Bouquet:

To Brody Chapman, a courageous Eckville boy who has gone out of his way to assist other children who, like him, have been gravely ill.

Last weekend, he was honoured by Premier Ed Stelmach with a Great Kids Award in recognition for his efforts to make scrapbooking kits available to sick children.

As impressive as that may have been, for Chapman, 12, it was not on the same level as meeting a personal hero in Hawaii this month: Dog the Bounty Hunter.

That visit was arranged by the Children’s Wish Foundation.

Dog the Bounty Hunter — AKA Duane Chapman — was scheduled to spend a half-hour with Brody, but spent 90 minutes with him, because of his genuine interest in the boy and his project.

“Brody was overwhelmed, just star-struck,” his mother Carmen told the Advocate.

Brody has spend a lot of time in hospital in recent years, getting treatment for cancer.

He got interested in scrapbooking, finding it an interesting and fulfilling way to pass the time.

With the help of his mother and generous donors, Brody created Scrapping with Cancer, to create kits for others.

He has helped distribute 300 of the kits, including 23 in Hawaii this month.

So far, every sick child who has asked for a scrapbooking kit has received one.

A $65 donation will fund another kit and ensure that pattern continues. For more information, check out www.scrappingwithcancer.ca

Bouquet

To Chuck Strahl, the minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development, for demanding more accountability in how money is spent in his department.

Strahl is pressing forward with a plan to improve oversight of how $6 billion is spent on Canada’s aboriginal reserves.

He wants to know not only where the money is going, but assurances that Canadians generally, and aboriginals more specifically, are getting value for those expenditures.

Starting next week, federal transfers to reserves for education, housing and some other programs will contain a clause allowing the Indian Affairs Department to later analyze whether it was well spent.

Under current regulations, if residents of a reserve feel the money sent to their band for education or housing is being improperly allocated, not even the minister can follow up to ensure accountability.

This plan is not some hard-ass Tory scheme. It was proposed by former Liberal prime minister Paul Martin, who then dithered and backed down after some national native chiefs said they were not properly consulted in advance.

But value-for-money clauses are routine for other federal departments. They have also been accepted for a long time by band chiefs for federal transfers allocated for social development and health.

There’s no reason why the same standards should not apply to transfers for housing and education, and potentially millions of reasons why they should.

Bouquet

To the City of Calgary or having the guts to accept a controversial sculpture for a public space.

American artist Dennis Oppenheim created a massive sculpture, made of steel and stained glass, that looks like a steepled church.

The point of the steeple is sunk into the ground with the rest of the piece suspended in mid air.

Oppenheim says the sculpture is about pure architectural aesthetics rather than organized religion, but its title is certainly provocative.

He called it Device to Root Out Evil.

Oppenheim created the piece 11 years ago for an art show in Venice.

It was subsequently rejected for a permanent home in New York, City, where he now lives, and at Stanford University in California, where Oppenheim received his master’s degree in fine art.

For the past two years, the sculpture has been in a small public park in Vancouver, as part of a two-year installation of 22 sculptures.

When the Vancouver Parks Board recently decided not to extend its stay, Calgary stepped to the fore.

No doubt when Device to Root Out Evil is set up in Calgary, it will have avid supporters and virulent detractors.

That’s a good thing.

The more art that people see, the more they think about art and talk about it, the better society becomes.

Oppenheim is not some young punk trying to make his mark by being deliberately outlandish.

He’s 70 years old and is a respected conceptual/performance artist.

It’s a mark of growing maturity that Calgary is anxious to publicly display his work.

Joe McLaughlin is managing editor of the Red Deer Advocate.