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The growing aging population in Canada has multi-faceted psycho-social needs. Social workers are well-positioned to address these needs, despite many challenges. This paper reports findings from the World Café at the Gerontology Symposium in Alberta, Canada, held in 2018. The goal was to learn from social work practitioners, researchers, and educators (N = 49) about current and future needs of gerontological social work in Alberta. There were two research questions: 1) What strategies do social workers need on the micro, mezzo, and macro levels to help better serve the growing older adult population in Alberta? (R1) 2) How can social workers promote the value and contribution of gerontological social work within the interprofessional community? (R2) The data were analyzed using qualitative content analysis. Ten R1-related themes emerged: personal traits of a social worker; professional skills; bio-psycho-social needs of older adults; community connections; access to benefits; gerontological social work education; integrated healthcare; aging policy; ageism; and advocacy to strengthen the voice of older adults. The three R2-related themes include strengthening the status of the social work profession; building trust through demonstrated skills; and interprofessional education and practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Wheat is affected by many fungal diseases that can cause severe yield and quality losses. Disease prediction models generally employ weather data to estimate potential for infection to determine timing for fungicide applications, but these models fail to account for the presence and quantity of pathogen inoculum. This study adapted highly specific qPCR primers to identify and quantify, in real-time, inoculum present in air for the six most important wheat pathogens in Canada. Fungal spores were collected using either Burkard spore collectors and quantified using qPCR or microscope slides covered with adhesive tape and identified and quantified using microscopy. Samples were collected from seven different sites in southern Alberta throughout the 2015–2017 growing seasons. The results demonstrated that qPCR can reliably identify and quantify spores from Puccinia striiformis f. sp. tritici, P. triticina, P. graminis f. sp. tritici, Blumeria graminis f. sp. tritici, Pyrenophora tritici-repentis, and Fusarium graminearum. The limits of detection of DNA for primer pairs in singleplex tests ranged from 0.0001 ng for P. graminis to 0.001 ng for P. tritici-repentis, which corresponded to approximately 3 spores for P. tritici-repentis and F. graminearum and 1 spore for the other pathogens. Conversely, microscopy permitted identification of rusts to the genus but not to the species level and was ineffective in quantification of the remainder of the wheat pathogens. This study will contribute to the development of a fast and reliable forecasting system that will enable identification and quantification of airborne pathogens in real-time before initial disease symptoms appear. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on case-study research from a rural, resource-based community in Alberta, Canada, this paper explores the social and economic context of substance abuse. Specifically, the linkages between social structure, community fragmentation, and family dysfunction offer a way of understanding differential resistance and susceptibility to substance abuse. Five thematic areas were linked to susceptibility in this study: (1) an economy based on multiple divergent sectors, which gives rise to income disparity and social inequality; (2) a highly transient population, which results in social distancing and lack of social support; (3) shift work, which prevents opportunities for consistent and productive family and community relationships; (4) high incomes, which lead to material competition and financial stress; and (5) a culture of entitlement, which produces certain expectations and perceived privileges among some workers and their families. Our findings are consistent with previous research on the link between substance abuse and shift work, work environments, and the social conditions in boomtowns. But this paper also identifies novel themes, such as high incomes and a culture of entitlement, and introduces the notion of slow disasters and cumulative risk histories to help explain susceptibility to substance abuse within this rural community. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rational choice theory suggests that parents are utility maximizers who make decisions from clear value preferences, that they are able to demand effective action from local schools and teachers, and that they can be relied upon to pursue the best interests of their children. This paper presents a different perspective and argues that parents invest a mixture of rationalities when selecting schools. Based on the results of a survey of 1,500 parents of students in 11 private, eight public and 10 alter- native elementary schools in Alberta, Canada, this paper explores the logic, values, and concerns that inform parental decision making in the selection of an elementary school for their children and discusses implication for policy and educational reform. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reports on the development of a 'suitability for practice' policy in a large Canadian school of social work. Pertinent gatekeeping issues are reviewed and the results of a survey on suitability polices in Canadian social work schools are presented. The paper concludes with a discussion of the University of Calgary's Faculty of Social Work Suitability Policy. This policy integrates current research on gatekeeping, the results of the Canadian schools survey and input from primary stakeholders: the students, faculty members, the professional association and the community. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Policy makers in a variety of sites are embracing initiatives that attempt to tighten the links between school and work. A reinvented human capital discourse argues that more highly skilled workers are required to meet the demands of the 'knowledge economy'. This paper explores the new vocationalism as it is promoted within the Framework for Enhancing Business Involvement, a policy report produced in 1996 in Alberta, Canada. Using a critical policy approach, this paper focuses on the process of developing this document with attention to the policy context, influences on the process, ideological assumptions and the impact of the document since its release. Analysis suggests that questions of representation in policy processes, accountability for outcomes and the role of public interests in multi-stakeholder consultation are critical in this era of new public management practices. Further, despite the impression of unity and consensus suggested by policy documents, there are tensions in vocational education and policy that must be addressed if they are also to promote equity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The recent call for heritage professionals to consider the 'spirit of place' is an attempt to reconcile the overlapping layers of tangible and intangible heritage within significant sites. However, the desire for wholeness can also displace the fragments and fragmented histories of place. This paper examines the history of heritage development in southern Alberta through two sites, namely Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump (a designated UNESCO World Heritage Site) and Writing-on-Stone Provincial Park / Aisinai'pi National Historic Site (UNESCO World Heritage nomination currently being developed). Located only 200 km apart, these two places offer very different perspectives on the 'spirit of place' and present very different histories of the production of 'heritage' through archaeological excavation, preservation practices and Aboriginal consultation. These stories from the Canadian prairies raise questions about the processes of 'place-making', 'place-taking' and how we mobilize and conceptualize the practice of place in public history. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Hobbema, Alberta, Canada is a community comprised of four First Nations. As with many of Canada's Aboriginal communities, Hobbema's population is young. High rates of socio-economic disadvantage, violence, family dysfunction, and substance abuse are linked to colonization, residential school policies, and discrimination. Crime rates, including gang-related crime in the area, are disproportionately high. In 2005 two police officers created the Hobbema Community Cadet Corps, a program which offers youth a pro-social alternative to criminal activity and gang involvement. The program provides youth with the opportunity to learn the value of group identity, discipline, and camaraderie. It also provides opportunities for recreational activities and travel otherwise unavailable to many in this impoverished area. This paper provides a description of the HCCCP, an overview of its activities and structure, and situates it within the crime prevention through social development framework which emphasizes the importance of building protective factors and reducing risk factors surrounding youth. Finally, a preliminary evaluation which highlights some of the challenges faced by program instructors is offered. The authors caution against relying solely on individualizing imperatives in attempts to deal with social structural issues of the types faced by citizens in Hobbema. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Several oil sands mines and refineries are currently recovering oil from the Athabasca River region near Fort McMurray, Alberta. Planning and construction of additional oil sands mines are in various stages of completion. Due to environmental concerns for aquatic life in areas downstream from current and future oil sands activities, surveys were conducted between 1998 and 2000 to determine whether the quality of water and sediments in tributaries of the Athabasca River are affected by flowing through reaches with exposure to natural oil sand deposits. This paper presents the results for metals in bed and suspended sediments collected from the Mackay, Steepbank, and Ells rivers during those surveys. The suspended sediments had a clay content (n = 7) ranging from 36.2% to 65.0%, while bed sediments, which consisted of a predominant sand fraction, had percent clay (n = 39) ranging from 0.0% to 38.1%. A Mann-Kendall non-parametric analysis to assess the longitudinal trend of the metals in the bed sediments found no significant (α = 0.05) downstream trend in the Mackay or Steepbank rivers; however, the Ells River displayed a generally decreasing tend from upstream to downstream. The results provide no indication that metal concentrations in the bed sediments and/or suspended sediments of the Mackay, Steepbank, and Ells rivers increase significantly as the three tributaries flow through reaches that have natural oil sand exposures (McMurray Formation). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 1880, the Tsuu T'ina Nation (then the Sarcee band) staged a small, armed protest known as the 'Sarcee War', in Calgary, Alberta, to demand food and a separate reserve from the Siksika, with whom they had been assigned land. This paper argues that this protest reveals the material and political roots of Aboriginal citizenship: a fragmented and differentiated political body, unified through contingent agreements. The Tsuu T'ina actions, the choice of location and their specific demands reveal an assertion of rights that differ from the 'standard' idea of Canadian citizenship (then and now) and articulate a complex process of 'othering' and belonging. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses the barriers encountered in undertaking an oral history project with survivors of a total institution for ‘mental defectives’ in the province of Alberta, Canada. Powerful social actors were able to bar access to survivors through legal guardianship orders, and to make access to the institution and its grounds and to publicly archived materials quite prohibitive to the researcher. In addition to overt efforts on the part of powerful social actors to block the project, concerns about the potential to discredit survivor narratives led to changes in the research design. Specifically, research and literature about the ‘acquiescence’ of intellectuals with intellectual impairments led the researcher to broaden the sources for this history as a preemptive strategy. Despite these barriers, survivors of the institution provided a rich and powerful testimony to the brutality of institutionalization, and provide us with an emancipatory history from the perspectives of those most oppressed by disability policies and practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reviews indigenous/aboriginal tourism, a rapidly evolving sector of the tourism industry and an important growth sector in aboriginal economies, and examines the optimism expressed about its growth potential. Case studies are given of the host, guest and intermediary relationships involved in aboriginal tourism in southern Alberta, Canada, still at an early and tentative stage of development, despite the volume of travel taking place in this area, the location of Canada's largest Indian reserves in this region, and world renowned attractions such as Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump. It notes the lack of industry knowledge on the part of local aboriginal operators, a lack of consumer awareness on the part of travellers and an underutilization of potentially advantageous partnerships between local product suppliers and tour operators. Suggestions are made for the professional development of an aboriginal tourism product; market reconnaissance and market development; and the evolution of a partnership between aboriginal tourism product suppliers and the travel trade. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Competing models of Late Wisconsinan glacial advance, coalescence and retreat entail different opportunities for early human occupation of the developing ecophysical landscape of interior western Canada. Of the current models, one postulates prolonged ice coalescence while the second suggests brief coalescence followed by a prolonged interval of deglaciation. Before we can model human occupation of the recently deglaciated landscape then, it is necessary to understand the changing physical landforms and ecological landscapes as these influence not only the opportunities for settlement but also the chances of site preservation. This paper reviews recent evidence on the developing ecophysical landscape of southern Alberta during the late Pleistocene and early Holocene. Our review of this evidence appears to support a model of rapid deglaciation sometime around 12,000 years ago with an equally rapid colonization of the recently deglaciated landscapes by plants, animals, and people. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper grows out of the author's ongoing interest in the Calgary Stampede, the world's most extravagant celebration of cowboy culture in Alberta. The article focuses on how Calgarians exploit the symbolic resources at their disposal, including the image of the cowboy, to construct their regional and municipal identities. The author highlights the important role of Marcus Belmont Marcell, a U.S.-born adventurer who photographed Calgary Stampede, in documenting the event and suggesting that, working in the tradition epitomized by pictures of such western artists as Frederic Remington, Charlie Russell, and Edward Borein. Marcell played a significant role in popularizing an image of the wild West in general and of the Canadian West in particular.

The topic of religion within public schools has generated interest in several countries in recent years. In Canada, the United States, and England, educational policies favouring greater parental choice in education through grantmaintained schools, Charter schools and voucher plans have renewed parental interest in this area. Alternatively, one might argue that the lobbying by religious parents and others for choice has influenced educational policy. The dynamics of change are not always clear. This paper explores these dynamics through a two-part longitudinal case study in Alberta, Canada. My examination of events over a period of almost twenty years reveals both the micro-politics around religious programming in public schools and the macro-level changes in the policy context between the late 1970s and mid-1990s. This micro-macro approach provides a sense of the impact of local histories on education policies as well as parallels between sites. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Features the third conference on Pneumatic and Hydraulic Conveying Systems held on October 6-11, 2002 in Banff, Canada. Lecture of Professor Mark Jones on Professor Predrag Marjanovic who passed away on September 2001; Discussions on findings and researches; Selection of papers submitted at the conference for publication in the periodical 'Particulate Science and Technology.'

Discusses the abstract of the paper "Occurrence of black knot on Prunus spp. in Alberta in 2003," by R.J. Howard et al, presented during the joint regional meeting of the Alberta and Saskatchewan units of the Canadian Phytopathology Society in 2003.

Recognizing the limitations common to both centralized and privatized management regimes, institutionalized resource management is beginning to incorporate the knowledge and skills of local resource users, coupled with the enabling policies and legislation of state systems, to arrive at cooperative approaches to resource management. These varying and dynamic approaches to resource management have been compelled largely through the recognition of the limited capabilities of existing management systems to adapt effectively to ecosystem change and the evolving needs of resource users. These cooperative approaches tomanagement should not, however, be considered an institutional end-point, but rather a phase in the perpetual transition of a social system; each unique in character and individually variable depending on the resource being managed, the political climate in which management occurs, as well as the differing strategies employed by resource users to enact institutional change. Drawing from the experiences of the Whitefish Lake First Nation of Alberta, Canada, this paper presents abrief overview of the evolution of resource management theory, grounded in the real-world formation of the Whitefish Lake First Nation - Province of Alberta Cooperative Management Agreement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]