City notebook: Couldn’t we just dig straight down?

By Collin Gallant on November 10, 2018.

If you’re a Hatter who’s followed the saga of Methanex expansion, or pipeline construction in general, you’ve probably wondered what’s the quickest route to China?

Pembina Pipelines provides some measure in its latest quarterly financial presentation. The firm is considering a West Coast liquid natural gas export facility, and lays out the cost differential compared to shipping from the U.S. Gulf Coast.

Using an estimate of $85,000 per day to keep a tanker at sea, the return trip from the pacific coast of North America would last 25 days.

From the U.S. Gulf Coast via the Panama Canal would take 50 days, and other Gulf Coast to Asia routes show return trip lasting 80 days via Suez Canal, 85 days around the horn of Africa and 90 days via the Straits of Magellan.

Deck the halls

Ray McKay, who coached the Medicine Hat Tigers to 45 wins in the 1983-84 season after 12 years playing pro, is the newest member of his hometown’s sports Hall of Fame in Leduc. McKay has spent most of his time running hockey academy programs in Ontario after a two-year coaching stint in the Hat.

On cue, this year’s inductees for the Medicine Hat sports Wall of Fame are set to be announced on Tuesday afternoon.

Votes of note

The major points of the U.S. midterms are well known. But, of note to cross-boarder smokers in Medicine Hat, Montana voters rejected a ballot initiative that would have placed an additional US$2 per pack tax on cigarettes in order to fund expansion of medicare in that state.

A look ahead

The city’s planning commission will be presented with a proposed Riverside Community redevelopment plan on Wednesday along with an application to rezone greenspace near Primrose Drive for possible condo development.

100 years ago

“Hostilities Cease!” was emblazoned across the top of a special bulletin of the Medicine Hat News on Nov. 11, 1919, reports of the Armistice signed in Europe reached Alberta by telegraph.

Reports laid out the Armistice agreement, ending more than four years of combat on the western front, and a seemingly wholesale change in politics of defeated nations.

The next day the afternoon paper was headlined “Hun’s Teeth Drawn.”

Hatters celebrated on a public holiday on Nov. 11 by parading cars throughout the city in a makeshift parade that terminated with a rally at city hall. There, patriotic speeches, prayers and anthem singing was concluded with burning an effigy of the Kaiser.

Also included in the edition was a causality list from the waning days of the conflict that included J.W. Roberts of Walsh, and C. Prince, of Medicine Hat, both dead of gunshots and J.J. Murphy, of Empress, wounded-gased.

Local obituaries that mentioned Spanish Influenza also increased steeply, including one for William McNeely, one of the principles the Medicine Hat Milling Company and Alberta Linseed Products. He died at age 37 of “double pneumonia.”

Influenza cases number 9,200 in Alberta, including cases in Bow Island, Cereal, Warner, Wheatland, Dunmore, Taber and Walsh. Local auto owners volunteered to bring rural patients in to Medicine Hat for treatment.

Local ads included “Direct sale to Farmers” offering oats green feed at $23 per ton and oats straw at $13.