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News Advertiser
www. NewsAdvertiser .com
april 26, 2017
FROM THE PAGES OF THE VEGREVILLE OBSERVER
COMPILED BY DAN BEAUDETTE
90 Years Ago – April 27, 1927 Dr. E.H. Carlton left on Monday for Edmonton where he has accepted a position with a dental manufacturing firm. Mrs. Carlton and Lola will remain in Vegreville for a few weeks. Dr. Carlton was a strong supporter of all sporting events, especially soccer, football, during his residence here and the boys are all sorry to see him leave. On Friday evening last at 8 pm in the town hall, the Boy Scouts who were present were initiated by Lorne Mitchell, the Assistant Scoutmaster, and by the Patrol Leaders and Seconds. Following are the boys who took the Investiture: Fred Reesor, Ralph Hayter, Lloyd Barber, Mortie Milner, John Perdie, Lawrence Cooper, Frank Hayter, Arthur Eversfield, Bill Burkholder, Roy Webb, Max Milner and Arthur Milner. Ernie Mallioux has purchased the Standardbred Stallion, Lockwood, a 2.03 ¼ trotter. This horse in his younger days campaigned over the Grand Circuit and at one time dragged down a Chamber of Commerce Purse of $10,000 together with other noted purses. Although Lockwood is by no means a youngster now, he still has plenty of go in him and Ernie intends to race him on the “B” Fair Circuit this summer.
75 Years Ago – April 29, 1942 Dr. McIver dental surgeon, who had been practicing in Vegreville for the past year, left at the week end for his former home at Wolseley, Sask. where he will spend some two weeks before going to Calgary to join the dental corps. Pte. Dick Weetman of the RCOC, Camrose and of Lavoy visited at home over the weekend. Mike Tatarin is home in Hairy Hill, having been discharged from the army. Mike joined the army the same time as Bert Jewell and Jimmy Atkinson one year ago last fall. Jimmy is still in England and we are not sure if Vert has gone over yet or not. Mike Ruptash (Wm Ruptash’s son) and Jack Katchuk are home on leave from the army for a few days. A former member of the 11trh Alberta Dragoons Reserve Army Unit of Vegreville, Tpr. Leo Milner had been promoted to the rank of Corporal in the Canadian Army (active). Tpr. Milner is now stationed in Calgary and is a member of the 31st (Alta) Recce BN. C.A. C. Previous to his enlistment he resided in Vegreville.
50 Years Ago – April 27, 1967 Ne manager of the Bank of Montreal’s Vegreville branch is Alex G. Green, who was formerly manager of the Bank’s Highfield District office in Calgary. He succeeds the late James Richmond. Miss Barbara Matviw has been selected by the Rotary Club of Vegreville to participate in the “Adventures in Citizenship” sponsored annually by the Rotary Club. The program will include a trip to Ottawa where she will be guest of the Ottawa Rotary Club and a tour of the nation’s capital along with students from all parts of Canada. Miss Matviw is a Grade 11 student at the Vegreville Composite High School. She will leave for Ottawa on May 12th and return on May 19th. The Vegreville Chamber of Commerce went on record Thursday night supporting a petition being circulated in the Hairy Hill area requesting that the subscribers in the Hairy Hill Mutual Telephone Association be united with the dialing system in Vegreville rather than having a dialing system installed in Hairy Hill. The reason given for the petition by spokesperson Harry Babchuk was that nearly all of the business carried on by residents in the area to be affected is done in Vegreville.
25 Years Ago – April 28, 1992 Anya Fox, daughter of Derek Fox and Viola Braun-Fox, has been cast in the role of Dorothy in a rock musical production titled The Wiz. Anya has studied music and dance extensively over the years. The 16 year old has over 11 years of training behind her. Her most recent accomplishment was winning the Kingsway Garden Mall fame and fortune singing competition. A number of Willingdon business people are actively involved in trying to establish a local chamber of commerce. After kicking the idea around for the past year, a group of about four business people said enough with the talk and decided to start laying the groundwork for the organization. A preliminary meeting was held March 30 which, according to organizers, was a success with about 10 business people attending. Chamber spokesperson Reg Bidulock says, the main reason behind the endeavor is to form a unity among businesses in the community and work together for the betterment of all. A former Viking student, who went on to a career as an outstanding teacher-librarian, has been chosen by the Canadian Library Association as the recipient of the 1992 National Book Service Teacher-Librarian of the Year Award.
Letters Welcomed One role of the Vegreville News Advertiser is to promote dialogue on various issues of concern to area residents. We accomplish this by welcoming Letters to the Editor and allowing various issues to be debated through our pages. All letters must contain the writer’s name, address and phone number. Anonymous letters will not be printed, however the writer’s name may be withheld from publication in special circumstances deemed appropriate by the Publisher. The Vegreville News Advertiser reserves the right to edit letters for length, clarity, spelling and grammar, taste or for reasons of potential libel. The Vegreville News Advertiser reserves the right to withhold letters from publication.
Choose a Side: Trump and the Sunni-Shia War The Sunni-Shia civil wars in Iraq and Syria are both nearing their end, and in both cases the Shias have won – thanks largely to American military help in Iraq’s case, and to a Russian military intervention in Syria. Yet Russia and the United States are not allies in the Middle East. At least not yet. President Trump may get in bed with the Russians and the Shias eventually, but he doesn’t seem to have given the matter much thought yet. So for the moment US policy follows the line laid down by Barack Obama. Ex-president Obama was determined not to send American troops into another Middle Eastern war. Even as the Sunni extremists of Islamic State and the Nusra Front (al-Qaeda under another name) expanded their control in Syria and then seized much of Iraq, Obama restricted the US intervention to training local troops and deploying American air power. In Iraq the local government’s troops were mostly Shia (as is most of the population), and US support was sufficient without committing American troops to ground combat. The Iraqi army is now in the final stages of reconquering Mosul, Islamic State’s capital in Iraq and an almost entirely Sunni city. Yet there have been no massacres of Sunnis, and only a handful of American casualties. In Syria, the United States strongly opposed the Shia-dominated regime of President Bashar alAssad, but it did not fight him. Obama found local allies to wage a ground war against Islamic State in the form of the Syrian Kurds, who are Sunni, but more interested in a separate Kurdish state than a Sunni-ruled Syria. That collaboration worked well too. With US training and air support, the Syrian Kurds drove Islamic State steadily back, and are now closing in on Raqqa, its capital in Syria. And in all that time, Obama avoided taking sides between Shias and Sunnis in what most Arabs now see as a Shia-Sunni war. Obama even managed to maintain America’s traditional alliances with Saudi Arabia and Turkey despite the fact that those
two countries, both ruled by devout Sunni regimes, were sending money and arms to the extremists of Islamic State and the Nusra Front. He successfully walked a fine line in the Middle East for six whole years. It’s doubtful that Donald Trump has the skill, knowledge and patience to go on walking that line. His instinct is to treat Iran as America’s most dangerous enemy in the Middle East, which would certainly please Saudi Arabia. But Iran is Russia’s close ally in the Syrian war, and Trump’s instinct is also to get very close to Vladimir Putin. There’s a similar problem with Turkey. On one hand, Turkey is an important NATO ally and it has now sent its army into Syria, ostensibly to help destroy Islamic State. On the other hand, Turkey is ruled by the authoritarian and impulsive President Recep Tayyib Erdogan, a mini-Trump who sprays abuse at anybody who crosses him (he recently called the Germans “Nazis” and the Dutch “Nazi remnants and fascists”). In 2015 Erdogan deliberately re-started a war against Turkey’s own Kurdish minority in order to attract right-wing votes and win a close election. Now he has sent the Turkish army into Syria, allegedly to help destroy Islamic State but in fact mainly to smash the embryonic state that the Syrian Kurds have been building across northern Syria. Those Syrian Kurds have been America’s closest allies against Islamic State for years. There are even Turkish troops in northern Iraq (without permission), and Erdogan has threatened to use them if the Iraqi army abuses Sunni Muslims during the reconquest of Mosul. Iraq’s Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi replied (in November): “We do not want war with Turkey…but if a confrontation happens we are ready for it.” If Trump cosies up to the Russians instead, he will have to accept a close relationship with Assad’s brutal regime in Syria (no problem there) and also with Russia’s main ally in the Syrian war, Iran (potentially big problem there). But various latent conflicts are likely to burst into flame as the big civil wars in Iraq and Syria stagger to an end. Trump will have to jump one way or another quite soon.