ONE YEAR AGO
• A disease with the potential to devastate Alberta’s canola industry has been discovered in Lacombe and Ponoka Counties. Lacombe County agriculture fieldman Dion Burlock said the county’s first confirmed case of clubroot was found earlier this month on a quarter section in the northeast corner of the county, which extends as far east as Buffalo Lake. Clubroot was also found in a Ponoka County field about six km north of the boundary with Lacombe County.
• RCMP pulled off the largest city drug bust when they raided a Deer Park residence on Tuesday, seizing in excess of $1.1 million worth of plants. City RCMP, with the assistance of other Southern Alberta officers, raided the large home at 98 Duncan Crescent about 11 a.m.. They discovered more than 800 plants in various stages of growth. They had a search warrant. One man was in the residence and was taken into custody.
FIVE YEARS AGO
• Downtown businesses expressed outrage after learning the Safe Harbour Society planned to open a centre for recovering addicts in the Scott Block. “I’m just sick about it. . . . This will not be beneficial for us,” said Kathleen McAvoy, the owner of a high-end women’s clothing store located a few doors from the facility.
• About 500 people who helped protect North American airspace during the Cold War reunited in Red Deer. The fighter control operators manned radar stations throughout Canada more than 40 years ago. The military phased out their jobs after satellites went into space in the early 1990s.
10 YEARS AGO
• The provincial government announced a one-time, $151-million injection of funding into the school system. While local officials appreciated the cash, they pointed out it did little for the long-term woes in education funding.
• Alberta Treasurer Stockwell Day issued a public apology to local lawyer and school board trustee Lorne Goddard over a letter Day had written to the Red Deer Advocate regarding Goddard’s legal defence of a convicted pedophile.
25 YEARS AGO
• The Waskasoo Park project will pay the estimated $2,500 bill for a four-day trip to Boston by Mayor Bob McGhee and three city officials to examine golf courses. Mayor McGhee said Thursday the fact-finding trip, which wrapped up Wednesday, will save the city money on operation of the planned $2-million River Bend Municipal Golf Course. Accompanying the mayor were city commissioner Mike Day, recreation superintendent Don Moore and recreation board chairman Hugh McPherson.
• A 91-year-old Red Deer woman remembers when Alberta women in 1916 first heard they would be allowed to vote. “It did give us a great thrill,” says Josie Janssen, who was 23 at the time. But Mrs. Janssen recalls she wasn’t completely pleased by the enfranchisement announcement, since it extended only to women 21 and older with relatives in the armed forces, so “other women were left out who had as much right to vote.” She was allowed to vote because her brother was in the armed forces. To cast her vote in her first provincial election on June 7, 1917, she travelled to Red Deer from Pine Hill area where she taught school.
50 YEARS AGO
• Red Deer’s ninth set of traffic lights went into operation at the intersection of Gaetz Avenue and 59 Street north of the traffic bride. Designed with times to allow turning traffic, the 59th Street set were the first multiple phase lights in the city.
• The bulk milk handling inaugurated in the Red Deer district by Union Milk and Parker Transport, represented another step in the modernization and streamlining of the dairy industry, one of the most important farm businesses in the area. The growth of the tank truck handling method is regulated only by the number of dairy farmers who have installed bulk cooling systems. It was believed that the day would come when all major milk shippers would be using the tank system.
90 YEARS AGO
• Sunday afternoon a sad double drowning fatality took place at Gull Lake when Miss Edith Grace Snider and Thomas Hughes, son of Thomas Hughes, postmaster, met their death. To think that such a tragedy should be enacted from only a couple of hundred yards from shore, an in about eight feet of water, when crowds were enjoying themselves on the sandy beach, passes understanding.
• The members of the local Masonic Lodges held a very enjoyable picnic at Sylvan Lake on Wednesday afternoon. Despite the rather threatening weather there was a good turnout of the members and their families. The baseball game between Geo Ely’s fats and Irwin Hamley’s leans was pulled off according to schedule except the fat and lean part. The agony lasted for five innings and resulted in a score of 12 to four in favor of the fats.
100 YEARS AGO
• It was decided unanimously at a meeting of Methodist church trustees to name the new church after the late Rev. Leonard Gaetz. The cornerstone for the new church was to be laid by an official from the Masonic Lodge.
• A city barber had an electric massage machine installed at his premises, the only such machine in Red Deer.