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Westerner Days Attractions… multiple blasts from the past!

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From Westerner Park Communications

Dinosaurs Unearthed: Predator Versus Prey
July 17 – 21, 2019

Roaring into Red Deer this July…  
Dinosaurs Unearthed : Predator versus Prey will be a part of Westerner
Days 2019! Come face-to-face-to-teeth with 26 life-sized animatronic
dinosaurs and over 20 fossils in this new and exciting exhibition.
Discover which dinosaurs fought each other, and the damage they
created backed by Palaeontologist’s research.  Meet some species from
the Jurassic and the Cretaceous – and from around the world. Compare
your weight, or the weight of your entire family, to a T. rex!
Get Tickets
Westerner Days Fair & Exposition
July 17 – 21, 2019


Westerner Days is Central Alberta’s largest summer celebration with five days of top quality, truly authentic, action-packed entertainment! This
event has everything that people are looking for in summer festivities –
live entertainment, midway rides, free entertainment, nightly Pony
Chuckwagon Races, good food and great company!
Get Tickets
Volunteer at Westerner Days
July 17 – 21 2019

With summer approaching quick, that means the planning for Westerner Days Fair & Exposition 2019 is well underway! Each year, Central
Alberta’s Largest Summer Celebration attracts nearly 100,000 visitors to
Westerner Park. This summer-staple event is made possible through
efforts of the many dedicated volunteers in our community. 

This summer-staple event is made possible through efforts of the many
dedicated volunteers in our community. Westerner Park would like to
invite your organization to volunteer at the Saputo Kid’s Corral during
Westerner Days, July 17-21!
Volunteer at Westerner Days
Best Dressed Business | Westerner Days 2019
July 17 – 21, 2019

Let’s get creative! Decorate your business during Westerner Days and
have your team sport their best Western attire to participate in our
annual Best Dressed Business contest. The winning business will receive Westerner Days 2019 gate admission passes for their staff, plus bragging rights for the entire year!

Off-site Events | Westerner Days 2019Westerner Days Fair & Exposition invites your business or organization to host an off-site event!Hosting an off-site event offers businesses the opportunity to unite the community together in partnership with Central Alberta’s largest summer celebration – Westerner Days Fair & Exposition.
More Information & Applications for Westerner Days 2019
Upcoming Events at Westerner Park June/July 2019
 June 8  Soul Train Gala
June 11-13 Pork Congress
June 15 – 16 Alberta Paint Horse Show
June 19  Charley Pride & The Pridesmen
June 19 – 23  Quarter Horse Show
June 21 Big Bike Ride
June 22 Red Deer Highland Games
June 26 -30  Western Canadian Breeders Championship Arabian Horse
Show
June 28 Notre Dame High School Graduation
June 29  Lacombe Composite High School Graduation 
July 4 KickSTART presented by Toyota
July 11 – 13 Canada’s Gospel Music Celebration 2019
July 17 Westerner Days Parade
July 17 – 21 Westerner Days Fair & Exposition
July 17 – 21  Dinosaurs Unearthed

After 15 years as a TV reporter with Global and CBC and as news director of RDTV in Red Deer, Duane set out on his own 2008 as a visual storyteller. During this period, he became fascinated with a burgeoning online world and how it could better serve local communities. This fascination led to Todayville, launched in 2016.

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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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