By Brad Linn
The Eagle
The Cochrane cement truck driver charged with the deaths of five people — including three children — was denied bail Dec. 20.
Daniel Tschetter, 50, will spend Christmas behind bars after Justice Bruce McDonald rejected an application by defence lawyer Balfour Der to overturn a lower court decision to detain Tschetter pending trial.
He will remain in jail for at least 90 days, when the judge can do a bail review.
McDonald also ordered a publication ban on the precedings.
Tschetter is charged with failing to provide a suitable breath sample and five counts of dangerous driving causing death in the south Calgary crash Dec. 7.

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By Brad Herron
The Eagle
Livestock markets may be down, but Springbank High School managed to sell 914 goats.
For the second consecutive year, the high school ran its Gotta Getta Goat fundraiser for Salabwek, Kenya.
Organizers sold $50 and $10 symbolic goats, totalling $9,140.
Teachers Janice Hyshka and Pat Beingessner organized the sale which ran from Dec. 10 to Dec. 21.
Beingessner said the money will go towards improving the water supply, building a school, improving education and promoting income sources for the Kenyan community.
“People are walking miles to get water and carrying it back on their head,” Beingessner said.
In the last year, Springbank High has raised more than $60,000 for the village.

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By Brad Linn
The Eagle
Routine mumps vaccinations for children will resume again, weeks after the Calgary Health Region (CHR) halted the program.
The region’s mumps inoculation program was halted Dec. 11 after a number of people suffered severe allergic reactions. The young adult mumps vaccination campaign is still suspended.
“Everything is back to normal (for children),” said Pat Brooks, public health manager for Cochrane, Banff and Canmore.
Children who missed a measles, mumps and rubella shot will be contacted by a public health clinic in January.
Health Canada continues to investigate the high rate of anaphylaxis in young adults who received the vaccine. So far this year, 96 cases of mumps have been reported in the CHR, 82 since Sept. 1.

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By Sarah Junkin
The Eagle
This Christmas season has turned out to be a bitter-sweet affair for one Cochrane mother.
Sheila Arnett’s son Ian has come from Brandon, Man., to Cochrane to spend the holidays with his parents along with his wife Lorelei and their two dogs. But the celebrations are tinged with poignancy.
In a month or so he expects to be deployed to Afghanistan where he will represent his country as a communications expert for approximately seven months.
Master Cpl. Ian Arnett, 38, is with the Second Battalion, Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry and has served in several previous overseas missions.
“We suspect he’ll be gone by February for sure,” Arnett said. “They don’t really give specific dates. But it means this is a really special Christ-mas.”
But Arnett admits her son doesn’t share her fears.
“I wouldn’t say he’s excited exactly, but he’s certainly wanting to put into action what he’s been trained to do,” she said. “It’s a bit of a rush of adrenaline for him.”
Arnett’s support of the troops became a very public one when she turned her home into something of a local landmark. A year ago she covered a tree in the front yard of her Riverview Drive home with dozens of yellow ribbons, each one tied on for a specific reason. Twenty-nine new ones have been added in the past year.
“There are 73 for the troops we’ve lost, one for a soldier that was wounded, and one for the diplomat that died,” Arnett explained, adding she had no idea when she came up with the idea that it would cause so much interest in the community.
“But it’s important to me to show support for our troops, and I don’t just mean my son,” she said, adding that whether people support the war is irrelevant to whether they support the military.
“I feel they’re making a difference,” she said. “Especially for women’s rights. If they can become more empowered then we can go faster in the right direction.”
But Arnett admits she finds it frustrating when people criticize Canadian troops being in Afghanistan at all.
“It bothers me a bit but everyone is entitled to their own opinion,” she said. “But you have to understand these young men and women are sacrificing a lot to protect us.”
Accustomed to dealing with constant fear and worry when her son is overseas, Arnett draws a great deal of comfort from a Calgary-area organization that provides support to families of military personnel (www.calgarymfrc.ca).
“Every family gets a deployment package and I’ve been to a couple of briefings where you get to meet speakers who have been over there and come back,” she said. “They’re continually having potluck suppers and you get a newsletter once a month.”
Still, Arnett has done this before and knows 2008 is not going to be easy for her.
“I’m trying to take each day as it comes and do a lot of praying. Not just for my son, but for all the troops,” she said.

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By Brad Linn
The Eagle
The Rocky View School Division and the Alberta Teachers Association are going to roll up their sleeves and begin negotiating a collective agreement, tentatively starting Jan. 3.
Sylvia Eggerer, chair of the school board, said she’s not sure why there has been delays but the negotiations have to begin soon.
“We have to get busy and get this done,” she said.
A collective bargaining agreement must be approved by every local teachers’ association and every school board in Alberta before Jan. 31 to ensure the province’s $2.2-billion unfunded pension liability proposal is accepted.
Rocky View’s current contract, which was supposed to run until 2009, will in effect be scrapped for the new agreement.
“Everybody has to open their collective agreement in accordance with the deal,” said Diane Sellars, the local teacher’s association representative.
Both the teachers and the board have to agree or there won’t be a deal and if there is a problem it has to go to mediation “pretty quick,” said Eggerer. “We should get on this.”
Sellars said she is hopeful a deal will get hammered out.
“I think it’s going to be fine,” she said. “We have to get moving on it.”
Meanwhile, 2,830 Calgary Catholic school teachers have agreed to the province’s proposal and accepted a five-year contract on Dec. 19. The teachers will get a three per cent wage increase in the first year and keep another three per cent they had been paying out to the $2.2 billion unfunded pension liability.
Marge Belcourt, chair of the Calgary Catholic board of trustees, said she is thrilled with the result.
“I’m very optimistic it will be ratified,” she said.
Catholic trustees will vote to ratify the deal with teachers on Jan. 16.
The province has indicated it will cover the pension liability if all Alberta’s school districts reach five-year deals by the Jan. 31 deadline.

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By Sarah Junkin
The Eagle
Officials at the St. Francis Retreat Centre estimate attendance at their live nativity scene doubled over last year.
The Dec. 18 outdoor event featured actors, musicians and live farm animals to illustrate the Christmas nativity story.
“We think we had over 100 cars and two buses,” said Brenda McAlpine, co-director of the centre. “We worked harder at advertising this year and word of mouth helped too.”
Spectators brought items for the food bank and donated $400 in cash which was delivered to the Activettes Dec. 19. Baking and hot chocolate were on hand courtesy of the centre’s cook, Mary McArthur, and despite the time of year, the weather may have contributed to the good turn out.
“It wasn’t a double digit negative,” chuckled McAlpine.
But, she added, the increase in attendance brought with it some challenges as well.
“Next time we’ll get the Knights of Columbus to volunteer to help us with the parking,” she said. “And we may need to rearrange things to make provisions for the children to be up front. Maybe even bleachers.”

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By Brad Linn
The Eagle
A 19-year-old man was rushed to hospital Dec. 20 after his off-road vehicle rolled on him north of Waiparous.
The accident happened at around 5 p.m. in a gravel pit on Highway 40 northwest of Cochrane.
The man was loading a quad onto the back of a truck with his dad when it rolled. He was knocked unconscious but regained consciousness when STARS air ambulance arrived to take him to Foothills Hospital.
Huw Jeffries, station officer with the Cochrane fire department, said the person was in serious but stable condition.
Cpl. Bill Eubank said the man was wearing a helmet.

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By Brad Linn
The Eagle
There are mixed blessings for local retail businesses this shopping season.
According to Visa Canada’s ninth annual survey, Albertans will be the country’s biggest spenders this holiday season.
But the robust spending isn’t necessarily happening at some local shops.
Gadabout Garb’s manager, Jen Munroe, said customers were going to the United States to shop or were buying stuff online.
“It’s definitely slower than last year,” she said Dec. 20, adding that the beginning of December was slow but it was picking up the week before Christmas.
But at Just For You Flowers and More on Cochrane’s First Street, sales have “absolutely gone up” from past years, said long-time employee Elaine Pease.
Mark Denton, owner of Trailblazers, also said sales are “definitely up.” He attributes the increase to the outdoor gear shop moving to its new location on the main drag.
Lili Knipple, a salesperson with Old and Crafty, said sales are pretty good and “probably on par with last year.”
The survey, conducted by Omnitel, said 2.1 million Albertans expect to spend an average of $1,252 each on gifts, the highest in Canada and almost $200 more than the national average.
Most Albertans plan to shop for 11 people — one more than the national average.
Unlike most Canadians, who plan to give clothing as the number one item this year, 74 per cent of Alberta holiday shoppers are more likely to buy gift cards and gift certificates for their friends and family.
Alberta’s children should be spoiled this year. Parents plan on spending $226 on their children this Christmas, above the national average of $204 per child.
The survey was conducted between Nov. 1 and Nov. 7. A random national sample of 1,318 male and female respondents 18 years of age and older were interviewed via telephone.

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Coffee with Warren
by Warren Harbeck
What makes writing this column such a wonderful experience for me is the quantity and quality of responses I receive from our coffee companions year after year. This year has been no exception.
The past 12 months of your affirmations, suggestions and personal experiences over coffee and by e-mail have made this column really live for me and for our readers; your thoughts and words are what drive this column.
And what themes grabbed your attention most?
Stories of lives well lived always generate lots of interest — especially stories of elders from the Stoney Nakoda First Nation at Morley. Among these we remembered the late Gerald Kaquitts, globetrotting goodwill ambassador the late Walking Buffalo, and recently deceased Lily Wesley. Their legacy of wisdom — and especially lessons learned in “Nature’s University” — enriches all of us.
Columns on nature and nature photography were right up there, too. Topping this category was a feature on photographer/priest Fred Monk, who focuses his lenses on the sacred in the every day.
Equally popular were columns on art and literature. Our celebration of Cochrane’s mosaic mural, Trust, continues to draw responses from around the world. Such artists and writers elevate us to the realm of wonder. As local poet/artist Marie Sigurdson put it, “Wonder allows one to see the divine thread hand-painted through all of life.”
Language and word usage continues to be a topic that draws lots of responses. Early in the year, coffee companion Phil Minnaar introduced us to his The Positive Dictionary: Only Words with Positive Messages. This positive feeling was echoed in The Hippo and the Unicorn: A Rainbow of Words, by Cochrane authors Lindsie Haxton and Elaine Phillips, who fashioned words into a collection of friendship letters between two unlikely correspondents. For some readers, however, my endorsement of the use of “hopefully” (as in “Hopefully, I’ll see you . . .”) was debatable. (I still stand by my endorsement.)
The closely-related topic of great quotations also drew considerable reader participation. Some, such as Mexico coffee companion Barbara Hollenbach, shared from a lifetime of collecting inspiring sayings. One of her favourites was by Rabbi David Wolpe: “Part of our task in life is to choose worthy companions who will cultivate what is good in us.” That explains why I enjoy our coffee companionship so much — you are those “worthy companions,” and I love to speak of the goodness you cultivate.
Which brings me to what is overwhelmingly the most popular set of themes among our coffee companions, based on this year’s reader response: quality-of-life issues associated with happiness, inner stillness, death and dying, perseverance, responding to change, human rights, and making wonderful days.
In second place was a series of four columns on embracing and responding to change. We quoted from renowned mythologist Joseph Campbell: “We must be willing to get rid of the life we’ve planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for us” — not a bad motto as we cross from one year into the next.
Coffee companions David Ambrose and Leo Peters spoke of how they have committed their professional lives to drawing happiness out of what at first seems like adversity. As you may recall, a near-fatal accident helped David re-evaluate his own life priorities, ultimately culminating in his many published and speaking contributions on happiness.
In Leo’s case, the return of cancer some years ago and the real possibility of having only six months to live led him to the choice of living each day in the fullest, happiest, most positive way. He’s long outlived that deadline, but continues to do everything in his power to bring happiness to all he encounters.
Which brings me to the first-place topic in our coffee columns for 2007, a four-column topic which Leo himself raised for us and has dominated reader reaction for the past month: What does a wonderful day look like, and what can any of us do to make it a wonderful day for others?
I received 49 e-mail responses alone to that question, and as you may recall, the major features of a wonderful day that emerged are: gratitude, a listening heart, contentment, and choice.
Now, as we cross over into 2008, my prayer is that those four qualities will be active more and more in all our lives, until, like the Dutch Holocaust martyr and writer Etty Hillesum, we are brought afresh to “just one single word: God.”
(c) 2007 Warren Harbeck, warren@harbeck.ca.

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