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Warming up to winter on the Ross Street Patio

Published

3 years ago

5 minute read

By Mark Weber

We may be into the coldest chill of the winter season, but Red Deerians will find a warm, engaging and inviting atmosphere on the Ross Street Patio just the same. The Ross Street Patio is a spot everyone needs to put on their to do list, even in the winter.

Amanda Gould, executive director of the Downtown Business Association explains the DBA has been bringing special events to the downtown core for several years now. “Every year, we deliver more than 100 events in the downtown core with a favourite being the Ross Street Patio. This marks the first year we will be continuing with programming throughout the winter,” she said, adding that the Patio was opened last winter as well, but with the ongoing pandemic there was no programming. “So we aren’t really counting last winter as our first go-round, we are counting this winter as our first.”

“You will see public art, fire pits, a giant metal ‘locks of love’ heart, free hot chocolate, a Frosty the Snowman bench where you can take pictures with friends, a live music stage for the warmer days, and an ice sculpture will be (featured) on the music stage, too,” Gould explains.

“So we’ve got lots of activity happening down here, and we are really trying to capture the people’s hearts with interesting ideas that we can create that will bring people downtown,” adding that another key goal is to help folks realize there is indeed plenty to enjoy downtown through the winter months.

“We aren’t going to do things on those minus 25 days, but those other days where it’s around minus 10, you can still come outside – the restaurants are open – come down and enjoy a drink, get a hot chocolate and relax on the Patio!”

“Another goal is to just generally increase traffic and overall awareness about all that downtown Red Deer has to offer,” says Gould.

“It’s really also about engaging the general audience with activity, public art and live music that you can’t really get anywhere else,” adds Gould. “It’s also about showing people the fun that you can have downtown.

“The businesses here are absolutely thriving, and their individual patios kind of spill out onto the streets.” Wednesdays in particular are busy especially during the warmer months when special performances are held along with the weekly downtown market.

“During COVID, we’ve still been seeing great numbers with that,” she said. “There will also be the annual car boot sale that we have on Wednesday afternoons as well, where people can come down and sell their wares out of the backs of their cars all along Little Gaetz which is great fun.

“One of the other things we are also working on this year is establishing a new brand for downtown, so that we can really start to change the rhetoric that is happening down here.”

“Yes, there is work to be done of course in other areas, but part of what the DBA can control is the messaging that comes out of the downtown. So we will see a new brand roll out toward the end of the year,” said Gould.

In the meantime, Gould encourages folks to check out the downtown core and visit businesses they perhaps haven’t explored just yet. “Come down and experience it – I think a lot of people who are (affected) by the negative rhetoric maybe haven’t been downtown for years, or they have been down recently and seen something that they didn’t like.

“But if you come down and experience the downtown on an event day, or during late night shopping, or when there is something like that when there is activity going on, you will have a totally different experience,” she said.

“Downtown is such a thriving little community as well – everybody from the various shops knows each other, (staff) from the restaurants know each other – there is a whole bunch of different personalities down here,” she said.

“So you are really ‘supporting local’ while you are down here, but you are also getting an insight into a completely unique way of life in the downtown.”

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Born and raised in Red Deer, Mark Weber is an award-winning freelance writer who is committed to the community. He worked as a reporter for the Red Deer Express for 18 years including six years as co-editor. During that time, he mainly covered arts and entertainment plus a spectrum of areas from city news and health stories to business profiles and human interest features. Mark also spent a year working for the regional publication Town and Country in northern Alberta, along with stints at the Ponoka News and the Stettler Independent. He’s thrilled to be a Todayville contributor, as it allows him many more opportunities to continue to focus on the city and community he not only has a passion for, but calls home as well.

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RFK Jr. says Hep B vaccine is linked to 1,135% higher autism rate

Published on July 1, 2025

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From LifeSiteNews

By Matt Lamb

They got rid of all the older children essentially and just had younger children who were too young to be diagnosed and they stratified that, stratified the data

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) found newborn babies who received the Hepatitis B vaccine had 1,135-percent higher autism rates than those who did not or received it later in life, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. told Tucker Carlson recently. However, the CDC practiced “trickery” in its studies on autism so as not to implicate vaccines, Kennedy said.

RFK Jr., who is the current Secretary of Health and Human Services, said the CDC buried the results by manipulating the data. Kennedy has pledged to find the causes of autism, with a particular focus on the role vaccines may play in the rise in rates in the past decades.

The Hepatitis B shot is required by nearly every state in the U.S. for children to attend school, day care, or both. The CDC recommends the jab for all babies at birth, regardless of whether their mother has Hep B, which is easily diagnosable and commonly spread through sexual activity, piercings, and tattoos.

“They kept the study secret and then they manipulated it through five different iterations to try to bury the link and we know how they did it – they got rid of all the older children essentially and just had younger children who were too young to be diagnosed and they stratified that, stratified the data,” Kennedy told Carlson for an episode of the commentator’s podcast. “And they did a lot of other tricks and all of those studies were the subject of those kind of that kind of trickery.”

But now, Kennedy said, the CDC will be conducting real and honest scientific research that follows the highest standards of evidence.

“We’re going to do real science,” Kennedy said. “We’re going to make the databases public for the first time.”

He said the CDC will be compiling records from variety of sources to allow researchers to do better studies on vaccines.

“We’re going to make this data available for independent scientists so everybody can look at it,” the HHS secretary said.

Health and Human Services also said it has put out grant requests for scientists who want to study the issue further.

Carlson asked if the answers would “differ from status quo kind of thinking.”

“I think they will,” Kennedy said. He continued on to say that people “need to stop trusting the experts.”

“We were told at the beginning of COVID ‘don’t look at any data yourself, don’t do any investigation yourself, just trust the experts,”‘ he said.

In a democracy, Kennedy said, we have the “obligation” to “do our own research.”

“That’s the way it should be done,” Kennedy said.

He also reiterated that HHS will return to “gold standard science” and publish the results so everyone can review them.

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Business

Elon Musk slams Trump’s ‘Big Beautiful Bill,’ calls for new political party

Published on July 1, 2025

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From LifeSiteNews

By Robert Jones

The Tesla CEO warned that Trump’s $5 trillion plan erases DOGE’s cost-cutting gains, while threatening to unseat lawmakers who vote for it.

Elon Musk has reignited his feud with President Donald Trump by denouncing his “Big Beautiful Bill” in a string of social media posts, warning that it would add $5 trillion to the national debt.

“I’m sorry, but I just can’t stand it anymore. This massive, outrageous, pork-filled Congressional spending bill is a disgusting abomination. Shame on those who voted for it: you know you did wrong. You know it,” Musk exclaimed in an X post last month.

Musk renewed his criticism Monday after weeks of public silence, shaming lawmakers who support it while vowing to unseat Republicans who vote for it.

“They’ll lose their primary next year if it is the last thing I do on this Earth,” he posted on X, while adding that they “should hang their heads in shame.”

The Tesla and SpaceX CEO also threatened to publish images branding those lawmakers as “liars.”

 

Trump responded on Truth Social by accusing Musk of hypocrisy. “He may get more subsidy than any human being in history,” the president wrote. “Without subsidies, Elon would probably have to close up shop and head back home to South Africa… BIG MONEY TO BE SAVED!!!”

Musk responded by saying that even subsidies to his own companies should be cut.

Before and after the 2024 presidential election, Musk spoke out about government subsidies, including ones for electric vehicles, stating that Tesla would benefit if they were eliminated.

This latest exchange marks a new escalation in the long-running and often unpredictable relationship between the two figures. Musk contributed more than $250 million to Trump’s reelection campaign and was later appointed to lead the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), which oversaw the termination of more than 120,000 federal employees.

Musk has argued that Trump’s new bill wipes out DOGE’s savings and reveals a deeper structural problem. “We live in a one-party country – the PORKY PIG PARTY!!” he wrote, arguing that the legislation should be knows as the “DEBT SLAVERY bill” before calling for a new political party “that actually cares about the people.”

In June, Musk deleted several inflammatory posts about the president, including one claiming that Trump was implicated in the Jeffrey Epstein files. He later acknowledged some of his comments “went too far.” Trump, in response, said the apology was “very nice.”

With the bill still under Senate review, the dispute underscores growing pressure on Trump from fiscal hardliners and tech-aligned conservatives – some of whom helped deliver his return to power. Cracks in the coalition may spell longer term problems for the Make America Great Again movement.

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