By Katie Schneider
The Eagle
Though many Cochrane residents seem adamant about keeping big box stores out of their western-themed town, others’ minds were changed after a meeting Aug. 26.
At the meeting hosted by the Cochrane and District Chamber of Commerce, more than 70 people in the RancheHouse theatre listened to speakers from Airdrie, Drumheller and Cochrane, as well as from Springwood Develop-ments Inc., the Edmonton company that has applied to amend a bylaw that currently bans 4,645 square metre (49,980 square feet) big box stores in town.
Though Nathan Boskers, development manager with Springwood, said people only speculate that the former Domtar site may hold a Wal-Mart, Ray Telford, Drumheller’s economic development officer, discussed the impact a Wal-Mart has had in that town since January 2006.
Telford said in seven months, none of the town’s small businesses have shut down, though their business did decrease at first.
He said Cochrane businesses shouldn’t worry about losing customers because they have a strong “western brand” and are located in a vibrant downtown.
“We’ll keep coming back because of the downtown. Whether there is a Wal-Mart here, it doesn’t matter,” he said. “That’s how you can beat the big box stores — because of your heritage.”
Kent Rupert, the economic development team leader for Airdrie, suggested that with a big box store, just as with any other store coming in, smaller stores should change their business plans to keep up with and avoid being taken over by the competition.
“When another business comes in, see what they are carrying and make the shift,” he said, referring to what business owners did in Airdrie when they found out Wal-Mart was going to be built. He also suggested working with the developer to ensure the town’s western theme is not disrupted.
“When working with big box stores (make sure) that they build to your community (and) that it fits your community from an esthetics point of view,” Rupert said.
But Stephen Pepper, a graduate of Cochrane High school and resident of the M.D. of Bighorn, said he thinks the loss won’t be in business, but rather in the “heart of the community” since it will draw people away from the downtown.
“That certainly isn’t a town I would like to see this become,” he said, adding he enjoys the fact he can walk down the main street (First Street West) and see people he knows.
“We deteriorate what we have and send a message to corporations that we don’t have a sense of community (and) that we just have money,” Pepper said.
Judy Stewart agreed that the issue is more about having a big box store downtown and preserving the town’s “historical re-sources” and character.
Stewart, a former mayor, said the store would open up low-paying jobs in a town that lacks affordable housing for workers, introduce heavy volumes of traffic and detract from “pedestrian-oriented” shopping.
“I don’t have anything against (Wal-Mart),” she said.“But not in our downtown.”
But Boskers said a big box development would strengthen the downtown core because it would bring in more people from other towns who would otherwise shop in Calgary. It would allow Cochrane residents to stay in town to shop too, he said.
Boskers said the vision for Cochrane includes a combination of large and small format retailers, offices and public services similar to existing stores in Cochrane along Fifth Avenue.
“It will create a synergy with existing stores on Fifth Avenue,” he said, adding they will connect through different access roads.
Boskers said it would also increase tax revenue for Cochrane.
He showed pictures of other Springwood developments in Okotoks, Slave Lake and Fort Saskatch-ewan to bring residents’ attention to the architecture used.
Mel Teghtmeyer lives in the Ghost Lake area but grew up on a farm on Lochend Road when Cochrane had about 700 people. Though he said he appreciated the variety of speakers, the meeting reinforced his opinion against the development.
“I don’t appreciate the value that a box store would bring to Cochrane,” he said after the meeting, adding he agreed it would add more low-paying jobs to the town.
Cochrane resident Donna Lyon and her husband, Al, who used to have a negative impression about big box stores, said after attending the meeting, they saw both the pros and cons.
“I could see big box stores being beneficial, but I’ve seen when they have destroyed communities before,” Donna said.
Tim Giese, president of the Cochrane Environ-mental Action Committee and Chair of the Brownfield Development Committee, spoke about the history of the Domtar site that is now contaminated with creosote and pentachlorophenols (PCPs), and the need for a committee to address issues of environment and public health when cleaning and developing the site.
Under the Alberta Protection and Enhancement Act, Domtar is responsible for cleaning up off-site contamination, and Springwood would be responsible for on-site contamination, which would cost about $10 to 15 million.
Giese said the town has secured a federal loan to assist in covering a portion of the cost.
A public hearing about the big box issue will be held sometime in October.

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By Katie Schneider
The Eagle
After about 116 outstanding parking tickets issued during spring street cleaning were thrown out in Cochrane provincial court Aug. 25, town administration is now deciding whether to reissue them or appeal the decision.
Crown Prosecutor Richard Powell said the tickets were quashed because of an error in the way they were written by the bylaw officer. However, the town has the authority to reissue the tickets within six months of the date of the offence, he said.
Director of Community and Protective Services Ian Smith said the department was disappointed with the decision because it was given the wrong instructions on how to issue the tickets in the first place. He said bylaw officers were instructed through the court to only check off one box indicating a violation of the traffic safety act, but the tickets were thrown out Aug. 25 because the second box, indicating a violation of the use of highway and rules of road regulations, was also supposed to be checked.
“We received wrong instructions from the court,” Smith said Aug. 28. “We’re very disappointed for obvious reasons. In my opinion it was not the special constable’s fault.”
Residents showed up at court to protest $50 tickets issued for parking on a street during the town’s street cleaning program April 18 to May 3. About 191 tickets were issued during that period.
At least three residents argue they were not properly notified about the dates and times of the cleaning, one of whom also says the town didn’t follow its own traffic bylaw properly. Those residents say they will continue to fight their cases no matter what administrators decide.
Curtis Flanagan said he received his ticket for parking outside of his Ross Avenue apartment on April 20. Advertisements were placed in the March 15, April 12, and April 26 Cochrane Times reminding residents that street sweepers were coming, but they did not include a specific schedule for each location. Though signs were set up around the subdivisions, Flanagan said there was no sign on Ross Avenue.
“If (the town) doesn’t do (its) job, how are we supposed to take care of getting our cars off the street?” he asked.
Lisa Simpson was in the process of moving her car when she was issued a ticket for parking on her street May 1. She said she was returning home at 9:30 a.m. after driving her school bus knowing her street would be cleaned that day. She parked her car, went into her house to call a neighbour across the street to ask if she could park on her driveway, and was issued a ticket as she dialed the phone — with keys in hand.
Simpson said she told the bylaw officer she was just parking for five minutes while she called her neighbour, but the officer told her it was too late and she was already writing it out. Her husband had also come back from work at the same time to grab his lunch and was issued a ticket in that same short amount of time, Simpson said. The cleaners didn’t arrive until about 11 a.m, she added.
“It’s not fair at all. It doesn’t justify $100,” for two tickets, she said.
Simpson said it also doesn’t seem fair that she would be fined the same amount as people who refused to move their cars.
“We never got a chance to talk about our story, but we felt so strongly that we had only been parked for five minutes total,” Simpson said.
James Perras first contacted the town about the ticket he was issued on April 20, also on Ross Avenue, in May through a series of letters requesting specific information, including when the signs were placed.
He said the town contravened its own bylaw that states it must give 48 hours notice before the bylaw comes into effect by placing signs on the “subject” streets or highways. Perras said Smith wrote to him July 28 to say signs were put out by 11 a.m. on April 18, but Perras is adamant it was not 48 hours before some people started to receive tickets.
After receiving his ticket, Perras said in a letter that he toured the neighbourhood and found only two signs, one of which was on the corner of Williams Street and Centre Avenue. It read: “Thursday street sweeping in this area,” he said. He argued that statement was too vague and did not properly notify what area and what Thursday the sign was referring to.
“The town never apologized or admitted it made a mistake,” Perras said.
Coun. Andy Marshall said if the town is considering reissuing the tickets, he would bring a motion forward to council in September ordering administration to not proceed, and also look at reimbursing those who did pay the fine.
“It’s clearly a problem with the law or the application of the law when law- abiding people become law-breakers. To me there’s a problem there,” he said. “It becomes a political issue when so many people have been affected.”
He said it’s unfair to those people who did pay right away, though Smith said those people did plead guilty so their ticket is not outstanding.
“Everyone should be treated the same,” Marshall said. “The town should not proceed because (of concerns) about how it was done in first place.”
Coun. Truper McBride said if tickets are reissued, and if Marshall puts forward a motion to stop the action, he will support it. He said reissuing tickets would tie up the courts since so many people would return to argue their cases.
“It’s a waste of taxpayers’ money” he said. “The court did throw them out so I don’t think they should reissue (them).”

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By Katie Schneider
The Eagle
An agreement that will end the Canada-U.S. softwood lumber dispute will be brought to Parliament, but producers like Cochrane-based Spray Lake Sawmills are not celebrating.
On Aug. 22, Prime Minister Stephen Harper announced his government would introduce a bill in the House of Commons in September to implement the softwood lumber agreement after gaining support from a majority of softwood-producing provinces, Canadian producers, and the United States.
The agreement “delivers stable and predictable access to the U.S. market,” prevents the U.S. from imposing tariffs on Canadian softwood exports at current market prices, imposes a border tax and return $4.3 billion of the $5 billion that U.S. Customs has collected from Canadian producers since 2002.
Canada’s lumber producers and producing provinces were given until Aug. 21 to support the seven-year renewable agreement, and give Harper the green light to take it up with Parliament.
But Ed Kulcsar, forestry manager at Cochrane-based Spray Lake Sawmills, said his company still disagrees with the agreement.
Although the company does not ship to the U.S., Kulcsar said it has been impacted indirectly.
“The lumber market is, to a degree, a North American market,” he said. “We have felt the effects of the different lumber disputes” related to prices.
Kulcsar said the company is concerned with the retroactive potential of a surtax on top of the border tax.
“It makes it difficult to come up with business plans and deal with customers when (they) expect final tax rates,” he said. “(Spray Lake Sawmills) still find(s) it difficult to throw in support for the agreement.”

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By Jack Tennant
There’s lots of recent talk of Cochrane’s downtown core and how precious and important it is.
But what is it and where is it?
Is the downtown core that they say we must protect by the Rockyview Hotel or is it at the Safeway mall? Is it both?
I also get a kick out of folks who say they want Cochrane to remain a quaint wee village. So do I, so everyone who’s moved here since 1984 has to go. (more…)

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By Pam Asheton
A lone Canada goose splash-taps out of a small crystal smooth lake and, annoyed, a perching raven shuffles his feather and croaks displeasure. Saddlepeak Mountain is shimmering in the August sunshine and the silence around is total, almost aching.
The odd shape of Devil’s Head lies to the north, from which the Richards’ ranch takes its name. Members of this local family, which homesteaded four generations ago, are stock contractors for the Cochrane Lions Rodeo — they supply the massive bulls and athletic bucking horses you’ll see exploding out of the chutes as part of the Labour Day weekend of activities in Cochrane. The rodeo starts at 1 p.m. Sept. 2 and Sept. 3, and then at 1:30 p.m. Sept. 4.
This Friday the Richards will saddle up and start hazing the 30 or so bulls from a lakeside pasture. They’ll load into trucks, drift into Cochrane, unload, feed and water and set their stock up for the night.
Bull riding, according to Jimmy Richards, 29, is steadily growing in popularity over, say, saddle bronc and bareback bronc riding, a phenomenon he has opinions about but, grinning, asks me not to print.
Pouring a coffee you could stand a spoon in, he pulls a photograph down from the log house walls of his father, Doug Richards, taken back in his competitive rodeo days. A near black horse has all four hooves about four feet above the ground and Doug’s looking just a bit athletic to stay on board.
Bulls weigh about 1,800 lb. and many have distinctive shoulder humps identifying part of their breeding as Brahma, usually outcrossed with Angus or other popular breeds. At the ranch they’ll get tried out once or twice for their bucking ability around the three-year-old mark, but they won’t get regular rodeo work until around the age of five. Their working life continues until they’re eight or 10, and in a season they might average 10 to 12 rodeos.
On this day, Jimmy moves quickly in the field, dumping feed pellets and unravelling sweet smelling meadow hay anchored into the back of an ancient throaty truck that’s seen a bit of mileage. He keeps an eye, always, on the bulls’ movements — a couple are making noises a horror movie would be proud of, and their small eyes have an intense concentration that suggests serious respect is probably a cool idea.
“You get to know them,” he says, tipping back his hat. “Each one’s different; some will buck twice over the weekend, some only once, it depends.”
Jimmy’s sidelined right now but he’s hoping a September MRI might locate what seems to be a troublesome pinched nerve. Rodeo competitors get used to injuries. Chances are if you watch a rider after the eight-second bell, he’ll be limping from a season’s accumulation of breaks, strains and ligament ruptures.
Bucking horses, Jimmy explains later, often have a bit of workhorse in them (for heavier leg bones) and, interestingly, thoroughbred.
“That can give them a little bit more stretch,” he explains, “lets them really sleek their hind end out.”
Judges will be standing in the arena west of the Cochrane Curling Club, one either side of the chutes.
“A cowboy’s feet need to be over the break of the shoulder as the horse’s front feet hit the ground after leaving the chute,” he said, gesturing, “or you’re heading for instant disqualification, and that can take a bit of remembering in the beginning. In the chute there’s adrenalin, perhaps a bit of fear involved and your legs can be shaking.”
“The best rides often,” he remembers, “are the ones you’re thinking you’re going to get bucked off!”
Horses usually buck in a straight line, or a wide circle, left or right-handed, and generally the less ground you cover the more marks gained (this means the horse and cowboy spend most of their time airborne).
Grand Valley’s Doug Borton knows all those details. He and Jim Kelts (from Priddis) are the event’s two pick-up men, the unobtrusive cowboys just out of the limelight who’ll muscle in either side of bronc riders once the eight-second bell rings.
Pick-up horses tend to be top of the pecking order back in their home herds, Borton says, because they have to have a bit of aggression. His are often quarter horse-Appendix crosses, around 16-hands-high.
“You don’t,” he explains, “want them too tall — too much of a stretch otherwise to lean down and ‘trip the flank (strap)’, particularly when a buckin’ horse has its head right down into the ground.”
He starts his horses relatively late, coming into more serious work well broke around the six-year mark. The horses, dozing in afternoon sunshine, are good looking, leggy, solid, high withered.
“They tend to be about the 1,250 lb. mark,” Borton said. “They need that kind of weight behind them to muscle in.” He looks for horses “not scared to run, to really get in there and who won’t give up on you.”
Before the cowboy takes off, Borton will settle in a few chutes down. If the horse is a straightliner, him and his partner will angle in a few strides behind — “coasting, hanging out” — on either side, waiting to move in, while with a “circler” they’ll begin to move into position in a different way, one man on the circle’s inside circuit (who’ll be scooping up the rider) and the outside man beginning, after the bell’s signal, to ride alongside pushing the bronc towards the inside pick-up man.
“Sometimes it can be a matter of inches,” he nods.
Riders will dismount in a number of ways. Generally they’ll grab the pick-up man’s waist and swing off their bronc.
“Riders like Billy Richards, you don’t even know he’s there!” Borton explains. “He’ll swing onto my horse, behind the cantle, and then straightaway off the other side.”
Once the rider’s safely down, the pick-up man “goes back and helps the other guy trip the flank strap,” easing the bronc safely back towards the exit.
What about nerves? Borton leans back against his barn’s 1940’s hand-hewn logs, considering.
“I don’t know if you’d call it that, but you do definitely get a feelin’. The first couple of horses go past you and then you’re rollin’. You can’t be an individual here or it ain’t going to work; teamwork’s critical, essential when everything happens in a hurry and sometimes goes to hell as well.”
Pam Asheton: Sunwired@hotmail.com.

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By Katie Schneider
The Eagle
Cochrane RCMP say alcohol was a factor when a fight broke out and a man was struck over the head with a log Aug. 27.
Sgt. Bill Eubank said the incident happened in the mid-afternoon of Aug. 27 on Highway 8 and 101 Street S.W. near Calgary. The victim was taken by Calgary EMS to hospital in the intensive care unit, but he refused to name his assailant, Eubank said.

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By Warren Harbeck
Earlier this summer I ran a couple of columns on the statement by the Russian writer Dostoevsky that “the world will be saved by beauty.” I also ran a summary of Nobel laureate Solzhenitsyn’s essay on that quote.
Your responses have been deeply moving. One of our Calgary coffee companions, an author of books on happiness, wrote:
I had no problem with your adopting Dostoevsky’s statement as a guiding light for your column and life, even though I have not read anything by either Dostoevsky or Solzhenitsyn other than occasional quotes.
This being the case, and with my focus being on happiness, I interpret the statement totally differently — and, if I may say — more positively.
Like you, I see beauty everywhere. It is in the rising of the sun, the first snow, the colour of the trees in the fall, rainbows, a baby’s cheerful gurgling, the way a loving eye sparkles, the wonder of the cosmos. I could go on forever.
When humanity appreciates all this beauty around us, the world will truly be saved. We will all then be closer to God than we have ever been and there will be no need for all the dogma and opinions that divide us.
— David Ambrose, Calgary
An Edmonton coffee companion would heartily agree with David’s focus on natural beauty, and especially on its role in healing. She has just come through four months of knee surgery, not without painful setbacks. Home at last, she wrote:
Now that I am able to sit outside for a while, I am enjoying the beautiful flowers and the antics of the many birds and squirrels that come to our feeders. The Painted Lady butterflies did not return this year, as they were able to return to their original migration route. How I miss them.
Just as my husband and I snuggled into bed the other night, we were serenaded by the coyotes that live in the river valley. A couple of packs were calling to each other for several minutes — wonder if it had anything to do with the bright orange full moon! The howls are so haunting and varied, and we felt privileged to have heard them.
— Barbara Stevens, Edmonton
Then there’s this response from a British Columbia writer and teacher within the Waldorf education movement:
One of our Canadian Poets, F. R. Scott, said, “Politics is the art of making artists. It is the art of developing in society the laws and institutions which will best bring out the creative spirit which lives in greater or less degree in every one of us. The right politics sets as its aim the maximum development of every individual. Free the artist in us, and the beauty of society will look after itself.” (Quoted in Sandra Djwa’s biography of the poet, The Politics of Imagination.)
It’s worth noting also that in Waldorf education, the years between seven and 14 are devoted to educating through all facets of the curriculum that sense of beauty — awakening in each child the artist whose feeling life can become an organ of cognition. The social life of the class with the teacher who journeys with the class from Grade 1 to Grade 8 is a studio where this artistic sensibility is cultivated.
— Philip Thatcher, Vancouver Island
I’d like to wrap up this topic for the time being with reference to Pope John Paul II’s 1999 Letter to Artists.
“May the beauty which you pass on to generations still to come be such that it will stir them to wonder!” he wrote. “Faced with the sacredness of life and of the human person, and before the marvels of the universe, wonder is the only appropriate attitude.”
Thanks to wonder-engendered enthusiasm, “humanity, every time it loses its way, will be able to lift itself up and set out again on the right path. In this sense it has been said with profound insight that ‘beauty will save the world.’
“Beauty is a key to the mystery and a call to transcendence. It is an invitation to savour life and to dream of the future. That is why the beauty of created things can never fully satisfy.
“It stirs that hidden nostalgia for God which a lover of beauty like Saint Augustine could express in incomparable terms: ‘Late have I loved you, beauty so old and so new: late have I loved you!’
“Artists of the world, may your many different paths all lead to that infinite ocean of beauty where wonder becomes awe, exhilaration, unspeakable joy.”
(c) 2006 Warren Harbeck, warren@harbeck.ca.

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By Sarah Junkin
Usually we spend the Labour Day weekend hanging out at the Calgary Highland Games, and at the Canmore Highland Games the following day. Our son is in the bagpipe competition both days, but even if he wasn’t, we’d still enjoy the day-long family events.
Where else can you watch burly, sweaty, kilted guys throwing a hammer or tossing a caber?
Where else can you sample a steaming plate of haggis washed down with Irn Bru, or browse through tents in search of important information about your clan?
The piping, drumming and highland dancing are always spectacular and we’re lucky to have this annual extravaganza of Scottish culture on our doorstep.
It’s interesting though that while highland games are held all across North America, attracting up to 50,000 people each year, the Scottish Games Association reports a shortage of competitors willing to take part in the traditional festival.
To build enthusiasm it’s been suggested organizers set up training camps to attract youth to the traditional competitions as well as to the dance and bagpipes events.
They’re also planning to consult with organizers of highland games in North America to figure out how to boost interest in Scotland, which is pretty odd when you think about it. Now that Scotland has finally procured its own Parliament after centuries of trying, it’s too bad the country is having to work so hard to retain other pieces of its cultural heritage.
Scottish linguists are also trying to revive Gaelic and make it an integral part of Scottish life again, though census figures indicate that Gaelic speakers have dwindled to only 58,652 in the entire country, or 1.2 per cent of the population.
They don’t need to worry though because Canada’s not about to let Gaelic die.
A Nova Scotia film crew has released Canada’s first ever Gaelic-language film, The Wake of Calum McLeod.
Director Marc Almon admits there’s “a small market” for the film, with fewer than 1,000 Gaelic speakers in Canada. The film will feature subtitles in an effort to boost box office sales.
Almon and film producer Nora MacDermid decided to make the movie after they began taking Gaelic language lessons together.
“Calum MacLeod is a very traditional Gaelic speaker who basically loses his family to the modern world because he is sticking with the old ways,” Angus MacLeod, a Gaelic expert who stars in the title role, told CBC News.
St. Francis Xavier University in Cape Breton is the first North American university to offer Scottish Gaelic studies, and some other institutions offer night classes and summer courses. Even in Calgary, there’s a Gaelic speaking club though I understand that so far only one person has joined up.
Another thing that happens virtually every summer is that e-mail you receive out of the blue from a distant relative you remember only vaguely announcing that he’s going to be in the area and wants to reconnect. Last week I took two of my sons to Banff to meet a cousin I didn’t know from a hole in the ground, his wife and two children.
“Why do we have to spend the day with these people?” whined my youngest son. Though I snapped back “because they’re family,” I admit I was wondering about it myself.
Cousin Andy and I haven’t exchanged so much as a Christmas card in 30 years, and I didn’t even know his wife’s name. Our parents had been close at one time, but that relationship had come to a screeching halt in the 60s with no one explaining why.
Anyway, Andy was in Banff for a couple of days and wanted to see us, so off we went.
Somehow we got past that first awkward hour with the four kids glaring at each other suspiciously, and the grown-ups smiling, nodding and wondering how soon we could reasonably suggest heading to the pub.
But we stuck it out, all of us trying to make it work, trying to be like family.
And despite decades of no contact, Andy and I spent a happy day remembering now deceased grandparents and ancient family parties from childhoods long ago.
We realized then how much we wanted our children to know the connections we’d lost, and by the end of the day they too were laughing and teasing one another.
My boys didn’t want to leave.
It could be years before we see these people again, and I doubt that we’ll even stay in touch.
But I nonetheless found it comforting to know the invisible bonds of family can be as invincible and enduring as time, even without Gaelic and highland games.
sarah@cochraneeagle.com.

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Dear Editor:
It’s no wonder Sean Maw couldn’t cut it in politics, not even in the Green Party.
He accuses publisher Jack Tennant (“Show politicians some respect”, Aug. 23, Eagle) of not taking part in the democratic process — what does he think a free newspaper is? — and of praising our military — the ones who protect his right to speak freely — yet he doesn’t mind abusing his right to free speech.
Freedom of speech, like all democratic rights, has corresponding responsibilities and obligations. He should study and practice them before trying to be a politician.
Many thousands of young Canadians have died in the defense of our right to live in a free country and speak as we choose, from the Boer War to two world wars, Korea and the present action in Afghanistan.
When it comes to a failed “politician” taking cheap shots at a columnist for doing his job and exercising his freedom of speech, I wonder if Maw is man enough to put himself in harm’s way defending Canada as a soldier or a cop?
I’ve done both. I earned my right to speak.
Maybe he’d learn some respect and appreciation for the fact that even a fool has the right to speak, but is considered wise when he doesn’t.
Paul D. Good

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