City Notebook: 2020 Newsmakers

By Medicine Hat News Opinion on January 23, 2021.

cgallant@medicinehatnews.com@CollinGallant

The News, like most, made essential workers the newsmakers of 2020 – the work of health-care professionals and others simply outpacing the field in a pandemic year.

But without COVID, what would the year have looked like?

We missed the traditional runners-up story this year, but there’s a strong case to be made for MLA Drew Barnes on it.

Without a glimpse of the alternate universe of a non-COVID 2020, the representative from Cypress-Medicine Hat was geared up to play point on Alberta’s Fair Deal power play.

Some measure of the UCP’s exercise with confederation could still play out in 2021, but it seems many have lost the gusto.

That hasn’t stopped the UCP from keeping it top of mind with a series of critiques of Ottawa’s handling of the pandemic, support for the patch and a sundry of other items.

It hasn’t stopped Barnes either. He’s still out there, ceaselessly talking about Alberta’s need for a Fair Deal. He helped write a report of the same name, and pushed harder than his panel mates on things like pensions, a police force and more power for this province.

Many feel that conversation was essentially shelved when the pandemic took 2020 over, and what was ramping up to surely be a humdinger of a referendum question about equalization.

Barnes’ enthusiasm is also seemingly out of kilter with what top party officials were discussing (right up to this week, when KXL re-fired the conversation).

Perhaps they’d rather leave it to an MLA out of cabinet to drive. Perhaps not.

But, it’s led to all sorts of chatter about an apparent disconnect between Barnes, a one-time Wildrose Party leadership candidate, and Premier Jason Kenney, who’s a sort of one-man brass band.

And with added stress of recent polling and fundraising results (showing the UCP trailing the NDO on both), one can only wonder what 2021 will bring for a governing party approaching the mid-point of its term.

And, who knows who the top local newsmaker will be?

Award winning

My personal unsung hero of 2020 is Angela Baron at the Prairie Rose School Division.

This fall the former local TV journalist did what any journalist should do and rewrote the province’s back-to-school pandemic protocols for when to keep children home.

Cutting through the over-lawyered, over managed technospeak, she produced a simple one-page flowchart about how to consider symptoms and next steps.

That was stamped as correct by AHS officials and soon school boards around the province were using it and sending it to parents.

When the book is finally written about what went right and what went wrong in the pandemic, several chapters should be dedicated to a complete failure of the communications industry.

Another interesting phenomenon is the myriad governments, agencies and groups that sprang in the spring to create “one-stop” information portholes for their constituencies, only to see them become vast plains of bafflegab akin to the Canadian Prairies.

A look ahead

The Mayor’s State of the City address goes virtual Tuesday for those who’ve registered for the Kiwanis Club event that’s jointly promoted by the Chamber of Commerce.

If you’re wondering, the House of Commons is back in session Monday.

The Alberta legislature won’t convene until Feb. 25, but, get ready, there are only five off weeks planned between then and a potential end date of June 23.

100 years ago

MP A.L. Sifton, the former premier who joined the federal war cabinet after securing a seat in Medicine Hat, had died, the News reported in January.

An editorial described him as a notable personality in Western Canada and a driver behind creating the Union Government that survived the Conscription Crisis.

Sifton was one of Canada’s signatories to the Treaty of Versailles.

He was Secretary of State when he died, and would be buried in Beechwood Cemetery in Ottawa.

The local Rotarians presentation of the “the Jollies of 1920” was a hit, according to a review of the variety show.

City council approved $1,300 for the construction of an overhead walking bridge connecting Riverside and Crescent Heights.

Collin Gallant covers city politics and a variety of topics for the News. Reach him at 403-5285664 or via email at cgallant@medicinehatnews.com.