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

High 4 to Sienna Randolph!

Congratulations to High 4 recipient, Sienna Randolph! Sienna is an exceptional example of volunteerism and leadership in our city. She has worked tirelessly with Rotary, inspiring others to be courageous, take on challenges, and step up when the going gets tough. She is a graduate student at the U of L, but is never too busy to be involved in her community. Thank you for all you do Sienna, High 4 from us to you!

Celebrate the people who make Lethbridge a great place to live, work, and play - tag and cheer somone who’s made a difference in our community today!

TOAST: To all the volunteers that helped to make Jane’s Walk so successful on the weekend. So nice to learn more about our beautiful city.

ROAST: To the delegates at the UCP convention who voted to allow authorities to disclose to parents if their child belongs to a GSA against their wishes. This is alarming and will cause vulnerable youth fear and distress. If parents have a warm and open relationship with their children, they will not be afraid to tell them but when children hear derogatory comments made by their parents and people around them about the LBGTQ community, they will never share. ROAST: To Integra for the lack of notice (and class!) of ceasing operations out of Lethbridge.

ROAST: To Integra Air. Westjet can’t get here soon enough!

TOAST: On two different days I attended the westside recycling lot with leaves and tree branches. I have to toast Matt and Shane for such excellent and friendly customer service. They make our world a happy place.

TOAST: To the Police Beat article and the Chief of Police. Thank you for explaining the zipper merge for the sake of future safety and timeliness. Could you do the same for an eight-way stop during rush hour? I have no trouble with a four-way stop.

ROAST: It will make no difference as to which stripe of vultures will roost on perches in Alberta’s legislature after next year’s provincial election. What matters is the corporate trough be full at all times with pipelines sticking out to suck out Alberta’s resources elsewhere to the never changing swan song of loot and pollute. TOAST: To those members of council who have opposed or are rethinking their position on the ill-thought-out recycling project the City is embarking on. It is another of the gross examples of mismanagement and waste of tax dollars this city seems to excel at.

ROAST: To those who are still complaining about the curbside recycling rollout. We are already years behind this and are finally doing the right thing. Please adapt to the positive change and stop complaining and nitpicking about every dollar spent on progress. Your roasts and letters and online commentary is tired. ROAST: I’m getting tired of people hitting on truck drivers, thinking that they should have more training, because of these car/truck collisions; they should be the last people to blame. The whole thing lies with the training given students getting their class 5 licence, they do all their driving around town, and never really get a chance to mix with the big rigs. I have found that most car/truck collisions occur because of the inexperience of four-wheeler drivers. I have been driving big rigs for over 45 years, and I have over three million accident-free miles under my belt, and I have lost count of the number of times I have had to take action to avoid an collision with a fourwheeler. TOAST: To George Thorogood and his concert in Lethbridge last weekend. What a great show!

ROAST: From what I’ve seen lately in the news, it would appear that the caribou are more important than the people of this country. Our environment minister suggesting $50,000,000 over three years to study the caribou and its habitat and then another possibly $1 billion down the road to try to fix the problems discovered by these studies. What is this world coming to? Is that responsible use of our tax dollars? Just think about it.

ROAST: Just great, now that these druggies are trying to party or do themselves in while

in jail, it’s the system’s fault if they succeed. All some of these people do is daydream all day about ways to buck the system, just like they did long before they went in. The correction system has their hands full enough without taking crap from families and others that refuse to take responsibility for their loved ones. The guards never held these people down and gave them drugs. Where were the families when they started their road to death? I am well aware our systems from the top down are wobbly at best, but if you get to jail it’s time to turn your life around, just like you thought they would do. Well, they chose not to! ROAST: To the people saying the system failed your loved one. First, I’m sorry for your loss but enough already. It wasn’t the system that failed, it was your family member; after all, he was in jail. He then took drugs while being in jail so how did the system fail? Drug addicts can get drugs anywhere for some reason and it’s not the opium crisis either because drug addicts find drugs no matter what the new high is so once again I’m sorry but the blame ends with the addict, period.

ROAST: To this NDP government and their almost daily massive spending announcements! $700,000 for three backcountry huts in the Castle! What are we building — the Taj Mahut? And where is the media oversight and outrage on this obscene spending? This provincial government has promised us a $100 billion debt if we vote for them! Why is the media silent on this outrageous spending?

TOAST: To the supervised consumption site’s numbers report to council. Clearly this was needed in the city and is already proving to be a great asset in the fight against opioid crisis. My only hope is that the user numbers start to taper off and the numbers of those getting the help they need (ie with the support systems/programs) starts to rise instead.

ROAST: To the drug site already planning for expansion. How much more is this going to cost taxpayers?

ROAST: To those who believe Trump should get the Nobel Peace Prize. Totally ridiculous but they did give it to Obama so nothing should surprise us.

ROAST: To Notley and her NDP mishandling of the Kinder Morgen Pipeline mess. She said she was going to cut off the oil to B.C. What has she actually done? Well, nothing, it’s all been empty words shown up as an embarrassing bluff. Don’t say stuff you don’t mean. After all, Notley told the B.C. premier she would not actually do it, so why bother, she has no guts. We need a provincial government that will really stand up for Alberta. No bluffing but actions. So look out NDP and Justin Trudeau — the UCP are on their way. Only one more year, folks, then we can start to regain hope and get ourselves out of a petrifying debt load. Save our children’s future.

ROAST: To the Toronto Raptors. All those memes about going extinct sure don’t seem far off now after the pathetic effort against Cleveland.

TOAST: To the Lethbridge Sports Hall of Fame. It’s so great to see a city our size recognizing the many many well-deserving athletes who have come from here.

TOAST: To Jerry and Diane Cunningham on your lottery win. Happy retirement!

ROAST: To all you Lethbridge “jerks” as name called by our Chief of Police. I agree Lethbridge drivers are a force of their own, but jerks? OK, I agree! On second thought, a

TOAST: To the Police Chief. The drivers that don’t know how to merge and drive are certainly poor drivers.

ROAST: To administrators of the consumption site who feel that a 90-minute wait for service is too traumatic on clients thus necessitating expansion. In the real world individuals wait one to two months to see specialists and over a year for many medical procedures. Something is wrong with one of these pictures. TOAST: To CJWE 88.1 radio station. I recently stumbled upon this channel on a long drive and enjoyed classic country music interspersed with the beautiful sound of First Nations dialects. Less chat, more music, coming soon to Lethbridge — hooray!

TOAST: Thank you, Dean and Phil of McGuire’s Men’s Wear, for your years of quintessential service. You set the bar (in my mind, exceeded by no one) for the dignity and class by which you carried out service to the community. And you always ensured the standard of your service was equivalent to the quality of your clothing. I hope you thoroughly enjoy your retirement. You have earned it!

TOAST: To Phil and Dean at McGuire’s for all the years of service and dedication to downtown Lethbridge. You will be missed!

ROAST: To management at Denny’s for not intervening sooner in that ugly racist video posted this week. The whole situation is awful, but someone could have and should have stepped in sooner.

ROAST: To Donald Trump for exiting the nuclear agreement with Iran when leaders of Britain, Germany and France tried to get him to stay. Even Russia and China are staying in the accord. He is making the U.S.A. and all of us less safe with this action. His one main mission is to erase all of President Obama’s accomplishments because Obama mocked him at a correspondents dinner. How venal is a man who would put his own people and the world at risk for his own aggrandizement? I just begin to think he can go no lower as a human being let alone as a president when he proves me wrong. TOAST: To Mark Campbell for taking a pie in the face for SAIPA. After reading the Herald article, my only question is: what does “SAIPA” stand for? If The Herald uses acronyms, please provide the full name at least once in the article.

Editor’s Note: Yes, it should have been there for first reference. Apologies. It stands for Southern Alberta Individualized Planning Association.

TOAST: To our prime minister who has been identified as one of 100 persons named in Time magazine as being the most influential. Now that ain’t no small potatoes.

TOAST: To the Symphony for a great performance of their Youth and Fireworks concert. Fantastic. Also a BIG TOAST: To the parents attending with their young children that were so well behaved. Was very impressed, do not see youngsters that well behaved very often nowadays. Thank you. ROAST: To all the City and County councillors who are planning to attend the Federation of Canadian Municipalities conference in Halifax at the end of May, all on public money. Can we not send one from each and spend some of the money on improving conditions in both the city and county? In 2017, the City sent six people at a cost of $25,000. This year, the County is planning on sending five, (two in 2017) at similar costs. Listen to Calgary; they are limiting their numbers.

ROAST: To the Magrath town councillors who voted to sell the golf course — it will be interesting to see if gossip is correct and the purchaser was determined prior to tenders even being put out — also will residents get perhaps a tax break or will the monies

received be spent to pay off debt that was incurred due to previous poor choices by those councillors — add this to the library fiasco!

ROAST: Ms. Pocha of Cranbrook, B.C. I must say to you that so many good people over the years have either been murdered or have been attacked for one reason only. When confessing to the crime he or she has stated that I did it because I was disrespected. How little respect do some have for human life. That attitude is very dangerous to have. People need to be a little more tolerant.

ROAST: To the gong show that is the U.S. White House: 3,000 lies, affairs with a porn star paid off with hush money, corruption, suspiciously doing very little to punish the Russians for trying to rig the 2016 elections, changing policy to suit the NRA, half the staff fired or quitting, a White House lawyer getting close to a million dollars for selling access to the president. The list goes on and on and most of the sitting Republicans turn a blind eye to it all for fear of affecting themselves.

TOAST: To all letter carriers, Herald carriers and all other delivery people who had to trudge through the snow and cold weather all winter. Thank you.

ROAST: To the cheap so and so who stole my two Bargain Shop cloth bags out of my shopping cart at the southside Safeway on May 1. If you had asked me for them I would have given them to you. You didn’t have to steal them.

ROAST: To hairdressers — when a customer tells you how they want their hair done, do it that way — not the way you want to do it.

ROAST: To the potato growers who sold their green and scabby potatoes as number one grade. Shame on you.

ROAST: To the Alberta defence lawyers’ association. Your egos and greed are impeding your thinking. Your selfishness is standing in the way of poor people getting a defence. Perhaps a little volunteer work might help! Your self pity and sympathy is only coming from within yourself as you have been over charging much too long. No wonder there is no money left on the table. Get over yourselves!

ROAST: To the Police Chief: Please don’t call people that pay your wage “jerks.” Name calling is so very unprofessional. Yes, many don’t know how to zipper-merge. Educate us, don’t humiliate us. Maybe “zip” it and stop talking down to public and focus on the carding issues.

ROAST: To the Cranbrook woman and her racist comments caught on video for literally the whole world to see. You personally set back years of progress with one rant. Also, thanks for doing it in Lethbridge and making it an issue here, where racism already exists plainly.

TOAST: To those who are being active in working on long-term solutions to racism in our city and region. There is good work being done and relationships being built. Let’s not let one “Canadian” woman’s isolated comments set everyone back.

TOAST: To Cornerstone and all of the other sponsors who put on the Seniors Live Well Showcase. It was another excellent show.

TOAST: To all of the exhibitors for the excellent information and for all of the freebies. I hope to see you all again next year.

TOAST: To everyone who supported the Humboldt Broncos hockey team and the Boulet family. Bless you all.

TOAST: To the news this past week — a little bit of everything!

ROAST: To the “apology” issued by the Cranbrook woman with her racist comments. Insincere at best.

TOAST: To her employer for promptly removing her.