A year since it started but its end is coming into view

By COLLIN GALLANT on March 13, 2021.

cgallant@medicinehatnews.com@CollinGallant

This week we reflected on the “start” of the pandemic, which is loosely defined by different media sources on different dates.

That speaks to the fast-paced reaction and confusion last March, when toilet paper supplies ran low and anxiety shot through the roof.

This week the News provided some papers to schools for discussions with younger students.

You know the kind of front page we’re talking about; instead of “WAR” on January 31, 2020, it read “Global Emergency Declared.”

It belongs in a time capsule for sure, but thoughts also drift toward when “Victory!” will emblazon the top-front banner.

When will we hold it up, walk out the door and dance it down the streets, ticker tape flowing, libations running strong?

It’s clear that such a date for that groundswell will be hard to define.

Perhaps it’s happened for you already, with the second dose. Maybe the warm weather and increasingly bright news has lightened your days.

But there will be no terms of surrender, no treaty signed on the deck of a battleship, no VE Day, or VJ Day, or in this case a specific VV day, or no obvious one anyway. Maybe one will appear without any reason and take root in the public imagination as the point between now and the future.

U.S. President Joe Biden said in a national address this week that day could be July Fourth, after vaccine will be available to every one of American’s 300-plus-million adults.

That likely won’t happen as fast in Canada and Alberta, but it’s more quickly upon us than we thought not so long ago.

In the meantime, it’s OK to be more than a little weary.

But don’t let that stop you from being hopeful.

What’s old is new

This week the city’s website trumpeted out telling of the creation of a new interactive map of projects for the 2021 construction season.

Granted it will be busier than originally planned thanks to a spate of now-approved projects funded by Ottawa and Edmonton’s COVID stimulus grants.

And there are a couple updates to the technology, but it’s not a remarkably different concept from the sort of map that appeared on the city’s website four years ago but, ironically, fell into disrepair.

In a similar vein, when council last met, officials simply could not stop marvelling that a process of epoxy lining older sewer mains negated the need to dig up streets and replace aged infrastructure while saving money.

Neat? For sure, but hardly new. Memory is foggy, but it’s been at least eight years since the city first started contracting crews to do this.

Some sympathy here, public officials have had to spin around like Tasmanian devils trying to assure residents who wonder why the same roads seemingly get ripped up every other year, even if they don’t.

A look ahead

Council sits Monday to hear the 2020 annual report of the newly created Invest Medicine Hat economic development office at city hall.

A bylaw to call for a vote to “disestablish” the City Centre Development Agency as business improvement area states that day could be in mid-May.

100 years ago

“Canada’s railways would not adopt daylight savings time in 1921,” the Medicine Hat News informed readers 100 years ago this week.

The transportation companies stated that conforming to a recent federal government policy, not requirement, would be too difficult to accomplish on short notice.

Canada’s top militia officer, Lt. Gen Sir Henry Burstall, for whom the town in Saskatchewan was named, reviewed the No. 3 Medicine Hat Machine Gun Co. and was banqueted at the Assiniboia Hotel.

The government of Alberta would back bonds sold by irrigation districts, Premier Stewart announced as part of a cabinet brokered solution, though the local irrigation scheme for the Seven Persons Creek would be paused for a year while the province’s engineer studied the project.

U.S. mining magnate Jesse Knight, who in 1901 purchased 250,000 acres south of Lethbridge and named the town Raymond for his son, had died in Provo, Utah, officials with the Knight-Watson ranch announced.

A $400,000 provincial budget surplus was aided by a $1.3-million transfer from Ottawa, a more detailed accounting showed, one week after the provincial treasurer outlined the 1920 financial statement.

“Order Easter Lilies Today” for deliveries by Easter from Mills Greenhouse at 1021 Yuill Street, or phone 2227, read an advert.

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