Edmonton • Heritage Preservation

history in the unmaking?

Dolores Nord is upset that the city has reduced the number of historic buildings eligible for funding in her neighbourhood from 40 to 25.

The Community of Oliver Group, of which Nord is president, approached the city with a survey of 300 potentially historically significant buildings two years ago. The city hired a consulting group to research the buildings. That review reduced the Oliver Group’s list from 300 to 40 properties.

Now the city’s heritage department has called a public meeting on February 7, but said that only 25 properties are on their list. 

The Oliver community has invested thousands of volunteer hours into this project, says Nord, and she wants to see results. “You have to leave some old in a community,” she says.

Robert Geldart, the city’s principal heritage planner, says that after he received the consultant’s report, the city’s Historical Resources Panel reviewed the list and took off an additional 15 properties, declaring them ineligible for municipal funding.

The public meeting takes place at the Oliver Community Hall from 7 to 9 p.m.

ANGELA BRUNSCHOT

EDMONTON • lecture

iggy gets jiggy

Political junkies were expecting a row at the lecture by deputy Liberal Party of Canada leader Michael Ignatieff at the U of A last week. Vitor Marciano, a member of the Conservative national council, sent out a rallying cry a week before the event, asking his members to attend the lecture to challenge Ignatieff’s stance on the Afghan mission. 

Ignatieff has been widely criticized from both the right and the left for flipflopping on Afghanistan and Iraq. While a human rights professor at Harvard, he was a vocal supporter of the war in Iraq. But during his run for the Liberal leadership, he backed away from those views. 

In his lecture, Ignatieff said Canada must embrace the fact that Afghanistan is a combat mission for good reason. Ignatieff feels that the number of Canadians killed (which now stands at 78) would be higher if Canada had taken on a peacekeeping role instead. “You can’t protect people with blue berets and a sidearm,” Ignatieff said. “You’ve got to have bulked-up capabilities. You’ve got to go in there with flak jackets, you’ve got to have armour.”

Conservatives in the room found little to argue with as Ignatieff argued that Canada needs to start flexing its international muscle, citing the Middle East as a good place for us to start. Ultimately, he says, the Afghan mission is Canada’s first step in taking on what he calls the biggest challenge of the century: “making sure that countries are well enough governed that they don’t blow themselves up.”

ANDREW PAUL