City Notebook: Dog days full of nonsense

By COLLIN GALLANT on August 27, 2022.

cgallant@medicinehatnews.com@CollinGallant

This is the space reserved for a “dog days” of summer column, perhaps owing about this or that in the absence of big news in a holiday-hampered final few weeks of August.

It’s a traditionally sleepy time, late summer, that space just before the dawn of when most people can actually accomplish things or muster the energy to take on new challenges.

But like a snooze button’s tormenting cries, the news cycle hasn’t let up, has it?

Turn on the tube, grab the tablet or unfold the News and you’ll be confronted with some or many items of utter nonsense on provincial, national and international scenes.

On the intergalactic scene, a French scientist apologized after he jokingly included a cross-section of a sausage claiming it to be an image of a planet captured by a new telescope.

Of course, some items are more important in grand scheme and couldn’t wait until September. Still others are much less important and shouldn’t bother us at all.

Local issues

slumber

The biggest issue of the spring – whether the city could get Towne Square up and running – seems to have been answered. Still outstanding are economic development, rec facilities planning (see below) and some chatter about the future of the Monarch Theatre.

Just a thought

The Medicine Hat Historical Society gave $10,000 this week to the Etzikom Windmill Museum.

That facility preserves equipment and tells the story of wind power to operate pumps and other machinery on homesteads long and not so long ago.

We now have a half dozen substantial renewable power companies operating modern windfarms in the region. They’re looking to prove they’re good corporate citizens and here for the long haul. Seems like an obvious sponsorship or partnership opportunity.

Another thought…

The Moose Rec Centre reopens next month after no shortage of concern in the immediate central community that it would be lost to the further donut-ification of the city. City council put up the money to fix the aging rink, but has the community’s view now changed to “use it or lose it”?

And another thing…

Did anyone out there hit up an outdoor pool to find respite from what was eventually a very hot, drawn out summer? Thanks to the Kinsmen, there was a good slot of free swimming at local pools.

Another takeaway has to be that such a setup would well serve the good people of South Ridge. (What about Crescent Heights and Riverside, where outdoor pools are or soon will become memories?)

A look ahead

It’s back to school Monday and the calendar flips to September – that’s also Alberta’s 117th birthday and now “Alberta Day” by declaration of the provincial government. It’s not a proper holiday however, that’s Labour Day on the following Monday.

100 years ago

CM Hatfield, who’d been contracted to “make rain” in Medicine Hat with his secretive scientific process, had arrived in Europe under engagement to the Italian government, the News reported in August 1922.

The promoter noted in telegraph he hoped to meet and explain the process to Pope Pius.

The Gas Dispute – Medicine Hat council may want to buy the assets of the Western Power and Fuel Co. in the Redcliff field, but Mayor Huckvale stated a proposed price of $250,000 was too high.

In Lethbridge, telephones would be removed by order of the mayor and police chief at “problematic” homes as part of a “cleanup” of social problems in the city. The measure was considered legal by the provincial minister in charge of the telephone department, and shutoffs would proceed where a violation of the Liquor Act was suspected.

A New York woman would sue that city’s police board after an officer knocked a cigarette out of her mouth stating such displays wouldn’t be tolerated.

Irish Provisional Army leader Micheal Collins was shot and killed.

A Spokane man set a likely record by playing 22 rounds of golf (comprising 58 miles in loops around one course) in 15 hours, though the Spokesman Review noted the unheralded hero was the man’s caddy, a 15-year-old named Bobby Willard.

The Rotary Club Carnival fundraiser would be held in tandem with a three-day “stampede” promoted by Ray Knight as a qualifier to Knight’s “world championship” rodeo in Oregon.

Contestants in city-wide voting for Carnival Queen would be Miss Blanche Millican, Miss Gladys Warham, Miss Irene Crawford and Miss Marion McLean.

Collin Gallant covers city politics and a variety o topics for the News. Reach him at 403-528-5664 or via email at cgallant@medicinehatnews.com