Looking back — Oct. 17, 2023

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 17/10/2023 (1078 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

SIXTY YEARS AGO

Downtown Brandon had a circus air today as the second annual Red Banner Festival, sponsored by the downtown merchants and their chamber of commerce, got underway. The four-block mall from Sixth to 10th streets was lined with new autos, an Honest John artillery rocket from Camp Shilo, shopping booths and a myriad of other attractions. Mayor S.A. Magnacca broke a bottle of champagne across the rear-wheel of a democrat, an antique horse- drawn cart, to officially open the festival.

Brandon’s Golf and Country Club curling rink is rapidly taking shape following installation of massive beams recently. Members are hopeful of moving into the main part of the new Country Club next month and the six-sheet rink is expected to be in operation shortly after.

FIFTY YEARS AGO

Canada is ahead of the U.S. in scheduling for conversion to the metric system for length, capacity and weight measurements and plans to stay that way.

Ed Haverstock of Locomart in Brandon paid top price of $1.21 a pound for the grand champion market lamb at the fall lamb sale at Keystone Park. The lamb weighed 106 pounds and was sold by C.H. Chevins of Kemnay.

FORTY YEARS AGO

About 100 homes in Brandon’s south end will be provided with sewer and water services by next spring, ending a seven-month lobby by area residents.

After fighting for three years to save their house, the Gardiner family finally gave up this weekend and let firefighters do them the favour of burning it to the ground. Weldon and June Gardiner have joined the ranks of thousands of Canadians who subscribed to a government-backed urea formaldehyde foam insulation scheme.

THIRTY YEARS AGO

A local cadet corps did the city proud at a competition in Winnipeg last weekend. The Royal Canadian Army Cadet Corps won the Thompson Memorial Trophy for general efficiency at the 11th annual Cadet Appreciation-Sports Tabloid at Minto Armoury.

A small piece of Clayoquot Forest — all 10,000 pounds of it — made its way to Brandon yesterday as part of campaign to save the B.C. old-growth rainforest. The 390-year-old stump, removed from a clearcut, is being transported to Ottawa by the Western Canadian Wilderness Committee.

TWENTY YEARS AGO

Brandon-Souris MP Rick Borotsik doubts the value of a Conservative-Alliance merger proposed by leaders Peter MacKay and Stephen Harper. “If this is going to be a name change for the Alliance party,Canada is not served well, simple and plain,” Borotsik says. After weeks of speculation and negotiation, Harper and MacKay signed an agreement in principle in Ottawa to unite Canada’s two right-wing parties before the next federal election, which will likely be called next spring.

Errol Black looks forward to seeing east-end children play on swing sets and not the piles of garbage he played on when he was a young boy growing up in the Riverview area. The Riverview alderman helped dedicate a new $34,000 playground called Keystone Lions Humanity Park. It stands beside a group of new homes built by Habitat for Humanity that rest near a former city garbage dump that has long since been filled over. The $34,000, provided by the Lions, the city and the Brandon Neighbourhood Renewal Corporation, goes toward a swing set, play apparatus and sand for the equipment to sit on. This part of the project is Phase 1. The second portion could include a beginner’s skateboard park, says Ian Barnes, the chairman of the project for the Lions Club.

TEN YEARS AGO

In its first audit since merging the Assiniboine, Parkland and Brandon regional health authorities, the newly minted Prairie Mountain Health region posted a shortfall of $3.45 million in its 2012-13 operating year.

Voter-friendly promises like reducing wireless roaming costs, requiring television channels to be “unbundled” and a new cyberbullying law were a few of the points touched on in Wednesday’s speech from the throne. Delivered in Ottawa by Gov. Gen. David Johnston, the hour-long speech also included the promise of a free-trade deal with the European Union and a pledge to confer honorary Canadian citizenship on Pakistani teen Malala Yousafzai, the Nobel Peace Prize nominee who survived a Taliban attack on her school bus in October 2012.