ONE YEAR AGO
• Ambulance operators are frustrated with being in limbo over whether health regions will take over the service from municipalities. The Alberta Ambulance Association is waiting to hear if the provincial government will transfer municipal ambulance services to the control of regional health boards.
• Wanted Dead or Alive: Wild boars. The bristle-haired beasts had wandered into the province’s legislative crosshairs and were expected within days to be officially listed as a provincial pest. That will make it open season on wild boars and give farmers free rein to remove any wild boars they find on their land — dead or alive.
FIVE YEARS AGO
• Red Deer College shelved its men’s hockey program, one of the longest-running in the country, after struggling to come up with the cash to remain competitive. Founded in 1968, the Kings won nine ACAC championships and placed second 12 times.
• Darlene Cormier of Ponoka filed a human rights complaint against the Alberta Cancer Board and the Alberta Ministry of Health and Wellness. They had refused to pay for Rituximab, a $3,000-drug that could double her chance of surviving non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.
10 YEARS AGO
• After three years of turbulent negotiations, operations of the Red Deer Regional Airport were finally turned over to a local authority. A partnership between the city, the county and the chamber of commerce, the Red Deer Regional Airport Authority took control from the federal government, which was divesting itself of all regional airports in the country.
• Red Deer College athletic director Al Ferchuk was named Athletic Director of the Year in the Canada/U.S. west region of the National Association of Collegiate Director of Athletics. Twenty-four awards were presented among 5,100 directors at 1,600 junior and community colleges across the continent.
25 YEARS AGO
• Many graduating students at Red Deer College have decided to opt out of grad traditions, forcing the convocation planning committee to cancel the convocation dinner/dance. Only about two dozen tickets had been sold when the event was cancelled said Mary Ann Kortesio from the student services office of RDC. The $18 price tag for dinner and dance at the North Hill Inn was just too steep for most grads to handle, she speculated.
“When a couple has to fork out $36, then a bottle of wine on top of that – you’re looking at a $50 evening,” said Mrs.. Kortesio
• Cigarette smoke now wafting from several smoking rooms in Red Deer hospital will soon be sucked into the great outdoors, the hospital board heard. Gord Birbeck, assistant executive director of Red Deer Regional Hospital Centre, said exhaust fans on order should address the concern of a Red Deer resident who complained of poor ventilation in smoking rooms in wards 31, 32 and pediatrics.
50 YEARS AGO
• Several dry-cleaning and laundry workers had a narrow escape from serious injury when a heavy explosion at the Peerless Laundry, 4502 Gaetz Ave, blew out the end of the drying machine tank. The door of the tank ripped across the interior of the plant and smashed out a window. One of the plant employees had just moved out of the path of the projectile.
• City building permits for April reached what is believed to be an all time record high for one month as a construction spending total of $1,230,810 was listed for a variety of projects — institutional buildings, a shopping centre, a creamery, an office addition, a restaurant and service station and 23 new dwellings at about $400,000.
90 YEARS AGO
• A special meeting of the Red Deer Public School Board was held to hear high school inspector Smith and Mr. L. E. Pearson, supervisor of manual training at Calgary, discuss the new government aid proposals for manual training and domestic science in the school. There was present Mr. Gaetz,, chairman, Mr. Payne, Mr. Welton, Principal Locke, Mr. Fowler and P.S. Inspector Boyce.
• Ald. Collison used vigorous language in denouncing the erection by Mr. Towe of a billboard on First St. South, next to the Advocate office, in contravention of the Billposting by-law. He complained of Mr. Toew’s attitude when he spoke to Mr.Towe about its erection and wished Mr. Toew summoned before the magistrate for violation of the Billposting by-law.
100 YEARS AGO
• A group of farmers from Scotland visited the Red Deer area. They were particularly interested in the success enjoyed by one Central Alberta farmer who had come to the area from England in 1885, not knowing “the one end of a cow from the other.”
• A new grain elevator was scheduled to be built in the summer in Red Deer, one of 19 in the province. The elevator was to be constructed by the Great West Co. of Brandon, Man.