In the near future, residents will be able to walk into the brand new Town Hall.
    Progress on the new Drumheller Town Hall, in the old Civic Centre, is moving along. If all continues to go well, the renovations should be finished  in the next several months.
    “We’re still looking at an opening at the end of April to the first part of June,” said Mayor Terry Yemen.
    Most of the building has been completed.
    “We’re coming along pretty much on track. Most of the interior walls are in, the plumbing is done, and there’s only a little more work to be done on the heating,” said Allan Kendrick, Director of Infrastructure Services for the Town of Drumheller. “It looks like we’ll be really close to finishing the project on time.”
    Demolition of the interior of the Civic Centre began last fall and construction soon after.
    “It’s basically a retrofit. We had all the outside walls in place and we did some demolition on the inside, with staff from the Town and help from the Penitentiary,” said Kendrick. “The new interior is fairly straightforward office style. It’ll be a nice presentation when someone walks into the building.”
    The move of Town Hall to the Civic Centre was confirmed early in 2012. The desire was to have the municipal heart of Drumheller modernized. Given the age of the current Town Hall, it was felt renovating it was not practical and would have taken considerable work to bring the building up to current building codes.
    The cost of the renovation is roughly $2 million. Of that, $1.5 million was covered by a provincial grant.
    “I really like the idea of having a handicap accessible Town Hall and one that’s downtown. We’re always looking for opportunities to revitalize downtown and this might help,” said Yemen.

    The Drumheller Public Library is celebrating one of the most basic, and sometimes taken for granted, freedoms of the western world; the freedom to read.
    Across the country this week, Canadians are being encouraged to think about and reaffirm their commitment to intellectual freedom, which is guaranteed under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
    The theme this year for the nation-wide Freedom to Read Week being displayed at the Drumheller Library, is to stand up against the censorship, or attempted censorship, of literature.
    Abroad, some of the literature taken for granted in Canada is censored. For example, Dr. Seuss’ Green Eggs and Ham is banned in China because of its depiction of early Marxism. The Tale of Peter Rabbit was banned in the 1980’s in London, because it only depicted “middle-class rabbits.”
    Closer to home, other works are subject to scrutiny. Libraries across Canada are subjected to complaints and requests to have books or movies removed from their shelves. For example, in 2011 the entire His Dark Materials series, which contains The Golden Compass, was challenged by a patron who suggested the book “...be burned,” or moved to the adult section at a public library in Alberta.
    In another example, a parent formally complained about the use of Margaret Atwood’s novel The Handmaid’s Tale in a Grade 12 English class. The parent complained that the novel’s coarse language, anti-Christian overtones, violence, and sexual degradation probably violated the district policies.
    In many cases sexuality, violence, and language are the primary causes of patrons seeking to have material removed.
    The Drumheller Public Library is encouraging residents to exercise their freedom and free a challenged book by giving it a read.