Author Archive

interview with ward 1 & 2 calgary public school trustee candidate Trina Hurdman

1
October 12, 2010 - By

Why are you running?

I’m running because the next 3 years are going to see some major, major changes coming in education and I want to be a part of those changes. I’ve done a lot of research, a lot of reading about education and I really believe that the province is moving in the right way.

I know that with these changes coming up there’s going to be a lot of backlash from the general public and a lot of people that don’t really have a firm grasp or understanding of educational issues. I know that if we just push ahead with these changes, it’s going to be a big mess. So I basically want to be a trustee to serve as an intermediary between the province and the public so I can talk with people. I don’t want to introduce any changes that people aren’t 100% behind otherwise it’s just not effective and a waste of dollars.

What are some of these changes?

Assessment practices are being completely rethought, for example, in the Foothills  school district, just south of Calgary. They have eliminated traditional grading in elementary schools and junior high schools. For example, they don’t [...]Read More

Categories: School Board Trustees - Calgary Board of Education

The most common argument I’ve heard against Barb Higgins

12
October 10, 2010 - By

Lately I’ve heard one main criticism about Barb Higgins and it’s just the wrong way to go about criticizing her: “She doesn’t do anything, she just reads a teleprompter.”


As a student journalist this irritates me. So much work goes into creating a simple half hour news show – especially one on prime time television. You can’t just throw it together. Trust me, I know what happens when you just throw together a half-hour news show – and it’s definitely not CTV News.

Higgins was more than just a news anchor, she wrote and co-produced the 6:00 News as well. So that stuff she was “just reading” on the teleprompter? She  wrote a lot of that too. I also imagine  she helped choose the stories to report and air as well.  She didn’t just show up at 6:00, read some stuff on TV, then leave at 6:30, but it sounds like a lot of people think she did just that.

Being in the media means it is your job to know what is going on. Not only are you reporting and reading the news every day, you’re friends with other people who are doing the same thing. [...]Read More

Tags: Categories: Mayor of Calgary

cjsw’s 2010 civic election coverage!

October 6, 2010 - By

HOLY. So basically CJSW 90.9FM is super rad. We’ve launched our civic election coverage featuring over 80 interviews and forum recordings and honestly, it blows my mind. Back in August when we started sending out e-mails I honesty had no idea how it would turn out and how many interviews we’d really be able to do – there were so many candidates! Click the image to check it out!

Each interview had to be booked (and then re-booked, as the case was at times), conducted, edited and uploaded. We also needed a rad website to showcase all our interviews and Aendrew and Reid nailed it. In short, we had about 25 volunteers who put this all together for your benefit. Twenty five volunteers, two months, and over eighty interviews. I’m insanely proud of it. Kudos to Joe Burima, CJSW’s News Director, who works like a madman 24/7 and makes the world a better place.

Anyways, listen to the interviews, subscribe to the podcast and take our interviews on the go. Be informed. AND VOTE. Don’t let all our hard work go to waste. Kudos to all the candidates who were [...]Read More

Categories: Alderman - Ward 1, Alderman - Ward 10, Alderman - Ward 11, Alderman - Ward 12, Alderman - Ward 13, Alderman - Ward 14, Alderman - Ward 2, Alderman - Ward 3, Alderman - Ward 4, Alderman - Ward 5, Alderman - Ward 6, Alderman - Ward 7, Alderman - Ward 8, Alderman - Ward 9, Calgary Issues, Mayor of Calgary

urban sprawl and ward 7

18
September 29, 2010 - By

The first thing I noticed about the Ward 7 CivicCamp debate last week was the demographic of attendees: 50 plus. There were very few people there my age – in fact, at 21, I might have been the youngest. I made friends with two guys my age and I couldn’t help but thinking that we looked disrespectful to the older crowd because we were on our phones the entire time – live Tweeting. I guess Twitter might change the taboo of texting on your phone during an event? So weird….

All five candidates participated: Kevin Taylor, Jim Pilling, Michael Krisko, Druh Farrell and Elizabeth Cook (no website).

Jim Pilling and Kevin Taylor drew applause with their opening statements, mainly referring to the need for change in City Hall. Throughout the night they continued to receive support from the audience. Farrell has garnered a lot of opposition over the years and as the night progressed I began to see why. Not that I necessarily agreed with the opposition, but I did understand it.

A large part of the conversation dealt with sprawl and [...]Read More

Tags: ι ι ι ι Categories: Alderman - Ward 7, Calgary Issues, Events

tales of a blog

2
September 24, 2010 - By

I was reminded today that people actually read Calgary Politics. Naheed Nenshi called ahead of time to say he was running late for his Gauntlet interview and specified that he read my post and regretted following Higgins’ example. Higgins’ team called back today (two days after…hmm) to apologize for being late, giving us such a short window of time, and wanted to reschedule another interview. She also fired her campaign manager today for communication and scheduling problems, which I assume is related to some degree.

For the record, we’re only doing one interview per candidate.

Yesterday as I wrote about our interview with Bob Hawkesworth I thought to myself, “We haven’t finished doing all of our interviews yet, so it’s probably not the best if I post my thoughts about the interviews before we finish them all.” Duh. They say hindsight is the clearest. I will still post my thoughts about the interviews, but after we’re finished them.

It’s freaky to think that mayoral and aldermanic candidates read what I write and even refer to what I write. Yeesh, that’s not a lot of pressure at all…

[...]Read More

Tags: ι ι Categories: Mayor of Calgary

My impressions from Barb Higgins’ interview with the Gauntlet

11
September 22, 2010 - By

We’ve started doing our mayoral interviews for the Gauntlet, the University of Calgary’s independent student newspaper. Each municipal election we put out a supplement in our newspaper, so look for that in October. Here I’ll post a bit of a behind the scenes look at each of our interviews and my completely subjective impressions. Our first interviewee was Barb Higgins.

My first impression is – why is she so hard to get a hold of? She hasn’t responded to CJSW’s request for an interview that we sent a month ago, and Kim had to pull several strings to finally get her to come to the Gauntlet.

Then she was 20 minutes late. I know it’s hard to get around Mac Hall right now, so I could understand maybe a bit of lateness…but 20 minutes is a bit much.

Anyways, the interview was fairly short – we only had ten minutes with her. She almost seemed nervous at first, she was sitting on the edge of her seat leaning forward. Was she trying to seem more personable or eager? I don’t know. I guess I’m so used to her sitting up straight as a news anchor that her body language [...]Read More

Tags: Categories: Mayor of Calgary

Paul Hughes drops out of mayoral race

1
September 17, 2010 - By

Paul Hughes has followed Alnoor Kassam’s lead and dropped out of the mayoral race. While Paul was the first to declare his candidacy for mayor (Okay, not counting Alnoor’s Twitter snafu), his withdrawal wasn’t completely unexpected as he made it clear early on he was not expecting to win.

“I’m not going to be elected mayor, that’s for sure,” he told CJSW 90.9fm’s Greg Chernoff  on August 19, 2010. “But certainly people who vote for me are saying something.”

Image from paulinate.com

“So 10,000 people run a marathon,” he continued. “I guess if you’re not going to win those 9,999 people probably shouldn’t run?…I have something to say, and if you’re at the table you can be part of the conversation.”

Paul definitely did contribute to the conversation and I would also consider him one of the most active social media users. Like Kassam, Hughes endorsed Barb Higgins.

Yesterday Hughes re-tweeted a link on Twitter to a blog post entitled Too much and too many, lamenting the large number of mayoral candidates. Looks like Hughes [...]Read More

Tags: ι Categories: Headline Roundup, Mayor of Calgary

Masked Man for Mayor!

1
September 16, 2010 - By

Click the image to watch the video.

Hey, he’s upfront about his mask instead of pretending it isn’t there and puts the “casual” in business casual. What more could you want?

As for the pajama pants…well, candidates, don’t look on in jealousy because you can’t afford the bad photo op despite the undeniable comforts. That’s what Twibates are for: debating and campaigning in pajamas. Striped, polka-dot, or Pokemon pajamas. Aren’t you tired of wearing suits and cowboy hats? I don’t know why you wouldn’t participate given the chance!

(As an aside, if any candidates, aldermanic or mayoral, send me a picture of themselves in Pokemon pajamas, they’ll have my vote on the spot.)

Cross posted from gin and tonic.

Tags: Categories: Mayor of Calgary

Kensington’s Night Out

2
September 14, 2010 - By

Kensington is one of my favorite places in the city, so last year when my family was looking around for a new place to live I was thrilled we were considering Sunnyside. So many unique small businesses, great coffee shops and restaurants right by the river, a short walk to downtown, SAIT is just up the hill and the University of Calgary is a 7 minute C-train ride away. Having lived in five wards in the past 10 years, I can safely say that Sunnyside, in Ward 7, is my favorite residence so far.

Last summer I worked at a small food business in Kensington that unfortunately had to leave that location because the lease increased. I worked the closing shift – which was 3-7pm.

It’s unfortunate that many local businesses in Kensington can’t even stay open past 5 or 6pm without losing money or at least without their staff being bored to tears. I understand everyone took a hit during the recession, especially small businesses – but we’ve all got to bounce back somehow.

That’s what I want to talk about right now: shopping, especially in Kensington! It’s a great place, but sometimes I feel the streets aren’t [...]Read More

Categories: Alderman - Ward 7, Calgary Issues, Events