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There always seems to be a bear or two in the ditch of Hwy. 88, up around the Marten Mountain turnoff. Apparently there’s clover growing there, and they like to eat it. That’s fine, but the other day, we heard, there was somebody stopped and feeding the bears. That is not good. Teach a bear that vehicles and food are related, and the bear will be on the road and not in the ditch. Same as the bear that learns that houses have tasty garbage, or that humans are friendly critters with handouts. You’ll never get rid of them. The experts all say that taming bears isn’t a good idea. Leave them alone and let them stay wild.
* * * * * Sexually active, are ya? Think you’ve got all the bases covered? Think you’re safe from STDs? Maybe not.
There’s a first time for everything, and todays it’s genital warts. That is...they haven’t been mentioned on this page before as far as we know.
What’s up is a news release from the Society of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, warning of the dangers of something called HPV. That stands for ‘human papillomavirus.’ It’s “highly contagious” sexually transmitted disease that isn’t much fun to have, according to the SOG.
All it takes is skin-to-skin contact to get it. It can cause cancer of the cervix. You can have it but have no symptoms.
There’s much more, and it’s not all that encouraging. HPV is apparently quite common, but awareness of it isn’t.
Get informed. Get vaccinated. Get a Pap test. Check out hpvinfo.ca.
* * * * * The Rotary Club gets a lot of ink in this space, no question. The thing is, they just keep doing stuff! No sooner had the dust settled from the Lanny McDonald visit last week than the Rotary brain trust was hip deep in preparing for this past weekend’s poker tournament. It’s very impressive.
Lanny was impressive too. Great work, guys!
* * * * * Somewhere there must be a big hole in the ground, because they sure have hauled a lot of fill to that new construction site across from Canadian Tire.
What’s going in there, we hear, is a Holiday Inn, a Shell station and a Lubex. Those are unconfirmed, but from a decent source.
What a lot of people must be wondering is how Slave Lake can sustain not one but two more hotels. The Nova hotel is well on its way too. If you count the Best Western (about 60 rooms), Noralta Lodge at something over 100 rooms, and add another, say, 120 (probably more) for the two new hotels, that’s nearly 300 rooms added in three years.
It gets hard to imagine how there could be enough business for all of them to survive. There are a few possibilities. One is that they won’t all survive. Another is that these investors know something we don’t about the growth that’s going to happen around here. Or a combination of both