February 2016

Bowness Park has been a destination in Calgary for more than 100 years.  From the time that John Hextall convinced the city to run a streetcar out to the park, to the long-gone amusement park and pony rides to the Great Bow River Raft Race, also a distant memory, Bowness Park is a treasured Calgary resource.

Even the floods of 2013 weren’t enough to keep people away.  Improvements and redevelopment of the park continues, ensuring that the park will come back better than ever.  In just a few weeks’ time, a new restaurant – the first in many years – will open its doors in Bowness Park. 

Seasons of Bowness is on track to open in the former Parkside Café kiosk right on the lagoon.  If you’re familiar with the building, it has lots of windows and a deck,

Mild temperatures are promoting spread of terrible hedge pest.

It’s called oystershell scale and its claim to fame is killing off hedges and bushes.  Especially cotoneaster, a hardy bush which can endure harsh prairie winters but is very susceptible to this ravenous aphid-like bug.

If the weather was very cold and there was more snow, only a small number of the bugs would survive.  Large amounts of rain will also slow it down and Calgary experienced a warm fall as well.

As it stands, last summer’s population will probably multiply in devastating numbers, especially in some of Calgary’s older districts like Inglewood. It has also been invading some other communities along the Bow River, such as Riverbend and Douglasdale.

Cotoneasters have a

It was a huge problem in the 1980s when interest rates were an astronomical 20% and folks were leaving Alberta to find work elsewhere. Half a million people left the province, and left their properties because payments were too high and mortgage balances were higher than the value of the property. So, if you couldn’t sell - what was a person to do?

Those days may be back in Alberta – sans the high mortgage rate.  Job loss is the new culprit.

You may see headlines that say that “jingle mail” is back.  That’s the jingle of a ring of house keys in an envelope on its way back to the mortgage lender. Anyone who needs to walk away from a situation like this has got to be out of ideas. 

It’s important to weigh the consequences of a desperate act like a