GREEN PARTY – GRAHAM MURRAY
LIBERAL – NORM BOUCHER
NEW DEMOCRATIC PARTY – DENNIS PERRIER
PROGRESSIVE CONSERVATIVE – LAVAR PAYNE
In a surprise media conference, Julie Friesen has announced that she will be running in the federal election for the Liberal party in opposition to Norm Boucher, who has also announced he will be running in the federal election for the Liberal party. This is after Julie made the comment yesterday, stating “Citizens of Medicine Hat should be very, very disappointed in (Mayor Boucher)”. There has been some bad blood between the two since the last civic Mayoral election, where Julie was out-voted to Norm by a couple percent. She stated today that, “Second time’s a charm” and that “Here’s my second chance”. There have been some comments floating around how Julie would be a good candidate for the Mayor position in Norm’s absence; however, this can no longer be the case.
Medicine Hat College approached the City of Medicine Hat last year with a proposal to gain full use of the Cultural Centre for the expansion of the Visual Communications Program. The City agreed to work with the College and key stakeholders to look at viable solutions to relocate the current City supported user groups, but City Council has determined it is not financially feasible for the City to relocate the groups from the Cultural Centre.
“The College has been notified of the City’s decision and operation of the Cultural Centre will continue to be a shared responsibility of the City and the College,” said Ray Barnard, Chief Administrative Officer for the City of Medicine Hat.
The Cultural Centre opened in 1983 as a shared project of the City and the College and will continue to be a place for Arts and Culture to thrive in the Medicine Hat Community.
“Our goal has been to find an affordable way of serving the needs of our students, and I offer my thanks to the City for the energy and time they committed to their evaluation,” said Dr. Ralph Weeks, President & CEO of Medicine Hat College. “Our motivation to steward resources intended for post-secondary education, and provide appropriate space for our students, continues.”
So the government fell and we’re now staring down the barrel of an election. Whose fault is it? This is the one point that every politician agrees on: it’s the other guy’s fault!
Here in Medicine Hat, we finally have a race. A legitimate non-conservative candidate with a decent shot at taking office has shown up. For your reading pleasure, here are all the relevant and irrelevant candidates for the 2011 election along with my take on their leadership.
Incumbent: The Conservative Party
Party: Conservative
To be honest, it doesn’t matter who is running for the conservative party this election, they’re likely to win. Medicine Hat doesn’t vote for a candidate, they vote for a blue C. That all may change thanks to the next guy, though.
My take: http://www.yunoconfidence.ca
Challenger: Norm Boucher
Party: Liberal
Medicine Hat’s current mayor is making his entry into federal politics. He’s the mayor, so he has at least some experience campaigning. 40% of 30% of Hatters voted for him in the last mayoral election, so he has a good shot at getting a decent number of votes in this election. His biggest drawback is that he’s running as a Liberal in Alberta.
The biggest complaint I’ve heard is that he shouldn’t have run for mayor if he knew was just going to run for Parliament, because everyone knows you’re supposed to quit your current job before looking for another one. Oh, and that arena thing. That one’s gonna hurt a lot.
My take: http://www.stopthescandals.ca
The Chamber is hosting an election forum for federal candidates on April 28, 2011
On Thursday, April 28th the Medicine Hat & District Chamber of Commerce will be hosting a public forum for local candidates running in the 2011 Federal Election. The one-night event will take place at the Medicine Hat College Theatre and all candidates are being invited to participate.
Following the Chamber’s mandate to be the “voice of business” in the community, this forum will focus primarily on issues related to business and economic development.
Doors open at 6:30 PM. Event from 7:00 PM – 9:00 PM.
All are welcome to attend.
Format:
Attendees are invited to submit questions for the candidates on the Chamber’s website at www.medicinehatchamber.com. All questions for the forum will be determined prior to the event.
- Questions must be submitted to the Chamber in advance.
- Deadline to submit questions is 4:30 PM on April 27th.
- Not all questions submitted will be posed to the candidates.
- No photography, video, or audio recording is permitted.
- No signs or banners will be permitted in the auditorium.
For more information, call (403) 527-5214 or visit www.medicinehatchamber.com
About 5 months after being elected Mayor, Normand Boucher is running in the federal election for the Liberal Party. What are your thoughts?
Mother Nature’s Cafe
$10.95
“Grilled vegetables, caramelized onions, balsamic goat cheese & freshly picked basil.”
4/5
My first time here, quite a nice cafe jointed to a beautiful garden center. It has a gorgeous display of loose leaf teas, I found the orange pekoe quite nice. The full panini comes with a side of greens, soup and beverage, I tried one of the greens and unfortunately it wasn’t for me. The panini was amazing, every ingredient with its distinct flavor creating an experience of awesome for each of my taste buds. What caught my eye mostly about this place, as I’ve been following them on Facebook, is that they have quite a fair share of non-meat options, though I think they specialize in daily soups and teas which means a limited menu. The staff was super nice, and it was almost full on the Monday noon time I attended. Due to the location, which honestly is still closer to most than Crescent Heights, I probably wouldn’t go out of my way to go there, although it is tasty and I do hope to try again, perhaps if I were shopping for gardening supplies with a friend it would be a good place to stop.
There has been a lot of talk circulating around Twitter and Facebook lately regarding the mistreatment of animals at the Guzoo Zoo in Three Hills, Alberta.
Bengal Tiger. Photo by Nic Burgess
Guzoo describes itself as being a wonderful idea by a silly man and has been in operation since 1990. Guzoo claims itself to be an animal sanctuary, but recently, there has been a public uproar that focuses around the habitat in which the animals are kept. The Guzoo website cites that many animals, including lions and tigers, cope well with (and even like) winter conditions, but that many of them are kept inside during the winter season and only let out during chinook weather. Even so, there is something that does not seem quite right about seeing a Bengal Tiger sitting in a tiny snow covered cage that is devoid of any trees or grass. Along with this, Guzoo’s website asks for sympathy for its Zookeepers, who apparently have it worse than the animals in winter:
Don’t feel bad for the animals in the winter, they are much better suited to tolerate the cold temperatures then you might think. Instead, give our poor zoo keepers some sympathy. Regardless of the weather conditions, they must trample through snow, struggle with frozen locks, numb fingers and fight with the feed tractor which often chooses not to start on the REALLY cold days. Having to dress in layer upon layer of clothing makes movement all that more laborious. Shoveling snow out of gates and walkways, making necessary repairs to damage caused by board breaking winter winds, and trekking out into the various pastures to check that the automatic waterers have not froze up, are just some of the hardships of winter Believe me; the winter is harder on the humans at the zoo than the animals.
From Guzoo in Winter
Barbary Macaque (Endangered) by Nic Burgess
Other reported mistreatments include bad water dishes for the animals, injured animals, over abundance of animal feces, garbage within enclosures, dangerous objects within enclosures, food seemingly thrown over the fence for the animals to pick at, extremely small living conditions and exposing the animals to frigid temperatures for which they are not accustomed to. Much of what I have found on the Internet describes how many of the animals in winter do not have heated water dishes for winter and as a result of the water freezing, resort to eating snow.
Another topic of discussion is that Guzoo apparently does not do much to help animals that are hurt or get into fights, and how animals that are killed are not cleaned up or dealt with, but rather, the corpses simply stay there for the duration of the season.
- Nic Burgess’ Full Facebook Photo Gallery
- Online Petition (with almost 9000 signatures)
- “Shut down Guzoo in Three Hills, Alberta – End Roadside Prisons” Facebook Group
Many additional reports can be found by Googling “Guzzo Animal Farm” including:
- The Sad Story Behind Guzoo Animal Farm (PDF)
- A Review of Guzoo Animal Farm (PDF)
- Roadside zoo under fire from local activists
I have also found a video of the poor conditions at Guzoo, which can be viewed below:
Medicine Hat College Visual Communications students will be exhibiting their work from April 9-17, 2011 at Medicine Hat College Centennial Hall. The exhibition is open daily from 9:00am – 4:30pm. The reception is being held Saturday, April 9th at 7:00pm.
For those unfamiliar with Medicine Hat:
- Medicine Hat College
- 299 College Dr. SE
- Medicine Hat, Alberta
“This year’s graduating exhibition for Visual Communications students is an examination, exploration and exploitation into the social, moral, and ethical implications of the business of repurposing these axiomatic brands and compositions. The magnifying lens is on how often and how pervasively our culture uses and reuses images and brands for their own purpose.” Nelson Yuen – Instructor
For more information, please contact
- Gail Snider
- phone: 403.529.3959
- Email: gsnider@mhc.ab.ca
- Visit our website
In light of certain recent events, I thought this topic deserved a post. There’s always two sides to every complaint. You can’t please everyone. Some lessons I learned a while back when similarly sharing something negative myself, and posting it on Medicine Hat Media.
As a co-owner of Medicine Hat Media, a person who runs a personal business, is employed by another business, and partakes in the offerings of other businesses, it is of my opinion that complaints and criticisms of businesses in Medicine Hat are not only important, but vital to both parties. We provide a service for consumer complaints to speak out against bad business and service, but we also provide that same service for businesses to promote themselves (for free), and like recently, provide a forum for businesses to represent themselves how they so choose. This creates a non-bias, non-partial, open and local environment for these topics and more.
We allow local businesses to advertise written content on our site for free! What other source locally with our reach allows something like this? But as typical humans, we love to hate, or hate to love negativity. Let’s compare comments on positive articles versus negative ones. There’s a post a couple down that promotes a showcase of local businesses with 0 comments for an example. It’s kind of sad really. It makes me wonder, what’s the point of offering this service to businesses when so rarely, they use it at all.
As Medicine Hat Media is a free, non-profit, public-driven blog, we allow an open forum of speech between any party and any person, no matter what their opinion is. As long as their written content provides a valid criticism, provides positive and negative points, appears to be factual (see definition of defamation), and encourages/allows comments for disagreement or agreement we will allow it.
Unlike publications, newspapers, and other forms of advertising-based media, we have the opportunity to do something unique for our users, readers, and writers. Let’s not ruin that.
And in that spirit, you are free to comment that you disagree or agree with me. If enough people are in opposition, then I am open to change (for example, removing a post). That’s the beauty of it.
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