Lacombe

Earlier this year, Protein Industries Canada announced a project and partnership with agriculture companies to help improve plant-based products including cheese. Partnering with Daiya Foods, Ingredion, Ingredion Plant Based Specialties (IPBPS) and Lovingly Made Flour Mills; the goal is to use Canadian grown crops such as peas and faba beans to help improve the taste, texture, and overall quality of plant-based cheese.  

Big Brothers Big Sisters (BBBS) of Lacombe and District is seeking donors to support its Adopt-A-Family program.

"We support families in the community as well as families and Big Brothers and Big Sisters that are in need through the holiday season. We provide them with gifts and essentials by working with a donor," explained BBBS executive director Brianna Berthiaume.

She says they're looking for individual donors or companies to support a family in need.

2025 Operating Budget

Lacombe City Council has approved the 2025 Operating Budget, which includes a tax rate increase of 2.86%.

The tax rate increase is below Council's original direction to Administration of 3.2% and aligns with Council's commitment to keep increases at or below the Consumer Price Index (CPI).

The total Operating Budget for the City is $49.4M, including utilities.

A group of Chinook’s Edge students are developing career ready skills in veterinary science this year. Fourteen students from nine Chinook’s Edge Schools are enrolled in the Veterinary Technical Assistant Certificate (VTA) program at Olds College. One of those students is Rilynn Ulry, a Grade 11 student from Ecole Olds High School.

“I’m loving the VTA program,” says Ulry. “I’ve always wanted to pursue a career with animals. I was very excited when I found out this program was offered in high school!”

For the fourth consecutive year, PBR (Professional Bull Riders) Canada’s elite Cup Series will return to Red Deer, launching the 2025 season for the nation’s premier series with the PBR Red Deer Classic, at the Peavey Mart Centrium at Westerner Park on February 1.

PBR Canada’s Cup Series regularly features Canada’s best riders alongside some of the organization’s top international athletes, squaring off against the rankest bucking bulls from across the nation.

The PBR Red Deer Classic will mark the 2025 season launch for the PBR Canada Cup Series.

Ponoka's Enchanted Forest Festival of Trees is back again this year from Nov. 21- 23 at the Stagecoach Saloon (Stampede Grounds).

The event will kick-off with an Open House Viewing of Trees on Nov. 21 from 4 p.m. to 8 p.m. This will give people a chance to get a first look at the trees and browse the Christmas Treasure Gift Shop. Cash donations will be accepted as well as donations for the food bank.

A Cochrane man faces five charges related to human/sex trafficking that occurred between 2004 and 2007.

A nine-month investigation by the RCMP led to the arrest of 47-year-old Darren Routhier on Nov. 7 on charges of human trafficking, receiving financial benefits from the trafficking of a person, sexual assault causing bodily harm, unlawful confinement and extortion.

He has been released on conditions to have no contact with the victims of the investigation and is scheduled to next appear at the Alberta Court of Justice in Cochrane on Nov. 26.

President-elect Donald Trump's promise to slap an across-the-board tariff of at least 10 per cent on all imports including from Canada is unlikely to apply to Canadian oil, energy experts are predicting.

The threat of the tariff is causing a lot of concern north of the border, where the Canadian Chamber of Commerce said such a tariff could take a $30-billion bite out of the Canadian economy.

A proposed class-action lawsuit against the Canadian government says Indigenous people removed from their communities and placed in group homes beginning in the 1950s suffered physical, sexual and psychological abuse that "was commonplace, condoned and, arguably, encouraged."

The Federal Court lawsuit filed this month in Vancouver says Indigenous children across the country were forcibly removed from their homes and taken "to live with strangers — sometimes hundreds of kilometres from their families and Indigenous communities."

Canada's Public Health Agency has confirmed that a British Columbia teenager hospitalized last Friday is the country's first ever human case of domestically acquired avian flu.

The agency said in a statement Wednesday that testing at Canada's National Microbiology Laboratory in Winnipeg confirms the teen did contract the H5N1 avian flu, the same strain related to viruses found in B.C. flocks in an ongoing outbreak at poultry farms.