From tragedy to hope: Calgary’s first safe surrender site opens in the new year
In 1987, Teanna Elliot was unsafely surrendered in a Calgary parking lot as an infant. Wrapped in a garbage bag with her head sticking out, she was discovered by two young boys walking home from school.
“It was hard knowing that somebody just gave me up,” said Elliot.
Since Elliot’s surrender in the ‘80s, there have been plenty more cases of unsafe surrender in the city…
How these local musicians make their music
Growing up, Natalie Inga listened to artists like Joni Mitchell and Bruce Cockburn to feel understood. Now as a YYC Music Award-nominated singer-songwriter, she hopes that others can have the same experience listening to her music.
Her process changes between songs; sometimes she begins with lyrics and other times a piano melody or a guitar riff gets her started.
“I have, like, three different notebooks on the go at any time,” Inga says. “Sometimes, I’ll just jot some words down and I’ll come back to it, and start to kind of find what that sounds like”…
Candlelight Concerts light up the city
The first Candlelight Concert took place in Madrid in 2019, but it has since spread to over 100 cities across the globe, including in Calgary in 2020.
The concerts are organized by Fever, a global online site to list and sell tickets for live entertainment. Alexandre Boccardi, the manager of Fever in Canada, says their vision is to make culture more accessible.
“The goal was really to make this a multisensory experience,” says Boccardi. “We try to present music that they might not be familiar with, or if it’s popular music, present it in a new format, namely in this case, a lot of our concerts are string quartets or piano”…
Julie Patton 