Medicine Hat may be celebrating the Unison Veiner Centre’s 50th anniversary, but the roots of this community hub reach back much further. In many ways, the story began with a boy growing up on a Saskatchewan farm, shaped by the values of his grandmothers.
That boy was Robert (Bob) Wanner, former MLA for Medicine Hat and Speaker of the Legislative Assembly, who played a key role in establishing what would become the Unison Veiner Centre. To set the stage for Bob’s lifelong dedication to community, we need to look at his family history. One of his grandmothers, widowed young, dedicated herself to supporting the people around her, and his other grandmother, with 13 children, herself relied on support from her community. Bob’s grandmothers left Bob with a guiding philosophy: build inclusiveness, foster cooperation over competition, and embrace the belief that “if we don’t do it ourselves, it doesn’t get done,” as he recalled during a recent visit to the Centre.
When Bob came to share the history of the Centre, he arrived with a weathered briefcase filled with documents - municipal reports, bylaws, meeting notes, planning guides, and official agreements- dating back to the early 1970s. Now housed at the Esplanade, these records trace how Medicine Hat came together to create a landmark hub of support for seniors.
Among Bob’s keepsakes was a photo of his young children sitting at a dinner table with Harry Veiner himself. That snapshot sparked stories: how Veiner would slip $5 to children to open a bank account (kids who had a bank account received a wagon wheel), hand cucumbers to men and roses to women at his hardware store, stride through town with his signature gait, and race horses for fun.
Veiner’s ambition was as generous as it was eclectic. Bob recalls being in the closed board meeting where Harry announced he would donate land to build a proposed seniors’ centre. That commitment set in motion the unique network of supports that Medicine Hat still benefits from today. Far enough from big cities, yet close to rural communities, the city council recognized that if they didn’t act to support seniors, no one else would.
For decades, Bob remained invested in that vision. Though politics wasn’t initially his focus, he was eventually elected MLA in 2015 after a long career in municipal service. Many programs he helped foster remain in some form at the Centre today: Meals on Wheels, the Senior Advisory Committee, and the precursor to Veiner Vintage Transport - a “glory bus” program. “We’re so bloody lucky,” Bob reflected, noting that Medicine Hat’s low utility costs allowed space to explore innovative ways of supporting community life.
Bob admits he was skeptical when the Veiner Centre was acquired by Unison. “We got privatized!” he exclaimed, noting the concern here was that the city may play a smaller role in its leadership for key decisions in the programs and services it helped establish. In time, however, he acknowledged that the Centre needed support. With a nod to Unison Veiner Centre director Cori Fisher, he added simply: “You’ve done a good job.”