Noteworthy: He shaped the music scene in Medicine Hat, and he’ll be sorely missed

By Bruce Penton on January 17, 2024.

Medicine Hat’s musical community suffered a major loss last Saturday when longtime band director Bill Wahl passed away in Edmonton.

Wahl, who formed the Medicine Hat Concert Band Society in 1985 and had been band director at Crescent Heights High School since 1971, faced a dementia challenge in his later years. A note to band members from current band directors Curtis Perrin and Mark Ward said one of the last things Wahl did was sing a song for his Edmonton nurses.

His family reported that “his last couple of days were spent listening to band music, telling stories to the doctors and nurses and watching the Jubilee Walhtz (conducting along with an IV in his arm),” the email said. The Jubilee Wahltz (spelled that way as a play on Wahl’s name) was a May 2022 event at which the local musical community paid tribute to Wahl’s outstanding contribution to the Medicine Hat musical scene.

– There’s probably a few good reasons – vandalism, weather damage, cost – the City of Medicine Hat doesn’t place more trash cans along the various walking trails around town, but I’m certain I’m not the only one who would pick up litter alongside the trails and deposit it into containers if they were readily available.

Discarded coffee cups, cigarette packages, tissues, masks (not so prevalent anymore), food wrappers, aluminum cans and other litter thoughtlessly tossed away by uncaring residents detract from the beauty of our city, and a few well-placed garbage cans might help to spruce things up a bit.

– As a person who wears hearing aids, I’m just wondering why all the TV commercials for hearing centres always feature the wife with perfect hearing and the husband who gets “extra fries” instead of hearing his wife say they need to “exercise.” Do women never need hearing aids?

– This has been a Noteworthy topic in the past, but it’s never wrong to beat the drum for a good reason. A right turn from Strachan Road onto 13th Avenue should have its own, exclusive, turning lane. As it is now, one vehicle intent on going straight invariably sits at the head of the pack, while perhaps a dozen or more vehicles behind want to turn right – and could turn right with no oncoming traffic from any direction getting in the way.

There’s a perfectly good ‘straight through’ lane at Strachan Road and 13th but it doesn’t get enough use. City officials took action on a similar situation at the bottom of the Dunmore Road hill a few months ago, and it has worked out well. It’s time to try it again. It would make at least one driver – me – happy. And I know I’m not alone.

– Be careful out there – on the pickleball court, that is. The sport growing quickest in popularity is pickleball and, yes, I’m one of those who has played it a bit. It’s popular with seniors, but accidents can, and do, happen. An acquaintance of mine from Regina, an amateur golf champion by the name of Doug Mader, died recently at the age of 83 following complications from a fall playing pickleball about a year ago. Of course, falling and hitting your head can happen almost anywhere. Another acquaintance’s wife died recently, a few hours after tripping on a vehicle’s trailer hitch in a shopping mall parking lot and hitting her head.

– The subject of fighting in hockey always creates vigorous debate. One side says fighting should be completely banned; the other side says it’s needed to keep the other team honest. What would the Chicago Blackhawks think after their rookie phenom Connor Bedard had his jaw broken after a high hit by New Jersey’s Brendan Smith? Nick Foligno, arguably the Hawks’ second-best forward, adhered to the age-old hockey code by immediately dropping his gloves to fight Smith, but broke a finger in the ensuing fracas and is sidelined for about a month. Maybe it’s time to ban fighting altogether.

– For the first time in Medicine Hat’s history, the majority of city council members are women. Counting Mayor Linnsie Clark, five of the eight folks who sit around the council table and decide the city’s fortunes are female. But in St. Paul, Minn., a city of 300,000, all eight city councillors are women – and all under the age of 40 – the first major city in the U.S. to have that totally feminine distinction. Maybe Medicine Hat will be next.