This is long overdue:

Ald. Ric McIver is bringing forward a notice of motion at Monday’s council meeting seeking a review on the posted speeds on multi-use pathways to ensure public safety.

Cyclists riding on city pathways are limited to a speed of 20 km/h, and violating that can result in a $50 fine.

McIver said he heard from hundreds of cyclists that the speed limit is too low and they should be able to go faster when the path is clear.

“That seems perfectly reasonable,” he said.

Perfectly reasonable is right! And the 20 k.p.h. bylaw is perfectly unreasonable, just one more deterrent against commuting by bicycle in this city (same with bridges that require cyclists to dismount to cross, bike paths that remain uncleared of snow and so on).

 … Read More

Does anybody actually read this stuff? Drew tells me he does, so here's the fifth Yuletide recipe from Bob Edwards:

Roast Turkey

Save up for months until you have price of good big bird. Then take money and send to Maple Creek for half a dozen bottles of Scotch. You won't want any turkey.

— Bob Edwards Summer Annual, 1923 (as found in Irresponsible Freaks, Highball Guzzlers and Unabashed Grafters: A Bob Edwards Chrestomathy, edited by James Martin.)

This is the last recipe in this series. If you want more Bob Edwards goodness I can post more but for now that's it. To recap, here are the previous recipes in this series: bread pudding, stewed chicken, pudding a la reine and rabbit stew.

Animal rights types won't like this one, but here goes:

Rabbit Stew

Take a good fat cat and give it a bat over the head in the cellar. Remove skin and dismember with sharp knife. Put in pan with a little water and allow to simmer slowly for a couple of hours. Season to taste.

— Bob Edwards Summer Annual, 1923 (as found in Irresponsible Freaks, Highball Guzzlers and Unabashed Grafters: A Bob Edwards Chrestomathy, edited by James Martin.)

First recipe is here, second is here and third is here.

Had enough of Bob's recipes yet? Here's the third installment:

Pudding a la Reine

Take down flask from shelf and pour stiff horn down your throat. Whip five or six eggs into a fine lather and pour in a quart of milk. Add cupful of sugar. Have another drink. Add a little minced onion and the contents of a can of strawberries with pepper and salt to season. Flavor with vanilla and set away to cool. If the guests are not satisfied with this, tell them to go to hell and throw the pudding out of the window. Finish the flask.

— Bob Edwards Summer Annual, 1923 (as found in Irresponsible Freaks, Highball Guzzlers and Unabashed Grafters: A Bob Edwards Chrestomathy, edited by James Martin.)

The first recipe is here, and the second one is here.

OK, here's the second recipe:

Stewed chicken

Take the varicose veins of an aged chicken and wind them around the bones. Lay the flesh of the bird aside for private consumption the next day. Stick veins and bones in shallow pan and allow to simmer for a while, then serve in white sticky sauce. The latter can be procured in desired quantity from the Calgary Bill Posting Company Limited.

— Bob Edwards Summer Annual, 1923 (as found in Irresponsible Freaks, Highball Guzzlers and Unabashed Grafters: A Bob Edwards Chrestomathy, edited by former Fast Forward columnist James Martin.)

You can find the first recipe in this series, bread pudding, here.

Alright blog readers, you're in for a Yuletide treat. Each day this week I am going to post a recipe from that venerable Calgary foodie and newspaperman, Bob Edwards. (For those that don't know about Bob, he's the best journalist this city ever had.) I don't know that ol' Bob intended these recipes specifically as Christmas dishes, but regardless, they'll do.

Please note that Fast Forward Weekly isn't responsible if you retch or spew or croak after consuming any of the forthcoming recipes. I'm not responsible, either.

So with that nasty business out of the way, here's the first recipe:

Bread Pudding

Gather up all the chunks of bread that have been leftover on the plates for the past week and dump them into a bucket of water. Let them soak … Read More

The five finalists for the Cantos National Music Centre/King Eddy redevelopment are in. All five deserve credit for innovative designs that promise to break us out of our architectural no-man's land. They are all unique proposals to spur the long-awaited East Village concept.

That said, not all the offerings are equal; from the familiar to the institutional to the good concept, bad design category, Here are the outside shots for you to judge.

Allied Works, Portland Oregon.

This proposal has a unique element — you can play the building like an instrument. The specifics are light, but the whole building will come alive with the interaction of visitors.

The design is intended to celebrate our surroundings, but maybe that's not such … Read More

This is rather bizarre. After fighting against an August downtown road closure (or an "opening," as the Bow River Flow organizers call it), Ald. Ric McIver is now hopping on a bike and participating in the event — sort of.

To recap, here's a sampling of what McIver's said about the plan to close a couple lanes of Memorial Drive to traffic: 

"We're all getting the message that the public is really mad about this. I'm all in favour of block parties, but not along Memorial Drive. . . . It really is time to stop the madness." (Calgary Herald, April 16, 2009)

"Calgarians were not pleased (when they first heard about the closure). Best I can tell, they're still not pleased. This is what's wrong with council. People really believe they know better than the people who put you … Read More

Aldermen Brian Pincott and Joe Ceci are putting a motion before council on Monday, directing administration to outline a strategy to make city data more available and easily accessible to citizens.

DJ Kelly broke the story on his blog today. You can find it, including the full text of the motion here. Currently, there are already a number of reports, as well as council agendas and minutes available on the city website, but, according to Pincott, this would also make available raw data.

"We've crunched the numbers for our purposes," he says. "Now we can open it up to let people do what they want with it." He adds that the idea was first brought to him by Kelly, and others active in the online community after they saw it being done in other … Read More

Today Sport Chek opens in the downtown building that used to house beloved bookstore McNally Robinson.

I lamented the bookstore's absence in a column last week. After the column ran, I was contacted by the Encorp Group, the property management company that sold the building to McNally Robinson five years ago. (Encorp does a lot of work with historical buildings — for example, they own Art Central and the storied Alberta Hotel building downtown.)

Here's what Encorp president David Neill has to say about McNally's departure from Calgary: "Bad corporate citizenship, pure and simple." 

What follows is the backstory as told by Neill. Encorp bought the Clarence Block building in 1998, and soon afterwards, actively courted McNally … Read More