City Notebook: It’s heatin’ up

By Collin Gallant on January 19, 2019.

There will be two elections for Albertans to vote in 2019, so, Welcome to Bighorn Country!

That’s the name of a proposed provincial park, which recently became the focus a flurry of outrage, accusation and all manner of controversy, but it might serve as a good hallmark of the political landscape in general.

The residents of this province have been moving from outrage to outrage for some time now, but with a long-talked-about provincial vote months away, it’s reaching a fevered pitch.

For perspective, this week on social media featured competing campaigns to determine if Albertans were ‘angry or not’, and there’s no clear consensus.

Another controversy is whether the Alberta government’s $23-million national ad campaign in support of TransMountain Pipeline expansion is a waste of money.

That put a billboard on parliament hill, where NDP critics were planning until recently to put in gridlock with a transport truck protest convoy.

It is interesting though how the Made in Alberta ad campaign, a call to outside investors is being advertised inside Alberta.

From Conservative corners last year came the suggestion the NDP might call a snap election just after the merger of Wildrose and Progressive Conservative party ranks in order to catch everyone off guard. Now, UCP leader Jason Kenney is essentially calling the government a bunch of chickens for not dropping the writ this week.

Forget the writ, it’s pretty clear the fight is well underway.

Spuds

Potatoes sprouted up a couple of times last year, or to pun another way, garnished this column.

The historical portion proclaimed record spuds grown in the great 1918 potato growing contest. In more current business news, we outlined how hemp acres in the region beat the what you might think cash crop of sugar beats, sunflowers and mint, but with more and more potato acres coming on each year.

Now, new crop data from Statistics Canada this week suggests Alberta could soon surpass Prince Edward Island as the top tuber producer in Canada.

That’s partly due to a poor fall harvest in the Maritimes, but also due to expanding acreage in the Highway 3 region of Alberta.

Nationally, production fell 2.6 per cent but Alberta producers boosted their output by nine per cent. Local yields were one-third above the Canadian average. With a cumulative crop weighing 10.1 billion kilograms, Alberta still sits about 200 million kilograms behind the island province.

Potato grower Harold Perry, of Chin, Alta., offered sage advice in an interview with the CBC.

“The way I look at it, for the Alberta economy, instead of trying to do one thing 100 per cent better, you do 100 things one per cent better,” Perry said. “I think potatoes are falling in that category right now.”

Regional

And there’s more invigorating news from the rural region as the Prairie Post reports that the new Burstall (Sask.) and District Community Complex is up and running. The $1.2-million project, that acts as community space, plus town and R.M. Offices, was first proposed in 2011 and fundraising ever since has them about 85 per cent of the way there.

A grand opening is planned for Jan. 23, followed by a fundraising supper on Feb. 9.

A look ahead

Council sits Monday to discuss the city’s grant to the City Centre Development Agency and an historic designation of a local church.

100 years ago

“Canada has never had such a chance in the European market,” read an ad by the department of Agriculture in the Jan 17, 1919 edition of the News.

It implored stock growers to conserve local herds in the short term to secure and hold the British market for the future after years of wartime food production.

Expanding irrigation works should be the top reconstruction priority for southern Alberta in the next decade, Lethbridge board-of-trade members announced at a regional convention.

The discovery of a dismembered body of a man whose skull was found near Irvine days earlier led authorities to believe coyotes were responsible. An inquest would be held to determine the man’s identity.

Nebraska became the 36th state to endorse the prohibition of alcohol, thereby meeting the two-thirds requirement of states to enact the constitutional amendment. “America has voted itself dry July 1 next,” read the report.

Also south of the border, the U.S. Army Flying corps announced that for the first time it would deploy aircraft to monitor forests in Montana and Idaho during the coming fire season.