Suncor Energy is about to reclaim Tailings Pond #1 at the end of September 2010. There has been a lot of work done and even more to go but this video is the kind of information Albertans as owners of the oil sands need to see to appreciate and understand what is involved, what is being done and how reclamation works.
This is an actual reclamation of a tailings pond and I think the first in the history of the oil sands...but I could be wrong. I will find out and let you know later. Recent Cambridge Strategies research on the values of Albertans on what should guide and drive the development of the oil sands noted reclamation type, habitat and ecological monitoring were the top choices for about 60% of us. This video addresses all but the ecological monitoring but I am sure that is not being ignored in the reclamation efforts.
In the meantime as we start to consider the reclamation and habitat protection and replacement around oil sands more seriously, give this video by Suncor on their initial efforts a view.
Full disclosure I am a Suncor shareholder and have done work for them in the past but not presently.
If you want a progressive political culture in the Next Alberta register now for RebootAlberta 3.0 at www.rebootalberta.org
Monday, September 13, 2010
Saturday, September 11, 2010
Why is Harper Avoiding the Media?
I picked up this link this morning on Twitter via @BrianMCarroll from the Nanaimo Daily News. It shows that our totalitarian Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper is in image control but not into communicating with Canadians...at least not through the conventional media.
I am on the PMO distribution list of what Harper is doing and the activities are mere message massage and manipulation. I can't understand why cash strapped and staff starved MSM even bother to cover these circuses of events where photos are allowed but journalists questions are not allowed or severely limited.
It is becoming more obvious that our democracy is in decline and the personal ambitions of Prime Minister Harper are pleased and promoting that demise. Canadians have to wake up and smell the political rot - and it is not just in Ottawa.
Many of our political parties and leaders have forfeited the benefit of the doubt from citizens that they are acting in our best interests. The uncertainty amongst citizens it there but individually they seem to be afraid of the consequences of taking back political power into the hands of the electorate and not the elites in political parties or back rooms.
Giving up on democracy is not an option. Showing up, speaking out and insisting on accountability, integrity, honesty and transparency from those who seek our consent to govern us is the only option. If you are better off today than 4 years ago I can understand a contentment to the status quo...but not many of us are as well off.
The fear uncertainty and doubt we are feeling about the future can best be fixed by citizens taking action. We need to change the political power structure, who is in political power and how we select those to whom we grant political power. If you are not content with the status quo and the infighting between left and right politics you can re-engage in a progressive approach to democracy through Reboot Alberta Join us and start making a difference in the future of Alberta and even Canada.
If you want a progressive political culture in the Next Alberta register now for RebootAlberta 3.0 at www.rebootalberta.org
I am on the PMO distribution list of what Harper is doing and the activities are mere message massage and manipulation. I can't understand why cash strapped and staff starved MSM even bother to cover these circuses of events where photos are allowed but journalists questions are not allowed or severely limited.
It is becoming more obvious that our democracy is in decline and the personal ambitions of Prime Minister Harper are pleased and promoting that demise. Canadians have to wake up and smell the political rot - and it is not just in Ottawa.
Many of our political parties and leaders have forfeited the benefit of the doubt from citizens that they are acting in our best interests. The uncertainty amongst citizens it there but individually they seem to be afraid of the consequences of taking back political power into the hands of the electorate and not the elites in political parties or back rooms.
Giving up on democracy is not an option. Showing up, speaking out and insisting on accountability, integrity, honesty and transparency from those who seek our consent to govern us is the only option. If you are better off today than 4 years ago I can understand a contentment to the status quo...but not many of us are as well off.
The fear uncertainty and doubt we are feeling about the future can best be fixed by citizens taking action. We need to change the political power structure, who is in political power and how we select those to whom we grant political power. If you are not content with the status quo and the infighting between left and right politics you can re-engage in a progressive approach to democracy through Reboot Alberta Join us and start making a difference in the future of Alberta and even Canada.
If you want a progressive political culture in the Next Alberta register now for RebootAlberta 3.0 at www.rebootalberta.org
Wednesday, September 08, 2010
Accountability, Integrity & Honesty is What Albertans Want from Politicians
We have done some interesting research about what values Albertans want to see guide and drive policy decision by the provincial government. There seems to be a critical disconnect with the governors and the governed about what values citizens want to see used to make public policy decisions.
The top values Albertans want to see from government are Accountability, Integrity and Honesty. When it comes to oil sands policy we are seeing a serious distance between the political culture citizens want and what they are getting. This is especially true in the areas of environmental monitoring and mitigation in areas like habitat, CO2 emissions and reclamation.
There is a very interesting set of quotes from politicians about the water quality in the Athabasca River and conflicting independent peer reviewed reports of unsafe levels of toxins that differ from the messages we have been getting from our government politicians. Government administration and independent experts seems to be saying very different things based on science than the political messages we are supposed to believe.
Click here is a link to a very enlightening blog post from the Calgary Herald that illustrates this point. How can this be happening in a modern democracy like Alberta?
I have to applaud the forthright comments of the government experts on the issues for their integrity, accountability and honesty in these quotes. It will be interesting to see if there are career consequences for bring truth to power when power has a different agenda.
Add to this the Globe and Mail story where Premier Stelmach says the meeting with US House of Representative Speaker Nancy Pelosi will emphasize that "The environment is the first and most important issue" but the rest of the story is all about investment and jobs. I hope the story is not fully reflective of the comments made by the Premier and he has had something specific to say about concerns like ecological monitoring, water use and safety, CO2 levels, habitat protection and reclamation.
Then we have another news story in the Globe and Mail saying a study is finding the destruction of ducks in oil sands tailing ponds is estimated to be 30 times that reported by industry and government. What is going on here?
We Albertans as owners of the oil sands need to start getting serious about insisting we get the facts behind the development decisions on this very important resource for Alberta's continuing prosperity. When sustaining or gaining political power supersedes the duty of politicians to govern responsibly with integrity, accountability and honesty citizens have to take matters back into their own hands.
We Albertans are the owners and ultimately responsible for how our oil sands are developed. We are also responsible as voter for who we allow to make these development decisions on our behalf. There is no "them" in this issue - only Albertans as owners and citizens.
It is time to speak up Alberta and insist on demonstrable political integrity, accountability and honesty from our governors again. Changes have to be made and a healthy democracy demands that we have viable political alternatives who demonstrate the core values we want applied to our public policy decisions.
If you want a progressive political culture in the Next Alberta register now for RebootAlberta 3.0 at www.rebootalberta.org
The top values Albertans want to see from government are Accountability, Integrity and Honesty. When it comes to oil sands policy we are seeing a serious distance between the political culture citizens want and what they are getting. This is especially true in the areas of environmental monitoring and mitigation in areas like habitat, CO2 emissions and reclamation.
There is a very interesting set of quotes from politicians about the water quality in the Athabasca River and conflicting independent peer reviewed reports of unsafe levels of toxins that differ from the messages we have been getting from our government politicians. Government administration and independent experts seems to be saying very different things based on science than the political messages we are supposed to believe.
Click here is a link to a very enlightening blog post from the Calgary Herald that illustrates this point. How can this be happening in a modern democracy like Alberta?
I have to applaud the forthright comments of the government experts on the issues for their integrity, accountability and honesty in these quotes. It will be interesting to see if there are career consequences for bring truth to power when power has a different agenda.
Add to this the Globe and Mail story where Premier Stelmach says the meeting with US House of Representative Speaker Nancy Pelosi will emphasize that "The environment is the first and most important issue" but the rest of the story is all about investment and jobs. I hope the story is not fully reflective of the comments made by the Premier and he has had something specific to say about concerns like ecological monitoring, water use and safety, CO2 levels, habitat protection and reclamation.
Then we have another news story in the Globe and Mail saying a study is finding the destruction of ducks in oil sands tailing ponds is estimated to be 30 times that reported by industry and government. What is going on here?
We Albertans as owners of the oil sands need to start getting serious about insisting we get the facts behind the development decisions on this very important resource for Alberta's continuing prosperity. When sustaining or gaining political power supersedes the duty of politicians to govern responsibly with integrity, accountability and honesty citizens have to take matters back into their own hands.
We Albertans are the owners and ultimately responsible for how our oil sands are developed. We are also responsible as voter for who we allow to make these development decisions on our behalf. There is no "them" in this issue - only Albertans as owners and citizens.
It is time to speak up Alberta and insist on demonstrable political integrity, accountability and honesty from our governors again. Changes have to be made and a healthy democracy demands that we have viable political alternatives who demonstrate the core values we want applied to our public policy decisions.
If you want a progressive political culture in the Next Alberta register now for RebootAlberta 3.0 at www.rebootalberta.org
Tuesday, September 07, 2010
Why Did Our Government Avoid Announcing the Premier-Pelosi Meeting?
This week should be a game changing opportunity for re-framing the oil sands narrative in the minds of some of the most powerful political personalities in the United States of America. The meeting this Thursday with Nancy Pelosi the Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, arguably the most powerful woman in America, could be and should be a game changer for Alberta and our oil sands to be understood in a broader and deeper context than merely "dirty oil"
The credible case for oil sands cannot be made by pushing the investment agenda or the jobs advantages. There is so much more to the potential than those concerns, vital as they are. There is a need to have an integrated conversation about the oil sands in terms of environmental elements of land, water and air impacts. There is a need to talk about health and habitat implications and mitigation. There is a need to talk about science and technology advances and its potential elements for a cleaner future for oil sands development.
There is a need to do all of this to dispel the mythology of dirty oil but not in the context of it not being so bad when you consider it in comparison with the British Petroleum Gulf of Mexico disaster. Being better apple in a bad barrel is not good enough for Albertans. We Albertans want to be proud of the oil sands as well as being able to prosper from them. Being the best of a bad lot is not good enough.
That said I do feel there is a need to compare the so-called "dirty oil" from the Alberta oil sands with the "blood oil" from the other US sources. Considering the Presidential level false pretense of weapons of mass destruction to justify an invasion of Iraq and the waste and blood that deception created I wonder is we don't need a broader definition of "dirty oil." The American government is guilty of creating really dirty oil that involves supporting war, terror, death and corruption, both aboard and domestically.. I hope someone is prepared to point that out to Speaker Pelosi this week. We need to frame the responsible development of the oil sands as a way out of that political, moral and ethical quagmire for the Americans.
The Iraq war was really about deceit, political hubris and securing an oil supply for the United States. It was not about freedom and democracy for Iraqi citizens as the ultra conservative rhetoric out of the White House would want us to believe. The George Bush political pantomime of the "Mission Accomplished" performance n the on the deck of an aircraft carrier shows the depth of the political posturing that regime was prepared to resort to in order to sustain its hold on power. Anyone see a parallel to the current Harper regime in Canada?
The terrorism fostered by the funding of extremist religious fundamentalist enabled by the Bush-Regime friendly royal family of Saudi Arabia is another aspect of "dirty oil" to my mind. Then look at the social costs in civilian deaths and the political corruption in Venezuela and you can add more granularity to the picture of "dirty oil." There are many more examples of blood oil as dirty oil in the world that are as least partly due to past American foreign and energy policies.
None of this justifies Albertans being complacent about insisting that the oil sands be developed in a much more environmentally and socially responsible way. But to lecture Alberta about our "dirty oil" and to allow the BP blowout to happen and to invade and support corrupt regimes around the globe in exchange for domestic fossil fuel supply is hypercritical in the extreme.
The opportunity to provide a more integrated and honest narrative about the potential of the oil sands as an energy resources to the American market has to be clearly and persuasively presented. If anyone making these points needs notes to make these points one should wonder if they are not sufficiently akin and aligned with the core values of Albertans around our oil sand development.
The point is to be realistic about our challenges in responsible oil sands development. Pelosi has to hear and the Premier has to make the point that the oil sands are a viable transitional energy alternative that can relieve the human costs of corruption, death and terror resulting from these other truly dirty oil situations the American people find themselves supporting..
This does not let Albertans off the ownership hook to assure the world we can develop this enormously important resource in a responsible and sustainable way with wisdom and integrity. It is significant that this meeting with Speaker Pelosi is happening in Ottawa with the Premiers of Alberta and Saskatchewan plus key Influentials invited too, like Marlo Raynolds of the highly respected Pembina Institute. (BTW Marlo is a Friday night presenter along with me at RebootAlberta 3.0 in Edmonton Nov 5-6) There will be a balance of perspectives on the oil sands available to Speaker Pelosi for sure and it is a credit to her that balance is happening.
It is more than a little disturbing to note that this meeting with Pelosi was not announced by Premier Stelmach's office. As Graham Thomson notes in his recent column, the Alberta public would not have known about it likely until after the fact if not for the fact others were invited and announced they were going.
This lack of public disclosure that our Premier is attending this meeting looks to me like a lapse of accountability and transparency by our government - and it is disturbing. We Albertans own the oil sands. We have a right to know what is going on in relation to them What is our government doing in meeting the stewardship responsibility of our resources, especially the controversial oil sands, is our public business.
The elected representatives are not the absolute rulers over the development of our oil sands. They are merely our proxy holders as owners. They are elected to represent our best interests. They owe us a duty to prove to us that they are serving those ends. They should be conducting themselves in the service of our best interests openly and honestly and with integrity. Citizens of Alberta have to start acting like owners of their natural resources and not merely employees for the industry tenants. The industry tenants need to earn our respect to sustain any social licenses to exploit our natural resources for the benefit of shareholders and citizens. Our governments need to learn some humility as servant leaders and be dissuaded from assuming they are entitled to govern without being accountable, transparent and honest with the voter.
To not disclose this meeting as part of the regular release of the weekly schedule of the Premier is an indication of a personal and institutional character flaw. It is not good enough and further erodes the public confidence in the capacity and truthfulness of this government.
There are times when confidentiality is required. On those occasions we owners still need to know why it is required and be able to trust the integrity of those entrusted to act on our behalf in such confidential circumstances. That is not the case now in terms of being informed as to why s discussion must be confidential or can we trust the integrity and accountability of our representatives who are involved in such confidential discussions.
Any of secret meetings held behind closed doors by our government proxy holders are inevitably with self-serving parties. That is why they are a serious source of citizen suspicion. There is that there is more back room self-interested collusion going and that is totally inappropriate. There is plenty of evidence that the current government of Alberta has at best lost the benefit of the doubt that they are to be trusted and believed. To not disclose the Premier-Pelosi meeting unnecessarily adds to the suspicion and distrust.
Democracy is founded on trust and confidence of the citizenry towards those to whom we delegate authority over us to make decisions on our behalf as informed engaged voters in meaningful elections. I know that is a fiction in Alberta and too many other dissolving democracies. The Pelosi meeting was a perfect opportunity for our government to show they are worthy of our trust and to justify our confidence in dealing on our behalf with the American mis-perceptions about "dirty oil."
The way this high-level policy event has been handled so far shows that the default of the powers that bee is towards political posturing and secrecy. That is trumping the greater duty to govern with a sense of stewardship and sustainability with integrity, accountability, honesty and transparency. Instead they have just reinforced our worst suspicions about how poorly we are governed instead of redeeming themselves by a gesture towards restoring public trust and confidence. I don't hold any hope that the Wildrose Alliance Party would be any better if not worse given their secretive and significant financial reliance on the Calgary based energy sector now.
As thoughtful and responsible Albertans we have to get past our defeatist attitude and insist upon or create another viable political alternative. To stay in a torpor means the future choices will be between an exclusively market driven govern philosophy or a reactionary social conservative option. Both are too restrictive to meet our potential and responsibility to aspire be more than the best place in the world to becoming the best place for the world. That is the preferred future for the Alberta I want to achieve.
If you want a progressive political culture in the Next Alberta register now for RebootAlberta 3.0 at www.rebootalberta.org
The credible case for oil sands cannot be made by pushing the investment agenda or the jobs advantages. There is so much more to the potential than those concerns, vital as they are. There is a need to have an integrated conversation about the oil sands in terms of environmental elements of land, water and air impacts. There is a need to talk about health and habitat implications and mitigation. There is a need to talk about science and technology advances and its potential elements for a cleaner future for oil sands development.
There is a need to do all of this to dispel the mythology of dirty oil but not in the context of it not being so bad when you consider it in comparison with the British Petroleum Gulf of Mexico disaster. Being better apple in a bad barrel is not good enough for Albertans. We Albertans want to be proud of the oil sands as well as being able to prosper from them. Being the best of a bad lot is not good enough.
That said I do feel there is a need to compare the so-called "dirty oil" from the Alberta oil sands with the "blood oil" from the other US sources. Considering the Presidential level false pretense of weapons of mass destruction to justify an invasion of Iraq and the waste and blood that deception created I wonder is we don't need a broader definition of "dirty oil." The American government is guilty of creating really dirty oil that involves supporting war, terror, death and corruption, both aboard and domestically.. I hope someone is prepared to point that out to Speaker Pelosi this week. We need to frame the responsible development of the oil sands as a way out of that political, moral and ethical quagmire for the Americans.
The Iraq war was really about deceit, political hubris and securing an oil supply for the United States. It was not about freedom and democracy for Iraqi citizens as the ultra conservative rhetoric out of the White House would want us to believe. The George Bush political pantomime of the "Mission Accomplished" performance n the on the deck of an aircraft carrier shows the depth of the political posturing that regime was prepared to resort to in order to sustain its hold on power. Anyone see a parallel to the current Harper regime in Canada?
The terrorism fostered by the funding of extremist religious fundamentalist enabled by the Bush-Regime friendly royal family of Saudi Arabia is another aspect of "dirty oil" to my mind. Then look at the social costs in civilian deaths and the political corruption in Venezuela and you can add more granularity to the picture of "dirty oil." There are many more examples of blood oil as dirty oil in the world that are as least partly due to past American foreign and energy policies.
None of this justifies Albertans being complacent about insisting that the oil sands be developed in a much more environmentally and socially responsible way. But to lecture Alberta about our "dirty oil" and to allow the BP blowout to happen and to invade and support corrupt regimes around the globe in exchange for domestic fossil fuel supply is hypercritical in the extreme.
The opportunity to provide a more integrated and honest narrative about the potential of the oil sands as an energy resources to the American market has to be clearly and persuasively presented. If anyone making these points needs notes to make these points one should wonder if they are not sufficiently akin and aligned with the core values of Albertans around our oil sand development.
The point is to be realistic about our challenges in responsible oil sands development. Pelosi has to hear and the Premier has to make the point that the oil sands are a viable transitional energy alternative that can relieve the human costs of corruption, death and terror resulting from these other truly dirty oil situations the American people find themselves supporting..
This does not let Albertans off the ownership hook to assure the world we can develop this enormously important resource in a responsible and sustainable way with wisdom and integrity. It is significant that this meeting with Speaker Pelosi is happening in Ottawa with the Premiers of Alberta and Saskatchewan plus key Influentials invited too, like Marlo Raynolds of the highly respected Pembina Institute. (BTW Marlo is a Friday night presenter along with me at RebootAlberta 3.0 in Edmonton Nov 5-6) There will be a balance of perspectives on the oil sands available to Speaker Pelosi for sure and it is a credit to her that balance is happening.
It is more than a little disturbing to note that this meeting with Pelosi was not announced by Premier Stelmach's office. As Graham Thomson notes in his recent column, the Alberta public would not have known about it likely until after the fact if not for the fact others were invited and announced they were going.
This lack of public disclosure that our Premier is attending this meeting looks to me like a lapse of accountability and transparency by our government - and it is disturbing. We Albertans own the oil sands. We have a right to know what is going on in relation to them What is our government doing in meeting the stewardship responsibility of our resources, especially the controversial oil sands, is our public business.
The elected representatives are not the absolute rulers over the development of our oil sands. They are merely our proxy holders as owners. They are elected to represent our best interests. They owe us a duty to prove to us that they are serving those ends. They should be conducting themselves in the service of our best interests openly and honestly and with integrity. Citizens of Alberta have to start acting like owners of their natural resources and not merely employees for the industry tenants. The industry tenants need to earn our respect to sustain any social licenses to exploit our natural resources for the benefit of shareholders and citizens. Our governments need to learn some humility as servant leaders and be dissuaded from assuming they are entitled to govern without being accountable, transparent and honest with the voter.
To not disclose this meeting as part of the regular release of the weekly schedule of the Premier is an indication of a personal and institutional character flaw. It is not good enough and further erodes the public confidence in the capacity and truthfulness of this government.
There are times when confidentiality is required. On those occasions we owners still need to know why it is required and be able to trust the integrity of those entrusted to act on our behalf in such confidential circumstances. That is not the case now in terms of being informed as to why s discussion must be confidential or can we trust the integrity and accountability of our representatives who are involved in such confidential discussions.
Any of secret meetings held behind closed doors by our government proxy holders are inevitably with self-serving parties. That is why they are a serious source of citizen suspicion. There is that there is more back room self-interested collusion going and that is totally inappropriate. There is plenty of evidence that the current government of Alberta has at best lost the benefit of the doubt that they are to be trusted and believed. To not disclose the Premier-Pelosi meeting unnecessarily adds to the suspicion and distrust.
Democracy is founded on trust and confidence of the citizenry towards those to whom we delegate authority over us to make decisions on our behalf as informed engaged voters in meaningful elections. I know that is a fiction in Alberta and too many other dissolving democracies. The Pelosi meeting was a perfect opportunity for our government to show they are worthy of our trust and to justify our confidence in dealing on our behalf with the American mis-perceptions about "dirty oil."
The way this high-level policy event has been handled so far shows that the default of the powers that bee is towards political posturing and secrecy. That is trumping the greater duty to govern with a sense of stewardship and sustainability with integrity, accountability, honesty and transparency. Instead they have just reinforced our worst suspicions about how poorly we are governed instead of redeeming themselves by a gesture towards restoring public trust and confidence. I don't hold any hope that the Wildrose Alliance Party would be any better if not worse given their secretive and significant financial reliance on the Calgary based energy sector now.
As thoughtful and responsible Albertans we have to get past our defeatist attitude and insist upon or create another viable political alternative. To stay in a torpor means the future choices will be between an exclusively market driven govern philosophy or a reactionary social conservative option. Both are too restrictive to meet our potential and responsibility to aspire be more than the best place in the world to becoming the best place for the world. That is the preferred future for the Alberta I want to achieve.
If you want a progressive political culture in the Next Alberta register now for RebootAlberta 3.0 at www.rebootalberta.org
Monday, September 06, 2010
Haley Simons and Other Rebooters Are Taking Action.
So one of the life lessons I am learning from my encounter with the concept of Rebooting Alberta is the energy that is starting to emerge from individuals who have come to the Reboot Alberta community. One of the most animated new activists is Haley Simons. She has taken up the crusade for Creative Alberta with an enthusiasm that is infectious and soon to be viral with the energy she has and the traction she is getting.
A concert pianist with a PhD in music Haley is another Ordinary Miracle Edmontonian who wants to see positive change and is taking personal responsibility to create and be the change she wants. She is typical of what I see emerging from the early start of a progressive citizen's movement in Alberta less than a year ago. More and more we see people taking action to make a difference in the communities where they live physically or intellectually or emotionally.
I met Haley on the phone when I was at a local food conference in Drayton Valley for the Grande Alberta Economic Region. She said she was give my number and told to call me by Senator Tom Banks. Tom is a long time friend and one of my early mentors in the arts and culture world as used to be more immersed in and miss that involvement as I have shifted my personal focus on to politics, democracy and governance.
Haley regaled me with her idea of getting Edmonton and perhaps Alberta to be one of the internationally recognized "Districts of Creativity." She noted this was a new initiative but had already connected with certain communities in Flanders, Catalonia, China, France, Scotland, Germany, India, Finland, and Italy I immediately invited her to attend Reboot 2.0 and promised her she would find her "Tribe." She came to Reboot and she did find her tribe and she got engaged as a responsive and responsible citizen. Now she is taking a leadership role in establishing CreativeAlberta...and writing a blog called SimonsSays. Here is a link to her first post.
So welcome her to the blogosphere and visit her often. She will soon be on the www.rebootalberta.org blog roll and mine too so you can keep in touch. Follow her on Twitter too @haleysimons. For a chance to meet the other Haley - the concert pianist - give yourself a treat and listen to her here. http://www.haleysimons.com/video1.htm
If you want to know more and become involved in CreativeAlberta and meet Haley in person come to RebootAlberta 3.0 Nov 5-6 in Edmonton. Registration and details are a click away here
If you want a progressive political culture in the Next Alberta register now for RebootAlberta 3.0 at www.rebootalberta.org
A concert pianist with a PhD in music Haley is another Ordinary Miracle Edmontonian who wants to see positive change and is taking personal responsibility to create and be the change she wants. She is typical of what I see emerging from the early start of a progressive citizen's movement in Alberta less than a year ago. More and more we see people taking action to make a difference in the communities where they live physically or intellectually or emotionally.
I met Haley on the phone when I was at a local food conference in Drayton Valley for the Grande Alberta Economic Region. She said she was give my number and told to call me by Senator Tom Banks. Tom is a long time friend and one of my early mentors in the arts and culture world as used to be more immersed in and miss that involvement as I have shifted my personal focus on to politics, democracy and governance.
Haley regaled me with her idea of getting Edmonton and perhaps Alberta to be one of the internationally recognized "Districts of Creativity." She noted this was a new initiative but had already connected with certain communities in Flanders, Catalonia, China, France, Scotland, Germany, India, Finland, and Italy I immediately invited her to attend Reboot 2.0 and promised her she would find her "Tribe." She came to Reboot and she did find her tribe and she got engaged as a responsive and responsible citizen. Now she is taking a leadership role in establishing CreativeAlberta...and writing a blog called SimonsSays. Here is a link to her first post.
So welcome her to the blogosphere and visit her often. She will soon be on the www.rebootalberta.org blog roll and mine too so you can keep in touch. Follow her on Twitter too @haleysimons. For a chance to meet the other Haley - the concert pianist - give yourself a treat and listen to her here. http://www.haleysimons.com/video1.htm
If you want to know more and become involved in CreativeAlberta and meet Haley in person come to RebootAlberta 3.0 Nov 5-6 in Edmonton. Registration and details are a click away here
If you want a progressive political culture in the Next Alberta register now for RebootAlberta 3.0 at www.rebootalberta.org
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)