City officials and dozens of onlookers celebrated Wednesday as crews installed the final roofing panel on the LRT encapsulation tunnel, triggering construction of the new Central Library.
Municipal leaders, past and present, city staff and representatives from the Calgary Public Library and the Calgary Municipal Land Corporation gathered in the East Village and donned hard hats made of Lego bricks to mark the occasion.
“It means we can start a green light on the vertical construction of the new library,” said Mayor Naheed Nenshi, who thanked his predecessor Dave Bronconnier and former alderman Linda Fox-Mellway, both in attendance.
“Figuratively, and literally, the LRT encapsulation is the foundation for building that new library,” Nenshi said.
Mayor Naheed Nenshi speaks at the “topping off” ceremony of the extension of the LRT tunnel in the East Village. The completion of the tunnel allows construction of the new Central Library to begin.
The 18-month project started in February 2014 and involved 2,500 cubic metres of cement, 420 metric tonnes of rebar and over 60,000 man-hours to complete the 150-metre encapsulation.
Officials noted the structure, which serves as a foundation to the library building, was completed largely without affecting service of the LRT.
Coun. Druh Farrell said the new central library represents the single largest investment in a public cultural facility since the city hosted the 1988 Winter Olympics.
“A lot of people said this tunnel was impossible, but this is a library and to channel Alice in Wonderland we do six impossible things before breakfast,” said Farrell.
“Great libraries are hallmarks of thriving communities that embrace ways to connect citizens to one another and to the world,” said Farrell.
Work now begins on the 240,000-square-foot facility over 750 days in four phases. The $245-million library is scheduled to open in 2018.
“The location of the new Central Library … will strengthen the fabric of community life by weaving the east village, the original heart of Calgary, back into the city,” said Lyle Edwards, chair of the CMLC which oversees the development of the East Village.
“Finally, I think the East Village will become part of downtown,” Edwards said.
Janet Hutchinson, chair of the library board, thanked city council and staff for understanding the unique role libraries play in fostering an engaged citizenry.
“Taking the new Central Library from the idea stage to where we are today would not have been possible without the moral and financial support of the City of Calgary,” Hutchinson said.
The homicide unit is investigating after a man with life-threatening stab wounds was found leaving a rooming house in the city’s northwest on Wednesday morning.
A passerby called police around 9 a.m. Wednesday after a man in obvious medical distress was seen exiting a red-and-white bungalow in the 4200 block of Centre Street N.
Emergency officials arrived at the Highland Park home and rushed the injured man to hospital. EMS said the man had been stabbed.
The man succumbed to his injuries a short time later, and police quickly deemed the death a homicide.
Members from the Calgary Police Service’s tactical team were called to the scene where the victim was found, and officers located a person inside the home the victim was seen leaving.
“There was a person found in the residence who we’re treating as a witness at this point,” said Staff Sgt. Ryan Jepson.
Jepson said officers found two other people, who are also being treated as witnesses, near the home.
“We have nobody in custody that we believe responsible for this incident. Anybody we’ve located for this incident is being treated as a witness,” he said.
Police are not sure if the victim was injured inside or outside the home.
On Wednesday afternoon, police tape surrounded the home where the man was found, as well as neighbouring alleys and a nearby yard.
Investigators combed the area for clues, and officers spoke to the home’s landlord.
A Calgary police service forensics team continued their investigation at 4211 Centre St. North on Thursday morning the day after a man was found bleeding at the residence and later died in hospital.
Neighbours said several people lived in the home, and Jepson confirmed the bungalow has several suites.
A weapon was not immediately recovered.
The homicide in Highland Park marked the second suspicious death that city police attended Wednesday morning.
Muhammad Robert Heft went to Iraq in 2003 as a human shield. His experience there soured his extremist views, and today he works to help steer people away from radicalization. Key to his changing attitudes, Heft says, was his everyday interactions with people. Here, he tells the Herald's Dylan Robertson that it's those positive relationships that
Hussein Hamdani, a former member of the federal government’s national security advisory panel, has intervened in more than 10 cases of Muslims who wanted to join terror groups. The insight he’s gained from these experiences cuts deep into the problem of the radicalization of Canadians.
Here, he explains to the Herald’s Dylan Robertson, the importance of legitimate grievances of the community — from the war in Syria to racism in Canada — and the way extremists use those grievances to radicalize westerners.
TORONTO — Muhammad Robert Heft left Iraq feeling disenchanted.
He came home to Canada in 2003 after trying to help his fellow Muslims while their cities were under bombardment by the U.S. and its allies.
“It was a spur-of-the-moment decision,” says Heft, who entered Iraq days into the American invasion. “I felt like I had to help.”
Five years beforehand, the Winnipeg-born man had turned from a philandering gambler to a devout Muslim. On a business trip to Egypt, he saw TV footage of Iraqis being bombed, with children’s bodies sprawled across the streets.
He fell into a group that encouraged him to go. They loaded the blue-eyed convert up with medical supplies and brought him to the airport.
“Most of it was my ego, more than anything else. It was almost like they were questioning whether I was a real Muslim,” says Heft.
Muhammad Robert Heft in the main room of Paradise Forever’s Toronto location.
After crossing into Iraq from Syria, he joined a medical convoy looking for human shields: civilians who place themselves in harm’s way in the hopes of preventing a military attack.
He found himself in a ragtag group of violence-seeking radicals, more focused on thwarting American air strikes than caring for those on the ground.
He lasted a week, and went straight home to Canada. Within months he opened a service centre for new Muslims in Toronto.
For over a decade, Heft and his colleagues at the Paradise For Ever centre, or P4E, in the multicultural Scarborough district have taken on an approach to thwarting terrorist threats that is gaining traction across Canada: spotting people with sympathies for extremism and intervening before they commit a crime.
“Ironically, I was doing the work of deradicalization by explaining the reality I saw,” says Heft. “I use that story to try to inspire people to make more positive choices.”
I was doing the work of deradicalization by explaining the reality I saw. I use that story to try to inspire people to make more positive choices
A year ago, the RCMP said more than 145 Canadians were abroad supporting terror groups, while 90 citizens at home were being watched for aspiring to join them.
Starting this fall, the Mounties will be using an intervention approach similar to Heft’s, to try pulling these people back from the brink of radicalization. But it’s unclear whether the law enforcement agency will be as successful as the community grassroots groups.
Invading ‘crusades’
Originally, Abu Omar wanted to become an Afghan insurgent. Today, he works with Heft to dissuade people from taking up arms.
“I myself wanted to join the Taliban. I never wanted to come to Canada,” says Abu Omar — not his real name — who spoke on the condition of anonymity so he can continue his outreach role.
I myself wanted to join the Taliban. I never wanted to come to Canada
A decade ago in Pakistan, Omar began frequenting a mosque near his university, run by a fundamentalist group that actively sought young adults with nothing to do.
The mosque leadership hosted members of al-Qaida and the Taliban, a hardline Islamic political movement known for its bomb attacks and violent oppression against women.
It was 2002, and Canada and other NATO countries were months into their fight against the Taliban in neighbouring Afghanistan following the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in the United States.
At home, Omar’s secular parents filed for divorce, while chiding his long beard.
His friends from the mosque fixated on U.S. President George W. Bush’s remarks about a western crusade on terrorism just five days after the attacks. The president later clarified he wasn’t referring to Christian military expeditions conducted during the Middle Ages.
Omar planned to join the Taliban, as some of his friends had done, after finishing his university degree.
But by 2006, Omar became responsible for his mother until she remarried. Family contacts set her up with a man in Toronto.
“Once we got her married, I said, ‘Well you know what, after graduation I’ll be joining the Taliban.’ That was the plan initially. And then my mother said, ‘No, we need to go to Canada.'”
Early intervention
Researchers understand radicalization as a gradual process, where habits, beliefs and then values slowly change to the point of what they call “consolidation.”
“The evidence seems to be suggesting that unless the intervention is pretty damn early, it’s just not going to succeed,” says Lorne Dawson, a University of Waterloo cult expert who co-runs Canada’s largest terrorism-research network.
Sociology professor from University of Waterloo, Lorne Dawson is photographed on Monday, Feb. 23, 2015. Dawson appeared at the Senate National Security Committee as a radicalization expert. (James Park / Ottawa Citizen)
“They’re going to be pretty much into an insular world view that is capable of developing rationalizations to refute any counter-arguments. So then when you try to intervene, you’re actually providing food for their alternative world view.”
As Canada eyes more laws and powers for investigators, other countries are focusing on intervening much earlier than when someone boards a plane or attacks a soldier.
In 2005, the United Kingdom rolled out an early-intervention strategy called Channel, as part of its long-standing anti-terrorism policy.
The program is designed to provide intensive one-on-one mentorship, where a police officer surrounds a vulnerable young person with support from local social workers, employment counsellors, housing officials or religious leaders.
“You have to have a multi-faceted approach,” says Rashad Ali, who helped craft the program and has acted as a mentor in Channel interventions across Britain for the past five years.
“That allows us to develop an appropriate program for the individual, tailored to that individual’s needs.”
Referrals come from teachers, imams, jail wardens and other police officers who spot signs of radicalization. The Channel officer then approaches the person for a voluntary intervention.
“They may be at the periphery of plots; they may be engaged in radical activities. The idea is to stop them from moving into the criminal space,” says Ali, now a senior fellow with the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, an anti-radicalization think-tank in London.
Ali says police often know of people who hold radical views, but haven’t acted on them and can’t be charged. He notes that one of the 2005 London subway bombers, Mohammad Sidique Khan, was on authorities’ radar for years.
To prevent similar incidents, a local “Channel Panel” of officers and trusted social workers meets regularly to assess how each case is progressing. They use a framework of 22 factors that researchers have found in British residents who have executed terrorist plots.
Those factors include “over-identification with a group or ideology,” access to equipment that could harm people and “attitudes that justify offending.”
Once a panel finds these factors no longer exist, the intervention is complete, though the panel reviews each case six and 12 months later.
The program got off to a rough start.
Muslim communities turned away after publicity campaigns explicitly linked them with terrorism. Many were suspicious their information would be passed on to authorities, and some remain wary.
In 2012, Channel was expanded across the U.K. and it has since had a total of 4,000 referrals, although only about 20 per cent are taken on as cases.
You can create quite meaningful, impactful change on those individuals, and they can have a very positive message for those around them
The U.K. Home Office said accepted cases include a child who scrawled, “I want to be a suicide bomber,” in a schoolbook and a student who seemed obsessed with weapons. Two-thirds of cases involve Islamist extremism, while half as many relate to far-right groups.
British officials argue these interventions are much cheaper than criminal or intelligence investigations. But the government doesn’t publish data on how many participants end up committing terrorist offences, how long the interventions take and how many cases are abandoned.
However, academics who have been confidentially briefed on the U.K. program cite a 70 per cent success rate.
“I think it’s quite effective,” says Ali.
“You can create quite meaningful, impactful change on those individuals, and they can have a very positive message for those around them.”
‘The filters are gone’
Omar arrived in Toronto in 2006, taking a job at a Pizza Hut alongside other immigrants and Canadian-born colleagues.
“We were all just the same essentially. No one was like, ‘Oh we should bomb (Afghanistan or Iraq)’. They didn’t even know; they didn’t even care. They were living their lives,” he says.
While Omar warmed to westerners, he spent his evenings poring over online videos, obsessed by the carnage of two bloody wars. He still yearned to fight in Afghanistan.
The war in Syria inspired some Canadian, who felt a yearning to help other Muslims.
He expressed these views as a volunteer in a research project on how Muslims viewed apostasy, the abandonment of Islam. He was also frank about the punishment that Muslims who leave Islam should face, supporting the death penalty in countries whose courts follow Islamic law.
Days later, two agents from the Canadian Security Intelligence Service asked Omar to explain his views. He said he supported the Taliban, but explained he wasn’t a threat.
“I’m here under a covenant. You’ve given me protection and you’ve given me rights, and I’m not planning to do anything in Canada, if that’s what you’re concerned about,” he told the agents, who didn’t contact him again.
A new approach
In Canada, a 2007 document from the CSIS intelligence assessment branch flagged early interventions as central to thwarting terrorism at home.
“Individuals at the initial stages of radicalization are more susceptible to change or diversion than those at the latter stages,” according to the report.
“If those at the beginning are still assessing their interest in joining a group or ideology, intervention should be able, in theory, to lead them down a less dangerous path.”
Now, eight years after the CSIS memo, the RCMP is set to roll out its own intervention program, dubbed the Terrorism Prevention Program.
In September 2014, U.K. Channel officials trained 30 police officers from forces across Canada in Ottawa. The RCMP originally said it would launch its program later that year, but now aims to be fully operational by the end of 2015.
The Mounties told the Herald/Postmedia in August the delay was due to ongoing consultation with the justice system, “to ensure the program addresses these risks at different levels.”
Following the Channel method, the RCMP and urban police forces have trained 1,800 officers to recognize who is vulnerable to recruitment by terrorist groups.
When they spot someone at risk, they will notify the local “hub,” where their force’s trained officer will reach out to the person and set up appointments with local mentors, imams, job hunters, or anyone who can help.
Police who intervene focus on what they call “the pre-criminal space,” but they also won’t hesitate to arrest anyone who commits an offence.
Supt. Shirley Cuillierrier, head of RCMP external relations and leader of the terrorism program rollout, says not all interventions are complicated.
“It could be as simple as life circumstances in that individual’s life — that everything is falling apart, that there is no support. So you bring in that support and it’s amazing how people will start to look at things differently, and perhaps not see all as doom and gloom.”
Eight RCMP employees will work full-time on the project, with a $3.1-million budget, about a 10th of the annual budget for Canada’s national-security investigation teams.
Cuillierrier admits officers face a steep learning curve.
“This is a new area for police; we have never, ever dealt with this. We have dealt with crisis, conflict, criminality but this is really, really different.”
A new challenge
Around the time of Omar’s chat with CSIS in 2008, he kept seeing Heft in the news.
Since its 2003 start, Heft’s P4E centre had quickly grown from offering Islam courses and a shelter for disowned converts to becoming a wider community hub.
In 2006, police arrested the Toronto 18 cell, which wanted to blow up vans in downtown Toronto and behead the prime minister.
Heft had unknowingly persuaded some men away from the group. He was called to counsel some of the men who were eventually convicted, to help steer them away from extremism.
Heft’s frequent interviews and talk of peaceful Islam frustrated Omar, who happened to live near the centre. He drove over to pick a fight.
Instead, Heft introduced him to one of his counsellors, who asked Omar what he’d achieve by joining Afghan insurgents.
“He was like: ‘What are you going to do other than be angry, and do what? What do you have here? You have a society and you have a peaceful place where Muslims are prospering; they’re able to go pray. So why don’t you do something positive here?
“They don’t need your manpower. They know their territory better than you. What are you going to contribute? You’re not some hero.’ And you know, it made sense,” says Omar.
They don’t need your manpower. They know their territory better than you. What are you going to contribute? You’re not some hero
Heft then had a challenge for Omar. He pointed out it was un-Islamic to waste one’s time watching videos online. Instead, Heft invited him to volunteer at P4E, teaching the basics of Islam in classes for new converts.
Through teaching those classes, Omar fell in with a group of friends with strong religious convictions.
He was no longer lonely in Canada.
‘Nothing new’
With the national Terrorism Prevention Program delayed for years, several communities across Canada have started their own initiatives.
Montreal’s mayor is set to unveil a storefront centre this fall dedicated to interventions, while Toronto and Calgary police have launched their own intervention hub models, with some RCMP consultation.
Unofficially, people who have come across radicalized people have set up programs in Calgary, Hamilton and Winnipeg.
For example, Shahina Siddiqui of Winnipeg’s Islamic Social Services Association co-launched Hayat Canada, meaning “life” in Arabic.
Shahina Siddiqui, President of the Islamic Social Services Association, launched an anti-radicalization centre in Winnipeg based on a program used in Germany to deal with neo-Nazi hate groups.
The group is a spinoff of a German organization that’s spent a decade getting neo-Nazis out of hate groups, and recent years pulling Germans away from terror groups.
“Our core values (are) the best way of immunizing our youth from being sucked into extremist hate ideology,” says Siddiqui, who is training six staff on how to counsel people at risk.
Like Heft, Siddiqui’s staff attempt to dissuade local young people from terror groups, and call police if it’s not working. They both feel having a buffer between families and authorities entices some to come forward.
But these programs don’t always work.
Before last October, when Martin Couture-Rouleau killed Warrant Officer Patrice Vincent with his car near Montreal, Quebec RCMP had spent four months trying to get him help.
Family and police thought their outreach was working just 11 days before Couture-Rouleau struck, committing an act of homegrown terrorism that shocked the country.
Beyond its effectiveness, legal experts question how police can detect people in need of a pre-criminal intervention when anti-terrorism Bill C-51 — enacted this June — makes it an offence to post support for terrorism online.
Others are suspicious of more bureaucracy.
As part of their research, RCMP consulted Toronto physician Nayeema Siddiq, who has intervened in cases involving radicalization as part of the Muslim Family and Child Services of Ontario.
Similar to the Terrorism Prevention Program, Siddiq’s group assembles doctors, social workers and imams to intervene in family crises, including youth pondering violent extremism. RCMP officers studied her model to help them form their own intervention hubs, according to internal documents released to The Herald/Postmedia.
But Siddiq feels new programs like the national initiative are distracting from an underfunded and slow-to-act social services system that could have stopped people from being susceptible to radicalization in the first place.
“For me, this radicalization thing is nothing new,” says Siddiq, who launched her group a decade ago. “You’re doing things for patients you should have already been doing years ago.”
For me, this radicalization thing is nothing new. You’re doing things for patients you should have already been doing years ago
Meanwhile, Canada has no strategy for people who have returned from supporting terror groups abroad. Last October, CSIS said at least 80 Canadians had returned, and there wasn’t enough evidence to produce a criminal charge.
The federal government believes Bill C-51 will make it easier to charge returnees. The Conservatives also plan to make it a crime to travel to zones gripped by terrorism, making it easier to arrest Canadians who have returned.
Unlike Channel, Canada’s terror prevention program will strictly focus on those who haven’t yet committed an offence or joined a group abroad.
“This is an important part of an ongoing, adjusting effort,” says Public Safety Minister Steven Blaney. “We have to adjust to the evolving threat, and we are learning from experience.”
‘I’m their friend’
Omar now spends his time working as a security guard and caring for his children.
He spoke to The Herald/Postmedia at Heft’s P4E centre, whose walls cradle benches with oriental tapestry and posters explaining the basic concepts of Islam.
The centre is popular for Arabic lessons and religious counselling. Around the large wooden table, Omar is among a handful of mentors at Heft’s monthly dinners for converts.
It’s partially through these informal events that Omar himself has been able to steer at least 10 people away from joining violent groups, according to Heft.
“If it’s done in a more subtle manner, they’re more open to it,” says Omar, who acts more as a friend than a counsellor.
Omar says the young people he’s worked with are consumed by foreign policy grievances. They’re angry Canada waited four years before intervening in Syria’s brutal civil war, and for recently signing arms deals with oppressive regimes like Saudi Arabia.
It’s for that reason both Omar and Heft are skeptical of a national program funded by government money. They say official involvement will take away all credibility in the eyes of young radicals.
And they’re not sure how police will manage uncomfortable views.
Grey zones between free speech and violence
Omar still supports the Taliban.
“They should remove the government or western intervention that’s there,” he says.
“But . . . holding radical ideas and actually engaging in them, I think they’re two different things,” says Omar, who still believes violence against enemy combatants can be acceptable.
Such views are repugnant to most Canadians. Heft says Mounties will have to navigate the grey zones between free speech and violent actions when they launch their program.
When you start to want to go after people’s ideas and become a thought police . . . that’s when it gets dangerous
He says some Muslims hold other views that are outside the mainstream — for example, on homosexuality or women’s rights — but don’t attack gay people or beat their wives.
“(Omar) still has some interesting views but he’s not a threat to anyone,” says Heft, who prefers the word “disengagement” over deradicalization.
“When you start to want to go after people’s ideas and become a thought police, people like (Omar) go underground,” he says. “That’s when it gets dangerous.”
Defence lawyers in Calgary and Edmonton announced Thursday they will no longer offer a free service helping low-income Albertans who have been denied legal aid coverage, saying it’s time for the government to increase funding to the program.
In a joint news release, the Criminal Defence Lawyers’ Association in Calgary and its Edmonton counterpart said volunteer lawyers have provided free representation to nearly 900 people denied legal aid coverage, including assistance applying for a court order forcing the government to pay for their legal representation — a process known as a Rowbotham application.
Although the former Progressive Conservative government agreed to cover the cost of legal representation for any successful applicants, the lawyers’ groups said the move was only a stop-gap measure and the hundreds of Rowbotham hearings are causing an unnecessary burden on the court system.
“We’ve been doing the work legal aid would normally be doing,” CDLA president Ian Savage said.
In the past year, Savage estimated the CDLA and the Criminal Trial Lawyers’ Association in Edmonton have brought forward approximately 500 formal Rowbotham applications on behalf of people who sought their advice.
The lawyers’ groups said they will cease providing free assistance to Rowbotham applicants on Nov. 1 and called on the government to increase funding to Legal Aid Alberta, the provincial society mandated to provide subsidized legal assistance to low-income Albertans.
“It’s not covering the working poor. We estimate the (900) people we saw is a fraction of the actual number of people out there who needed legal aid but gave up when they were denied coverage,” said Savage.
Funding for Legal Aid Alberta was a frequent flashpoint between the former PC government and the legal profession, especially since a precipitous decline in investment income from the arm’s-length Alberta Law Foundation that used to cover a much larger portion of the program’s operating expenses has left it increasingly dependant on government dollars.
Premier Rachel Notley consistently called for increased legal aid funding while in opposition, but the NDP government hasn’t made its position known prior to handing down its first budget later this month.
The government is undertaking a broader review of the province’s legal aid model, but Justice Minister Kathleen Ganley said Thursday it’s working with Legal Aid Alberta to come up with some interim measures before defence lawyers stop providing free Rowbotham services on Nov. 1.
“We’re hoping to have something to come into place by then,” Ganley said. “Using the courts as an appeal system for being denied legal aid isn’t efficient for anyone.”
The legal aid plan’s total budget of $58.8 million had been unchanged since 2011, but then-justice minister Jonathan Denis announced an interim, $5.5-million boost to the program last fall. The injection was intended to restore coverage to recipients of Assured Income for the Severely Handicapped (AISH) whose eligibility had been cut due to a funding shortfall for the program.
The PCs’ proposed budget, which didn’t pass before the election, had hiked legal aid funding to $66 million.
There has also been pressure on the federal government to increase the legal aid funding it gives to the provinces. Ottawa currently puts $11 million toward the money the provincial government contributes to Legal Aid Alberta. That amount has been unchanged since 2005, when 785,000 fewer people lived in the province.
Savage said the program needs at least $70 million a year to address the current gap in coverage. Continuing to spend less, said Savage, will cost the government more in delays caused by self-represented litigants and will deny justice to people without proper legal advice.
“It’s time the government recognize that and act immediately,” he said.
It started with Calgary Mayor Naheed Nenshi’s sharply criticizing the federal government’s legal fight against women wearing the niqab face covering during citizenship ceremonies during an interview Thursday on Sirius XM’s “Everything is Political.”
The response from Jason Kenney, who introduced the niqab ban as citizenship and immigration minister, was swift. Calling opponents of the ban “politically correct liberals”, Kenney dismissed Nenshi’s contention that the Conservatives were pursuing the issue in an “unbelievably dangerous” effort to gain votes.
It seems to me that it’s the mayor and people like him who are politicizing it. I don’t think this should be an issue of contention.
A woman is dead after she left her broken-down minivan on a highway near Calgary.
Around 10:10 p.m. Thursday, Cochrane RCMP and emergency crews responded to reports that a pedestrian had been hit by a vehicle about five kilometres northeast of Redwood Meadows on Highway 22.
On arrival, paramedics declared the woman, a 53-year-old resident of the Stoney Nakoda First Nation, dead at the scene.
RCMP say the woman was trying to flag down a southbound pickup truck hauling a covered utility trailer for assistance, after parking at the roadside due to mechanical trouble.
As she tried to stop the truck, she was struck and killed.
A passenger, a man in his early 40s, who had remained in the minivan was taken to hospital with medical concerns unrelated to the incident.
Two occupants of the pickup truck were uninjured.
The incident closed down the highway for several hours overnight. The roadway has since reopened.
Police and the Medical Examiner’s Office continue to investigate. They say the driver of the pickup truck was not impaired and they have not laid charges at this point. The name of the victim has not been released.
Okotoks RCMP are investigating a complaint of a stranger possibly posing as a police officer who approached a child in a residential area and offered her a ride home.
Mounties say around 3:45 p.m. Thursday, the woman drove up to an 11-year-old girl near Clark Street and Wilson Avenue.
“She approached the girl who was walking home. She asked if she could give her a ride and showed her a badge,” said Sgt. Sukh Randhawa, adding the woman was not in uniform and her vehicle did not have any kind of law enforcement insignia.
“We don’t know whether she is a police officer or not, who she is, whether she is with the RCMP, the Calgary city police. That’s why we’re concerned.”
The girl declined the ride, and went home to tell her parents what happened, Randhawa said, adding she was unharmed in the incident.
Police are now searching for the suspect, described as a woman with darker skin, short brown hair, and driving a newer model four-door truck that was silver or grey in colour.
Randhawa said there have been at least two other instances of people in the community posing as officers in the past.
“It poses a threat out there in terms of somebody impersonating a police officer,” he said.
“We are a bit cautious about it and we’re trying to reach out to the public, if they come across any information regarding this or others, to reach out to the RCMP.”
We’ve been industrial, we’ve been progressive. We’ve even been the home of fat steers. Now we’re going to be energetic. But when all is said and done, nothing can compare to being phenomenal.
That was how the city was branded back in 1912 in a book simply called Calgary.
While it was never adopted as an official slogan, it would seem a pretty great way to describe a place to live.
Some experts say city signs and slogans can do a lot to create unity or showcase a recognizable identity.
“Slogans are inspirational. They’re meant to inspire people and they can help to bring them together. If they’re good, they can represent everything about you,” says Ed Roach, an Ontario-based branding strategist.
Conversely, a bad slogan can leave people questioning how much was wasted on it.
Baltimore paid $500,000 in 2006 to come up with “Get In On It.” Seattle spent 16 months and $200,000 to come up with “Metronatural.” Sweden spent $250,000 on “Visit Sweden.”
Closer to home, the town of Okotoks used the following tagline in a summer tourism campaign, “There are a number of things to do in Okotoks.” It was quickly mocked on social media with tweets such as “Okotoks: Twice as OK as the Okanagan.”
This week, Calgary installed a sign on the south city limits emblazoned with its newest slogan: Be Part of the Energy. Created in 2010 by Calgary Economic Development, it is also being used by Calgary Tourism to attract business and workers to the city.
A new sign with a new logo greets drivers coming into Calgary at the southern Macleod Trail city limits Thursday, Oct. 1, 2015.
The phrase replaces the former slogan, Heart of the New West, which was adopted in 2000. Calgary Economic Development wants to move the city beyond the western stereotype and highlight the economic significance of its energy industry.
Roach likes the idea.
“You could read it internationally, or locally. The word energy could represent a whole plethora of things whether it’s energy in the ground, energy of the people.”
However, a renowned branding expert says it won’t change anything.
“Cities and towns try to be cute and clever and it doesn’t make any difference. Logos and slogans only make up two per cent of a brand,” says Roger Brooks, also known as the “Dr. Phil of tourism.”
“It’s way overblown. That slogan won’t convince me to move there or do business there. There’s too much energy, there’s your pun, spent on slogans.”
Brooks also believes it’s a mistake for Calgary to move away from what he sees as a globally recognized symbol.
“You go with what put you on the map. The Stampede and rodeo put Calgary on the map. Being Part of the Energy doesn’t say anything about Calgary. It’s like saying we have something for everyone. It won’t change people’s perception one iota.”
Calgarians seem to agree.
An Internet survey conducted by Leger Marketing in 2012 when the slogan was being considered showed that 44 per cent of residents preferred Heart of the New West. About 21 per cent of respondents were in favour of Be Part of the Energy and 25 per cent wanted a different tag line altogether.
At least the energy slogan is short and to the point. One of the city’s earliest mottoes was quite a mouthful. A 1906 book published by the Calgary Board of Trade heralded Calgary as The Land of Golden Wheat, Fat Steers, Industrial Opportunities and Unequalled Climate.
A 1940s sign plays up Calgary’s cowboy roots.
Special signs were hoisted in 1955 marking the Golden Jubilee year.
Over the years there have been a number of slogans and catchphrases to describe Calgary, including:
1918: Canada’s Most Progressive City (a book published by the Calgary Board of Trade)
1921: City of the Foothills
1925: Calgary: Gateway to the Rockies
1946: City of Industrial Opportunity (a book by the Chamber of Commerce)
A 1951 City of Calgary promotion booklet called Calgary The City with Everything Under the Sun.
1951: The City With Everything Under the Sun (a city promotional booklet)
1955: Stampede City, to mark Calgary’s Golden Jubilee year
1961: The White Hat City
In addition, the city has occasionally tacked on various slogans to its entrance signs. One heralded the World Petroleum Congress in 2000 and anyone living here in 1988 will remember the Olympic mascot Howdy adorning the Welcome to Calgary signs.
Have you ever wondered what it would be like to spend a day in the life of a police officer, what kind of calls do they take, what do they really do during their shifts? The Global Police Tweet-a-Thon gives you a chance to get as close to that as Twitter can take you.
Back for its fourth year the campaign, which runs under the hashtag #poltwt, connects local law enforcement with their communities, giving residents an inside look at what our local men and women in blue are doing.
Throughout the day @CstSmith, a digital communications officer with the Calgary Police, will be tweeting live #yyc police calls as part of the campaign.
Ducks Unlimited is launching a $2-billion campaign to save North America’s wetlands.
On Saturday, the organization is holding a public event in Calgary to launch Rescue Our Wetlands — a conservation and fundraising campaign that stretches across Canada, the United States and Mexico.
“It’s likely the largest conservation campaign ever initiated, certainly in North America and maybe in the world,” said Greg Siekaniec, chief executive officer for Ducks Unlimited. “The Ducks Unlimited Canada portion is $500 million.
“We have a conservation mission that is to preserve wetlands and grassland habitat on the ground.”
The campaign, which is taking place over seven years, will reach out to conservation-minded donors and organizations, and rely on matching government programs. It will then be used to fund habitat conservation and restoration, public policy initiatives, national education programs and wetland research.
“Wetlands are becoming in short supply in many parts of Canada,” said Siekaniec, noting some areas have lost up to 70 per cent of the wetlands that were once there. “The land conversion continues at a very rapid rate and we’ve learned that wetlands are important to have on the landscape.”
Wetlands clean water, serve as critical habitat for wildlife, help mitigate climate change, provide flood and drought protection and serve as natural spaces for recreation and education.
In August 2014, the Alberta government dedicated $31 million over three years to two programs aimed at restoring wetlands and fish habitats that were destroyed in the 2013 flood. It acknowledged a healthy watershed is one of the best defences against floods and droughts.
The Ducks Unlimited campaign, which started with a quiet phase in January 2012, will build on those types of government programs.
It has already raised $287 million of the $500 million needed in Canada.
“We’ve got really strong momentum right now,” said Siekaniec. “We’re going to give it everything we can between our board of directors, our employees within the organization, our volunteers.
“Everybody is pulling together in a really tight, coordinated fundraising effort.”
The campaign will launched publicly with a family-friendly event from 4 p.m. to 6 p.m. on Saturday at the Ducks Unlimited Canada Marsh at Bow Habitat Station, 1440-17A Street S.E. in Calgary.
A gorgeous autumn afternoon and evening proved the perfect backdrop for Heritage Park’s 27th annual September Shindig. Whether the rodeo and mock gun fight, superb live, blind and silent auction items, wonderful food, entertainment or midway rides, there was something for everyone at the must-attend fundraiser.
For many however, it was the live auction that took centre stage. Items as varied as a Founder’s Lounge dinner for 10 and a two week vacation on private Namena Island, Fiji to a five-bedroom Greek villa stay and an S.S. Moyie cruise for 50 people saw guests dig deep and bid top dollar for these unique items. Other highlights this night included snappy co-emceeing from broadcasting legend Darrel Janz and uber auctioneer Danny Hooper.
Kudos to all involved on the success of Shindig and hats off to major sponsors Amy Jennings, Safeway, Ecco Recycling , Highwood Distillers, PCL Construction Leaders, Raymond James and Standard General.
Guests having a marvelous time this night included: Bob and Carol Brawn with their son Dean and his wife Ellen; Krita Investments’ Ike Kolias; Harvey Thal and his wife Wynne; Larry Martin and his wife Sandy; Heritage Park president and CEO Alida Visbach and her husband Paul Corbett; Bill Macdonald and his wife Corinne; Heritage Park Society chair Gord Case; Heritage Park Foundation chair John Smeeton and his wife Brenda Ostrom; Ecco Recycling’s Alec McDougall and his wife Gail; Raymond James’ Dave Lougheed and his wife Dana; Safeway vice-president, retail operations, Dave Rodych and his wife Debbie; Highwood Distillers president Barry Wilde and his wife Melissa; PCL Construction Leaders director, business development, David Passingham; the McKeen clan comprised of Peter, Adele, Jay and Dr. Julie McKeen; Heritage Park manager, food services, Jeff Hodgson and his wife Andrea; New Interiors president Wade Schultz and his fiancee Cortney Snell; and Scotia Private Client Group director Robert Bietz and his wife Jill Timmins, director, client experience, Jaguar Land Rover Calgary.
Pictured, from left, at Heritage Park’s 27th annual September Shindig held at the park Sept 19 are guests Wynne Thal, Sandy and Larry Martin and Harvey Thal. The fab fundraiser featuring everything from a rodeo and mock gun-fight to fabulous food, auction items and rides on the antique midway.
Pictured, from left, at Heritage Park’s 27th annual September Shindig held at the park Sept 19 are Heritage Park president Alida Visbach with Raymond James’ Dave Lougheed and his wife Dana Lougheed. Raymond James was one of the invaluable sponsors of the fab fundraiser.
Pictured, from left, at Heritage Park’s 27th annual September Shindig held at the park Sept 19 are food services manager Jeff Hodgson and his wife Andrea Hodgson with PCL Construction Leaders director, business development, David Passingham.
Bill and Corinne Macdonald had a great time at Heritage Park’s 27th annual September Shindig held at the park Sept 19.
Pictured, from left, at Heritage Park’s 27th annual September Shindig held at the park Sept 19 are Canada Safeway vice-president Dave Rodych and his wife Debbie with Mellissa Wilde and her husband Highwood Distillers president Barry Wilde. Both Highwood and Safeway were invaluable sponsors this night.
Pictured, from left, at Heritage Park’s 27th annual September Shindig held at the park Sept 19 are the McKeen clan. Peter, Adele, Dr. Julie and Jay McKeen. The McKeen family and their company Jack Carter are avid supporters of Heritage Park.
All smiles for the camera at Heritage Park’s 27th annual September Shindig held at the park Sept 19 are avid park supporter Ike Kolas with Jaguar Land Rover Calgary’s Jill Timmins and her husband, Scotia Private Client Group director Robert Bietz.
New Interiors president Wade Schultz and his fiancee Cortney Snell had a great time at Heritage Park’s 27th annual September Shindig held at the park Sept 19.
The only thing missing from the recent Field of Fame Four unveiling at McDougall Centre Sept 17 was a reworked version of Queen hit We Are The Champions. A deafening They Are the Champions would have been apt indeed given that six outstanding individuals who have made significant contributions to our beloved city were honoured this day with individual stainless steel ‘stalks of wheat’ commemorating their lifetime contributions. Brainchild of Alberta Champions Society in Recognition of Community Enhancement founder Gordy Hoffman, Q.C., the Field of Fame has, since it’s inception in 2003, honoured luminaries the likes of Sen. Patrick Burns, Arthur Smith and Mary Dover, to name but a few. Field One is installed at Jamieson Place. Field Two at Calgary Court Centre Park. Field Three at the Hyatt Regency Hotel. And Field Four was unveiled this day at McDougall Centre. Joining the illustrious group of previous honourees are: Chief Crowfoot; William Roper Hull; Sydney Kahanoff; Peter Lougheed; Betty Mitchell; and Henry Wise Wood.
Pictured at the Alberta Champions Field of Fame Four unveiling at McDougall Centre Sept 17 are Alberta Champions president Gordy Hoffman, Q.C. and his wife Eva. Scores of guests gathered on the brilliant autumn day to witness the unveiling of six monuments honouring some of our greatest citizens: Chief Crowfoot; William Roper Hull; Sydney Kahanoff; Peter Lougheed; Betty Mitchell; and Henry Wise Wood.
Trico Homes’ Wayne Chiu and his wife Eleanor were among the scores of guests in attendance at the Alberta Champions Field of Fame Four unveiling at McDougall Centre Sept 17. Wayne Chiu, a recent Order of Canada recipient, is on the board of directors of the Alberta Champions.
Three words have been a part of Wood’s Homes for more than 100 years, in one way or another: Never Give Up. This promise has also now become the name for their signature event that took place on September 12 at the Hyatt – the Never Give Up Gala. The community truly is the foundation Wood’s Homes- a children’s mental health centre that employs more than 400 people working in 35 programs in Calgary, Lethbridge, Canmore, Strathmore, Fort McMurray and Fort Smith, NWT.
More than 450 guests attended the gala and enjoyed a performance from Flip Arts Academy, listened to moving testimonials from clients and supporters and danced the night away with the Dino Martinis. Wood’s Homes Foundation board member and gala chair, RBC Wealth Management’s Kata Acheson and her committee are to be commended for the hard work and dedication that was evident to all.
The evening brought together the family that is Wood’s Homes – its many generous donors, sponsors, partners, friends and neighbours. Global Calgary’s Paul Dunphy did a fine job emceeing, with Calgary Stampeder’s running back Jon Cornish helping out with the raffle and prize draws. Some spectacular items were up for grabs – a Fiji getaway from Rick and Linda Skauge, a Stampede party at The Metropolitan Centre, a package that included a private concert with country star Lindsay Ell and a cattle drive with the Black Diamond Land & Cattle Company. The latter was hotly contested between a bidder in the room and one on the phone – and ended up selling twice, each time for more than $25,000.
An eloquent introduction for a client speech was made by Renee Hopfner, director of community investment for Safeway, title sponsor of the event. Others in attendance included: silver sponsors Carri Clarke and Reid Brodylo from Fort Calgary Resources; RBC Wealth Management’s Tom Foss and his wife Jennifer; decor sponsor City Wide Towing and Recovery Services’ Ron and Wendy Voelk; bronze sponsors Canadian Oil Sands’ Trudy Curran and Laureen DuBois; David and Linda Tuer; BMO Nesbitt Burns senior vice-president Tim Churchill-Smith; Gary Sartorio, owner of Shaganappi GM and president and CEO of Calgary Harley Davidson; and others pictured at right.
With files from Sylvia McIver
Among the hundreds of guests in attendance at Wood’s Homes Never Give up Gala held September 12 at the Hyatt were, from left, Fort Calgary Resources’ Reid Brodylo and Carri Clark with Susan and Brian Dunn. Fort Calgary Resources was the gala silver sponsor.
Posing for the lens at Wood’s Homes Never Give up Gala held September 12 at the Hyatt are silver sponsors Foss Wealth Management’s Jennifer and Tom Foss.
Pictured at Wood’s Homes Never Give up Gala held September 12 at the Hyatt are City Wide Towing and Recovery Service owners Rob and Wendy Voelk.
Pictured, from left, at Wood’s Homes Never Give up Gala held September 12 at the Hyatt are Calgary Stampeders great Jon Cornish, Wood’s Homes CEO Dr. Jane Matheson and emcee Paul Dunphy.
Wood’s Homes Foundation board chair Robert Hayes addresses the audience at Wood’s Homes Never Give up Gala held September 12 at the Hyatt.
Shaganappi GM owner and president/CEO of Calgary Harley Davidson Gary Sartorio and his son Cole pictured at Wood’s Homes Never Give up Gala held September 12 at the Hyatt.
Wood’s Homes would not be the success it is were it not for the philanthropic support of many. Pictured at Wood’s Homes Never Give up Gala held September 12 at the Hyatt are avid supporters David Tuer and his wife Linda Tuer.
Among the hundreds of guests in attendance at Wood’s Homes Never Give up Gala held September 12 at the Hyatt were Dennis and Alexis Chorney.
Even the young ones know the value of philanthropy as evidenced by their attendance at Wood’s Homes Never Give up Gala held September 12 at the Hyatt. Pictured, from left, are Holly Hnatiuk, Nika Evenson, Anna Mathison, Grace Evenson and Megan Mathison.
“Radicalization is not an isolated issue,” says Stephane Pressault. “It has a social context.”
That’s the approach Stephane Pressault of Project Communities uses when combatting extremism in Canada. Here, he tells the Herald’s Dylan Robertson about the approach that has worked well for his group, but is difficult to manage because of a lack of, what he calls, “safe spaces” to discuss the issue in a meaningful way.
Members of Calgary’s 8th and 8th Mosque were shocked when news broke that members of their community were overseas fighting with ISIL. Here, while volunteering their time to help out homeless Calgarians at the Drop-In Centre, they share with the Herald’s Dylan Robertson some of the frustration they feel at being judged by the actions of others espousing radical ideas in Canada.
Calgary imam Navaid Aziz says tackling radicalization goes beyond pointing out how terror groups distort religious texts.
For him, it’s about addressing grievances, like the ones Farah Mohamed Shirdon — who left Aziz’s mosque last year to join the Islamic State group in Syria — still fixates on.
“I find a lot of the anger and frustration that young Muslim men feel, it has to do with foreign policy,” Aziz says, noting ISIL propaganda focuses on perceptions of Muslims suffering worldwide, and how Islam requires helping one’s fellow believers.
“There needs to be a component of education on how to lobby for policy, or how to make change in government.”
I find a lot of the anger and frustration that young Muslim men feel, it has to do with foreign policy
But such conversations can’t take place in a Canadian mosque, Ottawa imam Sikander Hashmi told Postmedia.
“A lot of Muslims will actually refer to jihad as the ‘J word,’ because they’re just afraid of having someone hear them mention the word or even worried about their phones being tapped or bugs in their homes or in the mosques, so they won’t even mention the word.”
Aziz agrees.
“The Muslim community will not voice their opinions in the mosque, because there’s just not a space for it,” he says.
That’s where Stéphane Pressault steps in.
The 27-year-old Ottawa man leads a program that promotes open dialogue among Muslim youth.
Pressault briefly knew fellow classmate John Maguire before he left to join ISIL in December 2012. Maguire later surfaced in a video explaining how a hockey-loving Canadian ended up on the battlefields of Syria.
John Maguire was a friend of Stéphane Pressault before he left Canada to fight with ISIL. Today, Pressault says mosques need to become more open to discussions of radicalization rather than fear such conversation.
“Mosques need to become spaces for intellectual engagement, and specifically not this fear of talking about positions that differ from the norm,” says Pressault, the head of Project Communitas.
The cross-country program, bankrolled by a $250,000 federal grant, aims to create space for discussion among Muslim youth in existing groups in six cities, from Vancouver to London, Ont.
“A lot of the conversation that I’m having with young people is this dissatisfaction: ‘I can’t do anything; what’s the point,'” says Pressault, a project co-ordinator with the Canadian Council of Muslim Women.
He says those who feel this sense of hopelessness are drawn to action, often through violence.
To prevent that, Pressault works with more than just imams and social workers. He trains young leaders about how to host tough discussions and suggest productive responses.
He uses the analogy of how Toronto’s black community successfully lobbied to get police to stop arbitrary stop-and-search carding. At first, young men would act out when they were carded, prompting criminal charges. But a group trained them to write op-ed newspaper articles and hold police accountable.
“If you can actually have that debate, then I think you can convince a lot of people,” Pressault says.
But mosques across the country have reportedly ended uncomfortable political discussions. Michael Zehaf-Bibeau, for example, was kicked out of a Vancouver mosque for speaking against a pluralistic society months before attacking Parliament and killing a soldier in Ottawa.
Toronto imam Yusuf Badat says some mosques shut down all sensitive conversation, worried that tackling explosive topics like political violence will invite the glare of the media and law enforcement.
“To avoid all this unnecessary difficulty, some imams and some mosques just say: ‘You know what, we don’t want to welcome any sort of discussion here, we don’t want any media and we don’t want any CSIS or anything here,'” he says.
To avoid all this unnecessary difficulty, some imams and some mosques just say: ‘You know what, we don’t want to welcome any sort of discussion here, we don’t want any media and we don’t want any CSIS or anything here
Badat is co-chair of the Canadian Council of Imams, a Toronto roundtable that advises governments on policy issues. Since 2012, the group has had around 50 senior imams sign a pledge to embrace these tough questions.
The idea, Badat says, is “to try and bring about understanding and engagement in the community; not necessarily to turn a person down. If we ourselves can’t help them, then let’s direct them to some agencies or counselling.”
Muslim human-rights activist Farzana Hassan, who was recently appointed to the government’s national-security advisory panel, supports Project Communitas’ goals, but still has questions.
“Philosophically and ideologically, it’s a great concept,” Hassan says. “It’s just the parameters of the debate on the issues of jihad that I’m concerned about.”
Hassan says that while few people engage in terrorism, she believes there is widespread support among Canadian Muslims for the concept of jihad as an armed struggle — and that’s the issue the project needs to tackle.
“Islamist jihad is very real. It’s something they’re willing to substantiate from the Qur’an and not without reason, not without a valid basis,” she says, predicting Pressault’s groups will have to navigate these inflammatory issues.
“I’m not opposed to the concept, but sometimes the devil is in the details.”
Standing around his ISIL comrades, a Calgary man toting an assault rifle lobbed his Canadian passport into a fire.
“This is a message to Canada and all the American tawagheet (false idols). We are coming, and we will destroy you,” Farah Mohamed Shirdon declared in a video released last June.
Back home in Calgary, his former imam was furious.
“This was someone I knew, and how the hell did they end up like that?” wonders Navaid Aziz. The 33-year-old imam is usually enthusiastic, but his hands clench when asked what he’d say if he saw Shirdon again.
“I would want to ask why. But I went to a stage where I don’t even care. I was like: ‘We tried so hard to bring you back. We tried so hard to be rational with you; yet you keep spewing out this hate.’
This was someone I knew, and how the hell did they end up like that?
“And I’d be like: ‘Don’t you realize the damage you’re causing yourself, your family, the Muslim community?’ I don’t think he realizes the backlash that the Muslim community faces over here, when he becomes the face of Islam — of Canadian Islam, in Iraq or wherever he is right now.”
Aziz pauses, peering down at the floor of his downtown mosque where at least five Canadian men prayed before leaving to join the Islamic State group, known as ISIL.
Four, who left as Aziz arrived, have since been reported dead. But the imam grew close to Shirdon in the months that followed.
Last week, the RCMP laid six terrorism-related charges against Shirdon in absentia, including participating in terrorist activities with ISIL and inciting others to do so.
Aziz lets out a sigh.
“At this point I wouldn’t even have it in me to engage him at all. I guess I’m still really upset at the things he’s said and done.”
Shirdon’s departure last year provoked more than a Canadian imam’s fury. It prompted a community of Muslims to reach out to its youth and stop sweeping uncomfortable conversations under the rug.
Like other Muslim groups across Canada, the mosque started trying to instil positive values in its young people to inoculate them from the lure of radical forces and homegrown terrorism.
Strangers in the mosque
The 8th and 8th Musallah mosque is a simple prayer space, located in the strip mall of a large apartment building amid the corporate towers that run Alberta’s oilpatch.
While a mosque in the city’s southwest has a towering minaret, and Canada’s largest mosque sits across from Calgary’s airport, a plastic, two-metre long placard is the only outward sign of this prayer room’s existence.
The front entrance leads to a tidy, windowless grey room with white walls and shelves of green and gold book spines. The side entrance for women leads to a similar room.
It’s common for the men’s room to overflow on the weekday lunch-hour during midday prayer shifts. At 6-foot-2, Aziz mounts a small stool to give sermons, his skullcap almost touching the ceiling.
The mosque is the city’s only English-language prayer centre for the majority Sunni sect of Muslims. It tends to attract strangers.
The prayer room also sits at the foot of a highrise condominium in which at least four friends spent their last days in Canada.
In late 2012, Salman Ashrafi, Damian Clairmont and brothers Collin and Gregory Gordon left for Iraq and Syria, after living together for months in an apartment whose lobby leads to the mosque.
All four men are reported dead. Two others are rumoured to have left with them.
When Aziz started working at its parent mosque across the Bow River in April 2012, he was only assigned brief visits to the downtown prayer room.
He recalls the end of Ramadan, a month-long daytime fast, which some Muslims end by sequestering themselves in a mosque for 10 days. Aziz says the small, insular group of young men frustrated others back in late August 2012.
“They were very rebellious in the mosque, in the sense that they didn’t want to interact with anyone; they wanted to be taken care of and they didn’t want to even clean up their own mess.”
He remembers them saying things like there was no purpose in having mosques in North America. By the end of the year, they had all stopped showing up.
In retrospect, Aziz saw signs of what psychologists call “consolidation” — casting out any contradicting thoughts and instead creating an echo chamber that reinforces their beliefs.
Michael Zekulin, a terrorism researcher at the University of Calgary who has studied each group member’s biography, says living in the apartment together above the mosque likely escalated their radicalization.
Terrorism researcher Michael Zekulin says like-minded radicals can feed off each other, making their ideas more extreme.
“That feeds off of itself; that becomes its own animal. That’s when that group process takes over,” he says.
“The ideas become more extreme: ‘We don’t like these people; we should do something about these people; we should hurt these people; we should kill these people.’ ”
‘He completely flipped’
Long before Shirdon left for Syria, his family fled political instability and religious violence in Africa.
Shirdon’s father Mohamed directed Somalia’s agriculture ministry before studying at Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y., as the Somali government fell in 1991.
The family sought asylum in Canada in 1993.
Until two months before Farah Shirdon left to join ISIL in 2014, his uncle served as prime minister of Somalia, surviving numerous assassination attempts by Islamist militants.
Farah Mohamed Shirdon in an image from an ISIL video posted on YouTube.
The younger Shirdon was born in April 1994. Classmates in Calgary describe him as a bully with a short fuse, who nevertheless got good grades. They say he had a good sense of humour, but always yearned to fit in.
“He was a good guy at heart; he was led down the wrong path,” recalls Nathan Little, who played video games with Shirdon in middle school.
Little says that by high school, Shirdon was hanging out with people who sold drugs, while working part-time at a movie theatre and a fast-food restaurant.
“The loneliness in his heart overwhelmed him to the point that he fell in with bad people,” says Little.
After high school, Shirdon enrolled in the two-year administrative information management diploma at the Southern Alberta Institute of Technology, but never finished.
Aziz first met the 19-year-old during the imam’s weekly chaplaincy at the college in the fall of 2013, a year after the apartment group left Canada.
The imam says he saw Shirdon struggling with issues at home, but thought his life seemed less tumultuous as he embraced Islam.
Shirdon went to the downtown mosque regularly, where Aziz had been assigned full-time in March 2013. He often went to Aziz’s Friday night courses.
“I was trying to help him re-find his faith, reconcile with all the spiritual issues he was having. Everything was going really fine.”
At the end of 2013, Aziz, a charismatic imam with a knack for public speaking, went abroad for a conference. When he came back, Shirdon started picking theological fights.
“He completely flipped. He started watching some crazy stuff online, started asking me some really weird questions. And I thought it was some kind of phase that he was going through.”
For example, Shirdon started asking about Abu Muhammad al-Maqdisi, a spiritual adviser to al-Qaida whom the U.S. military dubbed “the key contemporary ideologue in the jihadi intellectual universe” in 2012.
Aziz told him to learn the basics of Islam first.
But Shirdon kept asking about jihad.
He brought up videos by Anwar al-Awlaki, the American supporter of al-Qaida once dubbed the “bin Laden of the Internet” for advocating attacks on the U.S. and counselling people who later committed terrorist acts.
“It eventually came down to him accusing me of being watered-down, and pacifying the religion, so that it’s more accommodating to western values. And I’m like, ‘No I want to teach religion as it is; this is what I truly believe.'”
A couple of months go by, we don’t hear too much, then all of a sudden that crazy video is released of him burning his passport
As his views grew more extreme, Shirdon removed all non-Muslims from his Facebook contacts.
In February, he told Aziz that Canadian Security Intelligence Service agents came to speak with him. The imam told him he needed to stop obsessing over Islamic concepts he didn’t fully understand.
On March 14, 2014, Shirdon left Canada. In June, CSIS asked mosque officials about Shirdon. His video surfaced online days later.
“A couple of months go by, we don’t hear too much, then all of a sudden that crazy video is released of him burning his passport,” Aziz says.
Shirdon speaks
Shirdon is among hundreds of westerners fighting alongside terror groups like ISIL who can be reached through social media. On Twitter, he’s shared photos with more than 10,000 followers, posing with local children or standing in front of stolen vehicles.
On one of a handful of his Twitter accounts, Shirdon brags about the group’s success.
“I’ve been in Iraq for a few days and have already experienced American drone strikes. May Allah destroy them!” he wrote last summer.
“Beheading Shias is a beautiful thing,” he posted, referring to adherents of the second-largest branch of Islam.
Beheading Shias is a beautiful thing
In messages on the instant-messaging app Kik, he’s evasive about what led him to Syria, but echoes ISIL messaging of Muslims being oppressed.
He says nobody guided him to leave Canada. Instead, the Calgarian claims he watched the news, read the Qur’an and found a call to join the so-called caliphate (a land ruled by Islamic law).
He also doesn’t understand why people would find his story interesting.
“Why are they astonished there are hundreds of Canadians here?” he wrote to The Calgary Herald/Postmedia. “Things are great, come here and see for yourself.”
After Shirdon’s video was released last year, police revealed up to 30 Calgarians had been recruited by foreign terror groups.
National media called Calgary a “hot spot for exporting jihadis.” Donations and attendance dropped at the mosque.
Aziz describes the next three months as a “traumatic experience” for the downtown mosque, where every few weeks brought a new name, a reported death, or a video release.
Calgary Imam Navaid Aziz says the experience with local radicals was a traumatic experience for his Mosque community. “Extremism wasn’t a reality until this happened.”
“We really learned that, as nice and as kind and as hospitable that the Muslim community is, we do have our dirty laundry at the end of the day,” he says.
“Extremism wasn’t a reality until this happened.”
Building community
On a chilly June afternoon, 25 young people from the mosque gather at the six-storey Calgary Drop-In Centre, Canada’s largest homeless shelter, to feed the needy.
Standing around a small room, the girls wear hijabs while half the group don turquoise shirts bearing the logo of the downtown mosque. Some are immigrants, some are converts.
One of them is Shirdon’s brother, who later declines an interview request.
Aziz cracks a few jokes until a shelter worker whisks the group across a large dining hall.
Hundreds of homeless people sit in tables of four, waiting for dinner. A third of the volunteers run an assembly line of beef stew, salad and buns, scooping food onto plates.
Within an hour, the group has assembled, carried and tidied meals for 1,300 people. Large applause follows a debrief in the waiting room, as does a photo for Facebook.
“I can be useful to the community, and there are people who need my help,” says Kinza Arshad, 21, whose family arrived in Calgary from a small Ontario town last spring.
Programming like this has helped Arshad adjust to life in Calgary.
“Sometimes people really let you down by using whatever ignorance is being pushed out there, to kind of label you with the same kind of identity as someone who’s radical.”
As someone who wears a hijab, Arshad says it takes confidence to navigate social stigma. Some of her friends have left Islam. She thinks their decision had more to do with social pressures than religious belief.
Those pressures escalated in high school, as she navigated her parents’ cultural beliefs.
“You already feel a bit like an outsider,” she says. ” It’s easy to get confused and feel like you’re kind of alone in this journey.”
That’s why she feels Canada needs mosques that bring people together.
“It’s easier for kids to get away from things that are going to harm them and take them down the wrong path,” she says, mentioning the group of men who attended her mosque before going to Iraq and Syria.
“It’s definitely something that’s real.”
Role models
The monthly food service is part of a series of activities Aziz and his colleagues rolled out last November, after the furor died down from the Calgarians who joined ISIL.
Aziz says that time was an “eye-opening event, that we do have a problem with some of our youth having an identity crisis, not having purpose and meaning in life. That forced us to create programs that would cater to their needs.”
Lama Al-Yafi works with her Mosque community to help the poor, including volunteering at the Calgary Drop-In Centre.
While the group already ran sports programming for high school students, it launched programming for young adults.
Blood drives and city cleanups are meant to instil gratitude, and show young people they can have a purpose. Positive role models, Muslim and not, are brought up during classes.
And the mosque holds regular social events, from hiking trips in the Rockies to hockey games.
“That’s how we get people to interact with one another, and build ties of brotherhood,” says Aziz.
The imam is still grappling to create a judgment-free space. One of his congregants is a tattooed woman with piercings who doesn’t wear a hijab; she feels unwelcome at the mosque, says Aziz.
He thinks it’s likely that Shirdon and the other men who joined ISIL, with their rumoured family problems and drug issues, didn’t feel welcomed either.
“I think the concept of isolation, not only from the greater society but from the Muslim community, did exist,” he says. “They all found each other because they all isolated themselves from the Muslim community.”
Ultimately, he hopes these new programs — all attempts to build up resilience in young men and women — will stop that from happening.
“For every moment of darkness, you will have wonderful moments of light,” Aziz concludes.
Alberta’s auditor general is going to try to fix what ails health care.
Merwan Saher is launching a comprehensive review of his office’s past audits of health-care programs to see if he can identify the fundamental problems in the Alberta medical system and recommend a way to finally fix them.
“We don’t want to do a big, new audit,” he said Friday. “We want to look at the audits we’ve already done and use the findings we already have and the recommendations we’ve already made.”
Saher hopes to report findings that will be “profoundly useful” by February, 2016.
“It’s not for us to specify how things should be,” Saher said in an interview. “We’re entitled to look at the way things are and express a view on whether or not the way things are might be an impediment to the best possible health care, in terms of quality and at the best cost.”
The review was welcomed by Alberta Health.
Department spokesman Cameron Traynor said Health Minister Sarah Hoffman is always interested in working with the auditor general on his recommendations.
“Our priority is to ensure Albertans get the best possible care and are receiving value for their health dollars,” Traynor said.
Health care is the single-biggest expenditure in the provincial budget, costing more than $19 billion in this fiscal year.
Provincial per-capita health expenditures were projected to be 19 per cent above the national average last year, at $4,699 spent per person in Alberta — topped only by spending in Newfoundland and Labrador, according to federal data.
At the heart of the auditor general’s review will be an examination of the roles and responsibilities of the Health Ministry and Alberta Health Services (AHS), Saher said.
“Does Alberta Health Services have a clearly defined mandate and responsibility separate from that of the Department of Health,” he asked the all-party public accounts committee Wednesday when he revealed his plans. “Is it truly the agent in control of health-care service delivery in this province? Yes or no?”
Saher told the committee the new review is broader than previous audits and would encompass all aspects of the health system, including primary care delivery, mental health, chronic disease management and acute care.
The auditor told the committee he believes information technology and the systems being used with respect to physician compensation are at the centre of the problem. He said it’s not so much the technology, but how it’s shared.
Assistant auditor general Doug Wylie told the legislature committee that effective implementation of a single health program like chronic disease management could have a major impact on hospital emergency room wait times.
He noted that for the 2013 fiscal year alone, 27 per cent of all emergency room visits related to the treatment of chronic diseases.
“Visualize, if you would, a hospital emergency room. It’s full. Every seat is occupied by someone waiting to be seen,” Wylie said. “Now remove 27 per cent of those patients from that waiting room. This is something that may be achievable with effective chronic disease management.”
Saher said Friday the health system needs to be patient-centred and it must make available to anyone caring for a patient the information of all previous care that has been provided.
The auditor general said the review was initiated by his office.
“Nobody has asked us to do this,” he said. “This is us trying to use the resources allocated to us in the best possible way.”
