ONE YEAR AGO
• A Red Deer man convicted of second-degree murder in 2008 was granted a new trial by the Alberta Court of Appeal. In its ruling, the appeal court said that Paul Lionel White, 23, should never have been forced to conduct his own defence without the benefit of a lawyer. White, who was serving a life sentence without the possibility of parole for 13 years, was convicted of stabbing Grant Shoemaker, 21, of Red Deer, to death in the summer of 2005 in Red Deer.
• A police sting operation resulted in Central Alberta’s largest ever recovery of stolen electronics and DVDs, totalling more than $100,000. Undercover officers seized the property, reported stolen from stores across Alberta and British Columbia, when a search warrant was executed on Iverson Close in Inglewood. Three people were arrested inside the home. One man was later released and two people have been charged with various property offences. More than 2,500 new DVD and Blu-Ray discs, scores of televisions, various video games including Wii games and Xbox 360, and a number of computers were hauled out of the residence.
FIVE YEARS AGO
• Red Deer County issued a stop work order after a 30-acre stand of trees was mowed down from an area of land slated to become a natural park, as decided by mutual agreement between the county and the Town of Sylvan Lake.
• Red Deer’s two city school jurisdictions joined forces to offer a hockey academy. The plan came a month after Chinook’s Edge School Division announced it would start its own hockey academy for Bowden, Innisfail and Red Deer-area students.
10 YEARS AGO
• City councillors rejected construction of a $10-million parkade and bus terminal in a decision they called highly frustrating. The deal died after Millennium Centre backed out because of unspecified cost factors, and a new study on the flooding problems in southeast Red Deer changed council’s priorities.
• Canadian Alliance Leader Stockwell Day said he was taking out a $60,000-mortgage on his Red Deer house to help cover the cost of settling a controversial lawsuit. Day, his voice wavering with emotion, also offered his first public apology to the man who sued him for defamation, an incident that cost the province’s taxpayers $792,000.
25 YEARS AGO
• Sixty-three cutter teams from as far away as Big Valley, Carsland and Warburg converged at the Lacombe Research Station for the Snow Fest’s 10th annual cutter parade. “It’s the biggest cutter parade I know of,” said cutter driver Dwight Beard of Carsland. The Okotoks parade he said, draws only about 30 cutters and a lot fewer spectators.
• Expansion in the city food and beverage industry led the way to a 14.4 per cent increase in total manufacturing employment in 1985. A report on Red Deer and area manufacturing by the city’s economic development department showed an increase of 432 manufacturing jobs. That was an important local economic barometer in light of the fact the food and beverage industry employed the largest percentage of manufacturing sector workers in Red Deer — 1,080 of 3,438 or 31 per cent.
50 YEARS AGO
• Residents of Red Deer and Penhold would soon be able to pick up their telephones and themselves dial long distance station-to-station calls to any of dozens of cities in Canada and the United States as easily as dialing local calls. This would become possible immediately when the clocks turned to April 16, that precise moment having been chosen for the start of Direct Distance Dialing. Red Deer was to be the first in the province to have the benefits of the new system.
• The annual rush for new Alberta motor vehicle licenses was almost at hand; the sale of 1961 licence plates for cars, trucks, motorcycles and scooters was scheduled to start on Feb. 29. And expectations were that by the time the rush ended, more than 10,000 sets of the yellow and blue licence plates would have been issued in Red Deer by the offices of the Alberta Motor Association and the provincial Treasury Branch.
90 YEARS AGO
• As the hospital is in urgent need of all kinds of towels (except bath towels) and tray cloths, a shower will be held at the residence of Mrs. Geo. H. Lindsay, Fifth St. North on the afternoon of Monday, February 28, under the auspices of the Ladies Hospital Aid. Every lady in the city is invited to be present at the shower which will consist of hand towels, roller towels, tea towels and tray cloths. Tea will be served for which no charge will be made.
• Mr. J. J. Gaetz, M.P.P. telephoned The Advocate on Thursday afternoon that after a long interview with Hon. A. J. McLean, Minister of Public Works, he had a definite assurance from Mr. McLean that the bridge over the Red Deer River east of Red Deer would be gone on with this year and that Mr. McLean authorized the publication of this assurance to the people interested. The only conditions Mr McLean laid down were that when the site was determined, which would be very shortly, the municipalities on either side would build the approaches.
100 YEARS AGO
• CPR officials announced plans to build a roundhouse in Red Deer with up to 10 stalls, a second bunkhouse, a stores building and a locomotive foreman’s house.
• A dentist named Rowntree gave up his practice to go into the plow business.