NEWS FILE PHOTO
Couns. Jim Turner and Phil Turnbull (right) share a laugh following Medicine hat city council meeting on July 5, 2021, a point at which masking regulations were relaxed in Alberta. On Wednesday, colleagues are remembering Turner, who died suddenly this week, for his work on council and love of the community.
cgallant@medicinehatnews.com@CollinGallant
Reactions continue to flow in after the death of city councillor Jim Turner on Tuesday following a medical emergency at his home.
Friends and colleagues posted messages of grief and remembrance for the local businessman who helped create the brown bag lunch program for school kids and ran the Medicine Hat and District Food Bank before joining council as a voice for fiscal responsibility in 2013.
That comes as the News came under heavy criticism for reporting his death on social media the same day and highlighting his opposition to pandemic control measures.
A full statement from city hall appeared Wednesday morning, confirming his death and stating the city had lost “a highly respected leader, colleague, husband, father, son, and friend.”
Speaking later in the day, Mayor Ted Clugston said he valued his weekly lunch meetings with Turner and saw him as a community leader.
“He was a fiscal conservative… people might not remember that he used to sleep on the roof of his IGA (grocery store) to raise money for the food bank – he caught pneumonia one year it was so cold,” said Clugston.
Flags will be flown at half-staff at city facilities to honour the two-term councillor who leaves behind a wife, three sons, grandchildren and an extended family.
In public life, he served on a number of council’s public engagement committees and boards. Thursday’s meeting of the utilities and infrastructure committee, on which he sat, is postponed.
Turner, a business developer in his private career, was also council’s representative on the boards of the Medicine Hat Exhibition and Stampede, the local Chamber of Commerce, the Highway 3 committee and the Cypress View Foundation (the publicly operated low-income seniors housing entity).
Many of those groups, former employees and notable Hatters released messages of condolences.
A release from Bill Yuill, the head of Monarch Corp., where Turner was an executive, described him as “a trusted corporate officer with a warm caring personality. He brought a friendly smile to the office everyday.”
Coun. Robert Dumanowski said that Turner brought to council his convictions and pushed for what he saw as the best approach.
“Differences of opinion in politics can sometimes make things challenging and rewarding, but Jim’s deep-seated concern for the everyday person really made him shine,” he said.
Coun. Jamie McIntosh told the News that Turner was a “close colleague and ally” in favour of fiscal responsibility.
“He never, ever stopped pushing new ideas to save the city money,” said McIntosh, a member of the energy committee. “He must have been quite a reader because he always had an idea of what other places were doing – Can we do that here? Why aren’t we?”
Often mentioned by Turner in meetings was that at one point the city spent more than half a million dollars on postage annually, and he lauded the creation of an electronic billing system.
Before serving on council, Turner was the executive director of the local food bank, and previously was a franchise owner of a grocery store in the city.
He took a vivid interest in aquaculture and was developing a new agribusiness at the time of his death.
He was part of the original ownership group of the Medicine Hat Mavericks baseball team in the mid-2000s, a fact that showed he was a community booster and “multi-dimensional” said Coun. Kris Samraj.
“He kind of surprised me in a few ways,” said Samraj of Turner, who at times could be all business, but also jovial. “He really loved gardening. There’s always a gentler side to the one that’s shown publicly.”
Coun. Phil Turnbull sat next to Turner at the council table this term and said his death shocked him and should be seen as a call for greater humanity.
“I sat next to him for four years and before meetings all he could talk about was his grandkids. His face would be lit up. He had a great love for his family, which must be in great distress.”
