Red Deer 1913 — 2013 Create Celebrate Commemorate
ALL-STAR GAME
DOWN WITH WEBSTER ‘Party band’ performs on Friday night at Westerner Days C7
AL beats NL 3-0 to snap losing streak B6
CENTRAL ALBERTA’S DAILY NEWSPAPER
BREAKING NEWS ONLINE AT WWW.REDDEERADVOCATE.COM
WEDNESDAY, JULY 17, 2013
Waskasoo Creek poses flood hazard PROVINCE’S FLOOD MAPS SUGGEST BUSINESSES, RESIDENCES WITHIN POTENTIAL FLOODED AREAS BY MURRAY CRAWFORD ADVOCATE STAFF Although many key city-owned properties in Red Deer are outside of the flood hazard zone along the Red Deer River, newly released Alberta flood hazard maps show potential problems along Waskasoo Creek. The creek runs south from the Red Deer River near 45th Avenue and 55th Street and meanders south to the Red Deer Arena, before heading west near the Red Deer Lodge and Safeway near 43rd
Street. According to the province’s flood maps, some of these areas where both businesses and residences are located are within the potential flooded areas. These maps are a key component of new proposed policies that will change how provincial assistance is doled out in a flood, and affect what can be developed in a flooding hazard area. Along the Waskasoo Creek, there is both floodway and flood fringe. The flood fringe indicates areas where water may collect if the water rises above the floodway, which is a rare occurrence. In that floodway are downtown businesses and homes, mostly between 45th and 46th Streets and
Region’s high natural population growth good for economy: expert
Gaetz to 47A Avenue. Paul Goranson, Red Deer development services director, said the floodway is where there is active water moving. The flood fringe occurs if the creek gets to a certain level, resulting in water ponding in the area. “We haven’t had discussions with the province yet to find out what expectations they have of us related to this new policy,” said Goranson. Goranson called the government’s response proactive.
Please see CREEK on Page A2
MAKING HIS OWN HAY
PROVINCE LEADS COUNTRY; REGION JUST SHORT OF PROVINCIAL AVERAGE BY SUSAN ZIELINSKI ADVOCATE STAFF Alberta’s natural population growth continues to lead the country and the Red Deer region is just short of the provincial average. Natural population is the birth rate minus the death rate and does not include immigration. According to Statistics Canada, Alberta’s natural population growth averages 7.7 people per 1,000. Wood Buffalo-Cold Lake, which includes Fort McMurray, has highest rate in the province at 12.3. Calgary is slightly above average at 8.5. Red Deer region is at 7.3. Edmonton is 6.9. The statistics are from annual demographic estimates from July 2011 to June 2012. Todd Hirsch, chief economist with ATB Financial, said the natural population growth in the Red Deer region, which include communities in Red Deer, Lacombe and Ponoka counties and reserves, is good for its economy. “It will eventually lead to more workers in the workforce and it will have an immediate affect on certain retailers. Obviously young families tend to purchase more goods and services,” said Hirsch, who looked at Alberta’s natural population in one of his recent Daily Economic Comment columns. “Red Deer is one of the communities attracting a lot of young families, maybe because a city the size of Red Deer is an attractive option for families. Housing is more affordable. There is the pretense that it’s maybe safer for children so a lot of young families are attracted to those medium sized cities like Red Deer,” said Hirsch on Tuesday. “Other cities Red Deer’s size, like Medicine Hat and Lethbridge, they don’t have that same natural population growth. Its population growth tends to be older. It’s not driven nearly to the same extent as Red Deer is by the oil and gas sector.”
Please see POPULATION on Page A2
Photo by ASHLI BARRETT/Advocate staff
Jacob Barthel, 2, has some fun throwing around straw from hay bales at the outdoor barn dance on Little Gaetz Ave. on Tuesday evening. Many Red Deerians turned out for the event to enjoy live entertainment, dancing, food from local vendors and centennial souvenirs. The barn dance is just one of a series of events that help residents celebrate Red Deer’s centennial year.
Lindhout memoir a riveting account of gruelling captivity It’s an irony of the human condition that the escapism that momentarily frees us from our dreary, troublesome lives often becomes its own trap. Amanda Lindhout didn’t use alcohol or drugs to deal with domestic turbulences while growing up in Sylvan Lake. Instead, the child of divorced parents immersed herself in the pile of National Geographic magazines at her bedside to drown out the fights she would regularly overhear between her mother and her series of ill-suited boyfriends. More than once these conflicts would escalate to the LANA point that Lindhout’s mother MICHELIN would rush to the women’s shelter in Red Deer with Lindhout and her two brothers in tow. Whenever disturbances rocked her hardscrabble childhood, Lindhout recounted in gripping new memoir, A House in the Sky, she would escape reality
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Increasing cloudiness. High 22.
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by daydreaming about the exotic places she saw in the magazines. The world will come to my rescue, thought the future journalist, who imagined living among the nomadic people of China who churned yak yogurt, Hungarian cowboys, or Balkan mountain gypsies who danced with bears. But Lindhout was to discover through her exhaustive travels that the world is not a benign place. It can turn on you. In August 2008, Lindhout was abducted at gunpoint by Islamist bandits, along with her companion, Australian photographer Nigel Brennan, while the two were in Somalia, one of the globe’s most dangerous and intolerant wartorn countries. During their 15-month captivity, they suffered growing deprivations as their captors repeatedly held out for their $1.3-million ransom demand. But Lindhout, then 27, and her ex-boyfriend, Brennan, did not suffer equally. As an attractive, intelligent and strong-minded young woman, it was Lindhout who suffered the most physical and mental torment while detained in a male-centric, violently feudal place.
Please see LINDHOUT on Page A3
ADVOCATE file photo
Amanda Lindhout announces a Somalian scholarship program.
ALBERTA
CANADA
MLA CAUGHT IN PROSTITUTION STING RESIGNS
‘ENEMY’ LIST PETTY, CHILDISH: CRITICS
An Alberta politician has resigned from the governing Progressive Conservative caucus after being arrested by Minnesota police in a prostitution sting. A3
A leaked memo shows that in the leadup to Monday’s cabinet shuffle, the Prime Minister’s Office asked ministerial offices to provide a list of unhelpful bureaucrats and ‘friend or enemy stakeholders’ to guide the incoming boss on who to meet and avoid. C3
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