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In 1904, the city of St. Louis, Mo., hosted the Louisiana Purchase Exposition, better known as the St. Louis World’s Fair. This moment became a launching pad for St. Louis in its desire to become one of the major business centres in the United States. By 1950, St. Louis boasted a population of 856,796 and was one of the more modern cities in the country.
Today, the population of St. Louis is 302,000, down 65 per cent and is considered to be one of the most dangerous cities in the U.S. Loss of major businesses from acquisition or moves to better cities, failures to re-invest, racial division and internal government bickering have all contributed to the decline of this once progressive city. The story is one of discord and poor leadership and reports say that the failure to invest in the core began the deterioration of the entire community, much like an apple rotting from the centre out.
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In the 1998 movie Shakespeare in Love, there is a scene when the financial backer says to the producer (and I am paraphrasing): “The actors don’t know their lines, the sets aren’t finished, the tickets haven’t sold and we are supposed to open tomorrow. How can that be?” At which point the producer looks him straight in the eye and responds, “I don’t know, it’s a mystery.”
These past few days, we are all feeling more and more like much of our world is living in a state of “It’s a Mystery” and, somehow, all of us are expected to believe it all and follow the rules with as little push back as possible.
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For a long time, Alberta has benefitted greatly from oil and natural gas royalties. Today, the resource revenue, while still sizeable, is no longer adequate to support the lifestyle to which Albertans have become accustomed.
Fifty years ago, then-premier Peter Lougheed forecast that this day might come and set up the Heritage Savings and Trust Fund to get us through times like this. If our political leaders over those 50 years had stuck to the rules, raised taxes modestly and kept their hands off of the piggy bank, Alberta would have been in an excellent financial position today. But we aren’t.
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Driving past the somewhat delayed new Inglewood Bridge, I could not help but reflect on what it takes to build a bridge. Through a bit of research, I learned that Amsterdam has over 1,200 bridges, the most of any city in the world. The oldest bridge was constructed in 1648, and that the maintenance and the building of bridges in that city is a year-round and very expensive proposition costing millions of euros annually. It takes a lot of talent, time and planning to build a bridge and it takes a lot of effort to maintain them once they are constructed.