ONE YEAR AGO
• Meet Missy, the Wayne Gretzky of cows. The Ponoka-area bovine is a rare champion on a winning streak. She recently sold for $1.2 million, and is only the second cow in Canada to fetch over $1 million. “We’re pretty excited,” said Morris Thalen, who with his wife Sandra runs Morsan Farms in Ponoka. The Thalens decided to put their prize-winning cow, called Eastside Lewisdale Gold Missy, up for auction at the Royal Agricultural Winter Fair in Toronto last week in the belief she would fetch from $500,000 to $1 million.
• Alberta’s H1N1 vaccination program opened up to the general public. Alberta Health Services officials said the end of the national vaccine shortage allowed them to make the vaccine available to anyone over six months of age. Alberta had 500,000 doses on hand and would receive regular shipments through December to immunize up to 50,000 people daily.
FIVE YEARS AGO
• Tom Ganger, former chairman of the 1998 Alberta Winter Games in Red Deer, received a nine-month conditional sentence and 18 months of probation for four sex-related offences involving teenage males. More importantly, the victims said later, was that Ganger’s name was on a sex offender registry for 10 years.
• Extra holiday help was in short supply because of the region’s rapid growth, red-hot economy and ultra low unemployment rate. Store managers said most interested job applicants tended to be high school students who often lacked responsibility and commitment.
10 YEARS AGO
• School districts were struggling to make ends meet as spiking energy costs threatened to decimate their budgets. The public and Catholic boards were meeting to analyze the situation as the Alberta School Boards Association and its agent, Epcor, entered the electricity auction market to try and guarantee bearable prices.
• Red Deer MP Bob Mills and his fellow Central Alberta Alliance candidates were among 66 victors for the party in the federal election. The victories were bittersweet, however, as the Liberals swept to a 173-seat majority, improving on their previous majority, despite recent polls indicating a possible minority government.
25 YEARS AGO
• If a paramilitary camp existed near the quiet village of Caroline, no one knew about it — or else no one talked. West of Caroline, the highway was lined with bush which covered some of the Rocky Mountain foothills. It might have been perfect shelter to run a camp training members of a white supremacist group in the use of automatic weapons. Or could have been just pretty country side. Rumors had surfaced about such a camp run by Aryan nations led in Alberta by Terry Long who operated a saw mill just west of Caroline. Mr. Long had refused to comment about such a camp Aryan Nations was a secretive group based in Hayden Lake, Idaho, described by the FBI as “right-wing terrorists.”
50 YEARS AGO
• A meeting of 45 representatives was advised by E. S. Bryant of the provincial secretary’s office to go ahead and work towards establishing a museum in Red Deer. The meeting was called by a pro tem committee appointed by Mayor. J. M. McAfee to attempt to have a provincial museum established in Red Deer by the Alberta government. Premier Manning announced in the province’s five-year plan, a provincial museum would be established in 1963.
• Red Deer postmaster G.B. Horn said that not only have mailmen been confronted with zero-like temperatures, six to eight inches of snow and thawing slush, but within the past week, three had been bitten by dogs. ‘I don’t know if it’s the weather or what, but I’ll have to complain to the city. There must be too many dogs running around,” Mr. Horn told the Advocate. “Usually there are about a dozen bites in a year for mail carriers, but this is too much.”
90 YEARS AGO
• A special meeting of the Board of Trade was held to hear the report of the Roads Committee of the Board re the Red Deer West entrance. The chairman stated the purpose of the meeting, the desire of the Board to have more information on the Red Deer West entrance and bore testimony to the painstaking way in which the Council had answered the questions of the Committee and to its desire to give the Board of Trade committee all the information available.
100 YEARS AGO
• A Red Deer man, newly arrived from Quebec, was killed in an accident while trimming a tree at one of the Great West Lumber Co.’s camps west of Olds. The 23-year-old died after a tree fell on him.
• Six local residents wrote a letter to the Advocate to demand Edward Michener resign his seat as a member of the provincial House. The letter writers wanted him to resign because he had become leader of the Conservative party after having been elected as an Independent.