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The Medicine Hat News will mark its 140th anniversary later this year, and as a lead-up to that occasion we will reprint important items of historical and local interest as a service to readers.
This began last month (“Watch our Smoke!” the News declared on Nov. 1, 1911, of the opportunities natural gas would provide the Gas City).
The practice will continue on semi-regular basis through the summer and fall.
Today’s example requires some explanation, however.
Victory in Europe Day, celebrated on May 8, 1945, provides some view of the challenges or archiving some 40,000 editions since 1885.
A search finds that day’s daily edition is, frankly, missing.
This is embarrassing.
But putting duty over pride, our current staff has stumbled across an anomaly that provides important symbol of the Canadian and Allied triumph in Europe 80 years earlier.
It will likely never be known why a copy of the daily paper did not survive or was not properly archived.
One can imagine that it was busy day at the office, or the task of our clerks was simply lost in a great wave of relief after nearly six years of worldwide conflict.
However, the “weekly edition,” a conglomeration of News provided to rural subscribers, is in hand, well-preserved and re-printed on this page.
From the May 9 daily, Senator, F.W. Gershaw and Mayor Hector Lang addressed a crowd of 1,000 at a thanksgiving service at Riverside Park, the News reported.
That night, bonfires spelling out “VE-Day” were set ablaze on the north hill above Riverside. A continued push for war bond subscriptions brought Medicine Hat’s total to $1,000,450.
