Red Deer Advocate, November 15, 2012

Page 1

FLIGHT OF THE SWANS Majestic birds visit our area twice annually B1

PENNING TUNES Rob Heath coming to city for songwriters circle C3

CENTRAL ALBERTA’S DAILY NEWSPAPER

BREAKING NEWS ONLINE AT WWW.REDDEERADVOCATE.COM

THURSDAY, NOV. 15, 2012

Rebels fire Wallin BRENT SUTTER TAKES OVER BEHIND THE BENCH BY GREG MEACHEM ADVOCATE SPORTS EDITOR

Photo by JEFF STOKOE/Advocate staff

Red Deer Rebels owner and general manager Brent Sutter announced at a news conference on Wednesday that head coach Jesse Wallin has been relieved of coaching duties. Sutter will take the position of head coach until a replacement can be found.

Nature Conservancy snaps up more rare land in region

It was a sullen Brent Sutter who addressed the Red Deer media on Wednesday. “To be quite honest, it’s not a good day at all,” said the Red FULL COVERAGE B6 Deer Rebels owner/president/ general manager, in officially announcing that he was replacing Jesse Wallin as the club’s head coach. “Jesse is a great, great guy, someone I’ve gotten very close with over the years. But he and I have had some discussions over the last while about the hockey team, about where we’re at and where we’re headed. We went through some different things and over the last couple of days I had to come to a decision as to exactly what I was going to do moving forward and I’ve decided that we’re going to go in a new direction with our head coaching position.”

Please see REBELS on Page A2

Cable barrier may have prevented fatal crash: Alberta transportation BY LAURA TESTER ADVOCATE STAFF

BY RANDY FIEDLER ADVOCATE STAFF More rare Central Alberta lands are now preserved in their natural states thanks to the Nature Conservancy of Canada. Over the last year, the non-profit land trust bought eight properties totalling more than 2,000 acres in the Red Deer River Natural Area, which contains Pine Lake, Buffalo Lake and Goosequill/Hummock Lakes, to protect them from development. Chief among them is the Fyten-Lea property, 131 acres on the Red Deer River’s west bank at McKenzie Crossing west of Big Valley. The badlands landscape contains forest and native grasslands, ideal habitat for deer, moose, songbirds, birds of prey and many mammals plus unique prairie flowers. The more than $5.2 million to buy these lands came from the federal government’s Natural Areas Conservation Program and TransCanada Corp. “This is about building partnerships to preserve lands,” said Red Deer MP Earl Dreeshen at a Heritage Ranch gathering to celebrate the acquisitions on Wednesday. “It’s about everybody in the community sharing something now and into the future,” echoed TransCanada vice-president Peter Kruselnicki. The Nature Conservancy’s purchases are designed to create corridors of protected lands with its conser-

vation partners: the Alberta Conservation Association, Alberta Fish and Game Association, Ducks Unlimited and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Department under the North American Wetlands Conservation Act. “We’re also concentrating heavily on the Pine Lake and Buffalo Lake headwaters to protect water quality in those lakes,” said Bob Demulder, the Nature Conservancy’s Alberta Region vice-president. Colleen Proctor sold 721 acres east of Buffalo Lake that her family homesteaded in 1905. “My uncles and grandfather were early environmentalists. It’s a beautiful spot in there and they always wanted it preserved.”

Please see PROPERTIES on Page A2

Meeting with deputy premier turns heated BY CRYSTAL RHYNO ADVOCATE STAFF Deputy Premier Thomas Lukaszuk was put on the hot seat at a heated meet and greet at the Sylvan Lake Community Centre on Wednesday night. About 70 people attended the public meeting that was designed to allow residents to bend the deputy premier’s ear on local issues — namely the drive for an urgent care centre and re-opening the controversial Hwy 781 and Hwy 11 intersection. But the meeting quickly turned heated when a

PLEASE RECYCLE

number of people showed up who wanted to talk about an unrelated issue — property rights. “They hijacked a very important agenda,” said Lukaszuk. “That is an agenda of an urgent care clinic that deals with lives of people and a highway that could potentially deal with lives versus agitated individuals who wanted to talk about their property rights.” Lukaszuk said he found it troublesome that a local MLA sent out emails urging residents “to print placards, basically stage a protest.”

Please see LUKASZUK on Page A3

WEATHER

INDEX

Increasing cloudiness.

Four sections Alberta . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . A3 Business. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . C5,C6 Canada . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . A5,A6 Classified . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . D1-D5 Comics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . C4 Entertainment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . C3 Sports. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . B6-B8

FORECAST ON A2

A Hwy 2 crash with fatal consequences near Blackfalds on Monday may have been averted had a cable barrier been installed in the median, says an Alberta Transportation spokesman. Trent Bancarz said the cable barriers in place along Hwy 2 south of Red Deer have worked very well at preventing serious collisions. “You can’t say 100 per cent with certainty (regarding Monday’s crash),” said Bancarz. “But certainly the barrier likely would have prevented the car from going into oncoming traffic.” On Monday at around 4 p.m., emergency personnel responded to a collision on Hwy 2, just south of Hwy 597 near Blackfalds. The driver of a car was pronounced dead at the scene. RCMP Ponoka Integrated Traffic Unit reported that the driver of a southbound car was trying to pass a cement truck from the merging lane. It crossed through the southbound lanes and through the median, ending up in the northbound lanes, where it was struck by a compact car. STARS air ambulance airlifted one person from the scene to an Edmonton hospital, and then one to Calgary from Red Deer Regional Hospital Centre. The driver of the southbound vehicle is dead. Two other people are injured. No additional information as of Wednesday has been released by Ponoka RCMP. The provincial government installed cable barriers between Red Deer and Airdrie in 2010 and since then, they have been struck 1,100 to 1,200 times, said Bancarz. During construction of these barriers, they were hit about 30 times. A fatal collision happened earlier this year just north of Airdrie that involved high speed and alcohol, he said. “We’ve had extreme circumstances where drivers are travelling 150 to 160 km/h and they’ve gone through the barriers and into oncoming traffic,” said Bancarz. “There’s been collisions but no fatals, except for the one.” The 124-km stretch of Hwy 2 to Airdrie was chosen partly because the median is quite narrow.

Please see BARRIER on Page A2

LOCAL

CANADA

HUNDREDS GATHER TO VETERANS DEMAND MOURN GUILBAULT PRIVACY INQUIRY Former Red Deer city councillor Timothy Guilbault was remembered by his brother at a funeral service on Wednesday for this thoughtfulness, generosity and a sense of responsibility. A2

A high profile ex-soldier who claims his medical files were raided is calling on the country’s solicitor general to investigate the government’s handling of veterans’ privacy complaints. A5


Turn static files into dynamic content formats.

Create a flipbook
Issuu converts static files into: digital portfolios, online yearbooks, online catalogs, digital photo albums and more. Sign up and create your flipbook.
Red Deer Advocate, November 15, 2012 by Black Press Media Group - Issuu