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YOUR Independent Community Newspaper
Vol. 5 Edition 33
Sasseville shines in Winnipeg
By Bruce Corcoran bruce@chathamvoice.com
Five gold medals, a silver and a bronze on the national stage: Not bad for a swimmer who originally took up the sport because she couldn’t sleep at night. But that is Chatham’s Genevieve Sasseville, who lit up the pool at the recent Canada Games in Winnipeg. The 14 year old came home with gold medals in the 50m butterfly, 100m butterfly, and 4x50m, 4x100m and medley team relays, while picking up silver in the 4x50m medley relay and bronze in the 50m freestyle. Included in the bevvy of gold medals is a Canada Games record for the 50 m butterfly. She swam it in 27.51 seconds, breaking the old record of 27.59. Sasseville has come a long way from taking up the sport to wear herself out each day. “At first, I was in dance when I was younger. But I still had a ton of energy. I couldn’t go to sleep because I was so full of energy,” she said. Enter the Pool Sharks. Swimming works almost every muscle in the body.
“Swimming was the only thing that would wear me out,” she explained. “I really liked it. I stopped dancing.” Getting worn out led to Sasseville getting better and better as a swimmer. After qualifying for regionals, she decided to see where competitive swimming would take her. So far, that is the Canada Games. In the future, Sasseville said she’d love to compete at the Can Am Games, or even the Olympics. When Sasseville took gold last week at the Canada Games in the 50m butterfly, she said she didn’t know she’d earned the record at the time. “I went to go wait in line to get my medal, and my teammates came up and congratulated me on breaking the record. I said, ‘What record?’ ‘You broke the Canada Games record!’ That was super cool,” she said. While it may have been the highlight of her time at the Games, it wasn’t the only “cool” moment for Sasseville. She said the entire experience at the Canada Games was incredible.
Continued on page 2
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THURSDAY, AUGUST 17, 2017
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Fun times at WAMBO
Judy Woodrow/Special to The Chatham Voice
The ladies of Tropical Tan, Rachaelle Trombley, left, and Nicole Dubuque, may have capsized shortly after leaving the dock, but they still had a blast and won most creative boat in the annual cardboard boat race as part of WAMBO weekend. For more WAMBO photos, please turn to page 4.
Well defender to pay $25K
By Mary Beth Corcoran mary@chathamvoice.com
Wallaceburg Coun. Jeff Wesley went head with his defamation complaint against Water Wells First spokesperson Kevin Jakubec, getting a judgment of $25,000, plus $2,000 in fixed costs
against him, and has said he will not run again for council. Wesley’s lawyer, Michael Lerner, released a copy of the judgment to the media from Small Claims Court, regarding his defamation claim over the Shame Award given to the Wallaceburg
councillor back in February and Jakubec’s unwillingness to apologize in the media and retract his statements that Wesley “misled the public.” Jakubec, as spokesperson for WWF, had already given a Shame Award to Mayor Randy Hope to draw attention
to the group’s concern with the municipality’s lack of action over water well issues in Dover since the wind turbine projects began. Wesley was the second member of council to receive the award in the form of a Pinocchio statue. Continued on page 3