'Cadillac of toboggan rides' part of Edmonton's upcoming winter city conference
ELISE STOLTE
City officials are hoping this year’s WinterCity Shake-up conference will detail how to design cities to be warmer, healthier and more magical.
They’re also signing up teams of four to race canoes down Gallagher hill — a race La Cite Francophone’s Daniel Cournoyer promises is both safe and comfortable.
With a padded canoe following a custom-made luge track, it will be “the Cadillac of toboggan rides,” he said, urging people to get signed up at flyingcanoevolant.ca. “It’s a nice quick sweep down the hill and it follows up with a bucksaw challenge and an axe throw. Best times move forward.”
The Flying Canoe Volant festival, which runs this weekend out of La Cite Francophone, is adding the additional event to coincide with the Winter Cities Shake-up Conference, which runs Feb. 16-18, building on work from the first conference in 2015. Twenty speakers — and some attendees — from across Canada, Europe and Asia are lined up and conference officials said local residents are welcome, too.
Experts will detail how to design effective sunny nooks that capture heat while keeping out the wind, how embracing winter in other countries has improved rates of depression, how to create a sense of place in winter from an urban design perspective, and a business case for supporting winter biking, said Sue Holdsworth, leading the winter city effort for the City of Edmonton.
http://edmontonjournal.com/news/loca...ity-conference