With the pandemic changing the way people work and go to school, the Rural Municipalities of Alberta has decided to ramp up their campaign to get reliable internet to those living in rural areas.
Kara Westerlund, a Brazeau County councillor and Vice President of the RMA, says they have asked everyone to check their internet speeds and report it to the RMA. The plan is to use the data to lobby the government for increased infrastructure and technologies.
“We’ve been running the tests since 2020,” says Westerlund. The information they were getting back led them to seek more results from residents.
However, the results the RMA are getting suggest this is not the case. “We were pretty hard-pressed to find anybody that could safely say they were seeing those numbers,” says Westerlund.
She says they are finding that less than 10 percent of the responders to the test survey are seeing the 50/10 speeds they should be getting.
Westerlund says rural internet is currently the top priority for the RMA. She says the organization, which reports Alberta’s municipal districts and counties, brings it up when speaking with the different levels of government, when talking to the Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications Commission, or whenever they are speaking with someone who may be able to help with it.
She says the customer operations performance centre (COPC) was saying rural residents in Alberta were receiving 50/10 service, meaning they could download 50 megabytes per minute and upload 10 megabytes per minute. This was considered to be served and was the standard the COPC went by.
“We’re saying, ‘Hey look, your information is faulty, this is actually what’s happening. So let’s start tackling this together,’” says Westerlund.
Westerlund says while the federal government has rolled out some money to help with rural internet, all of it was spent in Quebec because they were underserved. The hope of the RMA is to bring attention to the fact that rural Alberta is in the same situation.
“We’ve got their attention now and now they’ve ramped up the conversations to how we can solve this problem,” says Westerlund. She says the RMA realizes they also need to have the Internet Service Providers and the big companies like Rogers, Bell, or Telus on board to help with the process.
Services Offered
- SEPTIC SYSTEM INSTALLATION
- NEW SERVICES DUGIN
- WATERLINE INSTALLATION AND REPAIR
- GRADE FOR FOUNDATION
- RV/PARKING PAD
- HYDRANTS AND CATTLE WATERERS REPAIRED AND INSTALLED
- COMPACTION AND PLATE TAMPING
- TRENCHING
- CULVERTS CLEANED AND REPAIRED
- FRENCH DRAINS
- DUMP TRAILER SERVICES
- ASPHALT AND CONCRETE CUTTING
- TRACKED SKID STEER WITH 78" BUCKET AND FORKS
- MINI SKIDSTEER
- LANDSCAPING
- INTEGRITY DIGS
- DRAINAGE
First it was caterpillars. Then it was rain. Then it was smoke. Then it was more rain. Then it was mosquitoes. Then it was moths. And then it was tornadoes.
I hope I have those in the right order. It’s been hard to keep track. I should probably fit blue/green algae in there somewhere too.
Either way, it’s fair to say that the summer of 2026 has been exciting, in the same way as getting a registered letter from the CRA or finding a litter of baby skunks under your garden shed is exciting.
But summer is not over yet. It’s still only early August, so there is time left to save the season.
Technically, fall doesn’t start until 6:05 pm on Tuesday September 20. Which is (writer counts on fingers, gets three different answers and gives up) somewhere between 40 and 50 days from now.
My aim is to fill that time with as much madcap fun as possible. There’s lots to pack in.
Golf would be nice. I’ve only managed to play twice so far this year. The first round wasn’t bad. The second round was absolutely dreadful. There’s no knowing what the third round might have in store. Although based on past experience, I’ve got a fairly good idea.
My wife and I will be going on a trip to Toronto to meet our brand new grandson in a couple of weeks. We’re very excited about that obviously. And I hear Canada’s largest city is lovely at this time of year. Plus my son in law knows a place where they sell the best sausage rolls I have ever had. I know a thing or two about sausage rolls, and have the waistline to prove it.
We’ve already had our annual road trip to Westlock for the Elvis festival. My wife is a big fan and I’m just a boy who can’t say no. And incidentally don’t make the same mistake I made; they’re tribute artists, not impersonators.
We’ve also had a very wet visit to Jasper which was nice, although the mountains are more impressive when you can actually see them. But there are other places, some of them quite close by, that might be worth a visit assuming they haven’t been washed away or stripped by caterpillars.
But my wife and I are simple folks. Our favourite summer pastime is to sit on our deck with a cold drink and maybe a few tunes. The deck faces south and if you stretch a bit and stand on your tippy toes you can almost see a park. For a long time the deck was the nicest part of our house. That changed a few months ago when a nice man came and renovated our bathroom. But we still prefer the deck for hanging out on, because there’s a little more elbow room.
And that’s it. That’s my plan to spend the final weeks of the best part of the year. I think it’s going to be a lot of fun and I’m excited to get on with it.
Blimey, I must be getting old.
Local rugby player Lucy Cropley has returned from the Canadian Rugby Championships where she played on Alberta’s U19 travelling team.
Teams from Alberta, Nova Scotia, Ontario, British Columbia and Quebec all attended the event in Toronto that ran from July 20 to 26. Cropley was one of 26 players selected for the Alberta team in June this year.
Though the team didn’t excel at the tournament, Cropley says Albertans don’t have the same amount of time to prepare as some other provinces. This year, the team that headed to the championships was only formed at the end of June. Other provinces, such as Ontario, can have teams that are formed in February.
“It was a really good experience,” says Cropley. “They are definitely a bit harder to compete against because they have been practicing and have known each other for a lot longer.”
She says regardless of how they did at the tournament, she was grateful for the opportunity to play on the team.
Cropley has been playing rugby for five years, starting out with the Frank Maddock Warriors.
She says over the years there have been a lot of highs and lows with the sport. Sometimes she has felt discouraged if she hasn’t made a team, even wondering if it was something she still wanted to pursue.
“It’s definitely a sport where you just have to keep trying, keep showing up, and there will be an outcome [based] on how hard you try,” she says.
Cropley didn’t score a spot on Team Alberta on her first try. She says she’s been trying to get on the team for a couple of years, but with every setback she worked hard to learn the lessons that were there. Then, when she tried out for the U19 team, she got it on her first try, ensuring she can play on the team in 2027 as well.
During her time playing rugby, Cropley has played for several teams. During the spring she plays with the Warriors, but during the fall and winter the sport has to be played indoors. As there isn’t an indoor sports centre in Drayton Valley, Cropley plays on an Edmonton team during that time.
Rugby can be played with different numbers of players on the field. There are the sevens, where each team has seven players on the field, and then there are the fifteens. The type of rugby played follows a pattern, says Cropley. In the fall, there are more sevens tournaments, culminating in the Alberta Rugby Championships in January.
Cropley made it onto the Alberta sevens team last January and ended up playing at a tournament in Vancouver in March.
Heading into the spring, there are more games of fifteens played, which is what they played at the recent championships.
Cropley says one of the aspects of rugby that she really enjoys is the camaraderie between the players. She says that at the level she’s playing at, her teammates have a good understanding of the sport and they can work well together.
“It’s not so much about the sport that you’re involved with; it’s more about the community and the friendships and stuff like that,” she says.
Cropley says it’s great to meet people from different areas who have had different life experiences than she has.
From August 2 to 9, Cropley will be at the U18 Canada West Development Camp in Victoria, where she could be selected to play for the U18 Team Canada.
“It should be a really great experience,” says Cropley. “Even if I don’t end up making it further on from that, it’s still great to have that level of coaching, and hang out with the people that are there.”
Right now Cropley is taking a gap year between high school and college so she can upgrade some of her courses, but she is planning to pursue a rugby scholarship when she does go to post-secondary.
I grew up in Glasgow in the high and far off time they called the 1970s. Back then I used to assume that everybody wished they were Scottish. It just made sense. We were the best at football, we had the coolest accents and we had the most interesting history. Later in life I discovered that actually, we were not the best at football after all. (Damn you Spain with your natural ability and team work!*) There are other places that have interesting history too. And regardless of what their accents sound like, most people do not wish they were Scottish. Generally speaking people are happy to be from, well, wherever it is they come from.
That’s almost universally true, except for a few days in the middle of February when an alarming number of folks like to pretend they’re Irish, in spite of the fact they aren’t.
But I digress.
Our sense of heritage is a funny thing. I’ve lived in Canada more than half of my life and in Drayton Valley for longer than I lived in Glasgow. This is undeniably my home and I’ve no desire to live anywhere else, even supposing I could find somewhere else that would have me. Life here has been good to me and in any case, if I wanted to leave town my wife wouldn’t let me.
Still, even after 40 years, being Scottish is a big part of who I am. But it’s complicated. These days I think of myself as Canadian first, Albertan second and Scottish, well, not third, but almost as a separate and unrelated part of my identity, like being bald or liking cheeseburgers.
When I had children of my own I felt it was important that they grew up feeling very definitely Canadian. Don’t get me wrong, I absolutely wanted them to know about their Scottish heritage, which is something I’m very proud of. But they were born in Canada with a Canadian mother, Canadian aunts and uncles and Canadian cousins. The Scottish bit is there, of course, but from their mother’s family there’s some German and some Russian, along with a good slice of Prince Edward Islander and yes, there’s a little bit of Scottish from that side too.
Which I think made them typical Albertans. Their background was cobbled together from a very mixed bag of people who made their way to Western Canada going back for more than a century to their maternal great grandparents. I’ve always felt that our incredible blend of backgrounds is one of the things that makes this such a great place to live. There is strength in our diversity and we all bring some added flavour to our cultural mix. It’s why the prairies are dotted with Ukrainian churches. It’s why we have so many French place names and it’s why almost every small town in Alberta has a Chinese restaurant. It’s a unique and ever-changing blend, and it makes us who we are. Somehow, when we come together, we create something that is greater than the sum of its parts.
So this year on Heritage Day. I’ll be reflecting that being Scottish is great. But being Canadian is pretty cool too.
*Also Argentina, France, England, Morocco, Mexico, Japan, Senegal, Cape Verde …
Bart Guyon is no longer Reeve of Brazeau County.
A news release issued by the County last Friday afternoon said Guyon had submitted his resignation effective immediately citing health reasons. That came on the heels of a pair of closed door council meetings. The first of those was held July 21. Council moved into private session a few minutes into the regularly scheduled meeting to discuss a last minute addition to the agenda regarding council conduct. Sections 26 and 30 of the Access to Information Act were cited as reasons. Those sections relate to cases where disclosure would be harmful to intergovernmental relations and where disclosure would be harmful to economic and other interests of a public body. Gwendolyn Stewart-Palmer, the County’s lawyer, joined the meeting by telephone. The closed session ended at 9:59 am to allow for a scheduled public hearing. The rest of the council meeting continued as normal with Guyon in the chair.
There was a second closed session later in the day to discuss a number of issues, including council conduct. That was followed by a motion to hold a special council meeting on Friday morning to “finalize council conduct decisions.”
Friday’s meeting began at 9:03 am. The draft minutes show that Guyon left three minutes later. The meeting continued in his absence for a little over an hour. According to the draft minutes, when council came out of closed session they unanimously passed a motion “that effective immediately the Reeve be removed as spokesperson of the County and that those responsibilities revert to the Deputy Reeve.”
However, a review of video from the public portion of the meeting available on the County’s Youtube channel appears to show a motion with different wording with the Reeve “removed from all duties of the County and that those responsibilities revert to the deputy reeve.”
At 2:45 pm that day, the County sent out a news release saying Guyon had resigned.
“On behalf of Council, I want to thank Bart for his service to Brazeau County, and to wish him well as he prioritizes his health,” Deputy Reeve Dallas Ekstrom said. “Our focus now is on continuity, making sure residents remain well-served and well-represented, and on managing this transition responsibly. Council will take the steps required to fill the vacancy, and we’ll keep residents informed as we do.”
The news release added that “out of respect for Guyon’s privacy, council will not comment further on the circumstances of his decision at this time.”
The Free Press reached out to Guyon for comment, but had not received a response prior to our deadline. It remains unclear what impact the council conduct discussion had on later events, or if the two are completely unrelated.
Guyon has been known to have health problems in recent years. Furthermore the minutes of last week’s meetings are still in draft form and are potentially subject to amendment to correct any errors before being approved by council.
Guyon has been prominent in municipal politics for decades. He was first elected to council in 1992. While he was out of politics for some of the intervening years, he was elected as reeve in 2014 and has served in the position ever since. In the most recent election, held in October of last year, he took 1,136 votes to 858 for challenger Pat Vos.
“You put your neck out on the line to try to do the things that you think people want you to do,” he said at the time. “It’s good to get validated. It wasn’t easy; it was a lot of work.”
A by-election to choose Guyon’s replacement has been set for November 2.
Last Monday, the new Drayton Valley Medical Clinic held its grand opening, welcoming two new doctors and staff to the facility.
Mina Bolos, the co-owner of IDA Malone Pharmacy, says he and co-owner Heidi Nasrallah funded the new clinic on their own in the hopes of helping residents get a local GP and to give the other community GPs a bit of a reprieve from their heavy workload.
Bolos and Nasrallah’s pharmacy started out at the previous Malone Clinic. When that clinic was shut down, they moved to their new location on 50th Street three years ago. It wasn’t long before they decided to work on building another clinic in the community.
“Everybody strives to get a doctor here,” says Bolos. “Through the communications and connections and everything, we’ve got two doctors.”
Dr. Nosakhare Ologbosere, who goes by Dr. Nosa, started at the clinic on June 1, while Dr. Samuel Nelson started out on July 20.
Bolos says they started working on the idea about eight months ago, but it was challenging to get a doctor to come to the community. He says he and his partner love to serve the community, and he was happy to find Nelson and Ologbosere willing to relocate to do the same.
Brazeau County Reeve Bart Guyon and Deputy Mayor Brandon Boehm, along with many of the councillors, were present for the event, offering a placard and gifts to welcome the doctors.
“You guys aren’t just needed, you’re wanted,” said Guyon. “People are going to be lined up to sign up to get a doctor.”
“You’ve gone through the work, you’ve brought some doctors into town, which I know has been a challenge, specifically in this town for the last few years,” said Boehm. “We want to thank you for doing that.”
Both Nelson and Ologbosere say they are happy to be in Drayton Valley and they plan to stick around.
“Since we’ve been here, we’ve met the community, and they have been very, very lovely,” says Ologbosere. “It’s been a pleasure working here, and we have the best team.”
“In this day and age, in this country, in this province, that is absolutely unacceptable,”
She says they are encouraging anybody to hop on and check out their speed. It’s a quick link and it’s easy. “A lot of people are fascinated by it,” says Westerlund.
It was Covid that really highlighted the issue for the RMA. Westerlund says they heard stories about parents driving into town with their kids and parking somewhere with free WiFi so their kids could attend classes.
“In this day and age, in this country, in this province, that is absolutely unacceptable,” she says.
She says lack of internet is hindering business growth, the education of children and college students, and those who rely on the internet to work from home.
Westerlund says they are well aware that fiber isn’t going to work for rural residents, but they are open to “any and all” technology that will help fill the gap. She says there are some technologies there, such as StarLink. However, the cost is not necessarily affordable for everyone.
“We’re not here to promote one company over the other, or one technology over the other, we’re simply saying, ‘Hey look, this is what’s actually going on,’” she says.
Anyone who wishes to participate in the speed test can visit www.RMAlberta.com/speed-test.
Seasons in the sun (and rain, and smoke)
First it was caterpillars. Then it was rain. Then it was smoke. Then it was more rain. Then it was mosquitoes. Then it was moths. And then it was tornadoes.
Perseverance pays off on rugby field
Local rugby player Lucy Cropley has returned from the Canadian Rugby Championships where she played on Alberta’s U19 travelling team.
More than just a bald guy who likes cheeseburgers
So this year on Heritage Day. I’ll be reflecting that being Scottish is great. But being Canadian is pretty cool too.
By-election set after Guyon resigns
A news release issued by the County last Friday afternoon said Guyon had submitted his resignation effective immediately citing health reasons. That came on the heels of a pair of closed door council meetings. The first of those was held July 21.
