The Pulse: March 21, 2025

Ben Staley, the former chef at Yarrow and the Alder Room, says Next of Kin, his first concept as Hoot Company's creative director, is a neighbourhood bar in the Brewery District.

Next of Kin is located at 10425 121 Street NW, in the basement below Wilfred's and Made by Marcus in the brick former office building beside the former Molson brewery. Staley developed the menus for food and drink, but also designed the interior. Design is something he's prioritized learning about since leaving Yarrow and chef life in 2022. The restaurant closed mysteriously in 2024.

"I've always just loved pretty things," Staley told Taproot. "I think the physical environment is so important to how people feel, or how you want them to feel. (The opportunity to work on that was) what made me agree to take this job."

Staley joined Hoot in 2023 and has helped overhaul the bar menus at both Dorinku locations before designing Next of Kin from the ground up. Hoot also owns both Japonais Bistro and DOSC.

Staley's concept for Next of Kin is that there is not one concept. "With my past restaurants, when I was still cooking, they were so hyper-conceptual and so hyper-focused on this one thing, and we did that to the best that we possibly could," he said. "We didn't really want to pigeonhole ourselves into doing just one thing (with Next of Kin)."

Still, Staley said, the look of Next of Kin is inspired by the 1970s and feels like "your cool grandparents' basement." Menus current as of March 19 include dishes with flavours from Asia and the Mediterranean alongside a burger and soft-serve ice cream. For cocktails, which Staley said are the focus of the bar, inspiration runs from bubblegum and rhubarb to café au lait and Five Alive.

Staley said the forthcoming Nero, a restaurant in the former Molson Brewery building right next door to Next of Kin by the team behind Rosso and Bianco, might help lure customers to his cocktail bar before or after dinner.

Attracting more people to the Brewery District might be limited by its design, Lisa Brown, the former president of what's now called the Wîhkwêntôwin Community League and a resident of the neighbourhood, told Taproot. Brown said she hopes new businesses like Next of Kin and Nero can influence the future of the Brewery District, which she believes was "not very well done from an urban design, integration-into-the-community perspective" when it was opened nearly a decade ago.

"My naive, optimistic hope is that some of these business owners push the developer to improve the public realm so that the experience of their customers improves," Brown said. "I'm not holding my breath for that, but I think that would be nice to see."

• Mayor Amarjeet Sohi plans to run for the Liberal Party in the upcoming federal election, Postmedia reported, citing unnamed sources. Sohi, who has been Edmonton's mayor since 2021, confirmed he will not seek re-election in Edmonton's 2025 municipal election. Sohi was a Liberal MP in the Edmonton Mill Woods riding from 2015 to 2019, but it's unclear which riding he would choose if he does run again. Troy Pavlek is keeping an updated list of municipal candidates in Edmonton, and Dave Cournoyer is tracking federal candidates across Alberta.
• Prime Minister Mark Carney was in Edmonton, where he met with Premier Danielle Smith. Smith said she delivered a "specific list of demands" the next prime minister must address to "avoid an unprecedented national unity crisis." Carney also made an announcement about housing, which included eliminating GST for first-time home-buyers purchasing homes under $1 million. He also put on a jersey and skates to join the Edmonton Oilers on the ice while the team was preparing for their game against the Winnipeg Jets.
• Education support staff at Sturgeon School Division have voted 80% in favour of ratifying their collective agreement and are scheduled to return to work after spring break. The division includes schools north of Edmonton, including in St. Albert. All labour disputes between support workers and Edmonton-area school divisions are now over, with employees at Edmonton Public Schools, Parkland School Division and Black Gold School Division having already voted in favour of their agreements.
• The City of Edmonton unveiled a Two-Spirit flag at city hall on March 20 in recognition of Two-Spirit and Indigenous LGBTQQIA+ Awareness Day, alongside an official proclamation from Coun. Tim Cartmell and messages from Joshua Morin of Edmonton 2 Spirit Society and Sadie Thompson of Sacred Circles Village. This is the fourth year that various governments in Canada have marked Two-Spirit and Indigenous LGBTQQIA+ Awareness Day, which began as an advocacy effort from a Vancouver-based nonprofit.
• The Edmonton Valley Zoo will open a new exhibit for Arctic wolves on March 21. The 5,000-square-metre space will contain two wolves that arrived from France last year, along with one wolf whose partner died in 2022. The exhibit provides the wolves a "spacious, naturalistic environment," a release said.
• Edmonton-based singer-songwriter Celeigh Cardinal is up for two JUNO awards. She is nominated for Adult Contemporary Album of the Year for her album Boundless Possibilities, released last year, as well as Indigenous Artist or Group of the Year. She won a JUNO in 2020 for her album Stories from a Downtown Apartment. The 2025 JUNO Awards are happening in Vancouver on March 30.
• ATB Financial's latest economic outlook for Alberta forecasts slower growth and higher unemployment due to U.S. tariffs, threats of tariffs, and accompanying trade uncertainty. In its report, ATB predicts a real GDP growth of 1.5% in 2025 and 1.9% in 2026, with unemployment averaging 7.6% this year. The report says the most pessimistic scenario, which assumes broad U.S. tariffs on steel and aluminum plus Canadian counter tariffs, forecasts 0.5% and 1.3% growth for 2025 and 2026.

On this day in 1980, comics from The Second City were making their Edmonton debut.

According to the Edmonton Journal, the performances tested whether Edmonton could serve as the next expansion for the improv comedy mainstay, which started in Chicago before branching out to New York and Toronto. While the Edmonton theatre troupe never materialized, in less than a year, the city nonetheless played a starring role for The Second City, and the comedy world.

Second City Television, or SCTV, was a sketch comedy show that grew out of The Second City Toronto. First airing in 1976 on Global, the show featured several future comedy legends, including John Candy, Catherine O'Hara, Martin Short, Joe Flaherty, Eugene Levy, Andrea Martin, Dave Thomas, and Harold Ramis. Framed as broadcasts from a tiny television station in the fictional town of Melonville, SCTV's comedy was bold, avant-garde — and expensive to produce.

Global axed the show after two seasons due to high production costs. But SCTV wasn't finished. Charles Allard, a wealthy Edmonton surgeon who owned the independent CITV station (which would later just become ITV) purchased it and moved production to Edmonton. Some of the cast dropped out (including O'Hara and Ramis), but Rick Moranis was added to the roster.

The move to Edmonton sparked a golden age for SCTV. The facilities at CITV were tiny, but advanced, leading to some ambitious comedic experiments. The city's isolation and long, dark winters also meant the cast had little to do but throw themselves into their work. The cast spoke fondly of their time in the city, although producing a show out of Edmonton did cause some problems. It was hard to convince guests to make the trip in, and sometimes, when the Oilers were playing, they would lose their production crew.

During the Edmonton years, SCTV produced some of its best episodes and gained attention. The show was broadcast on CITV and CBC, and was eventually picked up by NBC, making it the first Canadian TV series to air on an American network. While SCTV didn't get the same ratings as NBC's Saturday Night Live, the Canadian show was critically beloved. Seen as the edgier, more cult comedy creation, it was lauded as the funniest TV show around in everything from The New Yorker to the L.A. Times. SCTV went on to win four Emmys and kickstarted the film careers of many of its stars.

Edmonton influenced some of the show's comic sensibilities, too. Candy and Levy's polka-playing Schmenge Brothers were inspired by Edmonton's accordion master, Gaby Haas. Edmonton's concrete, brutalist architecture proved to be a suitable Soviet Union stand-in for one of SCTV's most memorable episodes, when its signal is overwhelmed by a similar station from the U.S.S.R. The Edmonton seasons also saw the creation of SCTV's most famous characters, arch-Canadian brothers Bob and Doug McKenzie. The pair was created to maliciously comply with CBC's demands for more Canadian content but became wildly popular with audiences on both sides of the border.

SCTV would only spend a year and a half in Edmonton before production was moved back to Toronto. But that short time left a mark. Many of the show's cast went on to legendary careers in movies and TV. And even now, comedy writers and actors talk of SCTV's scrappy, experimental sketches as a major source of inspiration. Today, Edmonton's place in SCTV history can be seen downtown, where statues of beer-swilling Canadian icons Bob and Doug sit on a bench near Rogers Place.

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

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

• March 21: Siuyeh Pop-Up starting at 5pm at EPIC Market
• March 21: NAT x UAC Demo Night starting at 6pm at University of Alberta (Student Innovation Centre)
• March 21: YEG Craft Spirits and Charcuterie Tasting starting at 7pm at Meuwly's
• March 22: Vegan class starting at 11am at Bakenary pastries
• March 22: MasterClass: Gluten-Free Pizza Making starting at 1pm at Caffè Sorrentino Head Office
• March 22: Growing Roots! Folk Music from Around the World starting at 2:30pm at Winspear Centre
• March 22: SWARANJALI: A Duet of Divine Melodies starting at 5pm at CN Theatre
• March 22-23: Drum Making at Devon
• March 22-23: Grandmother Goodies Bake Sale at Old Strathcona Antique Mall
• March 23: Seedy Sunday starting at 11am at Alberta Avenue Community Centre
• March 23: Above Average Evening starting at 6pm at Woodwork
• March 23: Baroque Chamber Music Treasures starting at 3pm at Robertson-Wesley United Church

And here are some upcoming events to keep in mind:

• April 1: IDEAS for a Better Canada – A CBC Conversation at Edmonton Public Library (Stanley A. Milner)
• April 3: Sort & Style Exchange: Sustainable Fashion at Creative Hive
• April 4: Olivia Shortt, with guests Matthew Cardinal, and Mustafa Rafiq at Ociciwan Contemporary Art Collective

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