The crow has always symbolized a contentious segment of agricultural history here in Western Canada.
Stories about the Crow Rate, and later the Crow Benefit, occupy large volumes of space in our library archives. Later deadlines occasionally accommodated the latest possible twists and turns in Crow events.
However, last week our staff were pressured to honor earlier deadlines.
During the previous weekend, just outside our building on Millar Avenue, we received a visitor. Appropriately, it was a crow. The rather dense crow, displaying the agility of a flying hippo, managed to touch two fuses on a power pole at the same time. The odds of achieving such a blunderous feat were probably a zillion to one, but our acrobatic crow shockingly did so. He became, as one staff member explained later, “quite dead.”
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The conclusion of this electrifying episode was more than one power outage for us on the weekend.
Our electrical systems were weakened. Our clocks were now wrong, our computer systems were temporarily down and the press operators were left in the dark on a Saturday morning.
Power was restored, but the frail system continued to have problems.
As we worked towards our deadlines on Monday, there was fear the power could go out again.
The city’s electrical staff arranged to come at 5:30 p.m. to work on the problem. The power was to be shut off for up to two hours — invaluable time on deadline days.
The arrival of a late-afternoon electrical storm in the city, and the threats of an upcoming strike by electrical workers that week did not make us feel more at ease.
However the paper was completed with time to spare, the problem was fixed, and life was able to go on.
But spare us any more crow jokes, please.
