Hot: Anna Borowiecki Selecting a favourite story for 2014 is a difficult assignment. So many compelling individuals with absorbing stories tend to cross my path.
Hot: Anna Borowiecki
Selecting a favourite story for 2014 is a difficult assignment. So many compelling individuals with absorbing stories tend to cross my path.
But one story that left me both amazed and amused occurred at the inaugural Dig In! Horticulinary Festival this past October as five stalwarts – or fools as some would say – voluntarily bit into the searing Trinidad moruga chili peppers.
The Trinidad moruga is the second hottest pepper in the world and packs the equivalent heat of 400 hot jalapeños. Picture that in your mouth.
On the vine, the small wrinkled pepper looks fairly feeble. But once on the tongue, the scorpion unleashes enough voltage to induce vomiting after one bite.
It was a panic watching councillors Cathy Heron, Gilles Prefontaine and Tim Osborne as well as firefighter Lee Monfette desperately try to retain control of their senses as their faces flushed red, tears slipped down cheeks and veins popped on the foreheads.
I was mesmerized and astounded that individuals could eat as many as four scorpions without requiring an ambulance. There was also that wicked inner child that lapped up the idea of politicians being put on the hot seat.
The event was held at the Enjoy Centre and Jim Hole has said he'd grow the world's hottest pepper for next year's competition. This is a great forum for politicians to face their constituents and I volunteer Mayor Nolan Crouse, as well as councillors Sheena Hughes and Cam MacKay for next year's feed.
Brush with fame: Victoria Paterson
It was a seemingly innocuous assignment that led to speaking to a legendary Canadian architect.
Back in June, the city announced the name of the boardroom in St. Albert Place would be changing from the East Boardroom to the Douglas Cardinal Boardroom in honour of the building's famous designer.
It was 30 years ago this June that the sometimes-controversial St. Albert Place had its grand opening.
It's the kind of story that could be phoned in – an interview with the mayor of the day, perhaps, and a couple of extra lines – but the opportunity was offered to interview Carol Watamaniuk, who was the director of culture during the development of the St. Albert Place project and later was a city councillor.
Watamaniuk was still passionate about Cardinal's design years later.
“I wouldn't change this building for anything. It's always been very special,” she said.
Interviews with passionate people are always a delight, and this one inspired me to do a better job on the story, so I sought out some more interviews and ended up at former city alderman Bill Shields' house where he was kind enough to share memories and photos of the time around the project.
Shields had been on council and chaired the associated committee during the project's development and advocated for Cardinal's hiring based on his reputation as a “solid man.”
I also spent a few hours looking through the archives of the St. Albert Gazette. Flipping through old newspapers is a favourite thing of mine to do – seeing different designs and writing styles, checking out the old advertisements and more importantly realizing that some issues don't go away, like worries over housing affordability in St. Albert or annexation into Edmonton.
But the highlight of the whole process was speaking to Douglas Cardinal. I had left a message at his office in Ottawa and didn't have much hope the call would be returned – but it was.
I've admired Cardinal's architectural designs since the first time I walked into the Canadian Museum of Civilization (recently renamed the Canadian Museum of History) when I was 15, and between that and return visits, it has become one of my favourite museums. St. Albert Place immediately reminded me of that building, so it made sense when I found out the buildings shared an architect.
Building that museum is a gig he got in part due to his work in St. Albert, where he used a Hewlett-Packard machine to design St. Albert Place – the first building to be designed completely on computer, he told me.
Cardinal was gracious about the room-naming. The performing arts centre in Grande Prairie is also now named after him, and a space at the Canadian Museum of History was named after the architect earlier this year.
“I think it's wonderful. I had a wonderful time serving the people of St. Albert,” Cardinal said.
And I had a wonderful time working on that story.
Aggressive birds: Kevin Ma
Birds are biters.
That's what I learned when researching last summer's feature on bird-banders. Our feathered friends are inexplicably averse to being manhandled, which means bird researchers are often on the receiving ends of beaks, wings and claws when they try to put little ID bracelets on them.
Bird-bander Rick Morse regaled me with tales of how he had been left bleeding from the neck by one furious falcon, and I marvelled at how he seemed to relish the biting and the bashing of wings that came with the job. (His disappointment when he was not mauled to death by a goshawk whilst three stories off the ground in a tree was palatable.)
The goshawks were impressive, but the part of this story I remember most is the red-breasted grosbeak.
It was a massive specimen with a proud red chest and a huge beak, and it was hanging out at the Beaverhill Bird Observatory cabin when I arrived. Little did I suspect that I'd see it a few hours later hanging tangled in a net.
This was a very angry bird, as bander Amélie Roberto-Charron discovered. It chomped her fingers as she collected it, nipped her as she measured its wings, and savaged her finger one last time when she let it fly free.
“Ow! Ow! Ow!” she said.
The whole experience of seeing these tiny birds pulled out of a sack like rabbits from a hat was magical, and the tiny cuffs the banders put on the birds' legs were adorable. I'll probably go back to hold some birds myself someday – probably while wearing very thick gloves.
Emotional interview: Amy Crofts
I admit, sometimes I make people cry.
Not intentionally of course, but with the subject matter of many of the stories I write, it is not uncommon for my interviewees to become emotional.
Personally I do not wear my heart on my sleeve. There are few stories that have moved me in such a way where tears well up in my eyes and I feel a lump in my throat.
“Becoming a Burdzy” in the Saturday, July 26 edition of the Gazette was one of those stories.
Curious about a St. Albert connection to the closure of the Michener Centre in Red Deer this past summer (which was halted as of September 2014), I was introduced to Dorothy Corder.
Dorothy, 59, has the mental capacity of a six-year-old and had lived the majority of her life at Michener, still carrying parts of it with her. She talks loudly, has to be the first one to eat and sometimes carries around shoelaces – also known as “soothies” – all examples of institutional behaviours.
In 2000, Dorothy moved to a group home in St. Albert under the care of the Lo-Se-Ca Foundation.
Although having come from a large family (the youngest of 10 siblings), many of them moved away and relinquished guardianship of Dorothy. She was assigned a public guardian to take care of her medical and legal needs.
In 2007, Erica Burdzy had just been hired as a financial assistant at Lo-Se-Ca. She wanted to know more about the organization so she worked a couple of shifts in the group homes, which is where she met Dorothy.
The pair instantly hit it off, so much so that Erica brought Dorothy home to her parents.
A year later, Erica's parents Judy and Henry Burdzy became Dorothy's private guardians, an informal adoption in a sense.
Dorothy lives with a roommate in a house down the street from the Burdzys in Akinsdale. She comes to their home, where she has her own bedroom, twice a week for dinner and in the summer, spent many weekends at their family cabin at the lake.
Private guardianship sought by non-family members is relatively unheard of, said her support workers as well as the judge who granted guardianship.
The Burdzys brought Dorothy into their home, a person not related by blood or marriage, a person with higher needs than most. They took on the responsibility of another life and did so with open arms and an open heart.
Merely sitting in a room with the Burdzys, I was touched by their affection, selflessness and generosity. They showered Dorothy with hugs and kisses, making sure she knew she is special, that she lightened their lives and above all, that she was part of a family.
“I lie awake at night worrying about her,” admitted “mom” Judy during the interview. “What if she lives longer than us? I can't stand the thought of her not being loved.”
My space camp rant: Scott Hayes
I have, on occasion, taken up the gauntlet to write a Commentary piece for the Gazette's Opinion page. I'd only penned one previously during last year's election campaign but the opportunity rolled around again in May.
I don't take these things lightly. I can't just whip one off on the first draft. It takes me weeks to write a commentary because I want to be careful about the point I'm trying to make and how my argument comes out.
And that's how I approached what turned out to be a fairly eventful May 28 piece that I wrote called “Breakfast versus playground: Our confused priorities.” In the early part of the year, there was a groundswell of interest from the community to help a school group that had lost out when a travel company went under. The group had put up $228,000 to send the kids to a space camp in Québec.
The movement attracted a lot of attention and generated numerous stories in this paper and through other news outlets. They raised more than enough funding to send those kids to the camp and all was saved.
But it got me thinking: how come there isn't that kind of a public uproar over something infinitely more important like the St. Albert Food Bank. Every year, the agency helps to feed many men, women and, yes, children … our neighbours. St. Albert is meant to be the best place to live in Canada, right? Shouldn't we care more about our neighbours going hungry. I questioned why we seem to care more about amenities than necessities.
The piece resulted in a phone call from programmers at Radioactive, CBC Radio Edmonton's afternoon show, who asked me for an on-air interview. During that interview, I speculated that it was, in part, because of human nature and (what I called) the nature of broken things. People are more likely to be interested in fixing something that is broken if they understand what it takes to fix it. A lost space camp trip can be reclaimed by a specific amount of money, whereas there are numerous challenging and complex reasons why people need to use the food bank.
I'm sure that the trip brought those 80 kids a lot of enjoyment for that one week in the spring. Back here, the food bank continues to help approximately 6,000 people every year. I would guess that they care more about what breakfast is going to look like tomorrow than whether or not there's a space camp in 2015.
Behind the scenes: Viola Pruss
Sometimes the most fun you have as a reporter is taking a peak behind the scenes. In this case, I was front and centre.
On May 8, I tried out a new job for an article, working at McDonald's for a couple of hours. I started shortly before the peak hour but customers were already streaming in. I quickly discovered that fast food is a high-stress environment. Workers co-ordinate, communicate and at times improvise within seconds of an order coming in. And they can't forget to smile at the customers.
I did everything from flipping burgers, shaking fries and handing out meals. Often, I was clueless or stressed. But the employees assigned to me were patient and friendly.
Most of us have little experience outside the job or career we choose. After a few hours at McDonald's, I thought that we should all spend more time learning about other professions. It's refreshing and fun to step into someone else's shoes for a day. But it also opens your eyes to the passion others pour into work that goes largely unnoticed.
