City Notebook: Cannonball!

By COLLIN GALLANT on July 24, 2021.

cgallant@medicinehatnews.com@CollinGallant

Only one word describes what happened this week on the lazy river that flows placidly towards next October’s city elections.

“Cannonball!”

After candidate filings trickled in during a now yearlong process starting in January, now everybody’s waded in on the controversy over the handling of the city’s economic development contract.

Those who filed early were joined by newly announced campaigns this week among a crowd of headlines. Who knows, there may be even few surprise entries who can smell blood in the water.

But it’s not just apsiring local politicians that are talking about city hall’s move to spin out Invest Medicine Hat to a private contractor.

Perhaps it’s a symptom of COVID, during which people have felt disconnected and powerless, but Hatters seem to be taking this issue to the streets.

Whatever the reason, Hatters are once again starting to hear a familiar refrain about the need to clean out the ‘Old Boys Club’ in Medicine Hat.

This is presumably a different ‘Old Boys Club’ that was ushered out in 2013 (the famous “Move Forward” election) and another from a decade earlier.

It’s brought up a long simmering debate about the land department, and old and new grudges.

When was the last time you heard about Tom Sunderland?

We’ve heard plenty this week about how this whole thing started when Ross Glen and South Ridge got underway some 40 years ago.

For the record

There are 17 council candidates registered with two months to go before the deadline leading up to the Oct. 18 election.

A total of 19 candidates for council ran in 2017, the top eight vote-getters elected. Roughly 6,000 votes marked the line between No. 8 and No. 9.

There are still no confirmed candidates for either of the city’s major school boards, despite the fact items like curriculum and (as always) funding are among the hottest issues in Alberta.

In the region, four of the nine district seats in Cypress County saw challengers the last time out.

In the greater region, the County of Newell will be stuck running the same old boundaries after a resident won a case at the Court of Queen’s Bench that redistricting changes to balance population and reduce councillors number was done incorrectly.

That case was won, by the way, by local lawyer Luke Day whose firm, Stringam L.L.P., also does work in Brooks.

For the record, also

Staying near Brooks, that hometown’s paper, the Bulletin, tells a story this week of teen Jesse Bradford’s quest to make the Guinness Book of World Records.

It took the 16-year-old a little over two hours and the 13 minutes to solve 300 Rubik’s Cubes while riding a unicycle.

That sounds like a record to us, but it takes the Guinness Book people time to verify that he topped the existing puzzling-on-a-unicycle record of 250 in three hours.

What are you planning for your summer vacation?

A look ahead

Just as blazing weather fades, it’s Stampede Week in Medicine Hat, with an evening show and nightly rodeo standing as the main attractions in what should be a somewhat less-busy year. It’s been hell to get anything concrete planned during the pandemic, but odds are the local summer show has done its best in trying circumstances.

100 years ago

The United Farmers chose Herbert Greenfield as leader and therefore premier one week after the surprising election in Alberta, the News reported on July 28, 1921.

Party president Henry Wise Wood declined a nomination. Another top official had been killed in an accident.

The party’s attorney, John Brownlee, had been tagged as a potential premier, but was rumoured to become justice minister.

Cabinet making was also difficult and wrought with rumours, including that previous treasurer C.R. Mitchell, a Liberal who had once represented Medicine Hat, would be retained.

Medicine Hat’s newly elected MLA, Perren Baker, secured the post as minister of education.

Building a dam on Ross Creek to feed a planned 3,000-acre irrigation district would be so costly as to make it impracticable, an engineers report commissioned by the province concluded.

Supreme Court chief justice, Sir. Louis Davis, was sworn in as “administrator of Canada” aboard a steamship in Quebec City. The former premier of P.E.I. would conduct the official business of the governor general’s until a replacement was selected and set sail from Britain.

Crops in Southern Alberta had “withstood a trying week of intense heat” but general rain was needed to bring them back to acceptable condition.

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