City Notebook: Keep an eye on base decisions

By COLLIN GALLANT on November 27, 2021.

cgallant@medicinehatnews.com@CollinGallant

Hatters are right to worry about an eventual loss of British Army Tank training at CFB Suffield.

The News broached the subject last spring and was accused of being a sour puss, but this week reports that the British Army was ready to close the base entirely was met by a sort of non-denial denial that politicians are great at offering.

The base won’t “close” but operations will “change” according to UK Defence Minister Ben Wallace.

Both can be true, can’t they?

Now, we all have a soft spot for squadies.

Even tavern owners who sometimes complain about behaviour have to admit they’ve sold enough pints of beer to fill Elkwater Lake over the years.

Hotel rooms for thousands of troopers on weekend leave?

Retail sales linked to the exchange rate for the British Pound?

How many discharged British troops have settled in the Hat?

It’s a lot, and certainly any change is a big change.

However, the silk purse that should come out of such a pig’s ear is obviously to repurpose CFB Suffield to host high-tech training that is the main thrust of British plans.

The region’s politicians are already floating the idea.

Drones, robotic infantry vehicles and other armaments for the “battlefield of the future” are laced in a report to the British Parliament last spring that reduces the number of heavy tanks but gives few clues about where they will train.

One can imagine that adding new mandate for BATUS would have the effect, essentially, of building another Defence Research station.

Those two plums could become an orchard to help diversify the southeast, add stable, white collar jobs in the form of hundreds of engineers or other technological workers.

Mind you, the general population never really took to heart the decade-old idea idea of making the region a centre for drone-testing – though it’s a going concern in the Foremost area.

Either way, tanks or not, Hatters will have to make sure this doesn’t turn into another one of those “great ideas” for southeast Alberta that seems to go nowhere.

Colab confab

On Monday, Hat Mayor Linnsie Clark will take part in a panel discussion put on by the Edmonton YWCA that includes Calgary Mayor Jyoti Gondek and Grande Prairie’s Jackie Clayton.

Clark said she met Gondek at last week’s conference of the Alberta Municipalities lobbying group, and is interested to explore how all of southern Alberta can work together better.

“If you look at the level of collaboration that is taking place in the Industrial Heartland (industrial zone near Edmonton) we’re just not there yet,” said Clark.

Of note, Monday’s moderator for the discussion of issues faced by female politicians will be Sarah Ryan of Edmonton Global. Hatters may remember her as Sarah Kraus when she worked at CHAT up to 2015.

Our back pages

Notable passings this week included downtown property owner Floyd Ronan, Dominion Glass historian and Redcliff mainstay Ralph Pinder, and Rick Redmond, a former Criterion Catalyst executive who was the head of the Medicine Hat Library Board last year.

A look ahead

The city’s audit committee will receive this summer’s mid-term financial statements when it meets this week.

The forecast for Wednesday (when we dip into December) is sunny and plus-10C.

100 years ago

A News editorial in the Nov. 24, 1921 edition took issue with a popular but misguided sentiment that since the federal Conservative in a union government had expanded the franchise, women should show gratitude rewarding them with newfound votes.

“No argument could be more childish,” the News concluded, no party since the 1890s had outright opposed women’s suffrage. The women of Canada were capable of making their own minds up in the coming federal election.

Local candidates for the December election were nominated in a flurry. Recently elected incumbent Robert Gardiner (Progressive) would face first-time candidate Dr. F.W. Gershaw (Liberal), and Great War and Russian Civil War veteran Maj. William McIntosh (Conservative).

Medicine Hat’s population was 9,575, according to the 1921 census, 70% more than 10 years earlier. Redcliff grew by five times to 1,097 citizens over the same time. The population of Alberta rose 50% to sit at 580,000.

An unknown Canadian Soldier would be relocated from the former Western Front and interred at the Victory Tower on Parliament Hill in Ottawa, it was announced.

Liquor inspectors in Spokane discovered a shipment of milk cans which were partitioned to allow a layer of milk above a second compartment filled with five gallons of illicit Canadian booze.

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