City Notebook: The heroes of COVID tested more than ever

By COLLIN GALLANT on September 18, 2021.

cgallant@medicinehatnews.com@CollinGallant

Spare a moment here to think of the heroes of the COVID pandemic.

You may picture health-care workers whose great reward for 19 months of hard work is to face truly impossible situations in hospitals today.

You may see truck drivers, grocery clerks, farmers, small business owners, teachers and parents who trudged forward to keep life as close to normal as possible for the better part of two years.

Or perhaps it’s seniors, who were actually locked down as the rest of us shuddered to hear about absolute horror stories coming out of long-term care facilities in 2020.

But, let’s not define ourselves by what we do for a living, but rather what we’ve done and can do.

You may not see yourself in the list above, but it has been the actions and fortitude of everyday folks that has beaten beat back rising cases during each wave of the coronavirus crisis. It will again.

If you paid attention, masks start reappearing in public each time cases began to rise, well before the province began issuing edicts or fiddled with indoor capacity.

You can cite the amazing, perhaps even miraculous, development, production and distribution of vaccine that nearly decimates the chances of spreading or dying of a new disease that quickly paralyzed the entire world.

It’s not very effective sitting on a shelf, and the fact it is in so many arms, is a testament to the common good and, many would argue, common sense.

The government can’t force you to get a vaccine, and won’t be able to.

Were you somehow tricked or cowed into getting it?

Of course, the problem is how to deal with rising cases largely among the unvaccinated.

Don’t expect the brute squad to start grabbing folks off the street.

The civil disobedience against health restrictions simply wasn’t quelled by the authorities, police or courts (aside from a few high profile cases).

That laid bare the role that the common weal has in the social contract we are all engaged.

That same power has been flexed, more widely and more effectively, by people choosing to do the right thing: wear masks, not cheat the rules and by those who have chosen to get vaccinated.

That number is three out of four Albertans, and never before have 75 per cent of adults in Alberta agreed on anything. Certainly not in a political poll. Not even on a favourite hockey team.

A look ahead

The Federal election is Monday, the same day municipal election candidates have to register their campaigns on Nomination Day at city hall. City council will meet Monday night.

Federal voting takes place at various locations throughout the city from 7:30 a.m. to 7:30 p.m.

Aurora Cannabis is set to release its year-end financial report on Tuesday.

100 years ago

The “Human Spider” climbed the top of Huckvale Block to thrill a large crowd below and promote his travelling daredevil show in Medicine Hat, the News beamed on Sept. 16, 1921.

The performer, Bill Strother, ascended the three storey building with only his bare hands and cunning. He then sang a song and rode a bicycle along the parapet above the throng below, before promising to scale city hall blindfolded on Saturday night.

Up to 50,000 acres within two days ride of Medicine Hat may be set aside for fall rye, it was estimated.

Montana Gov. Joseph M. Dixon backed a plan for Canada and the United States to jointly build reservoir space on the Milk River as the joint international waterways commission met in Havre.

Summer straw hats “fairly rained down” at the Polo Grounds to celebrate Babe Ruth’s record breaking 55th home run one the last day of the season.

Silver dollars would be the prize in 22 classes at the Medicine Hat Horticultural Society’s “Big Vegetable Exhibition”, after which all produce would be auctioned for the benefit of the Hospital, Children’s Shelter and Salvation Army.

A column by the News’s ladies editor remarked that while some may be shocked by new dress lengths, lower necklines, lighter material and looser waists, they are only good sense.

“Unimpeded” by corsets, stiff-starched undergarments, and “yards” of needless material, “a women walks around with what grace she is possessed.”

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