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Grande Prairie Daily Herald-Tribune • Monday, January 2, 2012
2011 In Review: MAY •••
Tories win
With each seat gained, the noise in the Grande Prairie Inn grew from a dull roar to wild exuberance. Supporters of Peace River MP Chris Warkentin realized that not only had Warkentin won a third term but the Conservatives now had a majority with 167 seats. “Looks like this election wasn’t a bad idea after all,” he told the enthusiastic crowd. Tu r n ou t i n t h e r i d i ng eclipsed the 2008 result, with 49.6% of eligible voters casting a ballot. Warkentin won 75.8% of ballots cast, or 36,125 votes. NDP challenger Jennifer Villebrun was second with 16.1% (7,701 votes), followed by Green Party candidate Wayne Kamieniecki with 3.5% (1,691), Liberal Corina Ganton with 3.1% (1,480), Independent Russ Toews with 0.8% (359) and Donovan Eckstrom of the Rhinoceros Party 0.7% (350). “I do want to congratulate the people that ran against me. We had a strong and a good group of people that moved across the Peace Country and campaigned,” Warkentin said. The Conservatives under Stephen Harper won a majority government with the NDP in official opposition, the BQ virtually elinated, and the Liberals reduced to third-party status. Elizabeth May, leader, won the lone Green Party seat.
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Royals wed
When Prince William and Catherine Middleton announced their engagement in November, GPer Bernadette Christie knew immediately that she would be there and she would have the best view. She was right. “As soon as they said it was at Westminster Abbey, I told everybody I would be on the street, right in front of the Abbey and I would have frontrow seat and I did,” she said proudly. Christie, who was born in Wimbledon, England, before moving to Edmonton and then, more than 20 years ago, to Grande Prairie, arrived back home after a whirlwind 10 days, much of it in the media spotlight. She arrived in London on Easter Sunday and visited with relatives before pitching a tent in front of Westminster Abbey the following Tuesday night in advance of the royal nuptials more than 60 hours later, on the Friday morning. “ The atmosphere was amazing. I think one of the biggest surprises was all the free food.”
•••
Run success
Dyllan Duperron finished his 900-kilometre trek across Alberta on Thursday morning. The 16-year-old from Valleyview completed the journey at the doors of the Grande Prairie Cancer Centre at the QEII Hospital behind an RCMP escort, having raised more than $12,000 for the
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delaying their seeding. It’s an irony not lost on some. “We were waiting for three years, now it’s too wet. It’s been from one extreme to the next,” said Harry Schudlo, an operator of his family’s 3,000-acre grains and oilseeds farm near Sexsmith. •••
Alberta Cancer Foundation. The run began March 14 in Lethbridge, and Duperron admitted to having sore hips, knees and ankles after averaging 35 kilometres of running a day. He went through three pairs of running shoes. “I’m pretty exhausted but it’s been a really good haul and we’ve raised lots of money,” he said at the finish ribbon. •••
Slave Lake help
GPRC grads
Grande Prairie Regional College celebrated its annual convocation with a recordbreaking number of graduates. “The convocation is always the highlight for the college, it’s the whole reason why we are in existence,” said president Don Gnatiuk. “This year was a special celebration because it’s a new record for GPRC, just over 220 graduating students.” Last year there were 201 graduates. The college gymnasium seated 1,200 spectators for convocation and it was standing room only. •••
Bee-lieve it
With the approval of $925,360 in funding from the Rural Alberta Development Fund, the Centre for Research and Innovation has teamed with the Beaverlodge Research Farm to create a new one-stop shop for all honeybee diagnostics. The program will research honeybee mortality across Alberta and the country. The new initiative at the federal research farm will study the three main contributors to honeybee mortality: Pests, pathogens and parasites. Between 2003 and 2009, there were 605,288 bee colonies in Canada, 237,060 of which were in Alberta. Since Alberta hosts more than onethird of the nation’s colonies, their wellbeing is crucial to the industry.
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“The Peace Country makes up for about 40% of the Alberta beekeeping industry. Alberta is a major honey producer. It’s important to have this type of research facility located in the heart of the region; it will strengthen beekeeping economics,” said Rutley. •••
Mayor chair
Mayor Bill Given had trouble entering City Hall one Tuesday afternoon. After repeated attempts, Given – in a wheelchair for the day to raise accessibility awareness – was unable to get onto the sidewalk ramp in front of City Hall without help. “There were some challenges even getting in the front doors,” he said. “Something as simple as a little bit of gravel made it so that in this chair I wasn’t able to get up the sidewalk.” He even had problems leaving his house to wait for the Grande Prairie Disabled Transportation Society bus to pick him up. Given spent a Tuesday in the wheelchair as part of the inaugural Chair-Leaders Enabling Access event, organized by the local chapter of the Canadian Paraplegic Association (CPA), which aims to help raise awareness about accessibility around the city.
1963
Busy airport
The Grande Prairie Airport was a beehive of activity in the first three months of the year, recording numbers never before seen, First-quarter figures show 90,964 passengers passed through the airport, eclipsing the record set in 2009 by 6.9%. If passenger traffic holds steady, as airport officials expect, 2011 is poised to be a banner year for the newly renovated and expanded facility. A total of 346,756 people passed through the airport in 2010. In 2009, 335,075 passengers travelled through Alberta’s third-busiest airport, down 5.5% from 2008 when 344,755 people flew in or out of Grande Prairie. •••
Seeding delayed
Peace Country farmers, ravaged by intense drought, have been clamouring for more rain for years. But now, heavy winter snowfalls have given way to a wet, cool spring – so far – which has resulted in some farmers
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The entire experience was eye-opening for him. “It makes you re-examine the most mundane of daily habits and look at them from a different perspective,” he said. •••
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In his more than 30 years’ experience as a firefighter, Capt. Barry Chorney of the Grande Prairie Fire Department has never seen devastation like what he encountered in Slave Lake. “An incredible amount of fire went through that community,” recalled Chorney. “I’ve never seen destruction of this magnitude, where there were houses there is nothing.” Chorney was among the personnel dispatched from Grande Prairie, the County of Grande Prairie, and the Towns of Beaverlodge and Sexsmith to help control the flames that ravaged Slave Lake, located just over 300 kilometres east of Grande Prairie. The fire departments got the call for help at 1 a.m. on May 16, six hours after an evacuation order was issued to the town due to encroaching wildfires. By 2 a.m., 18 personnel from the local detachments were on the road with three fire engines, a water tanker and two support vehicles. They approached the Slave Lake area just after dawn that Monday, noticing signs of what was to come within 40 kilometres of the town. “Even before we entered we were seeing burnt brush, some burnt houses, some houses standing, grass burnt around houses,” said Mike Cooke of the GPFD. “I was a little surprised to see it that far out of town.” “When we first showed up it was still fairly smoky,” said Dan Billingham, a Sexsmith firefighter. “It was quite a different place from what I remembered Slave Lake to be.”
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