Archives for January 9, 2018

With arched windows and Edwardian pilasters, the Odd Fellows Hall in downtown Calgary harkens back to a time when city fathers dreamed of a prairie metropolis as great as Chicago.

Today, the 105-year-old structure is alive again with the ambitions of another generation of Calgarians, one with an eye on Silicon Valley, not the Windy City.

It’s the home of Nucleus, a not-for-profit hub where the users — ranging from startups to post-secondary schools to venture funds — meet, work, learn and discuss innovation.

If all goes well, it’ll be a hotbed for Calgary’s emerging technology sector.

Or as 29-year-old Mark Blackwell, one of the bright minds behind Nucleus, enthusiastically puts it, this will be a place to “start figuring our shit out as it relates to Calgary 2.0.”

What will Calgary 2.0 look like? Blackwell is one of many people invested in that question. Calgary’s future is a hot topic in offices from corporate headquarters to city hall.

It’s also a subject of intense focus at Calgary Economic Development (CED). The organization, already spearheading efforts to land Amazon’s second headquarters, is now crafting Calgary’s new economic strategy.

‘I think we still suffer from the stereotype of Stampede and cowboys and pickup trucks and oil, which is not a very innovative stereotype.’
– Adam Legge, former president of the Calgary Chamber of Commerce
It’s a sweeping exercise scrutinizing the city’s strengths and weaknesses, the talent it’s producing, industries that could be built upon and potential opportunities for upcoming sectors.

“For the last 25 years we have led economic and population growth in this country,” said Court Ellingson, CED’s vice-president of research and strategy.

‘We will continue to lead this country’

“And it is our plan that over the next 25 years we will continue to lead this country and we will double our city in size.”

It’s a tall order.

While it’s been barely five years since CED’s last strategy was inked, in some ways, it’s been a lifetime. Calgary once had the swagger that came with $100 US oil and a boom that delivered jobs, immigration and investment.

The good times would never end. Then they did.

Oil prices began a long slide in 2014, ultimately skidding below $30 per barrel two years later. Downtown towers emptied out as layoff notices spread far and wide. Alberta’s unemployment rate hit its highest point in two decades.

Even now, with the provincial economy leading the country in growth, unemployment at 7.3 per cent remains greater than the national average.

CED is now looking to further broaden Calgary’s financial prospects, with perhaps no better example than the organization’s ambitious chase of the Amazon prize — a bid that has grabbed headlines despite going up against the likes of Toronto, New York and Washington, D.C.

CED is sifting through reams of analysis to identify Calgary’s advantages. Grafted onto it will be consultations with hundreds of citizens. The work, which began late last year, will be completed in the next few months.

“There’s an understanding in this community that we are going through a structural change of the economy,” Ellingson said.

“We often see or think about the reflection of that structural change being the change to oil and gas, but actually the whole globe is going through an era of change right now.”

Recent upheaval has forced many cities to take a hard look in the mirror. And there’s no shortage of communities looking for ways to shift their reliance from one industry and spread it over several.

Calgary — and the province — has been down this road before.

Diversification efforts important

In the late 1990s, with oil prices sagging, the province pumped both money and air into Alberta’s nascent technology sector. While there were successes, diversification efforts took a back seat when oil boomed again.

These days, officials note that the city is making big strides in agriculture, technology, transportation and tourism.

For instance, Tourism Calgary reports that the city attracted a record 83 events in 2017, ranging from the arts to athletics. In the third quarter of the year, the sector saw a year-over-year increase of an additional 72,779 overnight hotel rooms sold during the three-month summer period — also a record.

“Tourism brings over $1.7 billion [Cdn] to our economy, locally, every year,” said Cassandra McAuley of Tourism Calgary.

“When tourism is strong, and when we have a strong city, it really has a strong ripple effect.”

Former Calgary Chamber of Commerce president Adam Legge says the focus on diversification can’t be lost.

It’s important, regardless of oil prices, because Calgary is facing a long climb after the last collapse. In fact, it could be 10 years before it feels like the city has got its groove back, Legge said.

He cites Calgary’s education levels, quality of life and enviable location as reasons for optimism. But the city has challenges.

He worries local government may struggle with the pace of innovation and believes Calgary still labours under the stereotype of a city that doesn’t necessarily embrace change.

“I think we still suffer from the stereotype of Stampede and cowboys and pickup trucks and oil, which is not a very innovative stereotype,” Legge said.

Innovation is no stranger to Blackwell, however. And, as Calgary tries to find its economic way, it’s people like him from whom CED will seek input.

Blackwell knows the buzz of a thriving tech sector, taking a Calgary software company on a “roller-coaster ride” through California’s Silicon Valley.

“We almost went bankrupt twice … but we got some really good advisers,” he said. “Long story short, we kind of kept it between three of us and sold it for just about $30 million.”

Valley life was good, but Blackwell chose to return to his hometown to help grow the local sector. He thinks Calgary can create something special and sees a lot of promise in the young, talented entrepreneurs who are striking out on their own instead of scanning job boards.

“We can’t forget that this city was built from entrepreneurs in a whole different era, and there’s this entrepreneurial spirit that drives this town,” he said. “It’s now just an entirely different game.”

EDMONTON — Hunters have been killing cougars in Alberta for decades.

They often follow prints in the snow or use dogs to track the big cats before they are shot with guns or bows.

Last month, outdoor television host Steve Ecklund’s cougar hunt led to online threats and criticisms — including a penis comment from Laureen Harper, wife of former prime minister Stephen Harper — after he bragged about it on social media.

Similar outrage followed the killing of No. 148, a well-known Banff grizzly bear, by a hunter in British Columbia last summer.

Both kills were legal.

Scientists say a cultural divide still exists — even within their own community — about hunting large carnivores.

“It’s seeing a much greater value on an individual animal rather than a population, but the system is set up for us to manage populations, not individuals,” said Adam Ford, an assistant professor of biology at University of British Columbia Okanagan.

“You see this come up when the individual-focus conservation people see a dead cougar and call people out for having a small penis.

“The way hunting has been designed for a long time is to not have an impact on the population.”

Alberta has regulated its cougar population since 1969. An annual quota allows up to 155 animals to be hunted each year.

The province estimates there are 2,000 to 3,500 cougars.

Both the government’s top carnivore expert and University of Alberta biologist Mark Boyce have said it’s a sustainable population that must be managed because cougars can prey on cattle or become a public safety risk.

Similar debates have taken place around grizzly bears. The hunt in B.C. was banned last month after surveys showed it wasn’t supported by most residents.

Although people are concerned about “beautiful cuddly carnivores” being shot, Ford said he worries scientists have been weighing in on the ethical debate over hunting.

“My morals are different than yours, but facts should be facts,” he said, noting he’s working on a paper looking at the growing divide between scientists on issues such as hunting.

Hunters have defended the hunt as a tradition.

“As outdoor enthusiasts, we look for opportunities to get into the outdoors,” said Wayne Lowry, a hunter and past president of the Alberta Fish and Game Association. “The cougar season offers a very late-season hunting opportunity.”

Lowry, who killed a cougar near Crowsnest Pass about 15 years ago, said it’s unlike any hunt he’s experienced.

“It took me two years,” he said. “For me, it was a once-in-a-lifetime kind of event.

He still has the mounted cat in his home.

“It was a great experience … You see the dogs get excited and you get excited as well.”

Lowry admitted there’s a lot of controversy about hunting.

“The debate is the same regardless of who it is, where it happens and what the species is. You have people who don’t like it and people who do.”

One scientist said the outrage is not generally with hunting, but an ethical debate over killing large carnivores that can suffer. Chris Darimont, associate professor of geography at the University of Victoria, said hunting for sport makes people uncomfortable.

“They cannot accept the idea that people kill carnivores not to feed their families, but to feed their egos,” said Darimont, who is opposed to killing animals other than for food or protection.

Ecklund said in a social media post that he made a stir-fry from the cougar, although eating the meat isn’t required by law.

Darimont, who hunts one elk or deer a year for food, said it’s a “thin veil of deception” for hunters to say they’re eating the animals, because predator meat isn’t very tasty.

“Wildlife managers for decades have acknowledged that these (animals) are not killed for their meat, but for their trophy items.”

The cougar hunt in Alberta should be re-evaluated, Darimont suggested. Science shows there are risks in overharvesting, because it’s tough to count carnivores and get a clear picture of the population, he said.

“There’s lots of uncertainty. Managers can and do make mistakes, and then we are just starting to learn of the evolutionary and social costs of killing large carnivores.”

The Alberta government says it hasn’t received any calls to end the hunt since the cougar controversy hit.

The province did ban the grizzly bear hunt in 2006 due to concerns about a dwindling population — although recent increases in some areas have led to calls to allow it to return in Alberta.