By Katie Schneider
The Eagle
In a matter of days, ashtrays will be put away and restaurant and bar owners will be prepared to approach anyone violating the new smoke-free bylaw.
When Cochrane becomes smoke-free Jan. 1, duffing a smoke will be prohibited in workplaces and public buildings including bars, patios, transportation vehicles, restaurants, sidewalk cafes, and private clubs.
Smokers can light up outside more than three metres from an entrance or exit to a public place.
A brochure from the town’s Bylaw Services (on cochrane.ca) says if people are smoking, the establishment owner will advise them of the new rule and ask that the cigarette, pipe or cigar be extinguished. If they refuse, they will not receive any further service and will be reported to Bylaw Services or the RCMP.
Fines are $250 for a member of the public and $1,000 for proprietors.
Though Texas Gate owner-operator Mark Horton is still concerned about the financial losses the bylaw may cause businesses like his, he is keeping a positive attitude.
“At the end of the day, there’s no point in getting upset” at something he can’t control, he said.
Ducks on the Roof bartender Ross Suey said about 80 per cent of the bar’s patrons are smokers, but he is not worried about losing customers.
If they leave, they will eventually come back “because it’s the same everywhere else.”

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By Katie Schneider
The Eagle
In its first major project since the Ghost-Waiparous Access Management Plan (GAMP) was unveiled in May, members of off-roading organizations have begun installing bridges in the recreation area northwest of Cochrane.
To replace some of the bridges washed out during the summer floods of 2005, members of the Alberta United Recre-ationists Society (AURS), the Second Gear Club, the Calgary Quad Squad, and the Rocky Mountain Dirt-riders, are using steel bridges that were washed out in Fish Creek Park.
Roger Meyer, land use management officer in Resource Management for Southern Rockies area lands division of Alberta Sustainable Resource Development (SRD) asked Community Development if the Fish Creek bridges could be used elsewhere, such as in the Ghost-Waiparous area, since they no longer support the widened Fish Creek.
The first of four steel bridges, which measure 80 feet long, eight to nine feet wide and weigh 15,000 pounds, was installed over Fallentimber Creek, near Highway 940 and Hunter Valley Road, on Dec. 16, said Dave Dunlop, a motorcycle rider with the Second Gear Club, who is spearheading the project.
Another bridge will be moved to the south Ghost area off Trans Alta Road. The locations of the other two have yet to be determined, he said.
Because of its scope and size, Meyer said this will be the first major project carried out since the SRD released the GAMP, which designates trails for trucks, quads, motorcycles and dirt bikes to reduce potential conflict between those users and hikers, cyclists and horseback riders.
The GAMP also involved the creation of a Stewardship Committee, which is still in the formation stages but will implement the plan and make recommendations to the SRD about maintaining the trail system.
Meyer said the SRD is paying for the cost to move the bridges while the volunteers from the organizations will haul them to their new locations.
“We’re trying to all work together to improve the trails out there,” Meyer said, adding the trail system belongs to the SRD but volunteers help maintain and look after them.
“They are part of the process to improve the trail system,” he added.
“They’re stepping up to the plate.”
He hopes this will be the first of many major projects to “keep the trail system up to speed.”
Peter Straub, vice-president of AURS and member of the Stewardship Committee, said though the project is not a result of deliberations of the committee, he agreed it is the first major one undertaken by volunteer organizations since the GAMP was announced because of the scope of the SRD’s commitment to it and the fact the volunteers will “better understand their relationship with the SRD.”
Dunlop said though “no one likes the (Ghost Access Management) plan, the trails to have to be controlled, and so the SRD is just doing its job in achieving that.
“If you’re willing to work with the SRD, they are willing to work with you,” Dunlop said. “Realistically, we have to work together.”

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By Katie Schneider
The Eagle
Two years after a Cochrane girl was “clotheslined” and severely injured, her lawyer has sued the Links of GlenEagles golf for $1.15 million.
While riding her bike on a public pathway Dec. 24, 2004, the girl, then 12, was hit on the neck by an unmarked rope strung across the downward sloping pathway, said a statement of claim.
Stuart Ross, who represents the girl and her family, filed the lawsuit against the golf course owners on Dec. 18. The girl is now 14 and her mother asked that she not be named.
The statement of claim said the girl was thrown from her bike, landed on her back, neck, shoulder, and head. As a result, she suffered injuries including a skull fracture, brain trauma, concussion, permanent injury to the cervical spine, left hip trauma, and a jaw injury, among others. Her injuries have also caused “a permanent impairment of her learning capacity,” the lawsuit says.
It alleges negligence on the part of the owners, such as failing to ensure the path was safe and the rope was visible, as the cause of her injuries.
Scott Atkinson, general manager for the Links of GlenEagles, said the company has not yet been served with the suit but has been told it will be coming.
“We have heard about it and know about the incident, (but) we have not physically received service,” he said.
Ross could not be reached for comment.

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Wee Jackie weighs in
by Jack Tennant
The last week of the year and a time of reflection on the past year and enthusiasm for the future.
And for about the 17th year in a row, Cochrane stands at the doorstep of incredible growth and development.
One would think we’d be used to it by now but apparently not.
Growth still scares the hell out of many people for no obvious reason, and scared people are anything but positive.
The attitude of a very vocal few is if it’s growth then it must be bad.
If you positively mention the word “developer”, then you’re obviously against motherhood, apple pie and handicapped orphans.
How could there be anything good in a person or company that wants to take vacant land and turn it into tax revenue-producing property, and perhaps provide housing and jobs?
Growth without control, of course, is chaos but a community without growth is dead town walking.
There will be many and often spirited debates over Cochrane’s growth and one can only hope we can debate various issues based on principles rather than personalities.
Some of the arguments against “big box” stores are basically silly.
Such as, they won’t get employees — that’s our problem? I need another reporter, is it your obligation to find one for me? Not a chance and “big box” stores can find their own, they have experience at that.
Another shriller is “big box” stores don’t pay decent wages. Neither do weekly newspapers, so what?
And I love this one: “big box” stores will destroy our western way of life. What the hell is that? If my life’s values depend on the lack of a “big box” store then I don’t have much for values.
Then there’s the one that these stores, like Wal-Mart, will destroy our small-town friendliness. Isn’t that a crock. That’s just noise to prop up a faulty argument.
If our friendliness and being good neighbours depends on the size of retail outlets then we’re pretty shallow folks.
If a vocal few can cause a town to reject something new because of those reasons, then we are indeed a dead town walking.
Springwood Develop-ments has some ideas on growth for Cochrane and is hosting an open house Jan. 10 at Frank Wills Memorial Hall.
Don’t let the noisy few take over this process.
Make your decision based on fact and not shrill arguments that have no basis in logic.
Take an open mind to the open house.
Cochrane’s future is an interesting challenge to be sure, so let’s step back from the emotion and make the decision based on facts and common sense.
Let’s hear Springwood out. After all, isn’t tolerance and having the courtesy and courage to listen also part of our western heritage?

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Coffee with Warren
by Warren Harbeck
Gaydon Willis is a Cochrane Eagle columnist with an attitude — indeed, a most positive attitude, considering she is coping with cancer and refuses to let the “C” word rob her of the joy of life. Her writing flows from the heart of her journey and is characterized by candor, clarity, wisdom and humour. I’d like to begin my final column of 2006 by referring to the conclusion of her most recent column, appropriate, I think, because this is the week when many folks return undesirable gifts to the store and exchange them for things they’d much prefer.
“I’m going to take all my fears, worries and negative thoughts and exchange them for something better,” Gaydon wrote. She would exchange fear for hope, worry for faith, anger for joy, hate for love, and anxiety for peace.
Her positive outlook reminds me of the many e-mails I’ve received from our coffee companions. In fact, if the responses on particular themes we’ve explored in this column over the past year are any indication, then the positive attitudes of forgiveness, happiness, beauty, and overcoming loneliness top the list.
I wasn’t at all surprised to find forgiveness held the most interest for our coffee companions. As you may recall, the series of four columns on the topic was motivated by this fall’s example of a Pennsylvania Amish community’s acts of forgiveness and compassion following the murder of five of their young school children.
We had touched briefly on forgiveness back in March, of course, when Canadian peace activist James Loney was freed from captivity in Iraq after being held hostage for five months and one of his companions was executed. He has come out recently pleading for leniency toward his captors.
Locally, coffee shop patrons continue to share with me how the Amish example and your responses have provided healing for their lives.
The goal of such forgiveness, according to several of our readers, is the reconciliation that results in greater happiness among people, another popular topic this past year.
David Ambrose and Elaine Phillips, two of our local coffee companions who are originally from South Africa, helped us understand how this greater happiness is facilitated through ubuntu, a Xhosa and Zulu concept that translates roughly: “If I hurt you, I hurt myself; if I treat you well, I treat myself well.”
As you may recall, David drew out attention to a quote from South African Nobel Laureate Archbishop Desmond Tutu on ubuntu:
“It is the essence of being human. It speaks of the fact that my humanity is caught up and is inextricably bound up in yours. I am human because I belong. It speaks about wholeness, it speaks about compassion.” People with ubuntu “know that they are diminished . . . when others are treated as if they were less than who they are. The quality of ubuntu gives people resilience, enabling them to survive and emerge still human despite all efforts to dehumanize them.”
The topics of beauty and overcoming loneliness have intertwined themselves with forgiveness and happiness in many varied ways throughout the past year’s columns. Aware of their importance to our readers, local book dealer George Parry recently recommended to me a volume that celebrates their unity.
Beauty, the Invisible Embrace: Rediscovering the True Sources of Compassion, Serenity, and Hope, by John O’Donohue, reflects the positive essence of a motto I’ve adopted for my columns: “The world will be saved by beauty.”
O’Donohue is the author of the international bestseller Anam Cara. In Beauty he writes:
“The Beautiful stirs passion and urgency in us and calls us forth from aloneness into the warmth and wonder of some eternal embrace. It unites us again with the neglected and forgotten grandeur of life; for in some instinctive way we know that beauty is no stranger. We respond with delight to the call of beauty because in an instant it can awaken under the layers of the heart some forgotten brightness.”
For O’Donohue, beauty’s embrace may be the most positive, soul-affirming experience of all, for it has its origins in God.
“No storm can touch us there,” he writes. “In the presence of the God of Beauty our own beauty shines. God is the atmosphere where our essence clarifies, where all falsity and pretension vanish. Here we are utterly enfolded.”
So, in the spirit of Gaydon’s exchange of attitudes, I’d like to propose a New Year’s resolution for all our coffee companions: That we will exchange whatever is dark, ugly and lonely in our lives for the embrace of beauty, and in that embrace, radiate beauty to all we touch throughout the coming year.
(c) 2006 Warren Harbeck
warren@harbeck.ca.

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Dear Editor:
A number of months ago I was approached by one of our energetic community citizens and was asked to sign a petition that supported keeping “big box” stores out of Cochrane. With limited knowledge on the former-Domtar site development application, my instant reply was “yes”, but with conditions:
1) Did we have someone else lined up to clean up the former-Domtar site; I liked the idea that someone was finally committed to the remediation of this site;
2) We desperately need the commercial tax base here in Cochrane to help with the many demands that the ever-increasing residential base puts on our community. So my request was that before I sign, I would like to know we have a better plan to find this tax base balance.
Those two questions at the time of this letter remain unanswered. The timing benefit of the petition request, along with a recent Maclean’s business article, was ideal as it challenged me to do my own information gathering.
On Oct. 23, in the business section of Maclean’s, a full page was dedicated to “The long, losing war to smear Wal-Mart”. Included in the timely story was a paragraph that was very enlightening. The article stated, “They insist that Wal-Mart devastates local economies, but the places that are struggling most are those that fought to keep the stores out, and then watched as more and more commercial activity and employment fled to the Wal-Mart-friendly suburbs.”
We are struggling here in Cochrane. As a local business owner there is not a day that goes by that I don’t have local students, organizations and committees seeking financial or volunteer donations, and with good reason. We are in desperate need of outdoor sport fields, a third ice surface, fine arts facilities, a community hall and the list goes on and on.
I have heard active members of our community, whom I respect, say they cannot afford to stay in Cochrane if the residential taxes continue to increase. At the present time, these taxes do increase and these struggles continue.
You might ask what in the world does this have to do with “big box” development? Well, our current tax base is at 82 per cent residential and only 18 per cent commercial. This one Domtar development proposal, I am told, will bring into our community substantially over $1 million of taxes each year, resulting in less emphasis and strain on residential properties and taxes.
Is this a reason to jump on the development wagon? No, but it should make you interested in considering the option and investigate further for yourself.
For my part, I have researched further and found that there are many communities that have gone before us with this type of development. In fact, when I recently had an opportunity to sit down and discuss this project with the president of Springwood Develop-ments, he provided me with numerous letters of support which I found very enlightening.
Even more encouraging are the success stories associated with this type of development. Okotoks has been one of those communities and from the Chamber of Com-merce to the mayor, they have all endorsed the decision to move forward.
The Calgary Herald also found positive results, stating local business is “thriving . . . and Okotoks has become the community of choice.”
We all enjoy our “small town feel” and would love to retain that, and this type of development disposes us to think we may lose this. But I say the “small town feel” spirit is within us, not based on what gets built.
This again can be evidenced by positive results of development. Years ago I was asked to sign a similar petition against the Canadian Tire and Safeway. I recently visited both of those “big box” stores and felt our Cochrane “small town feel” spirit from both, and from staff and fellow citizens that were enjoying the convenience of local shopping along with me.
With regard to Domtar, I also wanted some non-biased feedback from outside of the Spring-wood family. I did not have to go far because Strathmore is now marking the first anniversary of its “big box” development. I was able to discuss at length this initiative with a long-time Strathmore resident and local business owner. His comments were very supportive of the project.
Strathmore did not have the options that Cochrane has; it had to go on the outskirts of their town. The downtown businesses were frightened they would lose business, but the opposite happened. Strathmore is enjoying a new vitality and energy that most everyone is excited about. One of the many comments I recall is, “I don’t have to drive to Calgary anymore I can stay home — the stores have come to us.”
I have also discovered a few encouraging commitments. Bill Butler (of Springwood Develop-ments) has not only agreed to remediate the former-Domtar site to meet Alberta Environ-ment requirements, but has also agreed to:
• a mix of smaller retail, personal service, clinics, studios, and offices on the 42 acres;
• extend Centre Ave-nue, provide new roadways and sidewalks to manage the downtown pedestrian and traffic flows more efficiently;
• support our western heritage design theme;
• Mr. Butler will retain ownership, he is here to stay, not build and leave;
• create new local and diverse job opportunities.
Undoubtedly, you have had a chance to see how many residents make the pilgrimage each day to Calgary. How much greater would our local economy and residents be if some of those commuters were able to stay and work here, spending more time with their families while helping the town they love grow?
I too cherish our small-town atmosphere and will do everything possible to support and retain this value. This development will mean competition to our businesses, but when I add up all the benefits and what this will bring to our community, the scale easily moves in the direction of “support”.
We have a community second to none which we all value. I encourage each of you to do your research and find out for yourself the positive effects this development could have for Cochrane.
Springwood is hosting an open house from 2:30-6 p.m. Jan. 10 at the Frank Wills Memorial Hall, and a public hearing will be held at the Cochrane RancheHouse on Jan. 25. Once you have had a chance to gather information, let our mayor and councillors know your thoughts so they can move into this decision with the voice of our community.
Alex Baum, Cochrane Dodge

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Dear Editor:
Re: “Letter on washroom access should not have been printed”, Dec. 20 Cochrane Eagle.
I want to start by saying, “Never say never Terry Deisman!” I felt compelled to write because apparently you have no idea what goes on in your own store.
I was recently in the drug store to drop off some packages and pick up a few things when my three-year-old tugs my leg and says he has to go to the bathroom, at which point I thought about the letter about being denied access to the bathrooms. I thought surely they will not deny a child.
I drag my two- and three-year-old to the front of the store and asked if I could use the restroom, all the while my son is begging to go to the bathroom.
Guess what? We were told first no, then told that there “might” be a restroom in the provincial building!
My son wasn’t going to make it to the provincial building. Honestly, I was hoping he would pee on the floor right here in the store to make a point.
He managed to hold it until I got him out to the van and I put a diaper on him, at which point he kept saying that he was a big boy now and he didn’t want to be a baby! Thanks for letting my son down as he has just been potty trained.
Mr. Deisman, I would be careful when you state that “seniors and children have never been denied use of our washroom.” I have told everyone that I know about the experience and you deserve all the bad publicity you get!
Be certain that I will not be shopping in your store and I hope that other parents follow suit.
On a side note, I thought that the people from Calgary were being silly and I was on your side — until now!
Courtney Archibald

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Dear Editor:
Re: Mobile home park.
We are writing to you due to our concern regarding the future of the mobile home park and affordable housing in Cochrane.
We recently decided to travel to Airdrie to see the Christmas light display.
It was well worth the drive.
While in Airdrie, we drove past the small subdivision of mobile homes where the residents own their own lots. It seemed to us that it was time for all of us to “think outside the box” when considering the future of our friends and neighbours residing in the Cochrane Trailer Park.
If the town could develop a small mobile home subdivision where rental lots were available to meet our present needs, and an additional bank of trailer lots were available for purchase, a number of objectives could be achieved to make our community a better place to live.
With the development of the subdivision, and the sale of the lots by the town, the recovery of the costs of the development could be achieved, and recover much if not all the costs of moving the existing residents of the mobile home park to the new rental sites.
This could take the taxpayer off the hook for much, if not all, of the costs of moving the existing park.
The second major advantage of this is that we would create a “bank” of affordable housing in Cochrane. This is badly needed in our town.
Now is the time for all of us to work to find long-term solutions to these issues, not to address them in piecemeal fashion.
Phyllis and
Bob Wardle

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By Ian Tennant
The Eagle
Smokers on edge over the prohibition of lighting up in public places as of Jan. 1 have an outlet to blow off some steam.
Cochrane’s Rockyview Hotel is inviting people to its Stageline Saloon on New Year’s Day to smash ashtrays while also raising funds for the Heart and Stroke Foundation.
Joanne Gau, who owns and operates the hotel along with husband Clem Walisser, said she came up with the idea to put a positive spin on the non-smoking decree, and to “have a little bit of fun.”
Starting any time after the saloon opens at 10 a.m., smokers and non-smokers can pay $2, or more, to throw an ashtray against a metal beer bin.
Safety goggles will be provided and the glass will be recycled.
“It’s a fun and easy way” to get rid of about 100 ashtrays and help the foundation, Gau said.
Not being able to smoke in the saloon as of Jan. 1 will likely mark the first time cigarettes, cigars or pipes have not been lit in the hotel since it opened in 1904.
“You weren’t allowed to drink there at one time, but you could probably smoke there,” said Gau, referring to the Prohibition era that lasted from 1916 to 1923 in Alberta.
Gau and Walisser bought the hotel in August 2005.

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