City Notebook: Memorial Cup bid on the way? Who can say

By COLLIN GALLANT on January 13, 2024.

cgallant@medicinehatnews.com@CollinGallant

Sports reporter James Tubb performed a public service last week arguing in a column that Medicine Hat has to – just has to – bid on the 2026 Memorial Cup tournament.

Looking at the current roster, the spring of ’26 could be a lot of fun.

Scuttlebutt says the local sport and event council have sketched out ideas.

Wasn’t the rink built for just that purpose?

Hockey fans think so. City Hall might as well.

But do the Tigers’ owners Brent and Darrell Maser?

They’re the operative piece in a Mem Cup bid, after all, not city hall. The WHL isn’t going to force anyone to host the tournament. Teams apply to host it, make their pitch and all the owners vote.

They’re also not the only piece, but isn’t it a bit too easy to say the city, or local hotels, or the Masers need to do something?

The Co-op Place is nine years old, after all, built after howls of unhappiness in the 2000s when fans without season’s tickets were essentially locked out of the old 4,006-seat Arena.

Well, last weekend the Tigers walloped two visiting teams by a combined score of 22-5, and the average attendance was just north of 3,000.

That’s more in year’s past, which is a pretty pitiful statement for a 6,405-seat rink.

More hockey, and more

A note here for Fred Farnworth, who provides an excellent weekly “look back” feature for the News’s sister publications in the region.

He announced that after 50 years of covering the Shaunavon Badgers for that town’s title, the Shaunavon Standard, and double as the PA announcer, he’s retiring.

Still tidying up

Something else that missed our roundup of notable news in 2023 was the fact the U.S. military closed the airspace over Havre, Mont. on Feb. 11 last year to scramble a fighter jet to investigate a “radar anomaly.” That was about the time a balloon originating in China drifted over the U.S. creating a major stir, and mightn’t the Havre object arrived from southeast Alberta? Who knows?

A few oddballs keep cropping up that missed our otherwise stellar compendium of News annual roundup.

Perhaps it’s a case of “did that really happen?” – which is becoming more and more frequent. (Or is it?)

On the go

Has there been a slower start to a year than 2024? A usual post-holiday lull in activity further plunged as winter finally arrived in southeast Alberta. Stay warm and keep your chin up, though. It usually takes a few days after the first cold snap for people to realize life will go on and that they likely don’t have the supplies on hand to last until May.

A look ahead

Medicine Hat city council meets Monday for its first sitting of the 2024.

A municipal planning commission meeting will hear about a plan to redevelop Micheal’s Motel property in Riverside that was closed last summer by police following spiking crime in the Riverside Community. Such permits typically don’t require routing through the commission, but it’s a high profile property.

Capital Power and Ontario Generation have a joint press conference scheduled on Monday with lots of bigwigs from both governments involved. The Alberta grid will be stretched in this weekend’s cold, so expect this to be the restart of power discussions in 2024. (The city’s final year-end financial statements, including utility profits, are due in March or early April.)

100 years ago

“Children are not allowed to sleigh down any of the streets of the city,” probation officer W.H. Williams reported in a front page bulletin on Jan. 12, 1924. “Parents will be prosecuted if this continues,” he concluded.

Work to correct the intake at the city’s power plant would require the construction of a new pier at the cost of $3,000.

The public school junior hockey league got underway with Elm, Connaught, Toronto Street, Montreal Street and Riverside taking part.

Meanwhile Alexandra High School would enter boys and girls teams in the Alberta championship circuit, but funds were required and a general appeal was on.

The Canadian Progressive Party, including Medicine Hat MP Robert Gardiner, would remain intact for the term of parliament, said Leader Robert Forke. The party had formed from disillusioned former unionist government MPs and supporters of the United Farmers political movement.

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.