Renewed excitement after solid week of renewables
All roads lead somewhere — a variation on a tried and true cliché sometimes employed in this space to describe a week when one topic seems to dominate news coverage, or at least your author’s time.
This week it was renewable energy. Often times it’s real estate, but one week last fall it seemed like every day involved some facet of trash collection.
This week there’s been explorations of electric car charging stations, hiring for the construction of the Whitla Wind Farm and the revelation of a major solar project in the Hat (see Page A1).
Some may call rampant bias and fake news, but it’s hard to ignore a project that could be attached to a $400-million construction budget proposed for inside city limits.
It’s also increasingly hard to ignore that renewable energy appears to be a growth industry among very few growth industries in today’s evolving economy. Now, let’s hold on. There appears to be some large hurdles left for the Saamis Solar project. Developers typically lock up supply contracts before they build. The particular site could require approval from the Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency.
Still, from talk about making a silk purse out of a contaminated site that, when viewed on an aerial map, looks a lot like a pig’s ear. got you flowers. The dried kind.”
Year-end development statistics will be presented at Wednesday’s meeting of the municipal planning commission.
It’s supposed to get warmer right around Valentine’s Day heading into the Family Day long weekend. After that it’s March.
Returning from an economic summit in Edmonton, Mayor Brown reported confidence in the new Alberta Ministry of Industrial Development to promote industry and growth in the post-war era, the News reported in early February 1919.
However, warned the mayor, “business must not be spoonfed.”
The ministry’s advisory board, including J.E. Davis, the president of the Hat-based Alberta Foundry and Machine Company, would meet monthly, survey natural resource base of the province and promulgate the benefits of Alberta.
At the same founding conference, Medicine Hat was lauded as the first city in the province to employ an agent to advertise its local industrial opportunities.
Across the continent, this week in 1919, labour trouble roiled.
The International Workers of the World claimed they were in control of Seattle as shipyard strike gripped the port and action spread throughout the Pacific Northwest, including east to Butte Montana.
Labour councils across Alberta planned mass meetings to protest censorship and unrest in coal fields.
An Alberta court ruled widows can not be legally excluded from sharing her husband’s estate during a landmark case involving an Edmonton women not mentioned in her husband’s will. The sole benefactor was the couple’s son, who supported his mother in the case.
A dispatch from Washington reported Mrs. Woodrow Wilson would not acquire a new wardrobe before accompanying her husband, the president, at the Paris Peace Conference. Instead she would wear “almost new” pieces while being received in noble courts.
Collin Gallant covers city politics and a variety of topics for the News. Reach him at 403-528-5664 or via email@medicinehatnews.com