Alberta: Redux

First of all, I'll skip the drama and just say this: 14 for 14!

My recent trip back to Calgary was a complete success - an expensive success, but a complete one nonetheless. I am now safely back in Halifax with the developed negatives waiting to be printed. There was no arrest made, no Premier Ralph Klein coming out and getting angry at me, no excitement of any kind while the photograph was taken. However, the road to get back to Calgary is quite a story.

In one of my recent blogs (I believe it was the Québec one), I had mentioned that I had received word from Alberta's Premier's office that they had reversed their previous position and were going to allow me to take the photograph of Premier Klein's home in Calgary. Well, that decision was reversed again. Apparently, a woman in the office received the package I had sent back in June to the Premier's office and decided to contact me and say that I would have permission, without knowing that other members of the office, including the Premier's security, had already nixed it. Well, they caught wind of it again and promptly told the woman who had given me permission that it was not going to happen. That's when I received an email that stated this.

I called someone with the Premier's Security team and had a lengthy discussion with him. He actually asked me where I got the addresses for the provinces of BC, Ontario and Québec, since he contacted the security teams from those provinces, and they had never known that I was taking these photographs and would not have allowed it to happen. When I told him about the Land Titles Offices, he couldn't really say much. He seemed to think that horrible things were going to happen to the Premier's house if he gave out the address, so I told him to contact any of the other provinces in the country and see if anything negative had happened since all of those photographs were already taken. The conclusion of that discussion was that there was nothing I could say or do that would make him change his mind, and that Premier Klein didn't want to involved in the project based on Security's strong advisement that the address not be given out.

So, I was back to square one. I went to Google and asked for help. At one point, I came across a news article from a few years ago that told of an activist/environmental organization that actually went to Premier Klein's home to forcibly install solar panels on his roof. So, of course, I contacted this organization (this was back in August yet) and talked to someone who was there when it happened. She was reluctant to give out the address since they and Premier Klein had a special legal agreement between them so that the organization would not get prosecuted for trespassing, etc. So, I called various other organizations that may not consider Premier Klein their best friend, but to no avail. This is one hard guy to track down.

Then I decided to call the solar panel organization back again and talk to someone else who was there. I ended up talking to a different guy, who directed me to a different person, who pointed me to someone else. I called this person and told him about my project, who I was, etc, trying to be extremely diplomatic since I'm not always sure how people will react to giving out other people's addresses. But his reply was, 'You need to know Klein's address then? Sure.' As it turned out, he didn't have his exact address, but knew the street it was on and told me it was the only one on the block that has a giant Alberta flagpole on the front lawn.

That was all I needed, and I bought a ticket to Calgary, went to the street, easily found the house, took the picture, and that was that. The project is (finally) finished.

14 for 14! Woo hoo!