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Christmas 1957

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5 minute read

by Michael Dawe

As Christmas 2017 approaches, it is interesting to look back 60 years to the wonderful Christmas of 1957.

The year had been a banner one for Red Deer. The community was enjoying one of the strongest booms in its history. The population of the City surged by an incredible 21.5% to more than 16,000 residents. Red Deer became known as the fastest growing city in Canada.

The newest subdivision for the City was Eastview, which was developed on what had previously been known as the Card Property. An impressive new junior high school had officially opened on the west side of the subdivision in March. On December 13th, the Joseph FitzPatrick family became the first one to move into a new home in the neighbourhood. Several others soon followed.

The cause of the boom was oil and natural gas. New wells were being drilled across Central Alberta. With all of the oil patch activity, there were lots of jobs and lots of new money in the community.

There were some downsides to the boom. Costs of construction jumped. People found it increasingly difficult to purchase a home or rent an apartment. The local infrastructure fell behind.

With the rapid growth, the City of Red Deer was running out of land for new residential and industrial development. Proposals were made to expand the

City boundaries and annex land from the rural Municipal District of Red Deer.

Hearings on the annexation bid were held in early December. The City made strong arguments in favour of expanding the City’s boundaries by 5820 acres. It predicted that its population might soar to as high as 35,000 by 1977.

The Municipal District of Red Deer opposed the City’s bid. It argued that if the areas requested were put within the City limits, the rural M.D. would be left with little more than farmland and hamlets for a tax base.

In an attempt to help ease the hard feelings, the Chamber of Commerce organized a special informal meeting with the City and rural councillors at the Buffalo Hotel.

As this bid for intermunicipal peace took place, the Chamber of Commerce was also boosting the annual Christmas retail season. A Christmas Shopping Jamboree was organized. Stores remained open during the usual Wednesday retail half-day holiday. Shopping hours were extended on Saturday December 21st and Monday December 23rd to 9 p.m. In order to help parents while they were looking for gifts, free shows were held for the children at both the Capitol and Crescent movie theatres.

The local stores offered all kinds of Christmas specials. Quality women’s coats could be purchased for $7 to $13 each, while men’s dress shirts were offered at $4.95 to $7.50. The local Eaton’s department store had a special children’s toy land where girls’ dolls could be had for $4.49, while boys’ construction sets were offered at $12.99.

Because the local C.H.C.A. television had begun broadcasting on December 11th, television sets were a particularly popular Christmas gift. Local stores offered   21” black and white TV’s for $264 and 17” portables at $219. Premium sets with wood consoles could be had for up to $480.

Local merchants were soon reporting their best sales ever. The Christmas rush was given an even bigger boost by exceptionally mild weather. There were even reports of pussy willows being out in the early part of December.

In the last days before Christmas, the Fire Department distributed the many toys which it had collected for the local needy children. The Lions Club again delivered special Christmas hampers to the many families who had not been benefiting from the boom.

Christmas Day was peaceful and pleasant. Some churches had special Christmas Day services although most had their Christmas celebrations on the preceding Sunday and on Christmas Eve. The weather was warm and beautiful which brought many families outdoors between the morning gift openings and large Christmas feasts later in the day.

All agreed that Christmas 1957 had ended up as one of the Merriest Christmas’s ever.  All were sure that the New Year of 1958 would be even better.

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Community

SPARC Red Deer – Caring Adult Nominations open now!

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Red Deer community let’s give a round of applause to the incredible adults shaping the future of our kids. Whether they’re a coach, neighbour, teacher, mentor, instructor, or someone special, we want to know about them!

Tell us the inspiring story of how your nominee is helping kids grow up great. We will honour the first 100 local nominees for their outstanding contributions to youth development. It’s time to highlight those who consistently go above and beyond!

To nominate, visit Events (sparcreddeer.ca)

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Addictions

‘Harm Reduction’ is killing B.C.’s addicts. There’s got to be a better way

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From the Frontier Centre for Public Policy

By Susan Martinuk 

B.C. recently decriminalized the possession of small amounts of illicit drugs. The resulting explosion of addicts using drugs in public spaces, including parks and playgrounds, recently led the province’s NDP government to attempt to backtrack on this policy

Since 2016, more than 40,000 Canadians have died from opioid drug overdoses — almost as many as died during the Second World War.
Governments, health care professionals and addiction experts all acknowledge that widespread use of opioids has created a public health crisis in Canada. Yet they agree on virtually nothing else about this crisis, including its causes, possible remedies and whether addicts should be regarded as passive victims or accountable moral agents.

Fuelled by the deadly manufactured opioid fentanyl, Canada’s national drug overdose rate stood at 19.3 people per 100,000 in 2022, a shockingly high number when compared to the European Union’s rate of just 1.8. But national statistics hide considerable geographic variation. British Columbia and Alberta together account for only a quarter of Canada’s population yet nearly half of all opioid deaths. B.C.’s 2022 death rate of 45.2/100,000 is more than double the national average, with Alberta close behind at 33.3/100,00.

In response to the drug crisis, Canada’s two western-most provinces have taken markedly divergent approaches, and in doing so have created a natural experiment with national implications.

B.C. has emphasized harm reduction, which seeks to eliminate the damaging effects of illicit drugs without actually removing them from the equation. The strategy focuses on creating access to clean drugs and includes such measures as “safe” injection sites, needle exchange programs, crack-pipe giveaways and even drug-dispensing vending machines. The approach goes so far as to distribute drugs like heroin and cocaine free of charge in the hope addicts will no longer be tempted by potentially tainted street drugs and may eventually seek help.

But safe-supply policies create many unexpected consequences. A National Post investigation found, for example, that government-supplied hydromorphone pills handed out to addicts in Vancouver are often re-sold on the street to other addicts. The sellers then use the money to purchase a street drug that provides a better high — namely, fentanyl.

Doubling down on safe supply, B.C. recently decriminalized the possession of small amounts of illicit drugs. The resulting explosion of addicts using drugs in public spaces, including parks and playgrounds, recently led the province’s NDP government to attempt to backtrack on this policy — though for now that effort has been stymied by the courts.

According to Vancouver city councillor Brian Montague, “The stats tell us that harm reduction isn’t working.” In an interview, he calls decriminalization “a disaster” and proposes a policy shift that recognizes the connection between mental illness and addiction. The province, he says, needs “massive numbers of beds in treatment facilities that deal with both addictions and long-term mental health problems (plus) access to free counselling and housing.”

In fact, Montague’s wish is coming true — one province east, in Alberta. Since the United Conservative Party was elected in 2019, Alberta has been transforming its drug addiction policy away from harm reduction and towards publicly-funded treatment and recovery efforts.

Instead of offering safe-injection sites and free drugs, Alberta is building a network of 10 therapeutic communities across the province where patients can stay for up to a year, receiving therapy and medical treatment and developing skills that will enable them to build a life outside the drug culture. All for free. The province’s first two new recovery centres opened last year in Lethbridge and Red Deer. There are currently over 29,000 addiction treatment spaces in the province.

This treatment-based strategy is in large part the work of Marshall Smith, current chief of staff to Alberta’s premier and a former addict himself, whose life story is a testament to the importance of treatment and recovery.

The sharply contrasting policies of B.C. and Alberta allow a comparison of what works and what doesn’t. A first, tentative report card on this natural experiment was produced last year in a study from Stanford University’s network on addiction policy (SNAP). Noting “a lack of policy innovation in B.C.,” where harm reduction has become the dominant policy approach, the report argues that in fact “Alberta is currently experiencing a reduction in key addiction-related harms.” But it concludes that “Canada overall, and B.C. in particular, is not yet showing the progress that the public and those impacted by drug addiction deserve.”

The report is admittedly an early analysis of these two contrasting approaches. Most of Alberta’s recovery homes are still under construction, and B.C.’s decriminalization policy is only a year old. And since the report was published, opioid death rates have inched higher in both provinces.

Still, the early returns do seem to favour Alberta’s approach. That should be regarded as good news. Society certainly has an obligation to try to help drug users. But that duty must involve more than offering addicts free drugs. Addicted people need treatment so they can kick their potentially deadly habit and go on to live healthy, meaningful lives. Dignity comes from a life of purpose and self-control, not a government-funded fix.

Susan Martinuk is a senior fellow at the Frontier Centre for Public Policy and author of the 2021 book Patients at Risk: Exposing Canada’s Health Care Crisis. A longer version of this article recently appeared at C2CJournal.ca.

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