this post was submitted on 06 Sep 2024
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A 15-year-old Indigenous boy killed by RCMP in Wetaskiwin, Alta., last week handed a machete and a knife over to police and had run into a field before officers opened fire, Alberta's policing watchdog said Thursday.

In a statement, the Alberta Serious Incident Response Team (ASIRT) provided new details on the final moments leading to the death of Hoss Lightning from Samson Cree Nation.

Lightning died last Friday. According to RCMP, the teen called 911 and told a dispatcher he was being followed by people trying to kill him.

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[–] [email protected] 21 points 3 months ago

The teen handed over his weapons, ran away, and the cops shot him to death.

Fucking assholes.

ACAB

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 months ago (2 children)

Bit of a sidenote, but when did the shorthand for Alberta become “Alta”? “AB” is right there and is shorter.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 months ago (1 children)

My mom has always written Alta when addressing mail. I wonder if it’s an older convention that’s still clinging on for some people. I’ve used AB my whole life.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago (1 children)

That’s interesting if it’s an older convention. I don’t normally read Alberta-focused literature, so it comes up for me a lot less.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 3 months ago (1 children)

I'm in my mid 60's ... so back when I was growing up in Saskabush, in the pre-postal code era, almost every province was shortened to the first few letters of its name, ie: Alta, Sask, Man, Nfld, etc.

After the introduction of postal codes it changed to the two letter designation.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 months ago

I’m familiar with the others, but the Alberta one stands out the most to me as odd. Still fascinating though.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 months ago (1 children)

It was the old form. Other than BC, the old postal short forms were 3 or 4 letters.

BC

Alta

Sask

Man

Ont

Que

NB

NS

PEI

Nfld

The 2-letter acronyms came up from the United States relatively recently.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 months ago (1 children)

The two letter designations came in the late 90's and are used by Canada Post in automated sorting.

I can find no history of Canada adopting this system from the US.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_postal_abbreviations_for_provinces_and_territories

[–] [email protected] 0 points 3 months ago (1 children)

The two-letter system was already in place in the United States mail system before the 80s.

It wouldn’t be the first time Canada adopted a US data standard to ease utilization of US made or standardized equipment.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Ok. Do you have proof Canada adopted it from the US?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

As someone who sees MS Word forms regularly force Canadians to use Month/Day/Year formats which were never native to Canada and don’t meet the ISO standard either, I am inferring the impetus transition.

But truly, I old enough to recall many standards being harmonized in the early 90s in the wake of the North American free trade agreement.

Whether or not a digital archive document demonstrates that Canada Post intentionally harmonized to match the US is TBC.

But it is a verifiable fact that the two-letter standard for provinces and territories has not been commonly established in all federal regulations or data standards or in provincial and territorial data systems standards.

That is to say, it has not been formally adopted as by Canada or as the ‘Canadian data standard.’