Latest news with #Edmontonian
Calgary Herald
3 days ago
- Health
- Calgary Herald
How did an Edmonton girl, 12, come to represent Canada at a Washington, D.C., diabetes event?
Edmontonian Emily Gervais, 12, recently returned from Washington, D.C., where she represented Canada at the 2025 Breakthrough T1D Children's Congress — a global advocacy event that brings together around 170 youth living with Type 1 diabetes (T1D). Article content Delegates aged 4 to 17 from across the United States and international affiliates including Australia, the U.K., and the Netherlands gathered for training and storytelling July 7 to July 9. Article content Article content Article content Emily, who was diagnosed with T1D when she was eight years old, met with leaders at the Canadian Embassy and joined other youth in sharing what daily life with this chronic autoimmune disease is really like. Article content Article content Postmedia sat down with Emily and her mother, Nicole Gervais, to talk about the experience, the challenges of managing diabetes, and what they hope others took away from her journey. Article content Q&A with Emily Gervais Article content Q: What was it like being in Washington, D.C., and representing Canada at the Children's Congress? A: 'It was a big honour for me, because I was the only representative from Canada there. It was really cool. It just made me really happy.' Article content Q: How did it feel to meet other kids who also live with T1D? A: 'It really made me feel almost normal, because there were other kids who were going through the same thing as me and that I'm not different, just the same as everyone else in the room.' Article content Article content Q: What did you talk about during your visit to the Canadian Embassy? A: 'I got to talk about renewing the Special Diabetes Program to Congress and what our lives were like, what we had to go through with our medical condition.' Article content Article content Q: Has the trip changed how you think about living with diabetes or sharing your story? A: 'It definitely gave me more hope for a cure, because there's lots of people talking about recent research and cell therapy and different things that are pushing towards the cure.' Article content Q: How does Type 1 diabetes affect your daily routine, at home and at school? A: 'Sometimes in the middle of the night, my blood sugar drops, and my parents have to wake up to check on me. They don't always get much sleep because they're worried about my levels. In the morning, I love cereal, but I usually avoid it because it makes my blood sugar spike out of range.
Edmonton Journal
4 days ago
- Health
- Edmonton Journal
How did an Edmonton girl, 12, come to represent Canada at a Washington, D.C., diabetes event?
Edmontonian Emily Gervais, 12, recently returned from Washington, D.C., where she represented Canada at the 2025 Breakthrough T1D Children's Congress — a global advocacy event that brings together around 170 youth living with type 1 diabetes (T1D). Article content Delegates, aged 4 to 17, from across the United States and international affiliates including Australia, the U.K., and the Netherlands gathered for training and storytelling July 7 to July 9. Article content Article content Article content Emily, who was diagnosed with T1D at age 8, met with leaders at the Canadian Embassy and joined other youth in sharing what daily life with this chronic autoimmune disease is really like. Article content Article content Postmedia sat down with Emily and her mother, Nicole Gervais, to talk about the experience, the challenges of managing diabetes, and what they hope others took away from her journey. Article content Q&A with Emily Gervais Article content Q: What was it like being in Washington, D.C., and representing Canada at the Children's Congress? A: 'It was a big honour for me, because I was the only representative from Canada there. It was really cool. It just made me really happy.' Article content Q: How did it feel to meet other kids who also live with T1D? A: 'It really made me feel almost normal, because there were other kids who were going through the same thing as me and that I'm not different, just the same as everyone else in the room.' Article content Article content Q: What did you talk about during your visit to the Canadian Embassy? A: 'I got to talk about renewing the Special Diabetes Program to Congress and what our lives were like, what we had to go through with our medical condition.' Article content Article content Q: Has the trip changed how you think about living with diabetes or sharing your story? A: 'It definitely gave me more hope for a cure, because there's lots of people talking about recent research and cell therapy and different things that are pushing towards the cure.' Article content Q: How does type 1 diabetes affect your daily routine, at home and at school? A: 'Sometimes in the middle of the night, my blood sugar drops, and my parents have to wake up to check on me. They don't always get much sleep because they're worried about my levels. In the morning, I love cereal, but I usually avoid it because it makes my blood sugar spike out of range.
Edmonton Journal
17-07-2025
- Business
- Edmonton Journal
Opinion: Edmonton's zoning bylaw offers opportunities for young people
In the context of the ongoing conversations around Edmonton's zoning bylaw, it seems Edmontonians have been thinking about and talking about infill housing more than ever before. While there have been years of public engagement leading up to this moment, it is fantastic to see Edmontonians becoming more engaged on infill housing. Article content However, the youth perspective has been largely left out of the narrative. As a busy 25-year-old Edmontonian who was unavailable to speak at the recent public hearings, where city councillors rightfully approved new design regulations for infill housing, I want to share part of my current perspective in the hopes that it will help shape your perspective. Article content Article content Article content Infill housing has always been a controversial subject in Edmonton, even going back to policies such as lot-splitting and the mature neighbourhood overlay, which are now generally accepted as enabling positive infill housing. The new zoning bylaw takes it up a notch, but particularly contentious is mid-block row housing (or eight-plexes, if you want to make it sound more scary) in mature neighbourhoods. Illegal pauses of such infill housing (which would take away individual property rights) have been floated, but row housing under the new zoning bylaw has played, and continues to play an important role in tackling Edmonton's housing crisis. Article content Article content According to general building permits data in Edmonton's Open Data Portal, so far in 2025, there have been 2,073 units in row housing with five-plus units that were issued building permits — just under 70 per cent of the total number of units for apartments. There is a narrative that gentle density in mature neighbourhoods, largely through row housing, is not making a meaningful dent in housing supply. The numbers show otherwise. Before you jump in and say 'but this infill housing is not affordable!' hear me out. While new infill housing can be a bit pricey upfront (it is new after all), it creates more homes for Edmontonians using economies of scale, and opens up homes elsewhere in Edmonton when people move into the infill housing. Such added supply puts upward pressure on vacancy rates, which have consistently moved opposite to inflation-adjusted rent changes in Edmonton over the last few decades, according to vacancy and rent data I sourced from Government of Alberta datasets. The concept of supply and demand has proven to ring true for housing in Edmonton. Article content The zoning bylaw is ultimately about fairness, especially for younger Edmontonians like myself who want an affordable and livable city. Any neighbourhood that restricts infill housing forces other neighbourhoods to pick up the slack. Putting all our infill-housing eggs in the downtown basket is not fair — many Edmontonians would prefer to live closer to the ground and neighbourhood streetscape rather than in 'skyboxes,' not to mention downtown having to further subsidize the property taxes of existing low-density neighbourhoods. And limiting infill housing mid-block (the vast majority of lots) would decimate where missing-middle housing can practically be built.
Global News
09-07-2025
- General
- Global News
‘Everyone's neighbour is a magpie in Edmonton': Magpies' special place in Alberta's capital
Nita Jalkanen says she checks on the avian neighbours that fly into her Edmonton backyard to drink from her bird bath nearly every day with her dog Ariel. 'I talk to them. I say, 'Good morning or good afternoon, Mr. Magpie' and they feel safe so there's no squawking,' said the 59-year-old in an interview. 'They'll come and approach (Ariel) and play. They'll chase each other around the tree … like they are playing tag. 'They've obviously formed a friendship with my dog and with me.' Tweet This Click to share quote on Twitter: "They've obviously formed a friendship with my dog and with me." She said despite many locals being divided on their opinions of magpies, Jalkanen said the ones that visit her from their nest sitting on a tree down the boulevard brighten up her days. 'They make me happy because they're so happy,' she said. Story continues below advertisement Black-billed magpies can be seen walking, soaring and chirping in nearly every neighbourhood in Edmonton. The bird is seen in murals around town and locals sometimes wear magpie costumes for Halloween. Elly Knight, an avian ecologist with the Alberta Biodiversity Monitoring Institute, says that's why it makes sense the city declared the conspicuous, clever and chatty corvidae with striking black, blue, green and white stripes its official bird this May. 'Everyone's neighbour is a magpie in Edmonton,' said Knight, also a professor of biological science at the University of Alberta. Nature Alberta says more than 40,000 people cast their vote to choose the city's official bird. '(Magpies) won 16,018 votes in total, meaning nearly 40 per cent of Edmonton-area residents who voted chose this bird to represent their city,' it said in a post on social media. Knight said magpies aren't her first choice of bird species to represent the city. Get daily National news Get the day's top news, political, economic, and current affairs headlines, delivered to your inbox once a day. Sign up for daily National newsletter Sign Up By providing your email address, you have read and agree to Global News' Terms and Conditions and Privacy Policy 'I find magpies a little bit brash relative to the average Edmontonian,' she said. 'They're so noisy. They are also, as corvids, sometimes a little bit mean.' Tweet This Click to share quote on Twitter: "They're so noisy. They are also, as corvids, sometimes a little bit mean." Knight said they are often embroiled in turf wars with their sister species, the crow. 'They will attack each other's nests and attack each other's babies. They will also eat baby squirrels. And it's that element that I know of Edmonton is not as representative.' Story continues below advertisement Knight said their loud chirping also what makes them stand out, sometimes becoming a nuisance to locals. The high-pitched tweets are often of teen magpies looking for attention. 'They've got their full feathers but they're still kind of idiots. And so they are following their parents around basically going, 'Mom, mom, mom,' asking for food. They're learning how to be magpies in the world,' Knight said. Their low-pitched chirp is often magpies warning their relatives of a nearby predator. 'Magpies really don't like outdoor cats because they're a threat. Other than that, they don't have a lot of natural predators in the city. And so they're not really afraid of anything.' Their population has also grown in urban areas in recent decades as humans also migrate to Edmonton, Knight said. 'Part of why they're so strongly associated with urban and suburban areas is they're eating garbage,' she said, adding they also eat worms and berries. But their recognition does also make sense because magpies are more Albertan than people might think, she said. 'It's a bird Edmonton strongly identifies with,' she said. 'They're plucky, they're tenacious, they're smart. They're resilient. They're very family oriented. They stand up for each other,' she said. Story continues below advertisement She said they are monogamous creatures with a low divorce rate and elder offspring often take care of their newborn siblings. Although most magpies only live a couple of years and can produce up to nine babies, Knight added that magpies can live for 20 years in captivity. Unlike other birds, she said, magpies also tend to live in the same nest for years at a time. 'The male and the female will come back to the same location every year, which is unusual in birds to reuse nests.' They also renovate their homes, bringing in new sticks and twigs to maintain them. Some magpie nests have been found with domes above them. Magpies are also not scared of the winter seasons, Knight said, similar to the Albertans who live in the province's north. 'We don't have a lot of bird species that stick it out here year-round and I think people identify with that resilience.' Tweet This Click to share quote on Twitter: "We don't have a lot of bird species that stick it out here year-round and I think people identify with that resilience." It's tough to say whether Edmonton is 'magpie capital' as some have called the city, Knight said. There are other places in Western Canada and in western American states with large magpie populations. Jalkanen said magpies were the first things she noticed when she moved to Alberta nearly four decades ago. Story continues below advertisement 'When I saw my first magpie here in Edmonton, I said, 'Oh, what a beautiful bird.' And the person I was with said, 'We don't like those.' I still disagree with that. They're a beautiful bird, and they're given a really hard time for no real reason,' she said. 'It just makes sense to treat them nicely and respectfully. And they will do the same to you.'
Edmonton Journal
09-07-2025
- General
- Edmonton Journal
'Everyone's neighbour is a magpie': Edmonton reckons with its official city bird
Article content Nita Jalkanen checks on the avian neighbours that fly into her Edmonton backyard to drink from her bird bath nearly every day with her dog Ariel. Article content 'I talk to them. I say, 'Good morning or good afternoon, Mr. Magpie,' and they feel safe so there's no squawking,' said the 59-year-old in an interview. Article content Article content 'They'll come and approach (Ariel) and play. They'll chase each other around the tree … like they are playing tag. Article content 'They've obviously formed a friendship with my dog and with me.' Article content Article content Black-billed magpies can be seen walking, soaring and chirping in nearly every neighbourhood in Edmonton. Article content The bird is seen in murals around town, and locals sometimes wear magpie costumes for Halloween. Article content Elly Knight, an avian ecologist with the Alberta Biodiversity Monitoring Institute, says that's why it makes sense the city declared the conspicuous, clever and chatty corvidae with striking black, blue, green and white stripes its official bird this May. Article content 'Everyone's neighbour is a magpie in Edmonton,' said Knight, also a professor of biological science at the University of Alberta. Article content Article content Nature Alberta says more than 40,000 people cast their vote to choose the city's official bird. Article content Article content '(Magpies) won 16,018 votes in total, meaning nearly 40 per cent of Edmonton-area residents who voted chose this bird to represent their city,' it said in a post on social media. Article content 'I find magpies a little bit brash relative to the average Edmontonian,' she said. 'They're so noisy. They are also, as corvids, sometimes a little bit mean.' Article content Knight said they are often embroiled in turf wars with their sister species, the crow. 'They will attack each other's nests and attack each other's babies. They will also eat baby squirrels. And it's that element that I know of Edmonton is not as representative.' Article content Knight said their loud chirping is also what makes them stand out, sometimes becoming a nuisance to locals. The high-pitched tweets are often of teen magpies looking for attention.
