy Banks Centre for Musical Creativity.

"In becoming the hub for music in our city, bringing the conservatory within, as opposed to keeping it as a separate offering, makes a lot of sense," Paterson said. "It's just so well-aligned with our existing vision and mission and values that we felt like (by) keeping it separate, we'd almost be doing a disservice to it, as opposed to thinking of music education in our city in a really holistic way."

The conservatory's century-plus history and its pedigree are partly tied up in its name, one instructor said.

"We've been trying to convince (Winspear) that this idea of 'conservatory' implies excellence in teaching, and that it has a cachet — a brand — all to itself, and it's important for us to keep," Elizabeth Raycroft told Taproot.

The sentiment is not lost on Paterson. She said efforts are underway to find a way to keep the conservatory's legacy alive as it integrates into the future of the Banks Centre. One concrete measure has been decided on.

"We have plans in the expansion and in the expanded building to have what we're calling discovery zones — areas where you can learn about music in our city," Paterson said. "We're planning to dedicate one of those zones to the conservatory, and the history of the conservatory, to honour that legacy in our city."

• The City of Edmonton's extreme weather response has been extended to Dec. 2. The response includes overnight shelter shuttles and expanded shelter service capacity, including overnight spaces at Al Rashid Mosque. City facilities and libraries are open during regular hours to provide respite.
• City council's executive committee reviewed a report from Colliers Project Leaders on factors influencing the cost of building fire halls and recreation centres, which found these projects are more expensive and take longer to build in Edmonton than in surrounding areas. The cost drivers include the pandemic, sustainability goals, and the complexity of bylaws and regulations, the report says.
• A dozen Edmonton community leagues are running their own community sandboxes this winter, as the number offered by the City of Edmonton drops. This year, the City plans to offer sand at 100 centralized distribution sites and 11 "large bin" locations, compared to the more than 770 it used to offer.
• The Edmonton Chamber of Commerce and industry lobby groups NAIOP Edmonton and BILD Edmonton Metro held a joint press conference about the city's financial stability and property taxes. The chamber is asking city council to set its core service priorities, lower the proposed 8% tax increase, and invest in revitalizing downtown. Mayor Amarjeet Sohi said the business community should prioritize its requests, noting council has invested in downtown cleaning, but that the recent Downtown Investment Plan asks for an additional $427 million that the City doesn't have.
• This week, 180 Edmonton-based members of the Canadian Armed Forces departed to join an ongoing NATO mission in Latvia, which began after Russia's invasion of Ukraine. About 1,900 Canadian soldiers are being deployed to Central and Eastern Europe as part of Operation Reassurance, currently Canada's largest overseas military mission. The operation involves Canada's only tank regiment, led by Edmonton-based Lord Strathcona's Horse.
• Claire Theaker-Brown, founder of the Edmonton belt company Unbelts, spoke to The Gateway about her efforts to make her products "undupeable" after counterfeit versions appeared online. Theaker-Brown used an Edmonton Action Plan Grant to create a new line using old stock and materials sourced from the Edmonton region, demonstrating the area's supply-chain resilience, she said.
• Splitsville Entertainment, a Canadian bowling alley chain, is opening its first Edmonton location in 2025 at Christy's Corner, a shopping area by the intersection of St. Albert Trail and 137 Avenue. It will have 21 lanes, an arcade, and other entertainment. Splitsville has opened four locations in Calgary in recent years and is hoping to make a similar mark in Edmonton, said president Pat Haggerty.
• After missing the last two games due to an undisclosed injury, Edmonton Oilers forward Zach Hyman will join the team on an upcoming three-game road trip, and may return to play, said coach Kris Knoblauch. The team plays the Utah Hockey Club on Nov. 29, the Colorado Avalanche on Nov. 30, and the Vegas Golden Knights on Dec. 3.
• Alberta is seeing an "alarming" trend of abandoned health records and misuses of health information, as well as "snooping" employees, according to a privacy commissioner report into breaches of the Health Information Act. In 2023-2024, health record-keepers reported 448 breaches, including two employees who submitted 500 false COVID-19 vaccination records to the public information system, and a case where patient health records were found near a dumpster, Postmedia reported.

On this day in 1969, Edmonton's city-owned telephone company was defending itself in a newspaper.

One of Edmonton Telephone's managers penned a rebuttal to an earlier letter to the editor, in which the writer complained about the service. What may seem like needless ink spilled over a customer complaint highlights how essential the telephone was in 1969, before text and email, as well as the city's long history as a telecom provider.

Edmonton's first telephone company was founded in 1893 by businessman Alex Taylor. By 1904, the city had grown and Taylor's company ran telephone service to Edmonton, St. Albert, Fort Saskatchewan, and other nearby towns. There were 500 telephone owners in Edmonton at that time, and the demand was becoming more than Taylor's business could handle. So, he sold the operation to the city for around $17,000. It became the Edmonton District Telephone Company, but would eventually be known as Edmonton Telephones, or in most conversations as ED TEL.

Edmonton was one of many cities in Canada that owned its telephone services. But its service was also one of the most successful. As the city continued to grow, so did ED TEL. In 1906, the organization built its first automatic telephone exchange downtown, a system that was cutting-edge technology at the time. And as the city spread outwards over the next few decades, more exchanges were built.

Eventually, one in every five people in Edmonton had a telephone, the highest rate of any city in Canada. ED TEL was so successful, in fact, that it continued to make a profit even during the Great Depression, despite offering lower rates than the province-owned Alberta Government Telephones, which served Calgary and the rest of the province.

The two Alberta telcos had a rocky relationship. For most of their history, the two companies fought over which would receive the fee for long-distance calls made from Edmonton to other parts of Alberta — ED TEL argued they were entitled to more of the fee since the calls used their lines. The 1970s saw a protracted "telephone war" between the two over territory. ED TEL demanded the right to take over service for communities such as Jasper Place, which Edmonton had annexed but remained AGT customers. Eventually, that dispute was settled, with Edmonton taking over any new areas of the city.

Given its sometimes adversarial relationship, there is irony in the way the ED TEL and AGT stories end at the same place. In 1990, the provincial government formed a holding company called TELUS to privatize AGT. Five years later, that company purchased ED TEL.

The municipal and provincial governments are no longer in the phone business, but phones still become a government matter on occasion. This fall, Alberta became one of many provinces to introduce restrictions on students using cellphones at school. So far, Edmonton schools have reported few challenges in meeting the province's new rules.

This clipping was found on Vintage Edmonton, a daily look at Edmonton's history from armchair archivist @revRecluse of @VintageEdmonton.

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

• Nov. 29: Silver Bell Soirée starting at 7pm at Edmonton Convention Centre
• Nov. 30: Stuff-A-Bus
• Nov. 30: Mike Boldt Book Launch starting at 2pm at Audreys Books
• Nov. 30: Para-Athlete of Colour Digital Museum Launch starting at 2pm at McKernan Community Hall
• Nov. 30: Glow Adults Only Night starting at 6pm at Edmonton EXPO Centre
• Nov. 30: Art Is…Soul: Where Memories Bring the Past to Life starting at 6:30pm
• Nov. 30: Meat, Cheese, and Wine Extravaganza starting at 7pm at Fort Edmonton Park
• Dec. 1: Ugly Sweater Workshop starting at 1pm at L'OCA Sherwood Park
• Dec. 1: Bring Out Your Dead starting at 3pm at Blues on Whyte Pub
• Dec. 1: Sherbrooke Tasting Room Presents Alberto Voerzio from BAROLO starting at 6pm at Sherbrooke Liquor

And here are some upcoming events to keep in mind:

• Dec. 4: DisruptHR YEG 12.0 at Cineplex Odeon Windermere and VIP Cinemas
• Dec. 7: Adventures in Snacking at Lucky Supermarket
• Dec. 12: Holiday Kitchen Party at Meuwly's

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