Tag Archives: Only in Alberta

Red Deer shooting spree paint(ball)s the town red!

Posted by gruesomegreg on

What do you do when you want to go on a murderous rampage, but your country doesn’t make semi-automatic firearms readily available to all citizens?  Well, if you’re in Red Deer, Alberta, you grab some paintball guns and hit the town’s casual dining establishments.  The Calgary Herald is reporting that “On March 13th, Red Deer City RCMP say the unusual incident started when a Tim Hortons building was shot at with paintballs at 11:57 p.m. by a male who fled the scene.”  The paintball shooters also hit a local Boston Pizza and a McDonald’s, where “a masked male … shot two McDonald’s employees with paintballs before driving away in a white Chevrolet truck.”  Because friends don’t let paintball fiends drive a Ford!

Of course, in a town of 92,000 people, you’re not going to get too far without someone spotting your paint-stained white Bronco Silverado.  As the Herald reports, “Police say they were patrolling the area and spotted the truck and arrested the four people inside and found two paintball guns inside.”  (And if there was one more “and” in this forever-anding sentence, I might shoot the reporter with a paintball gun!)

The three adults and one youth have been “charged with assault with a weapon, mischief and possession of a weapon dangerous to the public” and will get their day(s) in court on the 1st and 2nd of May.  Fortunately, their three victims only suffered minor injuries.  Can’t say they’d be so lucky in the States…

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Streaking at a rec-league hockey game won’t get you on TV, but it will get you arrested…

Posted by gruesomegreg on

It seems the NHL season couldn’t start soon enough for hockey fans in Alberta.  In the absence of any action at the Saddledome, a woman in Pincher Creek, a two-hour drive south of Calgary, was arrested for allegedly streaking at a rec-league game last weekend.  But it appears she didn’t even get a standing ovation.  A local RCMP officer told the Calgary Herald “As she was doing that, I think they were a little more (annoyed) it was delaying the hockey game.”

Const. Robert Wright also told the Herald that the suspect didn’t go Full Monty on the ice. “She got down to her undergarments. If she took anything more off, we haven’t been informed yet,” he said, adding “We’re still in the process of gathering the surveillance tapes now. Lord only knows what we’ll see.”

Since the tapes haven’t been reviewed yet, we can’t confirm whether the Pincher Creek Streaker had “Marry me Roman Cervenka” written across her chest, but in any case, it appears the Flames’ prized off-season acquisition can’t suit up anytime soon due to a blood clot.  As the Herald reports, “The Czech pivot is taking blood thinners, and transatlantic flight is not possible until the situation is under control.”  And no, he didn’t suffer a sudden rush of blood after seeing some rural Albertan strumpet in her skivvies.  The 27-year-old centre has been out for over a month after being hit with a puck during a KHL contest.  (He probably wasn’t playing the organ at the time, either…)

Hanna’s sign will soon read “Home of Nickelback… Where you can’t make fun of them!”

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The small town of Hanna, Alberta, nationally renowned for producing the most annoying Canadian rock band of all-time, has just passed a new bylaw that prevents people from making fun of Nickelback—or anyone else, for that matter.  As the CBC reports, “The town, 210 kilometres northeast of Calgary, passed a new anti-bullying bylaw prohibiting insults and name-calling.”  What a bunch of… sorry, the bylaw prohibits me from finishing that sentence. :P

“We’re certainly not here to be the thought police or take freedom of speech out, but to me abusive language and stuff that leads to bullying has never been freedom of speech or shouldn’t hide behind freedom of speech,” Mayor Mark Nikota told the national network.  This means, however, that Hanna’s favourite sons will have to get with the program.  In their hit song “Rockstar,” Chad Kroeger proclaims “I want to be great like Elvis without the tassels/Hire eight body guards that love to beat up assholes,” which isn’t a very nice thing to say about autograph seekers.  Furthermore, in their smash hit “Never Again,” Kroeger disses his daddy, singing “Father’s a name you haven’t earned yet/You’re just a child with a temper”—and that’s to say nothing of the band’s numerous Twitter flame-wars, including that time they insulted an injury-prone Atlanta Braves pitcher.  With so many bylaw contraventions, they might hafta give back the key to the municipality!

Mind you, if all it takes to prevent Nickelback from ever coming back to your town is some draconian piece of legislation, then perhaps Toronto could follow suit by bringing back public stoning, but only in the case of bleach-blond, whiny rock singers—oh, and throw in NHL commissioners, while we’re at it.  Right now, that’s about the only way Rob Ford could win back my vote in the upcoming by-election. ;)

As it turns out, the Russians were a couple millennia ahead of us when it comes to tattoos. Whodathunkit?

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Russian archaeologists recently uncovered the remains of a 2,500-year-old warrior princess with some pretty sweet ink, according to the Toronto Sun.  “The well-preserved mummy, known as the Ukok princess, was found by a scientist in the permafrost of the Altai Mountains near the border of Russia and China in 1993 with tattoos on her arms, shoulders and hands,” the Sun reports, adding that her tattoos look “incredibly modern.”  The 25-hundred-year-old Russian beauty is now set to be displayed in, get this, the Republican National Museum in Gorno-Altaisk, which, fortunately, is a good 5328.792 miles away from Medicine Hat, Alberta.  Cuz the good folks of Medicine Hat don’t feel comfortable about people displaying tattoos in their city—particularly if they’re policemen.

As the CBC reports, Police Chief Andy McGrogan says “It’s not what I think, it’s what members of the community think,” citing a 2011 community survey that says mad Hatters are fearful of tattooed cops, or some such nonsense.  “At the end of the day, our community has spoken and we just changed our policy to reflect that.” And rather than leave it up to a commanding officer’s discretion as to what might be considered offensive, which is common practice in the nearby liberal bastion of Calgary, Chief McGrogan doesn’t want to take the chance that a Medicine Hatter rips their shirt over a constable’s family crest poking out from under his uniform.  Hey, I can see how it would be a little weird if a cop showed up with purple hair and Body Count lyrics tattooed on his forehead, but I don’t think a tribal armband on a burly police officer is anything to be afraid of—at least not in Medicine Hat, anyways.

According to the Calgary Herald, tattoo regulations can be quite different across the globe.  Apparently, applicants to the UK’s Metropolitan Police need to include pictures of their tats along with their application form, while The Big Apple takes a similar approach to The Hat, banning “visible tattoos, brands, body piercings and other art while in uniform.”  No ma’am, that NYPD officer does not have a Picasso in his pants—it’s against regulations.  But I think Calgary takes the most sensible approach.  The Herald quotes CPD policy, which states, “Tattoos deemed offensive, unprofessional, or ones that ‘undermine the dignity or authority of law enforcement’ must be covered up,” adding that the chief has the final say as to what’s acceptable.  Makes more sense than a ban across the board, if you ask me.

Y’know, when Jason Kenney called this guy a “complete and utter asshole,” he might have had a point…

Posted by gruesomegreg on

Thomas Lukaszuk, the Alberta deputy premier famously referred to as a “complete and utter asshole” by federal immigration minister Jason Kenney in an email that was leaked to the interwebs, has gone a long way towards proving the Honourable Minister right with a callous post he made on Facebook yesterday.  After a mudslide killed four people and stranded hundreds, including some 600 people at Fairmont Hot Springs in B.C., Lukaszuk posted a picture of the mud-covered resort on his wall, along with the cheeky caption “Fairmont in Hot Springs has a good deal on rooms today. If a little bit of mud doesn’t bother you, book now!!!”  After quickly creating a buzz with his remarks, Lukaszuk deleted the post and took to Twitter to apologize, tweeting “Sorry for my [Facebook] post. I’m out of Canada and was not aware of the scope of the situation in BC.”  Guess he left his brain (and quite possibly his heart) back home in Edmonton…

As the National Post points out, this isn’t his first display of douchey behaviour, either.  While on the campaign trail back in April, he allegedly got in a shoving match with an ailing senior citizen, then attempted to press charges.  As the Canadian Press reported at the time, “Lukaszuk alleged that the man who opened the door immediately recognized him, swore, and ordered him off the property while punching him.”  But the alleged assailant later told the CP, “I’m 67 years old, I’ve got severe asthma, I’m in the final stages of liver failure. I don’t know how much longer I’ve got to live. I couldn’t punch my way out of a wet paper bag.”

Now, if this comment came from some insignificant back-bencher a la Rob Anders, one could easily just roll their eyes, shake their heads and ask “Why did we vote for this guy again?”  But the truly scary thing is that Lukaszuk wields the kind of power in the provincial government a guy like Anders could only dream of.  If, God forbid, something were to happen to Premier Alison Redford, this man would be the leader of Alberta, at least until the PC party officially names her successor.  And this right here is one of the reasons why I moved to Ontario in ’05.  (Do I even need to mention that Lukaszuk’s from Edmonton?)

If you wanna get a crowd to sing the national anthem in Calgary, whatever you do, don’t play it in French!

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The Greatest Outdoor Show on Earth has gotten into some hot water lately due to its decision to drop the French part of its recording of the national anthem.  According to a Stampede spokesman, this wasn’t a case of racism (Quebecois isn’t even a race, anyways) but rather a measure taken to increase crowd participation.  “Our community said they wanted to be able to show their patriotism during the anthem and that’s why we made the decision to go back to the English version,” he said.  Because, let’s face it, their community doesn’t speak French.

As the Globe and Mail reports, “Of the 120 contestants competing in the rodeo events at the so-called Greatest Outdoor Show on Earth, not a single cowboy or cowgirl hails from a province east of Manitoba.”  The Globe also states that the only time they sing the anthem in French at McMahon Stadium is when the Montreal Alouettes are in town—never mind that none of their American-born players are able to sing along.  Even Edmonton, which actually has a French university, had booked an Anglophone country singer to perform “O Canada” at the ’02 Grey Cup until the mayor of Montreal complained.  (Of course, the Als were taking part in that contest as well.)  Not to mention that French was considered a “foreign language” in a recent Calgary court case, which had some people (out east) up in arms…

That said, you’d be hard-pressed to find any French-language media coverage of this mixup—aside from national chain Radio-Canada, the French CBC—and here’s why.  The only people who sing the national anthem en français are not Quebecois pures laines, but rather former French immersion students like myself who grew up singing it at school assemblies.  And speaking of Grey Cups, I was there in Montreal in ’08, where the singer on the field performed a bilingual version of the anthem, but you’d be hard-pressed to hear anybody in the stands singing along.  What, did you really think the separatists would know all the words?  (Incidentally, there is a song called “Ô Kébèk,” but I don’t think too many people know the words to that one, either…)

Who’s to say he didn’t just eat a real tough cut of Alberta beef?

Posted by gruesomegreg on

A couple weeks after a Miami man helped himself to a homeless open-face sandwich, Calgary police believe they encountered a man intoxicated by “bath salts” in the southwest part of the city, according to the Calgary Sun.  And apparently, they’re not just for dinner anymore.  The cops were called to the Bridlewood home at 8:30 in the morning Saturday by the parents of a male in his twenties, who were reportedly “fearful of his behaviour.”  (And no, that doesn’t mean they caught him jerking it to kiddie porn, either…)

In fact, it got to the point where the man had to be restrained.  ”In the process (of controlling him) they discovered that he had an extremely high pain tolerance and he was acting very aggressively and combatively,” an inspector told the Sun.  And to think, the Stampede doesn’t start until next weekend…

Hey, that might be a way to get the animal activists off of our backs.  Replace the raging bulls and bucking broncos with drugged-up ravers, and see how many cowpokes can last 8 seconds on top of them.  I know I’d pay to see that!

26 traincars and he didn’t die? Blame it on the alcohol…

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Alcohol has been known to give people the illusion of super-human strength, but it seems it can also provide invulnerability as well—provided that you’re passed out.  The Calgary Herald is reporting that a man from Crowsnest Pass, Alberta passed out on the train tracks somewhere around Elko, B.C.  By the time he woke up, 26 rail cars had run over him—and yet he emerged without a scratch.

“Amazingly, I don’t know how you wouldn’t wake up even being that passed out drunk, how you wouldn’t wake up from that train rumbling over top of you with the brakes screeching,” RCMP Sgt. Dave Dubnyk told the Herald.  “Until this, I wouldn’t have known that a person could actually fit under (there) especially the engine of the train.”

Alas, the article doesn’t state what the man was drinking, but rumour has it that Coors Light already has their marketing department thinking up ways to exploit this.

COMMENT OF THE DAY: On second thought, they can keep my 300 bucks…

Posted by gruesomegreg on

From: http://www.calgaryherald.com/news/Wildrose+promises+give+energy+surplus+cheques+Albertans+with+video/6398150/story.html

The provincial election campaign is heating up in Alberta, with Wildrose Party leader Danielle Smith promising to bring back the energy surplus cheques–a bit hit under Ralph Klein in ’06–if her party is elected to form the next government.  But unlike King Ralph’s parting gift to his loyal subjects, this pre-election proposal has come under fire by those who’d rather see the money spent elsewhere, people like this guy:

I guess we know who he’s voting for then, eh? ;)

COMMENT OF THE DAY: Wait, you mean Santa doesn’t really exist!?

Posted by gruesomegreg on

From: http://www.vancouversun.com/news/dead+Alberta+home+RCMP/6116455/story.html

Although the Conservative government has stated that it doesn’t want to bring back capital punishment, regular conservatives seem to have other ideas, with a recent cop killing in rural Alberta bringing the issue back into the spotlight (for the umpteenth time).  While you could say that murderers might not take into account that killing someone could cost them their life, this commentor goes even further:

 

I like how he begins his sentence with “Lordy Lord” then implies that the bible’s not factual.  Could he not find a more atheistic exclamation?  Mind you, I suppose a harsher epithet might be removed by the moderators—after all, the Vancouver Sun is not owned by Sun Media, where anything goes (especially in regards to McGuinty).