ONE YEAR AGO
• Brush and trees were removed this week to uncover at least 18 graves in the neglected cemetery for children at Red Deer Industrial School. Until the archaeologist arrived, the residential school graveyard on Sylvan Creek about two km west of Red Deer had been silently hidden in brush and trees, unknown to most people.
• Dozens of people were believed to have fallen victim to a debit-card skimming scam in Red Deer. Const. Sabrina Grunow of city RCMP said police were still attempting to determine how widespread the scam was.
FIVE YEARS AGO
• Red Deer Emergency Services personnel freed two men trapped in an elevator for more than 20 minutes. The men became trapped on the fourth floor of the Hillcrest Manor apartment building when the elevator door refused to open.
• About 170 Red Deer College students staged a mass sleepover to ask the Alberta government to wake up and address the needs of post-secondary education. The sleepover was as part of a provincewide campaign spearheaded by the Alberta College and Technical Institute Students’ Executive Council.
10 YEARS AGO
• A settlement was finally reached for the residents of the Provincial Training School — which became the Michener Centre — who were sterilized without their knowledge. After the courts awarded Leilani Muir $740,000 in 1996, hundreds of claims were made to the government, with the government paying out about $142 million in total.
• After decades in the business, Dorothy Asmundson announced her retirement and the closing of the downtown IGA. The hands-on manager had run grocery stores and meat markets in Red Deer with her late husband since the 1950s.
25 YEARS AGO
• Red Deer and Rocky Mountain House had record low temperatures and Environment Canada forecasters were predicting the cold snap would be with us at least until the weekend. At 7 a.m., the mercury in Red Deer dipped to -19, eclipsing the previous all-time low for Oct. 29 of -16 set in 1971, weather services specialist Nick Fedyna said from Edmonton. Rocky meanwhile, reported -21 compared to the earlier record of -14 in 1971.
• Patients were being told in a local pilot project, what it had cost to keep then at the Red Deer Regional Hospital Centre. And they didn’t seem to mind the idea when it was the provincial government that was paying most of their hospital bills. Under the new project — called the Bill You Don’t See — all patients were issued statements when they were discharged from the hospital to give them an idea of the full costs of hospital care.
50 YEARS AGO
• Red Deer had a new Safety Council. At a meeting in the A.M.A. building, representatives of service clubs and other organizations, it was decided to take over and expand the work of the existing Safety Council. The object of the new Safety Council was to make the city more safety conscious. It planned to tackle the problem under eight different headings: highways, water, farm, recreation, schools, bicycles, pedestrians and industry.
• Alberta schools were teaching their subjects in the wrong order, a group of Red Deer parents and school officials was told. The speaker was Dr. L. H.. Cragg, new vice-president of the university of Alberta. “It is time for a complete rethinking of the sequence in which academic subjects are taught in our schools,” Dr. Cragg told an audience of three hundred at the meeting of the Eastview Home and School Association. “I am shocked to learn, that languages are introduced in this province at the Grade 11 level,” declared the newly arrived professor.
90 YEARS AGO
• Mr. W. T. Coote, who had purchased a general store business at Leduc, was honoured by the citizens of Red Deer and district, among whom he had lived and laboured for 13 years, at a banquet held at the Commercial Cafe, when the general regret of the citizens at his leaving was appropriately and unanimously voiced and the presentation made of a small cabinet or server as a memento of the esteem and appreciation entertained by the citizens of Red Deer for Mr. Coote and his faithful public service in one town and district.
• At the regular meeting of the City Council, there was present Mayor Lord in the chair, Ald. Collison, Simpson, Broughton, Moyes, Stone, Galbraith and Commissioner Stephenson. It was recommended that we authorize the building of an open air rink to be built on the slough south of First St. South near Parkvale. If we can get enough lumber, we will have the sides boarded up so the boys can play hockey and later on we will consider the possibility of lighting the rink for night playing.
100 YEARS AGO
• Red Deer’s police chief marched boys caught playing Halloween pranks around town in an effort to embarrass them into behaving better. The boys had tipped over several small buildings.
• James Watson, a man visiting from Scotland, fell and broke his left leg, just above the ankle, while playing with local children. “He is doing as well as can be expected, considering he is over seventy,” the Advocate subsequently reported.