March 2017 | Business View Magazine

200 201 Taber, Alberta From town to city B efore being named Taber, the small town in southern Alberta was known merely as “Tank No. 77,” a station used by Canadian Pacific Railway trains to fill up on water. In 1903, Mor- mon settlers from the U.S. estab- lished a hamlet at the Tank, and after the town’s post office was built in 1907, the Railway decided to call the town “Tabor,”probably after Mount Tabor in the Holy Land. After persistent misspelling and/or misprinting of the name to make it read “Taber,” the Railway changed the town’s name so it would match the station records. After a time, Taber became a successful coal mining town. Coal was shipped to Medicine Hat, first on the Oldman River steamers and, later, by narrow gauge rail- way. Coal mining declined in the late 1920s, but picked up in the 1930s after extensive irrigation in the area; irrigation which also helped propel the production of sugar beets. In 1950, the Alber- ta Sugar Company, later to be known as Roger’s Sugar, built a