Civic Camp

My eyes landed on a free newspaper while Wyona and I were sitting at the Dairy Queen. “Aldermanic Civic Camp Form, Triwood Community Centre, Thursday, 7 pm”, was about all I could read. I am not driving right now – no depth perception for a while due to the cataract surgery but this looked like an evening out in my neighbourhood. I have discovered it is a 20 minute quick walk to Wyona’s and Triwood Community Centre is five minutes short of Wyona’s house.

Civic Camp has organized aldermanic forums in each of Calgary’s wards, and this was the next-to-the last one they were running. Each candidate spoke 2 minutes. A set of questions were put to the candidates and 2 chits drawn from a cup so that the alderman holding that colour could answer that question. As well, each alderman had 4 chits worth one minute each when they could speak to a question of their choice. The audience was asked to respectfully refrain from jumping into the discussions, and that was about it.

The evening flowed beautifully. At one point one of the candidates referred to a 2 million dollar deficit and audience members called out, “You mean three million”, at which point the moderator chastised the audience for breaking their contract to stay quiet, even though the correction was good.

I saw next to the former president of the West Hillhurst Community Association, though I did not know that when I choose that seat. I used him to update holes in my knowledge about what is really political right now. Dalhousie residents are complaining that they have no drop curbs to go along with the beautiful set of walkways that criss-cross their communities. I had to ask what a drop curb was. And after listening to sustainable development, I had to ask what being an urban chicken farmer really means. Apparently some people keep a couple of chicken in their yard for eggs. I had a flash back to the time when Glen raised chickens and could also see us running across the rocks trying to catch his geese. About all I can do is keep the compost going in my yard and look to the east when I am in my backyard to see Richard and Miranda’s potatoes ready to be harvested and beans climbing up their bean poles.

I met an old colleague from Bibliographic Services in the Library who lives up in Charleswood and was Ward-hopping, he said, to get a flavour of what is going on in the election. I looked for others of my library friends who live in the Community, especially Rob Tiessen who is often at the mike during open meetings, but the dark glasses I am wearing inhibits a good scan of the audience. And there was no chance to talk about copyright laws, which is where he really shines.

The Triwood Community Centre was full – the mean age of the attendees was about my age -- 70. The only drawback to that is when my cohort are all trying to leave at the same time, the exit down the stairs is very slow, for most of the people are taking the stairs by both using the hand rails and having both feet on one step before attempting the next step. Other than that, we are all pretty young looking.

I notice that Civic Camp has organized a Forum for the Mayoralty Candidates as well on Wednesday, the 29th. With a little investigation, I might be able to figure out exactly where they are holding it.

Arta