Dreams Take Flight

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Last month I was fortunate to be invited by Tom Hutchison of Dreams Take Flight to accompany 115 children to Disneyland for the day. Dreams take Flight is in its ninth year and has taken over 900 underprivileged children from across Northern Alberta for a magical day at Disneyland. Thanks to major corporate sponsors like Air Canada, Shell Canada, Cara Foods, Edmonton Airports, The Crowne Plaza, Edmonton Oilers, The Gap, and photographers Ron Holland and Jim Korchinski and local business people like John Rudolph, Barry Stewart and Don Metz this group of local children had the day of their lives. Although there are numerous deserving charities in the Edmonton region, I think that Dreams Take Flight is one of the best as it has an immediate impact on children who otherwise would never have a chance to spend a day at Disneyland. The goal for next year's major fundraiser is $75,000.00 and will be held on March 6 / 2004 at the German Canadian Centre.

The downtown restaurant and nightclub scene continues to enjoy a renaissance with the addition of the Manhattan Nightclub on 105 Street, the June opening of Terry Vaughn's Sports Bar in the MacLeod Building, and the spectacular renovation of the Revillion Dining & Entertainment Complex by Worthington Properties which will eventually have four new restaurants and clubs with the first one being the superb Rick's Grill, which is opening it's fourth Edmonton area restaurant in October.

Congratulations to Rod Phillips on being selected to the media section of the Hockey Hall of Fame. Those of us who grew up in Edmonton in the 70's and 80's, were only able to watch at most one Oiler game a week on TV, and thus spent many a night listening to Rod describe the action to us first on 1260 CFRN and later on with 630 CHED. Although we loved his excitement levels when the Oilers scored, the true Oiler fans loved his fight descriptions the best when Dave Semenko, Marty McSorley, Dave Brown and now Georges Laraque started the lawnmower on a hapless opponent's face.

I noticed the construction has now started on the $600 million LRT extension from the University to Heritage Mall, while traffic has bogged down in almost every major traffic corridor in the past five years. Would the money not be better spent on finishing the inner ring road on 75 Street, Yellowhead Freeway (?), and 170 Street as well as eliminating pedestrian traffic lights on Stony Plain Road, 99 Street and a host of other major roadways? I can't think of another major city that allows pedestrians to block six lanes of traffic by simply pressing a button so they can cross immediately. At least we are not living in Vancouver where the poor taxpayers are being asked to pay $1.7 Billion for a single LRT link between downtown and their Richmond Airport.

Congratulations to city council for sticking to the plan to fund the renovation of Churchill Square. If we had listened to the numerous special financial interest groups on past civic projects we would not be enjoying today such fabulous buildings as the Winspear, Shaw Conference Centre, Skyreach Centre, Citadel Theatre, Commonwealth Stadium, TELUS Field and the river valley park system. All the great cities in the world have civic squares, museums, art galleries, sports stadiums and parks for their citizens and visitors to enjoy. To not proceed with this type of project for our 100^th anniversary over a relatively small amount of money would be foolish.

The public golf market is getting even better this month with the addition of Red Tail Landing Golf Course and Blackhawk Golf Course to the local golf scene. There are now over 70 public golf courses within an hour drive of Edmonton and most of them are very reasonably priced with green fees ranging from $35.00 to $75.00. Golfing in Toronto and Vancouver is the preserve of mainly private courses and the limited public courses charge $100.00 to $150.00 for green fees.