Former Mayor of Medicine Hat Ted Grimm, seen here in an undated file photo, passed away Friday following a battle with illness. Grimm was Medicine Hat's longest-serving mayor, holding the office for parts of four decades. - NEWS FILE PHOTO
cgallant@medicinehatnews.com@CollinGallant
Ted Grimm, Medicine Hat’s longest-serving mayor, is being remembered as one of its best mayors by friends and by all as the central figure in the city’s coming of age in the late 20th Century.
Sources have confirmed to the News that Grimm, who was in his late 80s, died Friday after an illness.
Details of a memorial service are expected this week. His family has requested privacy.
“People in Medicine Hat will be very sad to hear it,” said Mayor Linnsie Clark, 42, who befriended the former mayor before her own win at the polls last October.
Grimm, who remained out of the public spotlight since retiring from politics in 2001 after serving eight terms in office, a total of 24 years, introduced her at the victory night party.
“Each council builds on the work of the last, and he moved a lot of balls forward,” said Clark. “People may have agreed or disagreed with him, but no one should question that he cared deeply about this community.”
Grimm served in the mayor’s chair for all but three years between 1974 and 2001, making him one of the longest serving mayors in Alberta history. He also surpassed his direct predecessor in the Hat, the near-legendary Harry Veiner, who served 21 years.
It was a hard act to follow, but Grimm would earn a similar stature in the minds of many Hatters as a top-elected official focused on public services and the protection and promotion of the Hat’s publicly owned utility system.
Graham Kelly, who lost to Grimm in the 1980 election but worked with Grimm as an alderman for 18 years, called his former friend and sometime political rival “the best mayor we ever had,” very passionate about the community, but also a very “private person” which set him apart from Veiner.
“He just went to work. He really understood the community, and the average citizen knew he was going in the right direction,” said Kelly, who admitted the city’s unusual gas and power holdings helped keep taxes and utility rates low.
“We were one of the wealthiest municipalities in North America – he was very vigilant to keep it that way.”
Kelly felt Grimm’s term will be remembered for his prudent guidance and protection of utilities, but Grimm’s legacy is the quality of life valued by residents.
Grimm came to office as the Veiner Centre project was proposed in the mid-1970s, and the city’s part in the Cultural Centre was being discussed. He left with the completion of the Family Leisure Centre, now the Big Marble Go Centre, in 2000 and the Esplanade Arts and Heritage Centre just having been proposed.
Difficult negotiations brought the Saamis Tepee to town, and separately, the city acquired the Burnside land development. The city expanded south of the Trans-Canada Highway during his term, and the population of the Hat nearly doubled.
Each project had supporters and detractors, said Larry Godin, who was city clerk for Grimm’s entire tenure, but Grimm was astute and could guide controversial topics to fruition.
“He was a very good problem solver,” said Godin. “When there was a problem, he would address it, and usually to a good result. He never backed down from doing what he thought was best.
“Being a public figure and politician is tough, but he would always meet the day. Very smart. Very caring.”
In later years, Grimm led the charge to maintain the last fully municipally-run power companies when the province moved to deregulate the power market in the late 1990s. The natural gas company made Medicine Hat unique among all Canadian cities, but also a top-20 gas producer in the Canadian oilpatch when Grimm retired from office in 2001.
Bob Wanner, who served as city commissioner under Grimm, said the former mayor was foremost a champion of integrated public utilities “for the benefit of its owners, the residents.”
“The modern foundations of the city, are really the foundations that he and several strong aldermen laid,” said Wanner, the former speaker of the Alberta Legislature. “There was so much, of so much significance, that was accomplished.”
Grimm first became mayor in the 1974-77 council term, then returned in 1980, ahead of several deep recessions. His administration unsuccessfully sued the federal government claiming it illegally taxed city sales of natural gas.
He also presided during the construction of the ‘new’ city hall in 1982, and lobbied the province on the creation of an urban parks system that evolved to become city’s river valley parks and trail system, including Echo Dale Regional Park. Kingsway Avenue was redeveloped as a major thoroughfare via a civic improvement project. Special transit service was launched.
Grimm was born in Fox Valley, Sask., the grandson of immigrants – “Germans from Russia” according to biography posted by the provincial archives.
He moved to Medicine Hat in 1951 where he worked at Northwest NitroChemical as became involved in the labour movement. He returned after earning a teaching degree, and served two terms as alderman in the late 1960s, after unsuccessfully running for the New Democrats provincially,
During his hiatus from office in the late 1970s, he became a real estate agent, and would become involved in a controversial land sale of the former Ford Dealership across from what would later become city hall site.
The issue dogged him in the media, but never sank him at the polls.
With Veiner retiring in 1974, Grimm beat future mayor Milt Reinhardt and former mayor Chuck Meagher to become mayor. He lost the 1977 election to Reinhardt by 571 votes, but ran away with the 1980 race that saw him begin a string of seven straight election wins. That is believed to be a modern record in major Alberta cities.
“Good government doesn’t mean something magic,” he told reporters on election night 1980. “It means we’re going to supply the type of teamwork and leadership the people of Medicine Hat have always looked for.”
He is survived by his wife, Ruth, four children and a large extended family.
