Heart of Alberta

By Eric Volmers, Calgary Herald

As a journalist, Christopher A. Walsh has an aversion to pat, overly sunny answers to complicated questions.

So when the 31-year-old Calgarian spent months inside the curious subculture of Maritime’s longest-running travelling carnival, he was initially frustrated with how most carnies’ would answer the most fundamental of questions.

That question, of course, was why do it. Why would someone live the nomadic life of a carny, working the rides and games of the Bill Lynch Shows for an increasingly disinterested public? They travel from town to town, work long hours for lousy pay, suffer the unflattering stigmas attached to the trade and never find a comfortable home.

Residents in Gadsby and Donalda are waiting to see if the government considers their villages worth preserving.

Alberta Municipal Affairs is undertaking a dissolution study for Donalda to determine whether the village has the economic oomph to stay afloat or whether it would be better off as a hamlet in the County of Stettler. A similar study is being considered for Gadsby, also in the county.

Donalda Mayor Terry Nordahl said they are baffled as to why the minister ordered a dissolution study for their community of 250, which is two years away from celebrating its centennial. A group of disgruntled residents sent a petition asking for an audit of village operations to the minister this past spring.

Municipal Affairs determined the community had been audited a few years ago and it was running fine. But then the minister ordered a dissolution study.

“It was a total shock to us,” she said. “We are a very sustainable village. We didn’t have a deficit or anything.”

Environmentalist Brad Komishke finds ways to improve environmental performance from within the walls of industry

By Joey Podlubny

In 1989, Brad Komishke was working at Husky Energy’s asphalt refinery in Llyodminster, Alberta, doing analytical support, when he volunteered on a project with the focus to use moss to clean up asphalt spills at the plant. There weren’t too many options for disposal at the time, and Komishke wanted to find an effective method. So, he gave his time to help come up with a way to get the natural bugs from moss to eat up a spill.

Things went a little slower than expected. During the experiments, the bugs were not producing at a fast enough rate. The system was proven to work, but it lacked efficiency and speed. Studying the tanks that housed the mixture of bugs and asphalt, Komishke considered ways to speed up growth.

He remembered his fish tank at home. Taking an aeration pump, he blasted oxygen into the tanks. They were in business. It was efficient. They did it. No more asphalt in the landfills, no more burning the stuff. There was positive impact on the environment that came from within the walls of industry, not outside of it. “That’s when I realized what kind of impact I could have working from within an oil company,” says Komishke.