What a party.
It was the first annual Best of Cochrane bash held at Killarney’s Pub at the Cochrane Golf Club.
I’m not an expert on Irish pubs, but any place that has great bangers and mash is triple OK in my books. Killarney’s passes that tasty test with flying colours.
The Best of Cochrane was a fun thing and people voted for the best pizza, best representative of Cochrane, best server and stuff like that.
It was great fun, and originally we thought we’d do well if 40 or 50 people showed up to receive their certificates.
Well, last Wednesday night, 150-plus jammed Killarney’s and we all had a great time.
Mayor Truper McBride was there and said a few kind words about the Eagle, which I appreciated.
In the category of best representative of Cochrane the mayor placed second.
Martin Parnell placed first and few would argue with that. I placed third.
So a politician and a journalist were whipped by a runner, which no doubt will please more than a few.
But the way, I look at it that Martin finished first, Truper finished second from last and I finished third from first.
Still with town stuff.
Last week the mighty Eagle received a tip that civic election results were not available on the town’s website.
They were, but one needed a password and user name to access them.
And that information is only available through town staff.
So we phoned and inquired why previous civic election results were not available.
Such information is pretty basic to our democratic system, and so we were poised to launch to magnificent heights of righteous indignation.
Editor Derek Clouthier contacted Laurie Drukier, who seemed quite surprised the results were not available, and within minutes returned our call with the information that she had no idea how the results were deleted, but the results were now on the website for all to see.
Without even a user name or password.
Speaking of elections, this has to be the earliest start to any civic election in the history of this wee village by the Bow.
Imagine two candidates for mayor in April for an October election.
And no doubt there will be a few more before the writ is dropped.
We also have action at the councillor level with Ivan Davies not running, incumbent Jeff Toews running, newcomer Dan Cunin running and a passel of yet undecideds.
Still with people improving their lives, welcome to Ryan McLeod, who is leaving the dark side to join the editorial staff of the mighty Eagle.
Unless you’ve been dead or in Edmonton you’ll realize Ryan has worked for the Cochrane Times, but today he starts with us.
Just another, but very important step, in making us a very good newspaper.
Some say our challenge is to be better than the Cochrane Times, but I have a greater challenge than that for our staff — they must strive to be better than last week’s Eagle.
So welcome Ryan, let’s have some fun.
