Members of the Rotary Club of Medicine Hat and the City of Medicine Hat stand at a street sign for the newly named Rotary Centennial Way - formerly 23rd Street NE - on Wednesday.--NEWS PHOTO RYAN MCCRACKEN
rmccracken@medicinehatnews.com@MHNMcCracken
It was a move 102 years in the making.
In honour of the Rotary Club of Medicine Hat’s 2018 centennial, 23rd Street NE has officially been renamed to Rotary Centennial Way.
“It is a wonderful recognition of Rotary’s service in the community over, now 102 years,” said former Rotary president and current member Dave Panabaker, one of many who gathered Wednesday for a socially distant unveiling at the corner of Brier Park Place and the newly coined Rotary Centennial Way. “Our actual centennial was back on June 1, 2018. Our club, and other clubs here in town celebrated it at that time. This was one of three projects that were on the go to celebrate our centennial. And when I say our centennial, we really want to talk about it as Rotary in general in our community – not just our club but all the good things Rotary has done over the course of 100 years.”
Mayor Ted Clugston was on hand to celebrate the renaming. Clugston says completing the change took some time, as there were a number of issues that needed to be worked out, but he was happy to see the Rotary Club earn such prominent recognition Wednesday.
“This was a bit of a process, to tell you the truth,” said Clugston. “There were a few requests from the Rotary Club about different roads – Parkview Drive was one of them, Ranchlands. But because their centennial year was in 2018, Ranchlands would have taken too long to develop out and then Parkview had too many addresses on it, so this was our compromise here and I think it’s a good one.
“When you think about 100 years, actually 102 now, that the Rotary Club has been giving back to Medicine Hat, I think this is a very, very minuscule, small way to honour them.”
The Rotary Club of Medicine Hat formed all the way back in 1918, and Panabaker says its original project was to complete the cenotaph at Veterans Memorial Park, though their work in the city quickly expanded to touch on all areas of its culture, as well as philanthropic initiatives across the globe.
“That was the first project Rotary took on, to finish the cenotaph and get the memorial set up, and then over the course of the next 100 years there have been all kinds of different little projects, both in the community locally and internationally,” he said, adding the Rotary Music Festival each March is a point of pride for both the club and the community. “This is the 65th year of that music festival and it’s a big part of the local music scene for kids to perform in. Internationally, probably the biggest thing is the fight to end polio. In North America polio is almost a forgotten disease but internationally it’s been a struggle to get it eradicated around the world. It’s kind of interesting that we’re in a different kind of viral pandemic, when Rotarians think about the fight against polio that goes back 50 years and now is only endemic in two countries in the world.”
Panabaker added the other two projects connected to the club’s centennial celebration are the creation of Rotary Centennial Trail – now open for use along South Boundary Road – and a plan to plant 100 trees in Dunmore.
“The tree planting is planned for this fall, assuming that everything works,” said Panabaker. “We’re hopeful that over the next weekend or two, we’ll be able to go out there and plant some trees.”
