It seems like billiards fans might be snookered

By Collin Gallant on June 30, 2018.

Fancy a game of snooker? If you’re not a member of the Veiner Centre or the Redcliff Legion, you might be out of luck.

This week the News revealed the city was selling off six full-sized 12-foot by six-foot tables that were moved out of the Veiner Centre just before the 2013 flood.

Four new ones, plus an eight-ball table, will be in place when the centre reopens later this summer

Those appear to make up 80 per cent of the snooker tables in town, not counting mancaves, garages or barns.

The traditional pool halls seem to have disappeared over the last little while lounges are remodelling and, it seems, are getting rid of the big tables.

Likewise the Robertson Legion hasn’t had one for years, the front desk reports.

Boston Billiards, Pete’s Billiards in Crescent Heights, and the Billiard Academy downtown are all no more.

The Cypress Club moved its century-old table out of the upstairs banquet hall to a member’s home several years ago.

The Redcliff Legion kept its big table when it bought a smaller surface, though sources there say only a handful of members shoot on it anymore.

Sign of the times, I suppose. Everybody must be playing pickleball, instead.

Populations

A city census in Lethbridge finds the city is close, but no cigar, to the 100,000 plateau. Figures presented this week show local population grew 1.6 per cent over a federal census done in 2016 to sit at 99,769.

There’s no prize for reaching six digits, but the goal of a city census is to capture non-permanent residents, like students, that federal head counts typically miss, and thereby boost government grants that are given on a per capita basis.

Medicine Hat city council last year voted against spending $100,000 to conduct a city census after the federal census returned a figure of 63,260.

Partners

A 2017 study of the Business Council of Canada found that firms from this side of the border have operations located in 348 of 349 congressional districts in the United States.

The study found a total 7,705 Canadian companies had a “recognizable business presence” in all but one electoral district, with the only outlier being a small area of Kentucky.

“We want to make sure that members of Congress understand the degree to which their own constituents depend on — and benefit from — the Canada-U.S. partnership,” the group’s president John Manley said when the study was released.

Pot Central

It’s been said Medicine Hat’s spot at the hinge of Highway’s 1 and 3 makes it a potential logistics hub.

By hook or by crook it might also be the only place to buy marijuana legally within a 100 kilometres or more.

The News has watched a list of proposed locations on the AGLC website fairly closely, but hasn’t yet spotted an address in Redcliff or Cypress County. There are only a few in Brooks and nothing between here and Lethbridge, or north to Wainwright or Saskatoon.

Maple Creek will have an outlet, according to a list of approved applications in that province. Of 1,500 filed, only 51 province-wide were accepted.

Also of note, Calgary Co-op recently listed 17 addresses in that city where the retailer hopes to open cannabis outlets. Also of note, again, regional co-ops are independently run, and there’s no indication similar plans are in the works for South County Co-op, which operates locally and in much of southern Alberta.

A look ahead

The holiday on Monday means council will hold a Tuesday-night session to discuss assumptions for the 2019-2022 city budget. Such debate was tabled last meeting.

100 years ago

“A goodly number” of Hatters took part in sports competitions held annually to mark Dominion Day, the News reported on July 2, 1918.

That included an auto caravan to Seven Persons where the festivities featured horse races, a ball tournament, athletics and the ever popular tug-of-war.

The News editorial board took issue with discussions at council to open a public auto garage similar to city marketplace.

“While we have always stood for the ownership of public utilities, it requires a considerable stretch of the imagination to class the repairing of automobiles as such,” read an editorial.

Such a move, it continued, advertised to potential industries that if it locates in Medicine Hat and proved prosperous, there was no guarantee council would not establish a competitive line of business.