There is a lot going on these days down on the lands known as the East Village, that 49 acre parcel between Fort Calgary and the downtown core, and the Bow River on the north and 9 avenue SE on the south.

But first, a little history.

As the CPR pushed the main line west in 1882-83, it was generally acknowledged that the new townsite to be known as Calgary would be east of Fort Calgary, where the wonderful community of Inglewood now exists.

Land speculators, being land speculators, immediately began snapping up all that land which they believed they could then flip to the CPR for some handsome profits.

However, the CPR, being the CPR, (the closest thing to a local monarchy we have ever had), didn’t intend to be taken to the cleaners by Calgary’s first generation of land developers.

After having safely secured the lands to the west of Fort Calgary, particularly the strip along where the Palliser Hotel now stands, the railroad publicly announced that the townsite would be situated there, and the Inglewood boom went bust, as did many of the land speculators.

So, what would be some of the things to spring up around the new train station and townsite?

Hotels – including the now-legendary St. Louis Hotel.

In the picture accompanying this column is a picture that tells a story about the St. Louis Hotel – one moment in time.

Rod Love, former long-time Chief of Staff to Alberta Premier Ralph Klein, will be the co-host of a new weekly national radio show on CBC Radio One, beginning Monday, January 23rd.

The show, entitled “Type A”, will be a weekly one-hour opinion-based show that examines aspects of Canada’s current economic malaise, and ways to recovery, through the perspective of business leaders, entrepreneurs, and their critics.

“I know this will come as a shock to my many conservative friends who have joined me in fighting the CBC for three decades,” acknowledged Love, referring to legendary battles between Ralph Klein and the Mother Corp over the years.

“During those years, the CBC believed we were dangerous, knuckle-dragging conservative cro-magnons, while we believed the CBC was a left-wing hotbed for dangerous socialst propaganda,” said Love.

Both parties have agreed to a non-disclosure agreement on what they really think now.

Welcome to 2012, the year that the bills for the Great Recession of 2008 start coming in. As usual, governments took the easy way out in 2008 when the crash hit, and their revenues dropped. Rather than adopt a prudent reduction in government spending, commensurate with their falling revenues, Canadian governments simply ran deficits, and piled on the debt, or in Alberta’s case, burned through billions of dollars in hard-won savings to feed their spending addiction. The result is inescapable: deficits mean debt, and debt means debt servicing costs, and every dollar that goes to servicing a debt is a dollar that doesn’t go to essential public services.

In honour of Barry Obama’s inauguration a year ago this week…

On three occasions in American history, the man being sworn in as President worried that under the circumstances, he might be the last.

The first was George Washington, who observed in 1789 that “I walk on untrodden ground”, and knew that everything thing he did set a precedent. He worried constantly that if the precedents he set were wrong, there would be no second President.

I am pleased to mark my return as a regular bi-weekly contributor to the Calgary Herald by announcing my simple plan to save Canadian democracy.

I begin with the following question: why can’t we solve our problems in this country? I answer with the following proposition: our problems are not being solved because our ancient political system and institutions were not designed to find confront the complex and fast-moving problems of today’s world.