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Red Deer Advocate FRIDAY, NOV. 7, 2014
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Hunting death nets jail term BY MURRAY CRAWFORD ADVOCATE STAFF The wife of a Bentley man killed in a hunting accident forgave the Lacombe man who pulled the trigger as a judge handed down his sentence almost five years after the incident. Phillip Moore was shot dead on Nov. 29, 2009. His widow Jane Moore read her victim impact statement in Red Deer provincial court on Thursday. She concluded it by turning to face Herbert Stanley Meister, 60, and saying, “I forgive you.” Meister pleaded guilty to unauthorized possession of a rifle and careless use of a firearm. A charge of criminal negligence causing death was withdrawn by the Crown. He was sentenced to 60 days in jail by Judge John Holmes, to be served intermittently on weekends, and to a conditional sentence lasting two years less a day. The conditional sentence is staggered into three portions with Meister spending the first eight months under house arrest, the second eight months with a curfew and the final eight months with no curfew. He also received a lifetime weapons prohibition and an order to supply a sample of his DNA. Meister was out hunting with Phillip Moore and a few other men on Nov. 29, 2009. At the time, Meister was not licensed to carry or use a firearm. Moore went to “push bush,” a hunting technique meant to drive deer out of a wooded area and into an open area to hunt, while Meister waited for deer to come out. Meister fired one shot at what he thought was a deer. He thought he had missed and fired a second shot. That second shot hit Moore. Meister, realizing what he had done, yelled out. He drove to a fellow hunter to tell him he’d shot Moore. The two then drove to Moore and called for emergency services help. Meister performed CPR on Moore as his friend drove to a nearby farm to tell emergency services workers where Moore was. Moore was pronounced dead at the scene.
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Photo by JEFF STOKOE/Advocate staff
Canadian rock band The Trews originally from Antigonish, Nova Scotia lead singer Colin MacDonald and drummer Sean Dalton along with the rest of the band play an acoustic set to kick off their Red Deer Show Thursday at the Memorial Centre. With no warm up act Thursday The Trews then played a second electric set for the near full house at the venue.
Municipal operational budgets ‘completely out of whack’: report BY SUSAN ZIELINSKI ADVOCATE STAFF Canadian Federation of Independent Business is calling on Alberta municipalities to rein in operational budgets by cutting staff costs and limiting spending increases to population growth. According to the CFIB’s new Alberta Municipal Spending Watch report, operational budgets have risen at an unsustainable rate between 2000 and 2012 with spending outpacing population growth for the vast majority of municipalities. “We understand that with growing populations there does need to be a large capital investment in infrastructure and (the report) is strictly just looking at costs that can be controlled,” said Amber Ruddy, CFIB senior policy analyst, on Thursday who called most municipal operational budgets “com-
pletely out of whack.” “What’s really driving up these costs are wages, salaries and benefits.” These costs account for 50 to 60 per cent of municipal expenses, she said. “One of the things that the councils often say is they don’t have any control over collective bargaining. They do have control over the number of people they hire. It’s a little bit of both that is contributing to this very escalating cost.” She said there’s a huge gap between public sector and private sector compensation. Contracting work out and redistributing work loads instead of replacing staff who retire are a few ways to reduce costs. “(Municipalities) are not profit driven, but if they’re running up huge debts and deficits, that’s obviously problematic for future taxpayers to cover that burden,” Ruddy said. Helen Rice, president of the Alberta
Urban Municipalities Association, was baffled by the report and questioned its accuracy. “We’re in an economy where municipalities are trying to match that rapid growth and all the pressure that it brings. Plus if you look at wages, we’re competing against the energy sector — it’s Alberta,” Rice said. “The Alberta government predicts Alberta is going to expand at the rate of a small city annually — a city the size of Red Deer annually.” People don’t bring the services they need when they arrive in the province, she said. “You have to be ready for it. You’re working ahead of the curve. I’m surprised that they didn’t recognize that.” At the same time, municipalities are always looking for cost efficiencies, combining departments, looking at new technology, Rice said.
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Air Force veteran vividly recalls wartime experiences BY PAUL COWLEY ADVOCATE STAFF
Photo by PAUL COWLEY/Advocate staff
Lester Battle served two years in the Royal Canadian Air Force and still has his log book from his flying days in Canada.
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A few weeks ago on picturesque Lake Muskoka, the rusted remains of a Second World War plane saw sunlight for the first time in nearly 74 years. The remains of the airmen who perished inside the A-17 Nomad aircraft had been recovered two years earlier. They died along with two others on Dec. 13, 1940, when two planes collided while searching for a flyer who had gone missing earlier. Those four young men were among nearly 3,000 Canadian and Allied airmen who lost their lives — mainly in flying training accidents — in this country between May 1940 and March 1945.
REMEMBRANCE DAY Red Deer’s Lester Battle was one of those young flyers and remembers vividly how often word came in to training air bases about a plane going down or reported missing. “There was always some mishap occurring as far as training aircraft were concerned. We’d be sent out on square searches to try to locate these things.” On more than one occasion, he came uncomfortably close to adding to those statistics. Among the flights forever etched in his mind was a routine training run in an Avro Anson from their base in Chatham, N.B., to Charlottetown, P.E.I.
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Filmmaker Wayne Abbot stars in ‘War Junk: WW1’ airing on History Television
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