Lacombe

Seniors' week in Central Alberta gets started on Monday. 

Almost 40 years ago the late Alice Modin began a campaign to start a senior's day in Strathcona County that helped pave the way for this annual event.

The events scheduled mark a week dedicated to honouring and celebrating the contributions of older adults in the community.

Check out these events across the region to take part in. 

Children in Wetaskiwin, Red Deer and other parts of central Alberta can now receive free sports equipment, thanks to a partnership between Alberta RCMP and Sport Central. 

Sport Central is an Alberta-based charity that collects, repairs and redistributes gently used sports equipment to families facing financial hardship. As part of the partnership, Sport Central is supplying ball kits to frontline RCMP officers at participating detachments. 

As Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre argues the government's plan to speed up key infrastructure projects doesn't go far enough, some Indigenous leaders are accusing Ottawa of not giving them enough time to weigh in.

The government is developing a bill to fast-track what it calls nation-building projects with a streamlined regulatory approval process as a substitute for reviews under the Impact Assessment Act, also known as C-69.

While the federal government and cities across Canada are making strides on expanding the housing supply, the provinces still need to get serious about building quality homes, a new report released Thursday argues.

No province earned a grade higher than C+ in the report assembled by the Task Force for Housing and Climate, a non-governmental body that was struck in 2023 with backing from the philanthropic Clean Economy Fund.

The task force's "report card" evaluated governments based on their policies for building homes quickly and sustainably.

Seniors Week gets started on Monday in Red Deer with a full list of activities for 55+ adults to take part in at the Golden Circle Resource Center.

The events mark a week dedicated to honouring and celebrating the contributions of older adults in the community. 

Start planning your week with these activities and check back for more events in other regions.

Red Deer Catholic Regional Schools is thrilled to announce that St. Joseph High School humanities/CTS teacher Jillian Klevyer has been selected as the winner of the Alberta School Board Association (ASBA) 2025 Edwin Parr Award for Zone 4. 

The Edwin Parr Award is named after a longtime trustee and former president of the ASBA, who established the award in 1964 to recognize excellence among first-year teachers. 

Ottawa probably can't help overhaul how municipalities raise funds in the near future, because the federal government is now focused on major, nation-building projects, Prime Minister Mark Carney said Friday

"We're building on what has worked. We're learning lessons from what hasn't," Carney said at an event held by the Federation of Canadian Municipalities.

The group represents cities and towns that have lobbied Ottawa for years to give them more independent means of financing their operations.

The national chief of the Assembly of First Nations says she doesn't blame First Nations leaders who are voicing frustration with governments promising to fast-track development in their territories in the name of national unity.

"I don't blame them. They're frustrated and they're being disrespected," National Chief Cindy Woodhouse Nepinak said Wednesday morning.

"If we're not at the table making these decisions right off the bat, this is what happens and it causes the Canadian government more problems later."

Prairie farmers may have to contend with rust this year, a disease that can significantly impact crop yields.

Dr. Kelly Turkington, a research scientist in plant pathology with Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada at Lacombe, explains that rust spores typically originate from the Pacific Northwest and the Texas-to-Nebraska corridor in the U.S. These spores, which include stripe rust, leaf rust, stem rust, and crown rust in oats, are carried by the wind and usually start appearing in the prairies in June.