Planners take the heat but didn’t invent the kitchen

Albertans in general aren’t happy with the City of Burnaby stepping in to deny permits for the Trans Mountain pipeline.

It’s got every known politician up in arms one way or another. And has most pundits mulling whether it’s a constitutional crisis.

Perhaps less so, but the issue must be stuck in the craw of every other municipal planner.

Rightly or wrongly, they tend to wear the goat horns when the public is angry about some issue or another.

To this point though, local government planning authorities haven’t even had the power to oppose cellphone tower locations, because, like pipelines, they fall under federal regulations.

A few years back the Medicine Hat’s city planning department found their hands officially tied while Canada Post chose community mailbox locations.

Meanwhile Montreal’s elected officials gummed up the issue, and home delivery remains in that city. Mind you Denis Coderre isn’t a fan favourite in Alberta either.

Sewage: Is there anything it can’t do?

Not much, according to Statistics Canada, which this week announced its plans to gauge the amount of marijuana used by the general population by testing effluent for the active ingredient in the soon-to-be legal drug.

Yeah, it’s disgusting to think about, but pretty ingenious really.

It reminds one of the push by Ottawa several years ago to up water treatment standards for municipalities to filter minute amounts of prescription drugs to keep them out of water systems.

Lunar happenings

Friday’s new moon marked the lunar new year, also observed as the Chinese new year, but for the first time this century, poor old February won’t have a full moon.

Since the moon’s cycle is 29.5 days, the full moon is missed in the month every so often when the dates align just so. The last time occurred in 1999. There will however, be two full moons in January and also March, with the second in each known as the blue moon. The January 31 moon was also ominously dubbed a Super Blue Blood Moon — “super” due to its proximity to Earth, and “blood” is the moniker for January moons. It was also a lunar eclipse on that day, so yeah, weird.

Boosterism

While Feb. 14 was Valentine’s Day most everywhere, in Wakaw, Sask. it was also “Vey Day” — designated by the town to honour that town’s first ever Olympic athlete Linden Vey, the former Medicine Hat Tiger who’s on the Canadian men’s hockey team.

Media reports state most of the town was decked out in Red and White. Sounds like that town’s got the spirit.

It’s a pity however, that Medicine Hat, which can lay claim to both Vey and Canada head coach Willie Desjardins, doesn’t have a single person who thought up a similar idea.

A look ahead

Due to the Family Day Holiday on Monday, city council will sit on Tuesday, at which time it will discuss a short agenda that includes the plans for shutting in a historic gas well under a South Railway Street building.

Cypress County Deputy Reeve Dan Hamilton will also be on hand to present the county’s contribution to the city’s recreation facilities operations budget.

Later this week some details about city plans to roll out blue cart curbside recycling this spring should be revealed.

100 years ago

The Medicine Hat Board of Trade voted to support daylight saving time, the News reported on Feb. 21, 1917, and the forerunner to today’s Chamber of Commerce was also enthused about the recently announced Hudson Bay Railroad that could reach Medicine Hat.

Nationally, Canadians were preparing for the first ever income tax deadline of Feb. 28.

In Europe, Skirmishes broke out between German and Russian forces after the two powers had previously agreed to tentative peace an

Locally, news broke that Oklahoma capitalist J.H. Swan had purchased the Ansley Coalmine (later known as the Ajax Coalmine) with plans to develop it into a four-section concern.

The Elks Pavilion in Medicine Hat had been sold and would be demolished with the timbers destined to be used in the construction of a granary in Redcliff.

“If wooden beams had feelings,” mused an editorial, “it would be terrible to contemplate that the lumber that had once resounded to the strains of bands and looked down on the elite of Medicine Hat in bursts of relaxation is now condemned to the monotonous career of storing grain.”

Collin Gallant covers city politics and a variety of topics for the News. Reach him at 403-528-5664 or via email at cgallant@medcicinehatnews.com