Cheers 4 Lethbridge celebrates the people who make Lethbridge great. Celebrate someone today!

Tag & Cheer!

Join us in celebrating the people who make Lethbridge a great place to live, work, and play – tag and cheer someone who’s made a difference in our community today!

We invite you to share and applaud the actions for positive change you’ve seen throughout our city. Have you noticed someone contributing to our community in a positive way? Tag your nominee in a social media post on Cheers 4 Lethbridge’s Facebook or Twitter to celebrate them, and they may be recognized with a High 4 package!

TOAST: A toast to Alvin Shire for his letter reminding the mayor of Lethbridge so eloquently that he is very unapproachable when he feels he is “right” in his views. The recycling issue is not the only one where the mayor has not listened to the other side. The SCS comes to mind. As does the TV news clip showing the mayor scoffing at the school board superintendents pleading with the city to provide busing for another year. Schoolyard bullying at its best!

ROAST: To all those who do nothing but criticize and look for faults in other people. Keep drinking out of the same bottle. Especially in the situation some of you are in. Lead by example. Well you are leaving a bad one. Drink up. It’s like a daily ritual a sad one I might add.

ROAST: Roast to the people recycling clear glass jars at the westside depot. I took my glass containers to recycle on Friday and was disgusted by the number of glass jars in the bin that were dirty, not rinsed out, labels still on and metal lids on them. If you are going to recycle, please clean them first!

ROAST: Roast to city council for funding indigenous matters. They should have no business messing in these matters, it is the feds responsibility and maybe some input from the province. They have no right to use our municipal tax money for these purposes. All those who voted to authorize these funds better be gone this fall. How stupid can you get.

ROAST: Biden cancelling Keystone pipeline permit. So all you Trump critics, I told you so.

TOAST: I would like to send a big toast to Nick and Susan, my wonderful neighbours. Thank you for all of your help with snow removal for many years and for the offers to help during this past year. It is so good to have neighbours like you who are always watching out for me, it is truly appreciated.

TOAST: To a very kindly soul who discovered my purse left in a cart storage at North Wal-Mart on Dec. 7. The toast is tardy but the gratefulness is hearty.

Thank you for taking the time to go out of your way to return.

TOAST: To Nellie Slingerland, Letter to the Editor Jan. 16 — "Can a newly tested vaccine be used"? I totally agree with your comments and concerns. I also think the pharmaceutical industry is just out for their billions of profits with no regard for anyone’s health and wellbeing. None of this is information is new, it has been going on for years, unfortunately.

ROAST: To Lethbridge drivers who get in their cars every day without ever thinking about maintenance. Wake up people. Every month or two get your spouse, friend, child, just anybody and check your lights. Today on one trip down Mayor Magrath, I counted seven headlights, tailights and signal lights that were out. How are we supposed to know where you are going if your signal lights are out. Take two minutes out of your life and check your lights; this simple habit could save your life or someone you love.

ROAST: To Albertans for not waking up. People, if this Blairmore open pit mine at the headwaters of the old man is started it will ruin our way of life in all of southern alberta. Not only will it ruin our drinking water but have you given thought to our food supply, cattle, Taber corn, grain vegetables. I could go on and on. If this is allowed so China gets more coal to pollute the earth with their coal fired generators, we will be poisoning our way of life.

TOAST: The best part of the Tuesday Herald is the double dose of comics! Hurray for the gentle humour of Red and Rover! The worst part is the Roast of Roast And Toast. Vancouver and Victoria, just like San Francisco, attract homeless people because of their climate and social programs. Lethbridge does not! We have a homegrown homeless population. Once people are housed, they can turn around their lives.

ROAST: To the person feeding chickadees in Pavan Park to get better close-up photographs, and then encouraging passers by to do the same. Even a

Herald photographer perhaps. Please do not feed wildlife for any reason. Feeding creates dependency which ultimately endangers the animal’s life. Please and thank you.

ROAST: So Senator Doug Black says he’s been pushing for months to get a COVID vaccine. Haven’t we all? And don’t we all wonder why Canada doesn’t have vaccine production capability right here at home? Well, for decades we did! Then in the 1990’s, Prime Minister Mulroney privatized Canada’s vaccine lab, sold it off to the highest bidder who promptly moved it out of the country. There’s a long history here and we need to learn from history. Don’t let this happen again!

TOAST: Toast to the publisher’s note in last weeks issue stating that “media fault” thing is getting old — Trump’s “the media is the enemy of the people” has caused people not to trust what is obviously true.

ROAST: A roast to those who oppose the COVID restrictions in Alberta with bit of reality. When comparing COVID data between Arizona (very few restrictions) and Alberta (with many restrictions), the numbers are staggering.

On Jan. 20, Arizona had the following numbers due to COVID: 6,417 new positive cases for a total of 685,699 positive cases; 11,266 total deaths and 753 on ventilators.

On Jan. 20, Alberta had the following numbers due to

Covid: 456 new cases for a total of 117,767; 1,463 total deaths and 119 in ICU (number of ventilators unknown).

Yes, Arizona has a population of 7,378,490 compared to Alberta’s population of

4,345,737 (both 2020 censuses). But if you extrapolate the population difference, Alberta would have 3,786 new cases for a total of 404,562 cases; 6,647 deaths and 442 on ventilators.

I am happy to live with the restrictions we have in Alberta!

ROAST: To Jason Kenney for pretending to cut back on the new coal leases. All he did was cancel less than two per cent — how stupid does he think we are?

ROAST: To Jason Kenney for taking over the teacher’s pensions. The part of the government that invests pension money lost almost 2 billion dollars last year.

Why would anybody put their money in with a government that wasted $1.5 billion on Keystone, almost $ 2 billion on cancelling rail contracts and hundreds of millions on an “energy war room” that has proved to be impotent.

TOAST: To the EAs and Mrs. Hamilton in the Parker’s Place Program at Park Meadows elementary.

They are kind and willing to help out a sub EA. I look forward to subbing at your school because of all of you. I wish other schools ( and EA’s in this school) treated the subs as nice.

TOAST: Toast to the pub on wing night for their excellent service and prompt pick up. Roast to the customer behind us who refused to wear a mask when asked.

ROAST: A roast to our premier and his MLAs. Apparently he is unhappy/insulted/gut-punched about Keystone having its approval yanked without consultation. I feel allowing the exploitation of our foothills and water supply also warranted consultation with those affected. Unlike your government who announced its plan at the last possible minute on a long weekend, President Biden announced his plan in advance.

ROAST: If I hear one more person say “grim milestone” or “abundance of caution,” I shall throw something at the TV! Come on news writers, show some originality. Ditto for politicians and their “Let me be clear,” usually followed by obfuscation. See? If I can use my thesaurus, you can, too.

ROAST: To the Biden administration for their cancellation of the Keystone project. While I am no fan of Trump and the world will be better off with him gone, the new administration has shown no respect for Canada or common sense with this immediate cancellation of the permit.

The Biden administration is so in debt to the left, the black vote, the environmentalists and numerous other groups that this is only one of many poor decisions we will see.

We are now in a cycle of each new administration rushing to undo anything the previous one did without trying to retain any beneficial aspects that may have been present.

The neverending cycle of caving in to special interest groups will now be worse than ever.

TOAST: To all the people on my block for always looking out for each other and helping each other out.

ROAST: To the City 311 man who answered my call but did not know that the person I wanted to speak to was a member of council.

I asked to speak to a supervisor and she didn’t know either; rather she waved my concerns off telling me the City has over 500 employees.

To not be familiar with names of members of council let alone one who has been our rep for eight years, is shameful.

ROAST: Is anyone able to help with the harassment citizens must endure at the bus terminal?

I know no one cares about the people riding the bus; most people in Lethbridge look down their noses at us but the indignities that we must endure daily at the hands of the security personnel while changing buses is from a backwards time, or maybe it’s acceptable to kick people while they are down in order to feel good about our jobs.

It was always a coin toss dealing with the bus drivers since most were not meant to work with the public but instead used the job as a stop-gap to find something better which is fine but don’t take it out on passengers. If that wasn’t enough now we have security guards that were not able to become police officers.

What a great little town you have here.

ROAST: To Trudeau and every one of his members of government. Your incompetence has botched the pandemic response and now has botched the essential vaccine distribution. Quit blaming the provinces, you have utterly failed to deliver. People will die because of you. That’s unforgivable. The Americans threw out a good leader or less and if you manage to manufacture a winning election out of this fiasco then

Canadians deserve exactly when they will get — another pathetic four years of incompetence.

ROAST: To Canada Post and the new owners of a pharmacy for closing their postal outlet. The nearest outlet is now downtown — a $20 taxi fare for a $9.65 book of stamps. Hardship and more isolation for the large population of seniors, disabled and young families in this area. Bye local!

ROAST: Alberta will be left with decades of devastation and of rebuilding if Kenney is not ousted immediately. No referendums or any consultation with hard-working true Albertans, only lies and dictation coming from his war room. Kenney is a career politician who knows every angle and loophole on how to wreck our province and only seek his personal agenda. He should resign now before Alberta is a total disaster.

ROAST: In case no one has noticed, the corporate cast has been for some time missing from the COVID-19 stage play. No concern from this group for the plight of the flu victims or financial aid of their families, no mention of construction of medical facilities to relieve crowded hospitals or hiring additional medical staff to help beleaguered hospital workers.

TOAST: To the City for the excellent and organized approach to dumping garbage at the landfill. With clearly marked containers, a paved road and no stench, this facility is a joy to use, if there is joy in going to a a dump.

ROAST: Roast to M.P. Rachel Harder for blaming Trudeau for Biden cancelling the Keystone XL. It had absolutely nothing to do with Trudeau. It was a Biden campaign promise that he kept, something the conservatives lack. Your blame game is so pathetic.

TOAST: I would like to thank a young man by the name of Randy who bought my groceries at Safeway on Thursday afternoon. I am a senior who didn’t have enough money. He so graciously up and paid for them all. It made me cry. I wanted to thank him over and over again.

There are still good people in this world and he is one of them. God bless you.

ROAST: As Albertans we do not expect any help from Trudeau when it comes to the pipeline.

If it was Ontario and the steel industry was threatened or Quebec with it’s airline industry was impacted, Trudeau would be all up in arms. But Alberta and the west don’t count; I bet Trudeau is laughing his head off.

TOAST: To any candidate for mayor who will lead the city in making some very necessary changes. 1. Garbage bins move back into the back alleys where they were successfully picked up for well over the last 75 years. 2. Responsible leadership when it comes time to spending tax dollars (that includes the hidden miscellaneous accounts which happen to be tax dollars as well) 3. Limitation on the purchase of so many new vehicles for various departments, especially L.P.S. quad cab loaded unmarked and marked pick-ups. Come on guys, plain Jane half-tons will work as well. 4. Addressing our runaway crime rate, drug situation, and the loss of downtown and regional parks. You will have my vote, and I am sure the vote of many more Lethbridge taxpayers who are sick and tired of the runaway spending brought on by the councils of the last 12 years.

ROAST: To Rachel Harder! Biden and Obama have been against Keystone since 2011 — Biden finally pulled the plug once and for all. Yet our MP and Premier claim it is Trudeau’s fault? They both know that this is completely untrue yet they still continue with this really damaging nonsense. Shame on them both.

ROAST: To our current mayor. Recently ( Jan. 24) the mayor wrote a most demeaning e-mail message to the volunteer president of a long-standing (30 year +) non-profit society in our City. The mayor criticized the organization and stated that the president should resign. The society is looking forward to working with the new mayor this fall, thank you very much!

ROAST: Roast to Jason Kenney. He took a bag of over $1 billion of other peoples’ money (yours and mine) to the casino of American politics, and went straight to the table of his good friend, Donald. There, he bet the whole bag on one throw of th dice. Don got kicked out of the casino, and now J.K. wants our money back. He’s asking his big brother in Ottawa (whom he openly detests) to beat up the new croupier in the csino. Good luck, Jason, you blew it!

TOAST: To Tom Brady who is still showing his fans and his haters that he can win the big game. How many athletes have achieved what he has done in his long and storied career with the New England Patriots and now the Tampa Bay Buccaneers? Certainly not Aaron Rodgers!

ROAST: To Jason Kenney and Rachel Harder for “flogging a dead horse.” The Conservatives and the UCP gave trillions of dollars of royalties to the oil companies and now they want to blow up our mountains to send coal to China. What is it going to take for them to understand that fossil fuels are dead. Get with the program. Time to move forward. Quit throwing good money after bad. And quit threatening our water supply with a coal mine.

ROAST: With the CERB, Trudeau put Canada in debt in order to provide Canadians with money to keep a roof over their heads and food on the table. Kenney put Alberta in debt by gambling over a billion dollars that Trump would win and Keystone would go ahead. All Kenney had to do was wait for the election results but he threw the dice anyway and lost. With our money! Who’s the idiot?

ROAST: To Biden, the left and the Democrats as well as the Canadians who cheered you on. I doubt you will read this but you have done a disservice to Americans and Canadians by taking out a good president. Killing KXL for revenge is just the beginning. Your assault on the economy will hurt ours and your bumbling approach to foreign policy will only hurt all of us in the free world. The totalitarian regimes of the world love this picture because you will cave to their demands and agendas. While you repeat your useless talking points on climate change, the rest of the world laughs.

TOAST: To the kind woman who offered to help me lift a heavy table and chair set onto a cart the other day while I was waiting for my husband to return from the bathroom. I think he wanted to avoid assembling it.

TOAST: To former Lethbridge Hurricane Dylan Cozens for scoring his first NHL goal with the Buffalo Sabres last week. Here’s hoping he has a long and successful careeer in the NHL. Go, Dylan, go!