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Another sign of Red Deer returning to life – Museum + Art Gallery planning its Re-opening

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The Red Deer Museum + Art Gallery “MAG” is Re-opening 

The MAG is ready to welcome you back! The Red Deer Museum + Art Gallery plans to reopen to visitors on June 15th based on Stage 2 of Alberta’s Open For Summer Plan. Visitors can check out the travelling art exhibit APrairie Vernacular: Folk & Contemporary Art Narratives of Life On the Canadian Prairies at the Red Deer Museum + Art Gallery (MAG), showing from now until August 16, 2021. This exhibit includes over 50 artists, 9 themes with an amazing collection of work. A Prairie Vernacular is a travelling exhibition curated by Jennifer McRorie and Joanne; organized and toured by Moose Jaw Museum and Art Gallery in partnership with the Esplanade and is funded by the Government of Canada and Department of Canadian Heritage. The opening hours will be Tuesday-Saturday from 10:00am – 4:30pm.Visits can be booked on the MAG website www.reddeermuseum.com .

 

A Prairie Vernacular Exhibit examines historic and contemporary representations of the vernacular in artistic practice on the Canadian prairies, considering the relationship of folk art to contemporary art produced in Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba. These representations of the vernacular not only adopt the materials, methods and/or motivations of a folk aesthetic, but speak to shared contexts and subject matter, either reflecting on memories and histories of life on the prairies or presenting visual narratives rife with humour, fantasy, myth, politics, religion, and the prairie gothic. Artists represented in the exhibition include historic and contemporary untrained or self-taught artists, as well as academically trained artists whose works speak to the vernacular, the locality and history of the Prairie.

 

Words from Executive Director, Lorna Johnson:  

The Prairie Vernacular exhibition is a delightful and affectionate look at the Prairies, through the eyes of artists. All of the artworks reflect a deep love of place, and the personal memories, reflections and fantasies that are rooted in the prairie landscape. It is wonderful to see how the so-called folk artists have inspired some of Canada’s best-known artists to create works that celebrate prairie sensibilities. It is a lively and expansive show, and I hope visitors will soon be able to come and see it in person.  

 

Virtual Talks & Virtual Mini-Tours: 

  • Saturday, June 5, 2021 – 2 p.m.

“Indigenous Prairie Aesthetics” – Mini tour of Prairie Vernacular

  • Saturday, June 26, 2021 – 2 p.m.

“Memory and Memoria and the Everyday” – Mini tour of Prairie Vernacular

  • Saturday, July 10 – 2 p.m.

“Folk, Funk, Humor and Playfulness” – Mini tour of Prairie Vernacular

  • Thursday, July 22 – 6:30 p.m.

“Jude Griebel: The Influence of Prairie Folk Art on Contemporary Art

Practice” Artist Talk and Q & A

  • Saturday, July 24 – 2 p.m.

“Fantasy and the Surreal” – Mini tour of Prairie Vernacular

  • Saturday, Aug. 7 – 2 p.m.

“Prairie Gothic” – Mini tour of Prairie Vernacular

  • Thursday, Aug. 5 – 6:30 p.m.

“Place of Belonging” – Artist Talk and Q & A with Ken Housego

For more details regarding the exhibition A Prairie Vernacular contact Kim Verrier, Exhibitions Coordinator at [email protected]

 

Community

SPARC Red Deer – Caring Adult Nominations open now!

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Red Deer community let’s give a round of applause to the incredible adults shaping the future of our kids. Whether they’re a coach, neighbour, teacher, mentor, instructor, or someone special, we want to know about them!

Tell us the inspiring story of how your nominee is helping kids grow up great. We will honour the first 100 local nominees for their outstanding contributions to youth development. It’s time to highlight those who consistently go above and beyond!

To nominate, visit Events (sparcreddeer.ca)

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Addictions

‘Harm Reduction’ is killing B.C.’s addicts. There’s got to be a better way

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From the Frontier Centre for Public Policy

By Susan Martinuk 

B.C. recently decriminalized the possession of small amounts of illicit drugs. The resulting explosion of addicts using drugs in public spaces, including parks and playgrounds, recently led the province’s NDP government to attempt to backtrack on this policy

Since 2016, more than 40,000 Canadians have died from opioid drug overdoses — almost as many as died during the Second World War.
Governments, health care professionals and addiction experts all acknowledge that widespread use of opioids has created a public health crisis in Canada. Yet they agree on virtually nothing else about this crisis, including its causes, possible remedies and whether addicts should be regarded as passive victims or accountable moral agents.

Fuelled by the deadly manufactured opioid fentanyl, Canada’s national drug overdose rate stood at 19.3 people per 100,000 in 2022, a shockingly high number when compared to the European Union’s rate of just 1.8. But national statistics hide considerable geographic variation. British Columbia and Alberta together account for only a quarter of Canada’s population yet nearly half of all opioid deaths. B.C.’s 2022 death rate of 45.2/100,000 is more than double the national average, with Alberta close behind at 33.3/100,00.

In response to the drug crisis, Canada’s two western-most provinces have taken markedly divergent approaches, and in doing so have created a natural experiment with national implications.

B.C. has emphasized harm reduction, which seeks to eliminate the damaging effects of illicit drugs without actually removing them from the equation. The strategy focuses on creating access to clean drugs and includes such measures as “safe” injection sites, needle exchange programs, crack-pipe giveaways and even drug-dispensing vending machines. The approach goes so far as to distribute drugs like heroin and cocaine free of charge in the hope addicts will no longer be tempted by potentially tainted street drugs and may eventually seek help.

But safe-supply policies create many unexpected consequences. A National Post investigation found, for example, that government-supplied hydromorphone pills handed out to addicts in Vancouver are often re-sold on the street to other addicts. The sellers then use the money to purchase a street drug that provides a better high — namely, fentanyl.

Doubling down on safe supply, B.C. recently decriminalized the possession of small amounts of illicit drugs. The resulting explosion of addicts using drugs in public spaces, including parks and playgrounds, recently led the province’s NDP government to attempt to backtrack on this policy — though for now that effort has been stymied by the courts.

According to Vancouver city councillor Brian Montague, “The stats tell us that harm reduction isn’t working.” In an interview, he calls decriminalization “a disaster” and proposes a policy shift that recognizes the connection between mental illness and addiction. The province, he says, needs “massive numbers of beds in treatment facilities that deal with both addictions and long-term mental health problems (plus) access to free counselling and housing.”

In fact, Montague’s wish is coming true — one province east, in Alberta. Since the United Conservative Party was elected in 2019, Alberta has been transforming its drug addiction policy away from harm reduction and towards publicly-funded treatment and recovery efforts.

Instead of offering safe-injection sites and free drugs, Alberta is building a network of 10 therapeutic communities across the province where patients can stay for up to a year, receiving therapy and medical treatment and developing skills that will enable them to build a life outside the drug culture. All for free. The province’s first two new recovery centres opened last year in Lethbridge and Red Deer. There are currently over 29,000 addiction treatment spaces in the province.

This treatment-based strategy is in large part the work of Marshall Smith, current chief of staff to Alberta’s premier and a former addict himself, whose life story is a testament to the importance of treatment and recovery.

The sharply contrasting policies of B.C. and Alberta allow a comparison of what works and what doesn’t. A first, tentative report card on this natural experiment was produced last year in a study from Stanford University’s network on addiction policy (SNAP). Noting “a lack of policy innovation in B.C.,” where harm reduction has become the dominant policy approach, the report argues that in fact “Alberta is currently experiencing a reduction in key addiction-related harms.” But it concludes that “Canada overall, and B.C. in particular, is not yet showing the progress that the public and those impacted by drug addiction deserve.”

The report is admittedly an early analysis of these two contrasting approaches. Most of Alberta’s recovery homes are still under construction, and B.C.’s decriminalization policy is only a year old. And since the report was published, opioid death rates have inched higher in both provinces.

Still, the early returns do seem to favour Alberta’s approach. That should be regarded as good news. Society certainly has an obligation to try to help drug users. But that duty must involve more than offering addicts free drugs. Addicted people need treatment so they can kick their potentially deadly habit and go on to live healthy, meaningful lives. Dignity comes from a life of purpose and self-control, not a government-funded fix.

Susan Martinuk is a senior fellow at the Frontier Centre for Public Policy and author of the 2021 book Patients at Risk: Exposing Canada’s Health Care Crisis. A longer version of this article recently appeared at C2CJournal.ca.

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