City Notebook: Boom or bust? Depends on how you feel, I guess
By COLLIN GALLANT on December 14, 2019.
cgallant@medicinehatnews.com@CollinGallant Hatters had their backs up this week as the Financial Post painted a bleak picture of the local economy. It’s not uncommon, almost standard in fact, for residents of any town to react badly when they feel slighted by “the media.” But it’s a more complicated topic at the ground level as well as at 30,000 feet. There’s no lack of Hatters who are concerned about the local economic outlook. And a drumbeat from Edmonton and Calgary spell out that Alberta’s economy is in such poor shape that drastic action and Ottawa’s immediate help is needed. What are people to think? In the whole analysis, the article juxtaposes Medicine Hat, which started absorbing the collapse of natural gas prices years ago, with Grande Prairie, where new fields and drilling activity is described a last big boom. Local city officials wished – beyond correcting some glaring errors – it had centred more on efforts already made, and advertised southeast Alberta’s potential. Many will agree that Medicine Hat has made gains in an effort to bring in new industry. The losses in the natural gas sector are sort of old news, but perhaps given new life when the city approved shutting down 2,000 wells this fall. You also can’t deny that worry has persisted and is growing again. The official numbers don’t seem to back this up, but it’s clear there’s a seething sense of unease at the ground level, and some disconnect between the statements of officialdom and how people feel at their kitchen table. These people may not be economists, but it’s hard to imagine reasonable people not reining in their Christmas budgets this year. Municipal landscape A lot of new and somewhat fun ideas seem to be showing up at City of Lethbridge these days. The dome of the downtown post office will house the Sun, then other planets will be placed at civic facilities on the same scaled distance moving outwards toward city limits. It’s being paid for by the Lethbridge Astronomy Society, and travelling to all by foot would constitute running a marathon. On cue, Bob MacDonald, of CBC’s Quirks and Quarks program, considers the proportions of our solar system in his new book. If the sun was a baseball at home plate of Roger’s Place in Toronto, then Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars, would be grains of rice between it and second base. Jupiter would be at the outfield wall, and the next closest star would be in Calgary. Christmas calendar The Medicine Hat Concert Band’s yule time offering is set to take place tonight at the Esplanade with the andante and allegro bands performing (details on the Esplanade website). The CPR Holiday Train arrives on Wednesday, about 4:45 p.m. near the N. Railway Street depot. The coming Friday sees the opening of the weekend Cowboy Christmas trade fair and Beef Pen Show at the Stampede Grounds. A look ahead The annual city budget update is due at council’s final meeting of 2019. 100 years ago M.A. Brown won another term as mayor, and his slate of four aldermanic candidates were swept into power, the News reported on Dec. 9, 1919. In the first election since the abolition of the local ward system, Brown edged Rev. J.A. Morrow at the polls with 816 votes to 616. Four council positions were claimed by three incumbents and also newcomer Byron Bellamy, who resigned as chair of the school board to run on Brown’s Citizen’s Association slate. While Dominion Labour party candidates trailed well back, Bellamy, an official with the Trades and Labour Council and a printer with the News, announced he would represent the news of workmen at city hall. Ottawa shipped $20 million worth of gold to New York in an attempt to stop a planned discounting of Canadian Currency and Cheques exchanged for U.S. funds. The Spokane Clearing House Association announced it planned a 15 per cent exchange rate from travellers on the Spokane Flyer, which had a terminus point in Medicine Hat. After 1,100 cases of the small pox were reported in Toronto, protesters there claimed a new vaccine caused more cases of the deadly disease than it prevented. Local government in Montreal contemplated requiring proof of vaccination as a condition of entering that city. 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 30-29
