The Calgary Catholic School District will release its draft budget May 13. Cochrane schools Holy Spirit Elementary and St. Timothy’s High could be affected when funding is announced.

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A big annual event in Cochrane is returning to the Spray Lake Sawmills Family Sports Centre May 2-3.
The Cochrane Trade Show will have over 140 local exhibits ranging from home-based businesses to retail products and services that are offered around town.
The show promises attractions for all ages and interactive displays.
Also, within the Trade Show Cochrane’s Family and Community Support Services (FCSS) is running a “Volunteer Fair” to highlight over 30 local non-profit groups that residents can be involved with.
The Cochrane Art Club is also hosting its 50th anniversary Spring Show and Sale at the recreation centre.
The trade show runs from 10 a.m.-5 p.m. May 2 and 10 a.m.-4 p.m. May 3.
Tickets, available at the door, are $5 for adults, $4 for seniors $4 and free for kids 16 and under with an adult.

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By Rachel Maclean
The Eagle
It was a busy Earth Day for students in Cochrane.
Celebrated every April 22, Earth Day is the biggest and most celebrated environmental event in the world.
Manachaban Middle School encouraged students to walk or bike to school, kept the lights off in classrooms, picked up garbage in the neighbourhood and had a litterless lunch. The students managed to reduce their waste at lunch by 70 per cent.
“This is the age level when they really start to feel an obligation to the environment and can understand global warming,” said principal Mike Summers-Gill.
Grade 5 teacher Marie Grenon said most classes went out to collect garbage and they filled many bags.
“I had one student say to me, ‘Garbage picking was a whole lot funner than I expected,’” said Grenon, adding they found things like a tape measures, a shovel, pots and pans.
She also brought in guest speaker George Pastirik from the Calgary business Science Is to speak to her class about how to build an electric car.
The school started a battery recycling program, and with help from Tim Giese from the Cochrane Environmental Action Committee (CEAC), has established a very advanced recycling program.
Giese was also on hand on Earth Day to give a presentation on how much recycling is thrown in the garbage, and how much plastic is consumed. He showed a picture of 2 million plastic pop bottles, the amount used every five minutes in the United States.
He said families should only be filling a Safeway bag of garbage a week, and many things that can be recycled in Cochrane are thrown out.
Glenbow Elementary Grade 4 teacher Kim Knitter took her class to the RancheHouse to watch artist Jola Muran do a sculpture from recycled paper while some students collected garbage.
“Everyone did their own little things,” said Knitter.
Holy Spirit Elementary School had a week-long Earth Day. Assistant principal B.J. Coflin said they recognized their Green Club, students in charge of the recycling at their school.
The school had a special Earth Day lunch and awards ceremony. Other events included a recycled toy and book sale and a “trashion” show where students took recyclable materials and created an outfit for a fashion show in the gym.
“We did all the regular stuff as well: the lights are turned off daily, all plastics are recycled and pulled from the garbage,” said Coflin. “We do a huge amount of recycling here at the school.”
Elizabeth Barrett Elementary School had a litterless lunch. Grade 4 french immersion teacher Sarah Johnson said they encouraged kids to bring lunches that would have no garbage.
She said the large garbage bins were taken away so any garbage had to be recycled or taken home.
“Mostly the kids seemed to participate,” said Johnson. “Anything they packed in they had to pack out.”
At École Notre-Dame des Vallées students picked up garbage around the school and planted plants and flowers.
Marie-Hélène Bilodeau, french scholar and community co-ordinator, said they had a special lunch to commemorate all the activities.
Over at Bow Valley High, Earth Day started a long time ago. Grade 11 students Karla Powell and Ally Montgomery decided they wanted to raise enough money to symbolically adopt a polar bear.
“We asked the fashion 10 students to sew eco-bags, to use instead of plastic bags,” said Powell, adding the students used scrap material to do so.
The bags were raffled off throughout the week. They managed to raise $40 to give to the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) to pay for a polar bear’s conservation and gave $30 as a donation.
St. Timothy’s High School shut off its classroom lights for one period of the day, and acknowledged the celebration in morning announcements.

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By Cori Lee Miller
The Eagle
A man who allegedly brandished two weapons at a March 24 Alcoholics Anonymous meeting appeared in Cochrane Provincial Court on April 23.
Anthony John Allen, 50, is accused of entering the meeting at Weedon Hall and showing members two firearms. After approximately 2-1/2 hours, Allen was arrested outside of the hall by police. Members had successfully secured the weapons and turned them over to police.
Allen, who is in custody on a 30-day psychiatric remand, appeared via television.
His lawyer, Willie de Wit, requested that the matter be delayed until May 12 as Allen undergoes further assessment.
Judge John D. Bascom granted de Wit’s request. Allen will return to court May 12.
Allen stands charged with two counts of pointing a firearm, two counts of unlawful confinement, possessing a loaded, restricted, or prohibited firearm, having a weapon at a public meeting, as well as one count of carrying a concealed weapon, and two other counts of carrying a concealed weapon.
He will also appear in a Calgary court May 13 on five charges related to an incident on March 23.
Allen allegedly entered a Calgary treatment facility to meet a person he was familiar with. He then apparently showed firearms to the person, but then put them away and left a short time later.

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By Cori Lee Miller
The Eagle
After a morning of collecting donations from homes across town April 25, Helping Hands Community Wide Food Drive volunteers hauled approximately 12,000 pounds of food to the Cochrane Activettes Food Bank.
Terrance Haxton, Helping Hands co-ordinator, said roughly 250 volunteers from area churches and local organizations made the drive happen.
“Everywhere you looked there were people just putting in their best. It was incredible,” he said.
With so much volunteer power the food was collected and sorted before noon at the Frank Wills Memorial Scout Hall, and then taken to the food bank.
“It was piled to the rafters and there wasn’t room for much more to go in, so that was very good,” Haxton said.
Food bank chair Betty Suski praised the event, saying “it went just absolutely marvelous.”
“We had the volunteers we needed, we were set up good, and we were out of there by noon,” she said of the volunteers who collected and sorted the food.
Suski said the drive was smoother than in previous years. With thousands of pounds of food now in the Activettes cupboards, Suski had a positive outlook.
“I think that we’re going to be good through the summer,” she said. “We won’t have to buy any food, let’s put it that way.”
Usually demand for hampers falls in the summer, but Suski said this year she wasn’t sure if they would see a decline in the 16 to 18 hampers they currently provide every week.
While the food bank has a full pantry at the moment, Suski said anything they don’t give out will be saved for use in leaner times.
“We keep it and just kind of stockpile what we can, and eventually run out,” she said.
Food bank co-ordinator Kaija Belfry said the amount of food is about on par with what the bank received during its September food drive.
“They had hundreds of people and I was amazed at the amount of people who came out to sort,” Belfry said.
The food bank will sift through the food to catch any donations that may be expired, but Belfry said the amount they find is “usually pretty minimal, the ratio there is not high.”
A second Helping Hands Community Wide Food Drive is scheduled for Sept. 19.

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By Rachel Maclean
The Eagle
The numbers are in and Cochrane town councillors feel they will remain within their budget this year.
After reviewing the 2008 Financial Audit, and the operating revenue and expenditure statement for the first quarter of this year at council April 27, it even looks as though Cochrane may have pulled off a $755,207 surplus in 2008.
The actual surplus, based on generally accepted accounting principles, was $7 million but did not include principle debt repayments and transfers to capital reserve funds.
“Many see a surplus, but don’t consider the savings for the future,” said Paige Milner, manager of financial services.
“We are not trying to say we have $7 million to spend — a lot of that money has already been committed.”
Milner said the actual surplus is mainly from building permit revenues, which exceeded the budget by $279,000, and from just over $500,000 in cost savings from vacant staff positions that were not filled until 2009. Some, like the fire chief, have not even been filled yet.
Also, Milner said $350,000 out of the surplus might be needed to help fund the hiring of fire personnel to help split the integrated fire/emergency medical services in Cochrane since the province took them over April 1.
Milner believes some of that money will go into the tax stabilization reserve for future tax savings.
When the tax rates come forward to council May 11, Milner said the next meeting on May 25 can be used to plan the distribution of the surplus.
The 2008 financial audit was given a clean bill of health by independent auditors PriceWaterHouse Coopers.
Shannon Ryhorchuk, a PriceWaterHouse chartered accountant, said they did have to adjust a few town numbers such as a building demolition cost, switching over to a Tangible Capital Asset policy, and grants that were spread over a couple years, but they did find the town to be in line with municipal practices and will be sending the finalized audit to the province.
Milner said the town has to deal with $148 million in total assets, and in 2008 total revenues were $39 million while total expenditures were $32 million.
She said long-term debt is sitting at 46 per cent of the council’s approved limit at $18.4 million.
“It is a healthy debt at this point,” she said.

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By Rachel Maclean
The Eagle
An excited hush filled the Manachaban Middle School gym as the lights dimmed to bring in the sights and sounds of an orca whale.
His name was Luna, a baby killer whale who found himself alone in the waters of Nootka Sound off the coast of Vancouver Island after mysteriously being separated from his family. Naturally very social animals, Luna searched for friends in the most unlikely place — humans.
His story was captured by husband and wife team Michael Parfit and Suzanne Chisholm after a magazine assignment turned into three life-changing years making a documentary called “Saving Luna”.
It played at the Cochrane Movie House April 22, but Chisholm was also on hand to visit schools in the area, including Manachaban on April 23.
“I liked how the whale just kept coming back to the humans, even though some of them ignored him,” said Grade 6 student Matthew Busby after seeing parts of the film.
Busby said he could tell Luna had a good personality and liked to play. He learned the importance of orca whales having communication and friendship, a point which filmmaker Chisholm wanted to share.
“There was no particular message,” said Chisholm. “People walk away with different things. . . . It really is just an amazing story about a single individual that some people fell in love with.”
The film has stirred up some serious buzz with 19 international film awards, rave reviews and is currently on a whirl-wind film festival tour around the world.
Cochrane resident John Clarkson was on hand after the Manachaban presentation to whisk Chisholm off to the airport.
His wife, Darlene Kozub from the Chinook Film Group, was able to arrange the school presentations.
Clarkson was also at the Movie House for the Cochrane premiere and said the film was very well received. Afterwards there was a question and answer period with Chisholm.
“It was a full house. Lots of questions,” he said. “I thought it was great.”
Clarkson said currently there are two versions, a shorter one recently aired on CBC Newsworld and the longer film.
“Saving Luna” will soon be released in select theatres, and Chisholm said the DVD should be out this fall.
For information visit www.savingluna.com.

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By Rachel Maclean
The Eagle
Cochrane town council decided April 27 to get rid of 42 bylaws that have lost their relevancy.
Last year, a project team initiated a complete review of all Town of Cochrane bylaws to determine if they were relevant, required amendments or needed to be tossed out.
“It was a huge undertaking,” municipal clerk Brenda Romanchuk told council.
She said bylaws were cross-checked with other laws at the municipal, provincial and federal levels for redundancy, and will now be reviewed on a regular basis to keep out obsolete bylaws.
Coun. Tara McFadden said some bylaws dated back to 1946 and one was even handwritten.
Mayor Truper McBride said the strangest one he saw was “Sounding the Siren as a Curfew Notice” made in 1961.
“I guess we had a siren that used to blow at 9 o’clock to tell all the children to come home to bed, so we finally got that one off the books,” he said.

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By Rachel Maclean
The Eagle
The Calgary Regional Partnership (CRP) has wrapped up public consultations for its Calgary Metropolitan Plan.
With more than 50 presentations to 1,700 people, the next step is to review the plan and make changes.
Rick Butler, CRP executive director, said the plan will then go back to each of the 17 municipalities involved for approval. It comes before Cochrane town council on May 25.
“I think everyone realizes we have to have a regional plan,” said Butler. “The value of it tying into water and wastewater servicing, transit and all those things coming into one big picture is great.”
If a municipality approves the plan it is then bound to it for the duration of implementation.
The plan will be unveiled in High River on June 19.
Butler said many people realize they have to pick between urban sprawl and densification.
“Some people say, ‘I hate sprawl,’ and then we say we have to densify and then they say, ‘I hate densification worse,’” he said. “Well, you can’t make that choice. You have to either pick sprawl or some kind of densification. We think we have people aware at least at the need for greater densification.”
Butler said Springbank and Bearspaw have raised issues about too much densification in their areas, but in the next 60 years they will have to share in the growth coming from Calgary. Population in the area is expected to increase by 1.6 million people.
But he said there are no plans for the high density of the “compact urban nodes” — eight to 10 units per acre — in Bearspaw or Springbank.
Butler said the big win for Cochrane is building the community around transit — both rapid commuter buses and eventually a commuter train.
Other bonuses are solutions for things like water and wastewater management and water license issues, and making Cochrane an employment centre.
Mayor Truper McBride said realtors were concerned about future markets and asked for a meeting with the CRP.
“I think the concern was . . . that essentially land in the urban growth nodes outside the urban centres is going to be frozen until a urban centre expands into it,” he said. “We have worked to try to resolve that by putting interim uses for that land.”

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