Latest news with #CalgaryPetroleumClub
Calgary Herald
4 days ago
- Business
- Calgary Herald
Parker: Jan Eden recognized as longstanding Calgary booster
Last week, to a packed room in the Calgary Petroleum Club, an event was hosted by a group of Calgarians who felt it was time to honour Jan Eden for her longstanding commitment in promoting this city. Article content For the past 28 years she has organized lunches and dinners for executives who have moved to Calgary, to make them and their spouses feel welcome and to introduce them to people she felt they would benefit from meeting. Article content Eden's idea grew from her experience after moving here with her lawyer husband from Toronto and hosting his clients at their Riverdale Avenue home. A neighbour asked her if she would have a dinner party for a businessman moving here from Toronto to introduce him to some Calgary people he might enjoy meeting. It was quite the success as he met his future wife in Eden's kitchen. Article content Article content Eden is still the 'Queen of Connections' and every year she organizes welcoming lunches or dinners for new Calgarians to meet others. She stresses she is not an event planner, but rather when she hears of an executive moving here, she does some research into appropriate introductions for that person. Over the years, many who have been invited remain as friends or have benefitted from a business relationship, as well as having a good experience eating at places like Centini, Teatro and Hy's, as well as The Eden Bistro in Inglewood, opened eight years ago by her son Robert and his wife Nadine. Article content Article content Her work bringing people together deserves recognition as she's a real Calgary booster and one of the city's best communicators. Besides her New Calgarian events, Eden also arranges 'Conversations That Matter' lunches for her clients. At one, she had Jessica Faulds tell her story on conquering MS to 60 people at a Centini lunch. Eden is helping Faulds, a client, write a book about her 18-year MS battle. Article content After her marriage broke up and she was left to look after three children with no support, Eden needed to look for work. The Four Seasons Hotel (now Marriott Calgary Downtown) was opening, and with no experience in the hospitality industry, she talked her way into becoming the sales director, receiving six promotions within the year. Article content Having met with many business executives over the years, Eden knew she could be a successful executive coach and help business people think and execute their plans differently. Boldly, she picked Ottawa executives as a target and sent 100 handwritten letters to CEOs there inviting them to breakfast, lunch or dinner, and 50 came. Asking questions about the advice they needed, Eden signed up 10 on year-long contracts; they told others about conversations with Eden and she had 10 more within three months.
Fox News
10-03-2025
- Business
- Fox News
DAVID MARCUS: Trump's Canada tariffs take toll on would-be Conservative Prime Minister Pierre Poilievre
CALGARY, Alberta – The Calgary Petroleum Club is exactly what you would expect: dark wooden walls, fine decor, and rugged-looking wealthy men in jackets with no ties who can probably buy the whole West Virginia town where I live. This is where I met up with Gary Mar, a businessman and former government official, to see how President Donald Trump's tariffs are impacting Canadian politics. Mar served from 2007-2011 as minister-counselor of the Province of Alberta to the United States of America, and still has a hand in national politics. I wanted to know about the surge in support that the Liberal Party, which chose Mark Carney as its new leader this week, has experienced since President Trump began launching tariffs, and how Conservative Party leader Pierre Poilievre can respond as the Canadian election heats up. "There are two ballot issues," Mar said. "First, who is best able to deal with President Trump, and second, who is best able to run the economy?" Obviously, the tariff situation, or as Canada calls it, the trade war, colors both of these issues. Mar said the key is "to understand Trump's motives for the tariffs," and he offered four possibilities: Increase U.S. manufacturing, generate revenue for tax cuts, balance the trade deficit, and/or create leverage for non-trade issues, in this case fentanyl coming over the Canadian border. As a former diplomat, Gary found the fourth use of tariffs most objectionable, but what he was really asking was, what does Trump want or need from Canada to make this stop? In the absence of an answer to this question, Poilievre is in a dicey situation. Ever since Conservative Party leader offered support to the anti-vaccine-mandate trucker protest in Ottawa in 2022, he has been viewed in Canada as aligned with Trump. But today, Trump is public enemy No. 1, and Poilievre's party has bled 20 points in the polls in two months. Carney and Liberals are already showering the Canadian airwaves with ads tying Poilievre to the U.S. president. I asked Mar if Poilievre would be better off politically today if Trump were to praise or insult him. He didn't even hesitate, saying "it would be better if Trump insulted him." Somehow, this Conservative leader and would-be prime minister has to find a way to be frenemies with Trump, like the younger brother who doesn't take any guff from the older, to show he can work with Trump while also defending Canadian honor against a U.S. president threatening his proud nation's sovereignty. This is because everyone in Calgary, including Mar, has told me that Canadian nationalism, until recently almost an anachronism, is at levels they have never seen before. Trump's constant trolling about making Canada the "51st state" is undoubtedly another factor. The election, at soonest, will take place sometime in April. If the tariff issue is resolved quickly, it will free Poilievre up to campaign on the issues he wants to focus on, and I ran smack into one of them accidentally in Calgary on Sunday. As I turned the corner amid a morning constitutional, I saw about 40 or 50 mostly women, with signs demanding Canada no longer allow biological men in women's prisons. There I spoke with Heather Mason, who was incarcerated when the policy allowing men was introduced. Mason, and all of the other women there, had a clear message: "It has to stop." Poilievre agrees, and has publicly stated he will ban men from women's prisons. These are the kinds of issues that conservatives in Canada, like their cousins to the south, want to focus on. But with tariffs sucking all the news oxygen out of the media, they can't. To be sure, Trump's job is not to win elections for conservatives in Canada, it is to do what is in the best interest of the American people. But surely, on some level, America's interest is tied to a good, functioning relationship with our closest trading partner to the north. The scuttlebutt in the Great White North is that Liberals want a new election ASAP. They feel like they have the mojo, so the sooner, the better. Politically they want this trade war, as they put it, raging as Canadians cast their ballots. "There are two things that increase Canadian nationalism, war and sports, and we have both," Mar quipped, referring to the "trade war," and the USA vs Canada hockey rivalry's revival. In that kind of environment, Poilievre may need to punch back at Trump, but in a friendly way, the way brothers do. But that is a very fine line to walk. How he manages that challenge could define U.S. Canadian relations for a very long time to come.
