We'll Weather the Weather - High River 2015

The first two years of the Heritage Inn International Balloon Festival have been great examples of a community rallying around a fun, competitive balloon event. This year, as the town of High River hosts the Canadian Championship for the second time in three years, everyone deserves something that the first two years didn’t offer: good, stable weather.

The weather will once again have an important effect on the final standings. In 2013, only two competitors were able to launch for the final flight due to winds that rose quite quickly. The next year, tasks were changed quite due to ever-changing wind speed, direction and rain that came in spurts.

With the return of the Nationals and two new competitors seeking a trip to the World’s in Japan in 2016, as well as the retirement of a true veteran and legend of Canadian competitive ballooning, it means that more is at stake this year.  As it is also the only real competition in Canada, it is difficult to assess the competitors based on their performances this year. Still, there are a few favourites heading into the competition.

The two most recent champions, Dave Gleed and Jason Adams must be considered favourites not simply because of that success, but because of excellent careers. Adams, who has been living in High River this summer, has been particularly dedicated to competition and did well at Field of Flight in Battle Creek earlier this year. He’ll also represent Canada the World Air Games later this year and was the only pilot to fly the maple leaf in Brazil last year. Dale Ritchie is also a perennial favourite based on a career of excellence. Meg Skelton, who finished 20^th at the Women’s Worlds last year, is coming up to fly a Garry Lockyer event before next year’s Women’s Worlds.

Younger pilots will have something to say about the order of finish. Rookies Eduardo Martinez and Hal Cooper are rookies in name only. They both bring with them international experience with Cooper flying for Canada at the World’s in Austria and Martinez doing well in Mexico. With his permanent residency, he is very happy to be eligible to win the championship. Brant Leatherdale has the backup of Del Michaud who has decided to stop flying competitively and Cliff Skocdopole would have been in Brazil with Adams if he wasn’t such a good businessman.

Three other former champions, Dan Balisky, Dale Lang and Marvin Schultz will also be competing along with Calgary Balloon Club Vice-President Richard Clark who enjoys the spirit of competition without the expectation of winning.

Yes, the name of every competitor has been listed. Part of the challenge is what the weather will do.  The more tasks that are flown and the more technical they are, the more likely those with more experience in high level competitions will be advantaged. Another question mark is crews. The event is looking for a lot more volunteers on the ground. Without a team known to the pilots, their routines might change. The lesson is to sign up and volunteer!

http://www.heritageinninternationalballoonfestival.com/volunteer/

See you in High River!

6 year anniversary of leaving Iceland

This year was all about building on the successes of the first year in Alberta. I didn’t add any new responsibilities or titles, but tried to make right with my existing activities.  It was the year that I worked the hardest in all my life; I’m exhausted but have seen the rewards of my hard work.

The biggest of which is the opening, on this 1^st of May, of the Clinique francophone de Calgary.  I try to stay humble, but I truly feel like I deserve some credit for its opening: funding, staffing, leasing the space, marketing, etc. I’m quite attached to it.  Now the real work of ensuring its success begins.

I’ve tried staying in better touch with friends this year. I was happy to have Carl and Phil over for a week last summer during which we went to Montana (I’d never imagined that but there we were) and enjoyed my bachelor party with some of my best friends in Las Vegas in January.

I assumed the Presidency of the Calgary Balloon Club in November and have made small but consistent efforts to try and encourage young people to get involved in ballooning.  I only got to go to High River for the Western Canadian/Heritage Inn event last fall but this year is already looking much more promising. I discovered more of Alberta through the Calgary Canucks Jr. A team as we failed to make the playoffs once again. I recently emceed the awards banquet where Dennis Hull spoke, maybe that can lead somewhere.

Catie and I are all set to get married in August.  This yearly blog falls on our anniversary and today its 4 years together.  Re-reading the previous editions of this blog and following the evolution of our relationship through them is just as enjoyable as spending new time with the person who will be with me for my entire life.

Emelie visited twice since the last writing, and of course it snowed both times.  It also snowed in September which was annoying, but I golfed both the weekend before and after.  Emelie’s visits are a great opportunity to visit the tourist sites and museums we never give ourselves the chance to see otherwise, but we also spend time doing puzzles.

While the memories of Iceland are now further and further away, I still get to spend time with the friends I’ve made, including spending a few hours with Joel while on a whirlwind trip with work that saw me hit Cornwall, Notre-Dame-de-Lourdes and Saint-Boniface over a three day span.  I’ve yet to catch my breath.

This is the first time in seven years that I’m not moving, not changing bedrooms and not writing this blog from a different room than the year before.  In re-reading my previous posts, I see a person whose life is constantly changing.  Now things have been the same for a little while.  Still trying to catch my breath.

Round Two Brings Together Twenty-Two - Heritage Inn International Balloon Festival

After last year’s successful first event in a long time in High River, Alberta, a number of balloonists will once again descend on the Southern Alberta town for a fun and competitive event in late September.  This time, there are 22 balloons registered (with the possibility of a 23^rd) for the Heritage Inn International Balloon Festival - a huge increase over last year.  With balloonists coming from Belgium, Alaska, Colorado, Ontario and across the West, this event is gathering momentum and this year is hosting the Western Canadian Championships (to compete, pilots must be members of the Alberta Free Balloon Society).

It is growing on the strength of a few good reasons: the town welcomed balloonists with opened arms last year even though it was in the early stages of recovering from a devastating flood, the event was well organized and timely (pilots can head to Albuquerque right afterwards – even though it’s 26 hours away, most crops have been cut and the potential for wild thunderstorms and hail in the evening is diminished permitting evening flights), and it is put on by a sharp and experienced team who are dedicated to building an excellent event…hopefully for the long term.

It is so exciting that Jason Adams and three other Ontarians are bringing their equipment across the country to be involved in addition to a few international pilots.  Adams will want retribution after not being able to get off the ground in last year’s last flight.  Still, he had qualified for the World Championships and in Brazil improved greatly over the 2012 result in Battle Creek.  Last year’s winner and Canadian champion, David Gleed, won’t be participating in High River this year meaning that whoever wins will be a new winner at this event.

There are a number of good candidates for that crown, including Adams, but also including pilots from across the West.  Young stars Cliff Skocdopole and Brant Leatherdale proved they were in it to win it last year while the familiar cast of previous Canadian champions including Dale Ritchie, Del Michaud, Dale Lang, Marvin Schultz, Glenn Penner and Bill Whelan can all find glory on September 28 if things go their way.  In fact, with local conditions playing such a huge factor, everyone has a shot at winning it all if they can figure out the mystery weather and understand the loggers.

Last year, one flight had winds heading from the Northeast to the Southwest, directly towards the High River Airport.  At flight time, winds could be found to go in any direction, except the Southwest, with Marvin Schultz winning one of the tasks simply by landing back where he took off.  Another flight saw winds increase from almost nil to over 30 kts meaning that only three balloons flew in the competition, yet the fiesta pilots enjoyed a safe, normal flight.

With the Rocky Mountains in the background, this year’s Western Canadians at the Heritage Inn International Balloon Festival should be another great showcase for ballooning for fans of intense competition and pretty shapes and colours* in the sky.

All of the results can be found here : http://www.heritageinninternationalballoonfestival.com/news/results/

*Note – colours takes a “u”, I swear!

5 Year Anniversary of Leaving Iceland

These posts were initially just about the anniversary of leaving Iceland at this time of the year in 2009, but since then additional anniversaries have added themselves: I’ve now been with Catie for three years and in Alberta for one.  Each of these changes has brought all sorts of great opportunities and a tinge of sadness (not being with Catie of course).

Last year’s post ended with a mention of my friendship with Joel that was reconfirmed with his visit this February capped by watching the gold medal game at 5 am.  But we’ve made new friends too and part of my goal was, even though I didn’t know how long I would be in Alberta, to get as engaged as possible in the community.

I joined the Rotary Club of Calgary Crowchild and immediately became the Secretary.  I volunteered to be the Public Relations Director for the Calgary Canucks Jr. A Team moving me from the broadcast booth to the bus where I travel Alberta with the team to share the news.  I joined the Calgary Balloon Club after the Rimbey event, enjoyed helping at the Canadian balloon championships in High River and drove to Albuquerque to celebrate ballooning with Marvin and the gang.  Upon my return, I was acclaimed President-Elect of the Club and will take up my post with honour this fall.

Of course, I’ve also worked most of the time.  From a strategic review of the ACFA (Francophone Association) of Calgary’s activities, I’ve moved on to tackle the biggest issue that was identified: getting health access for Francophones.  And while I have no medical experience, I think I’ve pushed things in the right direction and have brought us closer to our goal.

We went home twice during the year: to Memère and Pepère’s 60^th anniversary party shortly after the major floods only a few blocks from our Calgary apartment and at Christmas time.  Those were oddly peaceful trips and reminded us of what we miss most from home: our friends and family.  While some have made the trip out here (Emelie arrived today on her second trip), we will be too far from them until we eventually return.

But before then, there is so much to enjoy in Alberta.  A few weeks ago, we moved into the house we bought in the North end of the city: a bungalow that will give us the chance to grow.  The same day we moved in, I proposed to Catie and she said yes meaning we will be married in the fall of 2015. Golf season and the Okotoks Dawgs baseball team will be starting just as soon as the winter ends (more snow in the forecast).

I don’t know if I would have recognized myself describing my life like this 5 years ago.  To be fair, I’m not sure I fully recognize myself as the person I was 5 years ago.  But if there is one thing to take from re-reading these annual posts, it’s that I haven’t wasted too much time reflecting on what could be or should be, but passing directly to action.  Here’s to another year, more adventures, but with memories of Iceland still in my heart.

Gloucester Rangers' Top Junior-Eligible Players - If Only

In building his teams, former Pembroke Lumber Kings Head Coach Sheldon Keefe was known to convince players to stay an extra year to make a run, especially in the 2011-2012 season when they pushed and won the RBC Cup Junior A national championship.  The Gloucester Rangers, now in year three of their rebuild, haven’t been able to convince players to stay behind as many have bolted for the ‘O’ or wanted out.  The team below is my compilation of the best junior-aged players that have donned the Rangers crest over the past few seasons.  Note how few of them are still with the club.

Forwards
Remy Giftopolous (OHL)	Alexandre Boivin (QMJHL)	Nathan Pancel (OHL)
Patrick White (OHL)	Adam Lloyd (OHL/CCHL)	Jacob Jammes (OHL)
Matthew Foget	Eric Clitsome (CCHL)	Andrew Abou-Assali (OHL)
Matthew Rosebrook	Mason Nowak (OJHL)	Keegan Rowe

Scratches: Daniele Disipio (CCHL), Chad Millett (CCHL)

Defense
Zack Leslie (OHL)	Owen Stewart (OHL)
Andrew Rossy (CCHL)	Colton Keuhl
Liam Murray (OHL)	Riley Bruce (OHL)
Goaltenders
Douglas Johnston
Gunner Rivers (CCHL)

While the players aren’t in their own particular positions (left wing or centre, for example), the team assembled above, from either Rangers picks or players who have played for them, would be a decent OHL team or an absolutely stellar CCHL team.  With a lineup like this, a serious run could be made for a national championship.

There are two points to this article, the first is that junior hockey is difficult because players personalities and pressure from parents and others (OHL teams, for example) make them want to press further and abandon the teams that put so much into them like Coach Favreau and his staff.  This isn’t helped when team management makes counterintuitive decisions and there has been a certain amount of that within the Rangers organization.

The other point, the main one, is that the organization is an excellent judge of talent.  Among their scouts is the unique Frank Barrette who found a lot of these players and pushed for their selection.  On top of that, he is greatly entertaining in the role of play-by-play man for the Rangers and someone I would consider a mentor in my learning about hockey.

Cheers to the team and players that gave me so much over the two years I was there!  Feel free to discuss my selections.

Canada's Big Sort

Though I haven’t delved too far into the Canadian literature on this topic, my recent read, ‘The Big Sort’ by Bill Bishop, leads me to think that there are some Canadian equivalencies to this American phenomenon.   He identified that ‘Americans could move to places that reinforced their identities, where they could find comfort among others like themselves.  These weren’t political choices, but had political consequences.’[1]  The question becomes: does this happen in Canada and if is so does it happen only within cities or across provincial lines?

Canada is like the United States in that both countries were formed by various waves of migration that settled further and further west.  An important difference finds itself in the fact that the Canadian migrations took place along a narrow band defined by two railroads with few people venturing into the fields between them.  The political identities of these places, I’ve seen argued by David Smith and others (though I wish I could find the ‘other’ articles), did not exist before the boundaries were created but came after; the only initial difference between Alberta and Saskatchewan was a line.  Since then, these places have differed considerably in economic, social and political aspects.

Now, as thousands move west, the question returns to the top: are Canadians moving to specific neighbourhoods or provinces for purely economic or also social reasons.  After all, Charles Tiebout’s seminal 1954 article ‘A Pure Theory of Local Expenditures’ argued that economic reasons would be the main reasons people would select one sub-federal jurisdiction over another.

These Canadian-movers, at least the ones I have met, have moved to new provinces for almost exclusively economic reasons: there are no jobs back home so they head West. Still, do their values influence their choice of location?  Or at the very least influence where they live in a city? “The Big Sort has been a national manifestation of the economist’s theory – a post-materialist Tiebout migration based on these non-economic goods, as people have sought out places that best fit their ways of life, their values, and their politics.’[2]

I would argue, with no data to back me up, that the Big Sort is happening to a smaller degree in Canada and it does not cross provincial lines.  People are just as likely to move into communities that are self-designated as a gathering place for their ethnocultural communities as they are to divide around values such as ‘safe streets and space’ or ‘vitality and culture’ which are my polished ways of saying the suburbs and downtowns respectively.

But people do not choose Saskatchewan over Alberta because they prefer Saskatchewan’s culture.  That day might come, but now they choose the economic opportunity that brings them there first.  At least, that is my initial thought.  People who move to Alberta for the ‘blue skies and free mountain air’ might truly be doing so because of the freedom it represents; naturally, socially and economically. And people might to B.C. for its attitude and take the cost of living as the price to pay.

The main argument emanating from Bishop’s understanding of the Big Sort is that it has had a perverse effect on democratic debate and therefore elections in the US. That is something we haven’t seen as much in Canada as there is still a high degree of volatility in the Canadian electorate, Canadians are truly less attached to their parties than they are in the US and a lot of the overwhelming majorities in certain ridings stem from such a long-time ago that they couldn’t be chalked up to these moves.  And 2011’s Liberal collapse shows that even the strongest local majorities are not set in stone.

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[1] Bill Bishop, ‘The Big Sort’, Houghton Mifflin Company : Boston, 2008, p.42

[2] Bishop, p.199

Let's Get High!

Yes, the typically weak balloon puns cannot be avoided especially as the Heritage Inn Hotel’s 2013 Canadian Hot Air Balloon Championships move to High River, AB next week.  It was a great relief to me and surely others closer to the event that it will go ahead after the terrible floods that have marked the summer of 2013 in Southern Alberta and in High River in particular.  But I’ll get back to that in a second.  First, let’s preview the contest!

Fifteen pilots have registered to compete in what is becoming a biannual event.  Aside from reigning champion Jason Adams, all others are from the West, meaning that the large balloon communities in Ontario and Quebec (even though they aren’t competitive) remain poorly represented.  Still, a good number of previous Canadian champions are in the field and the competition for Canada’s two spots at next year’s World Championships in Sao Carlo, Brazil will be intense.

I expect Adams to lead the pack as he did in Camrose in 2011.  Disappointed by his finish at last year’s Worlds in Michigan, he has worked tirelessly to sharpen his competition skills and has been throwing markers out across the Serengeti.   He won’t be alone at the top as I expect Dale Ritchie, David Gleed and Del Michaud will also have very competitive scores.  I’ve heard many people call Dale Ritchie Canada’s best ever flyer and his international experience somehow always have him hovering around the target.  Michaud and Gleed are also serious about competition and have honourably represented Canada on the international scene in the past.  Others, like Richard Clark, are just happy to see the target field. A new generation of pilots, featuring Cliff Skocdopole and Brant Leatherdale, means that the lessons Canada has been learning won’t be lost through time.

The event director is Gary Lockyer whose experience and preference for cutting-edge competition technology mean that competitors will be taking part in a truly world-class event.  Using SMS to transmit information to pilots should help lessen the learning curve for pilots who take part in international competitions.  This author will be reading the theodolite and is looking forward to the early wakeups.

An interesting part of Canada’s national championship – aside from the poor Eastern representation (it would be easier if it wasn’t so far!) – is that it is truly Canadian.  Whereas other national championships around the world occasionally feature pilots from other countries who want to practice, the Committee voted this year to only let Canadians in the competition department.  It appears as though a number of international pilots, from Europe in particular, would have been interested in participating.  Seeing as the timing of the event is favourable to pilots wanting to go to Albuquerque afterwards, letting them enter could be interesting in the future.

As mentioned, though, the real winners are the residents of High River.  Already, they should have their heads up high because of the courage and patience they have displayed since the floods.  For a few days in late September, they will be able to crane their necks even higher as they watch the colourful balloons above them and we get to admire the skill of many of Canada’s best pilots.  See you there! http://www.canadianhotairballoonchampionships.com/home-1.html