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Events

Halloween Trick-or-Treating Tips

A message from the Federation of Calgary Communities

Halloween can be a fun and exciting event for kids (and adults)! Below are some informative tips to increase neighbourhood safety on October 31.

Residents: 

  • Turn on outdoor lights and replace burnt-out bulbs. 
  • Clear a path from the road to your front door and remove any potential obstacles or tripping hazards. 
  • Keep your pets safe. Keep pets indoors and away from the unfamiliar (and spooky) guests at the front door. 
  • Beware of potential food allergies; consider alternative goodies. 
  • If you’re driving be cautious of Goblins, Ghouls and Ghosts out and about in your neighbourhood. 

Parents: 

  • Costumes should be short enough to avoid tripping; and be light coloured in order to be easily seen at night. Having your child wear reflective tape will also help them be better seen by drivers. 
  • Use non-toxic makeup to complete costumes instead of masks as masks can reduce visibility for your child. 
  • Create an easy to follow route with your children and teenagers. 
  • Travel in groups of three or four. Young children should be accompanied by a responsible adult. 
  • Practice crosswalk safety. Make your way up one side of the street and cross to the other side looking both ways, don’t criss-cross back and forth. 
  • Double-check you child’s goodie bags to ensure everything is safe to eat. 

Remember: 

Connect with neighbours! Halloween is a great time to familiarize and engage with your community!

Get Your Table for the Holiday Market!

Are you a local artist, baker, artisan, craftsman, etc.? Have you got a collection of your own creations that you know your fellow community members and neighbours would enjoy? Book a table for our annual Holiday Market and get ready to set up shop!

The Holiday Market is not until December, but we’ve opened up tables for reservations and they are going fast! With about half of the tables already claimed, do not hesitate to book yours – they tend to sell out well before the holiday season and we are on-track to sell out before fall. So whether you’ve got some homemade Holiday baking, decor, crafts, clothes, or whatever, reserve your Market table before it’s too late!

If you want to book a table, contact John, our Events Manager, by emailing him, giving him a call at 403.283.0464 ext. 4, or stop by his office at the west-end of the arena hallway.

For more information on the holiday market and to download the application form, visit our events page.

Get a TASTE of West Hillhurst this September

Looking to have a fun, adults-only night out where you can drink some cocktails, sip some wine, and sample some of Calgary’s best food? Well, we’ll save you a seat for the WHCA’s annual premier fundraiser, TASTE of the Neighbourhood!

Some of the vendors we’ve lined up for this years event include Sunterra Market, Midtown Kitchen, Amato Gelato, Rig Hand Craft Distillery, The Barn, Village Brewery, Springbank Cheese Co, Burwood Distillery, Osteria Chef’s Table, Bravara Coffee, Apex Predator Brewing, Kensington Liquor Cellar, Vinestyles, Get Smoked Southern BBQ and more to be announced!

If sampling food and drink wasn’t enough to convince you, this year we’ll also have a fun-money casino courtesy of our friends at Aces R Wild! This is a great excuse to play some high-stakes, casino-style table games at no cost to you. At the end of the night, our chip leaders in various games will be taking home prizes, so bet big and play often!

We’ve also put together our best silent auction to date, with generous donations from Calgary businesses such as 9-Round Kickboxing, the Calgary Roughnecks, Bowtown Music, Calaway Park, and more!

For the first time ever, we’ll be hosting a Wine Survivor at TASTE. To join the pool, bring a bottle of win and $10 entrance fee and YOU could be the one to take home half of the total wine pool at the end of the night.

So join us Saturday, September 28th from 7pm to midnight for a wonderful evening of fun, friends, and food. We hope to see you there!

New & Returning Fall Programs

The summer months can be a little slow for our WHCA programs – with the great weather outside and the ice removed for maintenance this year, who wants to be cooped up inside anyways?

Thankfully however, we’ve got some great new programs coming this fall, as well as some of your favorites making their return in September. We’ve heard community feedback and hope to bring you the best programming at the WHCA yet!

Squash & Fitness Centre programs will make their return in September with the return of Spin With Sandra and Family-Friendly Spin. You can also expect to see the return of Intervals and Tot Yoga. There will be new yoga classes too! For adults, we’ll be introducing Yin and Yang Yoga, and Youth Yoga for ages 6 to 9.

You’ll also see the return of our WHCA Music classes, Basketball programs, and some new and innovative takes on youth tennis, as well as other youth sports. Stay tuned!

Most notably this fall is TASTE of the Neighbourhood! TASTE is our annual and premier fundraiser at the WHCA and this year’s plans to be the biggest and best yet. We’ll see the return of many of our fantastic neighbourhood vendors, as well as some new local brands as well. The silent auction is shaping up to be phenomenal, and since people had so much fun with it last year, we’re bringing back the fun-money casino courtesy of Aces R Wild!

So stay tuned to our social media, website, blog, newsletters, and bulletin boards and don’t miss out on anything this fall!

Saddle Up for Stampede Breakfast

Our Annual Stampede Breakfast returns Tuesday, July 9th from 9 to 11:30AM!

Join us at the WHCA facility and enjoy a morning of delicious, fresh-made pancakes, sausage, and coffee with some family-friendly activities all courtesy of our wonderful events sponsors! Don your western wear and get in the Stampede spirit with us while we enjoy some great music by local group The Hubcaps.

This is a free event for community members, so get your family together and bring the whole posse on down for a breakfast with your neighbours and friends. Our staff and friendly volunteers will be waiting with a plate of hot and fresh breakfast!

No registration required. For more info, visit westhillhurst.com/whca-events.

YEEHAW!

Get Garage Sale Maps Starting Today

The Neighbourhood Garage Sale maps for this weekend, June 15th (Calgary’s Neighbour Day) are now available online and in the facility!

We assembled a map of all the homes throughout West Hillhurst that registered for our Garage Sale day. If you missed your chance to get included, there’s always next year! Registration gets your home added to the map, as well as a bright yellow garage sale sign to post in your yard or on your street. Which, if you haven’t picked your sign up yet, you can find those in the office at the WHCA along with yard stakes.

You can find the garage sale map here, as well as the printable PDF. If you find yourself in the area, feel free to drop-in and grab a copy! We have lots to go around.

So take part in the garage sales this Saturday. Who knows, you might find some hidden treasures!

Neighbour Day Summer Fest

Join us for 2019 SUMMER FEST!

For YYC Neighbour Day, we will be hosting (along with the Garage Sale) our first ever Summer Fest at the community association. Stop by from 11 am to 3 pm for an entire afternoon of activities provided by our amazing sponsors. Some of the great events we have planned are a bouncy house, carnival games, public skating, “Beat the Bucket” water-dunking, basketball, soccer, badminton, BBQ, and more! We are only able to bring you so many great activities due to our amazing sponsors: Cadence Chiropractic, Master Meats, Baboushkin DeJong Real Estate Group, Dairy Lane Cafe, Coca-Cola, and Amato Gelato! Thank you all again for your amazing support! Events like these allow the neighbourhood to connect and grow a our sense of community together.

So take some time on Saturday, June 15th and have some summer fun at the WHCA with SUMMER FEST!

Thank You for Your Clean-Up Efforts

We would like to take an opportunity to thank all of our community members who participated in Spruce It Up! and made our community clean-up day such a success.

With help of our volunteers, area businesses, and the city, we were able to host a success spring-cleaning in the arena parking lot. We hope we were able to take some of your pesky waste and recyclables off your hands and free up some space and time for you in your cleaning efforts!

The City of Calgary provided us alone with 3 truck loads of waste removal, with 6850 kg of garbage removed and 250 kg of organics!

Thanks again for making this event a success and we will see you once again next spring.

Spruce It Up 2019

Need a hand putting a dent in your spring cleaning? Have you got some stuff laying around just waiting to get thrown out or recycled? Join us on Saturday, April 27th for Spruce It Up!: Our annual community clean-up day!

This year for Spruce, we’ll be joined by some great local businesses to aid in waste and recyclable collection and disposal. The list so far includes:
City of Calgary – regular garbage & organic yard waste (items too big for black/green bin usage)
Comrie Sports – sports equipment in good condition for donation
Vecova – bottles & cans
GEEP – electronics
Best Shred – paper/document shredding
Cerebral Palsy Foundation –  clothing and household item donation
Navajo Metals – scrap metal
West Hillhurst Paint & Design – paint collection
With more to come!

With these great helpers present, we’ll be able to deal with almost anything you bring our way. If you’ve got recommendations for us to include in future Spruce events, let us know!

For this year’s event, we will have areas designated through the arena parking lot for you to drop off your stuff. Once you’ve been able to visit the appropriate station, stop by the BBQ on your way out and help yourself to a burger, brat, and a beverage!

So stop by on the 27th and let us help you clean-up the community!

Green Shirt Day at the WHCA

Join the WHCA in support of Green Shirt Day 2019! On Sunday, April 7th, we will be having a free community event from 3 to 5 pm in conjunction with Green Shirt Day in order to raise awareness for organ & tissue donation in honour of the “Logan Boulet Effect.”

“On April 7, 2018, Humboldt Broncos defenceman, Logan Boulet succumbed to his injuries, his parents, Bernadine and Toby Boulet offered to donate his organs so that six lives could live on. They did so, because Logan told his parents, he was registering as an organ donor, and that he was inspired by his coach and mentor Ric Suggitt. Ric passed on June 27th, 2017 and was also an organ donor and saved 6 lives.

As news spread of the organ donation, by this young hockey player, over 100,000 people registered to become organ donors in the days and weeks that followed. To date this is the largest number of Canadians registering to become organ donors in Canadian History due to one event – one person.

Green Shirt Day, hopes to honour, remember, and recognize all the victims and families of that fatal crash, and to continue Logan’s legacy, by inspiring Canadians to talk to their families and register as organ donors.

In Canada, almost 90% of Canadians say they support organ donation, but only 23% have actually registered their intent to donate. Though donation rates have improved over the last ten years, there is more to be done as approximately 250 Canadians die annually waiting for an organ transplant.”
-GreenShirtDay Website

The WHCA’s Green Shirt Day event will feature free food and beverages supplied by our friends at the Barn Pub and Sunterra Market. Calgary Flames alumni Jamie Hislop will be in attendance and available for photos & autographs. We will wrap up the event with a free public skate in the WHCA Arena from 4 to 5 pm.

So rock a green shirt and come on by on April 7th and show your support for this great cause!