Opinion

After feeling sick on the morning Dec. 27, I booked a PCR test for Dec. 29, which came back positive the following day. The result was hardly surprising, as my wife, brother, and a cousin I saw on Christmas Eve also tested positive that week, and all four of us had been suffering various degrees of cold and flu-like symptoms.

Despite being inconvenient for many families, keeping schools closed is certainly the right call as the Alberta government and health officials continue to assess the consequences of this current fifth wave of the pandemic. Driven by the highly transmissible Omicron variant, the fifth wave has already seen record-breaking case counts when it comes to new daily COVID-19 infections.

Given the lessons we've learned in the last year, we feel it's best to head into 2022 with a sense of cautious optimism, not expecting too much like we may have been guilty of at the tail end of 2020. Viruses don't care what it says on the calendar, after all. 

Dear editor, On Sunday, Jan. 2, 2022, the “Friends of 88 Society” will be hosting a bottle drive. Parent volunteers will be located at the Real Canadian Superstore just off of Veterans Boulevard, in parking lot across from the Gas Bar between 9 a.m. and 4 p.m. to collect bottles and cash donations.

After three years of reporting in Hinton, Alta. I know that pursuing storytelling as a career is a no-brainer for me. While some part of me has always known that, the fact my career continues to remind me of what I love to do is a bonus.

The death of an on-duty paramedic at the Airdrie Urgent Care centre hammers a home a message our sources have been telling us all year – that Alberta's ambulance response system is broken.

As the first five sitting weeks of the 44th Parliament come to a close, Canadians are no closer to getting an answer from this Prime Minister or his government about the inflation crisis or the rising cost of living.

While case counts and hospitalizations are still pretty bad here, the success of Alberta's vaccination campaign over the last 12 months means this Christmas should look a little more normal than the first COVID Christmas.

If you still have some last-minute Christmas shopping to do, our newsroom would like to use this space to highlight the importance of spending your dollars at local businesses.

'If improving safety for children and increasing the quality of Alberta’s already great system works against the mandate of the ATA, then the minister’s point has been made for her.'