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Spring Time in Taradale/Taravista

Welcome all readers! Especially all of the Taravista readers – know that you are included in the Taradale section of this newsletter. We hope you have been enjoying reading our community newsletter.

Spring is a time for change and growth. Taradale is a growing community with new developments, including in and around the lake.

As spring is now approaching, we are looking for new volunteers to help in a number of events in the upcoming month. One of the events is a golf tournament,
which will be held on July 30th. For more details, please see our ad.

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Shotz :: Photo Tips from a Pro #3

Setting up the shot.

Wouldn’t it be great when you wanted to take somebody’s picture, if you never had to worry about the perfect backdrop? Regrettably, this is not always the case. People often take pictures without much thought to the surroundings. Interesting pictures need not be limited to weddings and vacations! Even your every day pictures can stand out with a minimal amount of effort.

Many of us will pull out a camera to take a picture, and quickly snap the shot without much thought. This is fine if you’re in a hurry to capture what is in front of your lens; however, if you have a couple of moments to it set up properly, you’d be surprised how your pictures can turn out.

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Outdoors :: Hoar frost to Snowy Owls

The hardest thing about writing a column for a monthly magazine is trying to make everything relevant to the time period you are going to read it.

The end of February and the beginning of March have been like spring east of Calgary. Oh sure there has been mornings when we woke up to a little snow and some lovely hoar frost. I love the hoar frost we get here with the ice crystals on the branches of the trees and even on the leaves of the grass. You get out into the country and you come across it on the barbed wire, and everything is coated in white until the sun starts to shine and fantastic blue skies emerge then it is like it suddenly starts to snow. The ice crystals that were momentarily on the lines or the branches suddenly melt and fall, sometimes in a great long line of ice.

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Saddle Ridge donates $125,000 to NECCS

Our fund-raising continues! In February, Saddle Ridge Community Association donated $125,000 to NECCS as its commitment to match some of the funds received by the province. We hope to receive an additional $375,000 of matching funds within the next month and we will keep you posted as they are received. In late March, there will be a major corporate fund-raising event held by our funding partner, Genesis Land Development. We will provide an update on that event in next month’s article. Special thanks to Genesis and our fund development committee for all their hard work in bringing us ever closer to our $15M fund-raising goal for our Genesis Centre of Community Wellness.

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EMS:Bicycle Helmet Safety

Getting started

• Allow children to assist in choosing their own helmet– cyclists who choose their own helmet are more likely to wear them.
• Make a habit of wearing helmets early, even if young children are learning on a tricycle.
• One simple rule: no helmet, no cycling. Make the rule and stick to it consistently.
• Lead by example– always wear your own helmet!
• A helmet that has been in a crash must be replaced, even if it appears undamaged.
• Replace your helmet every five years even if it hasn’t been in a crash. UV rays will weaken the helmet over time.

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Where is our community pride?

I am a born and raised Calgarian, I know I truly am a rare breed in this booming city where many residents are new to the city. In fact, I’ve spent most of my life in North East Calgary and I’ve always thought we got a bum rap in our portrayal in the media as the lower class area of Calgary where every crime tends to be committed if the media is to be believed. When it came time to purchase my first home over 3 years ago I was proud to call Falconridge home, and I was happy to stay in the northeast since I knew the area and all of the amenities available to me here.

We are so proud of our first home and wanted to show our pride by doing our part to make our area a nicer place to live. In three years here we have taken the time to improve our home as best we could on our limited budget, we’ve made small renovations, purchased new furniture, re-did the flower bed in front of our home, planting a few trees and created a little garden in our backyard.

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Celebrate Earth Day in Saddle Ridge – Tuesday April 22

Tuesday, April 22 is Earth Day and communities around the globe will be celebrating with a variety of events and programs. Here in Saddle Ridge your community association is sponsoring the second annual Earth Day Pond Clean Up. If you’re looking for a way to mark this day why not gather up the family and join us at one of the ponds in Saddle Ridge?

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President’s Message – Saddle Ridge

The SRCA will be holding a Soccer registration April 19, 2008 This will be a community run league this year, plus we will be holding several soccer clinics. Our partner for this program in Saddle Ridge is Stephan Horbay and his background is very impressive.

Stephan is the founder of the Grassroots Sports and Recreation Association of Calgary, a Program Coordinator for the Calgary Bridge Foundation for Youth, and a former ESL teacher. Since 2006, Stephan has been involved with North East Calgary’s immigrant youth population – running after school programs and free soccer clinics through partnerships with communities, schools and initiatives such as the Teenzone project.

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President’s Message – Coral Springs

The Coral Springs Community Association held their Annual General Meeting on March 6, 2008 to elect the board for the upcoming year. I am honored to be your president again for the year ahead and I look forward to serving the community.

First of all, I would like to say thank you to everyone who came out to attend the meeting. It was a great turnout and it is encouraging to see more and more people taking an interest in what is happening in their community and the surrounding area.

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