All posts tagged 'Edmonton'
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Posted @ 7/30/2012 2:30 PM By Graham Hicks
July 30, 2012:
So after a well-publicized vote on what to call Edmonton's annual summer fair - currently under the generic Capital EX- the producer of said event Northlands has announced the winner.
K-Days!
K-Days was the abbreviation, the slang-term, for the fair's long-standing name of Klondike Days. The original idea for the Klondike Days theme stemmed was Edmonton's peripheral involvement in the Klondike Gold Rush, as a staging area for one of the toughest ways to get to the Klondike gold rush up north.
It came complete with barbershop quartets, men dressed in turn-of-the-century stifling hot vests and suits, ladies in the full Victorian style regalia of dresses.
All of which the city was completely bored with by the mid-80s, especially when we really didn't have much historical claim to calling ourselves a Klondike gold rush town.
So here's the can of worms that'll be opened with the decision to call Capital EX K-Days.
What does K-Days stand for, the visitor will ask.
Wel ...
Posted @ 4/26/2012 6:46 PM By Graham Hicks
Hot Chefs Cool bEATS food festival, Shaw Conference Centre, April 21, 2012Food: 4 of 5Ambience: 4 of 5Service: 4 of 5Much like that re-invented Alberta Progressive Conservative Party, our culinary world evolves.Previous fundraisers for Culinary Team Canada — an Edmonton tradition thanks to long-time organizers Shaw Conference Centre Executive Chef Simon Smotkowicz and NAIT’s Vinod Varshney — were swish, gala events with fancy dresses, business attire and starched linen.Suddenly, it’s not about old-school elegance any longer.It’s about having fun, bringing out the kid in us.It’s about dropping the price tag, as fewer and fewer companies and individuals are willing to shell out for those $300-plus charity event tickets.Hats off to Hot Chefs Cool bEATS co-chairs Simon and Vinomania’s Gurvinder Bhatia.Like Premier Alison Redford’s campaign managers, they figured out where trends are going, and got there first.On Saturday evening, Hot Chefs Cool bEATS was one big, informal, fun street party — and all the better fo ...
Posted @ 4/16/2012 9:41 PM By Graham Hicks
There’s a default position in Canadian business that goes unchallenged.Canadians aren’t innovative. Canadians aren’t productive. Canadians aren’t inventive.The mantra is repeated in northern Alberta. Our economy doesn’t “do” research and development. We’re scared of risk and the fear of failure associated with new technology, new processes. We’re too used to the easy life produced by an endless gusher of oil and gas.I’ve had the opportunity to explore this intriguing topic, working a few days a week as an adviser to TEC Edmonton, an incubator and accelerator of technology-intensive startup businesses.The business gurus have got it all wrong. This city and region should proclaim itself just as techno-savvy as “knowledge-based” cities like Boulder, San Antonio or Kitchener-Waterloo.Four events will counter the perception of Edmonton being ho-hum in “conventional” technology — the Analytics, Big Data and the Cloud conference, April 23 to 25 (abtech.ca), the 10th annual TEC VenturePrize Awards and Dinner (venture ...
Posted @ 4/16/2012 2:25 PM By Graham Hicks
Graham Hicks’ review of Midsummer Night’s Dream Citadel Theatre, through April 29, 2012. There’s a great charm to Tom Wood’s 2012 take on Midsummer Night’s Dream. It’s not only about the oh-so-talented young actors from the Citadel /Banff training program, with whom (Pride and Prejudice, As You Like It, Three Musketeers, Little Women) we are becoming quite familiar at this time of the year. As always, the program actors work their own magic, being so thoroughly professional, but so vital and enthusiastic and joyous. And they are a true ensemble, having been through an intensive six-week educational exercise far more binding than your usual rehearsal period. The charm is on top of this masterpiece of the English-speaking theatre, Shakespeare’s enormous talent turned to love, with three shows in one that continually interact, one with the other, of those inhabiting the supernatural world, the Athenian aristocracy and its working classes. Directo ...
Posted @ 3/6/2012 3:23 AM By Graham Hicks
Oil's well with Alberta energy 6 BY GRAHAM HICKS ,EDMONTON SUNFIRST POSTED: SATURDAY, MARCH 03, 2012 12:29 PM MST | UPDATED: SATURDAY, MARCH 03, 2012 12:39 PM MST 1Change text size for the storyPrint this storyReport an error If you’re going to understand the nature of business in Edmonton, understand just one thing.All roads lead to energy.Oil, natural gas, and that poor kid on the wrong side of the environmental tracks, coal.You likely know the essentials – 300 to 600 million years ago, all things lush and green were deeply buried and eventually decayed into hydrocarbon molecules.Mother Nature did us a big favour, pushing up the Rockies so those hydrocarbons oozed eastward and were concentrated under what happily happened to be Alberta.Generally speaking, natural gas is really deep, conventional oil is deep, and heavy oil close to the surface. Alberta sits on top of one of the world’s 40 major oil basins.Ever since the Leduc #1 oil well hit pay dirt in 1947, we have fretted over oil’s end.Once the big under ...
Posted @ 2/28/2012 9:00 PM By Graham Hicks
Now I know why Edmonton has to fight to change its own perception of itself. My first business column for the Edmonton Sun, published on Sat. Feb. 25, was about Edmonton's need to blow its own horn, to recognize that we are so darn lucky compared to just about every other mid-sized city in the world, for wages, employment, value housing, educational opportunities and so on. You would not have believed some of the negativity expressed in the "comments" section of the online story! Edmonton-deadmonton; a dark, depressing, boring, crime-ridden city; nothing to be proud of; a general population of delusional, angry, sociopathic, aggressive, antagonistic, self centered, disillusioned people; boring as hell; homelessness; price-gouging; high rents; high cost of power .... What is with these people? How have they allowed themselves to enter into such a downward spiral of negativity about the city they live in? Why, as some other readers asked, do they continue to live here? I'll tell you what. It's about them, not t ...
Posted @ 2/28/2012 8:56 PM By SuperUser Account
By Graham Hicks ,Edmonton Sun
First posted: Friday, February 24, 2012 05:10 PM MST | Updated: Friday, February 24, 2012 05:13 PM MST
I’m sick and tired of Edmonton being Canada’s forgotten city.
Every time, on every national newscast, it’s about Toronto, Montreal, Calgary and Vancouver.
Where’s Edmonton in the national consciousness? Where’s our hustle and bustle?
Welcome to Hicks on Biz, the new weekly Edmonton Sun business column with one overriding objective — to let you, and the rest of the world, know that Edmonton is the most dynamic, fastest growing, best-quality-of-life, best-positioned-for-the-future city in Canada. And, if any of our cylinders aren’t firing as they should, constructive commentary will be offered to stay on course.
We’ll do this mainly through looking at Edmonton’s economy in cold, hard numbers.
Numbers can be manipulated, but they don’t lie. Nothing makes the case for prosperity like the number of jobs, amount ...