Shoud be fun...who is in ?

Good news about the playground: In an effort to keep our new playground in tip top shape, two small sheds will be installed to keep brooms. The sheds and the brooms have been donated by one of our Wonderful Waterton community members and we appreciate it greatly. This past summer, many of you and your extended families have spontaneously, of your own initiative, worked at the upkeep of the playground. The entire community has benefitted from your unsolicited and generous volunteer service. We owe all who pulled weeds, swept, picked up garbage, or otherwise tidied, a big thanks. If yo

Who is in ?

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You can now follow the latest tweets from Waterton Lakes National Park. Find out what is happening in the park, what Parks Canada staff are working on, and anything else we think you will find interesting. Follow Waterton Lakes National Park on Twitter: @WatertonLakesNP @PNLacsWaterton

When is the last time you talked with your asparagus, or waltz with your potatoes? Do you share an intimate relationship with the food that’s on your plate at the dinner table? In hopes of bringing us together with our food, once a month, the Green Scene will be focusing on specific produce. Most of us know where our food comes from; we enjoy whole foods with our family and friends. But let’s get to know our food even better, let’s get personal with our produce! Though we live in a cold climate, it is quickly becoming harvesting time for some vegetables. Asparagus is one of the first

The first annual Community Forum is happening this Saturday at 12pm. This is your opportunity to get to know your Waterton Community groups and ask those questions that have been on your mind all winter. Being involved in your community strengthens its fabric and creates community resilience. Below is an article written by Milenko Matanovic to help us all build a stronger community, wherever we choose to call home. Milenko Matanovic is a community builder with over 40 years experience. This article is reprinted through a Creative Commons license. 10 Courageous Things You Can Do to

As sunlight beams through Waterton windows and melts the snow, the community prepares for another summer. Watertonians stretch in their dens and prairie crocus’ push up from the frosty ground. The Waterton Community Green Team is also getting ready for the 2011 summer season as well. Again, we are thankful for the space in this Boundary; here you can read weekly articles brought to you by the Community Green Team. These articles will vary from week to week but will always focus on topics to help us be more sustainable as individuals and a community. This summer some of the articles wi

Blog. What kind of a word is that anyway? Even more disturbing is that newer, stranger words have developed because of it, words like blogging, blogger, and blogosphere. Now I'm curious. A quick google search reveals that the word "blog" is a contraction of “web log”...wehBLOG...Blog. K, that makes sense to me. Despite the fact that I have used a blog since 2007 and that my daily work on the internet exposes me to a number of different blogs daily, this is the first time I've heard its definition. The word is both a verb and a noun. The online journal is a blog and the action of adding n

Hello Everyone, I have just uploaded the revised/updated version of Background Report #3 - Best Practices Review for the Waterton Park Community Housing Study. This updated version of the report corrects a number of typos and provides a revised version of the case study for The Banff Centre. The size of the file has been greatly reduced so it should download much quicker than the previous version. It has also been formatted for double-sided printing resulting in a number of blank pages throughout the document. Matt

In addition to questions about who should be responsible for developing new staff housing units either within or outside the community, there is also the question of who should own and manage staff housing. In some cases, all three duties fall to the same group or individual. In other cases, those responsibilities can be assigned to different groups. For example, an individual business owner could hire a private company to build staff housing that the business owner would then own and manage his or herself. Alternatively, that business owner could own the units but hire a third-party property

As part of the online surveys, we asked people to identify various issues or concerns that they have with providing more staff housing either within Waterton Park or outside the community. Some of these concerns relate to a variety of potential barriers that might prevent more staff housing from being built. The following are examples of some of the barriers we’ve identified so far (in alphabetical order): - Costs: land costs and building costs may be too high to make new staff housing financially viable; - Development Capacity: the absence of an active or ongoing housing market in the

There is the generally-accepted saying that "if you build it, they will come." We expect this to be true of staff housing. Although we have not received much feedback from the community through this discussion forum, we are being told anecdotally that there is a significant need for more staff housing in the community. This suggests that if more staff housing were provided, there is enough pent up demand that any new units created would fill up quickly (assuming those units are designed appropriately to meet the needs of local employees). Chances are also pretty good that it will be difficu

For this discussion topic, we want to focus on solutions to some of the issues associated with staff housing. A number of those issues have been identified through the online survey. Surprisingly, the majority of that feedback has come from Waterton Park residents, followed by employees and lastly from business owners (we had expected the opposite to be the case). The top five issues and concerns identified to date by residents regarding staff housing (in order of importance) are as follows: 1) Fear that Waterton Park may become more like Banff or Jasper; 2) Concern regarding incre

For this discussion topic, we once again want to hear from all members of the community - be they local residents, local business owners or local employees (regardless of whether you are currently living in Waterton Park or elsewhere). Specifically, we want to know what you see as some of the disadvantages or downsides associated with increasing the supply of staff housing - either inside the Park or elsewhere. As with the perceived benefits, the disadvantages could relate to how staff housing affects the economic environment of the community, its social environment, the natural environmental

For this discussion topic, we want to hear from all members of the community - be they local residents, local business owners or local employees (regardless of whether you are currently living in Waterton Park or elsewhere). Specifically, we want to know is what you think are the likely benefits of providing more staff housing - either inside the Park or elsewhere. These benefits could relate to the economic environment of the community, its social environment, the natural environmental of the Park, etc. Questions for you to consider that might help frame the discussion include: 1) How

Our introduction to this discussion topic is deliberately brief as the topic is pretty straightforward. For this discussion topic, we want to hear specifically from local employees who are either currently living in staff housing or who have lived in staff housing in the past. What we want to know is what you like and/or dislike about living in staff housing. Questions for you to consider that might help frame the discussion include: 1) Is there anything particularly unique to living in staff housing that you don’t typically experience living in market rental housing? 2) What are the

We know from talking to different business owners in Waterton that their employees are living in a variety of housing situations. While a number of local employees do live within Waterton Park, many live outside the Park in the surrounding communities such as Pincher Creek, the Crowsnest Pass, Cardston, etc. and commute into work. Preliminary results from the surveys tell us that some employees are even living in Lethbridge, Medicine Hat or Calgary and commuting into work. For some employees, having to live outside the Park and commute into work everyday can present real challenges. At the sam

Staff housing can take on many different forms. It can be housing that employees rent but it can also be housing that employees own either individually or as part of a housing co-operative. Sometimes, staff housing is in the form of single-family homes, but staff housing can also take the form of duplexes, townhouses, condominium units (i.e., stacked townhouses) and dormitory-style units. For example, the Rocky Mountain Housing Co-op in Banff is a housing co-operative which provides one-, two- and three-bedroom stacked townhouse units for rent to staff of the Banff Centre. Large employers such