City notebook: The weirdness finally subsides

By Collin Gallant on October 20, 2018.

There was a hidden gem included in last week’s column.

The description at the bottom, as usual, noted it covers city politics and a variety of topics, but also “potato yields apparently.”

(The 100-year-ago portion detailed the results of the 1918 biggest potato contest.)

This week we continued in a horticultural vein.

You may have missed it, but marijuana was legalized on Wednesday. It made all the papers, but with many major issues these days, by the time the actual thing happens, it’s a bit anti-climactic.

Oh, make no mistake, the fans of cannabis loved it — big time — just as those who disapprove, hated it.

Most people, I’m guessing, reacted like I did.

After a busy day interviewing pot smokers who rushed out of stores with tiny shopping bags, I took a load off with a decaf coffee and a handful of chocolate covered raisins after the kids were in bed.

Not canna-coffee, not CBD-infused glossettes, nothing of the sort.

I’m no prude, but it honestly is pretty weird, right?

Cash crops

A last word on marijuana: on the business side of things expect a shift toward a discussion of hemp production.

The changing rules in Ottawa also ease regulations for hemp growers who currently market the fibre to further extract and market other byproducts.

As for the size of the region’s hemp crop, the St. Mary’s Irrigation District reported for 2017 that its members’ acreage for hemp totalled 11,800 acres, up by about half from recent years.

It’s still only one-quarter the spread dedicated to the area’s top crop, hard spring wheat, and well short of other common grains.

But, except for canola, obviously, it beats out many high profile cash crops like sugar beets (11,300 acres), grain and sweet corn (about 6,200 combined), lentils (5,000), or mint (4,900).

By the way, potatoes took up about 16,000 acres last year in the area between Lethbridge and the Hat.

A Friday release from J.D. Irving in support of small business week notes the need for an additional 9,000 acres of crop production next year to supply the new Cavendish Farms potato plant in Lethbridge.

Quick ones

— Kelli Ireland is leaving the Canalta Centre.

— Grain shipments are hardly rare in Medicine Hat, but it’s weird to come across one downtown. Little birdies report that sacks on malting barley were hustled in to the backdoor emerging craft brewery Travois Alehouse on Third Street on Friday. Expect initial offerings to be ready when doors open in early-ish November.

A look ahead

On Monday, council’s public services will take up the controversial issue of how to protect the Saamis archaeological site while satisfying the dog-owning community, which currently uses it as an off-leash park.

100 years ago

“The chase to Berlin was on,” the News reported on Oct. 17, 1918, with new advances of Canadian and British troops detailed and a myriad of peace proposals telegraphed back and forth between the combatants in Europe.

The full text of a peace proposal put forth by U.S. President Wilson was reprinted on the News’s page 3.

“The German Sun has Set,” noted the title of an editorial.

In the casualties list for Sept. 29, Lte. Arthur Thompson, of 821 First St., Medicine Hat was killed in action.

In local politics, citizens debated the merits of the upcoming “Swan Bylaw” which would see the city grant concessions to owners of the Swan Coal Mine, west of Medicine Hat (in present day Echo Dale park) to aid expansion of the operation.

Horse buying for the Canadian Expeditionary Force heading to Siberia would take place in Medicine Hat on Oct. 23 and in Eagle Butte on Oct. 24. The military sought five to nine year old geldings of any solid colour except light grey or buckskin, and 15 hands for mounts, and 16 for draught animals.

A veterans diner in Windsor, Ont. turned into an airing of grievances to the local MP who was told the federal gov’t. should assist returning men with obtaining divorces from wives who had left them well they served overseas.