First-ever PBR event held in Kindersley
BY KATE WINQUIST
The atmosphere was electric Thursday night as Kindersley hosted its first-ever Professional Bull Riders (PBR) Canada event, the Energy Dodge Dakota Buttar Invitational. Named after local bull-riding legend Dakota Buttar, the event proved to be a spectacular celebration of talent and community spirit.
Long lines snaked around the Inter Pipeline Arena before the event, but eager fans quickly filled the venue, ready to embrace the excitement. Attendees enjoyed a vibrant pre-show environment, complete with refreshments, music, and a dynamic light show culminating in a fireworks display.
Event organizer Pete Gebraad conveyed his enthusiasm to TSN Canada Cup series sideline reporter Alicia Erickson, sharing how community support turned dreams into reality. “This event was a pipedream before that video call took place, but the resounding support from your Town Council and your Mayor was the inspiration and the catalyst for all of this actually happening,” he stated to cheers from the packed audience.
CHAMPIONSHIP RIDE! At the first-ever Professional Bull Riders)Canada Touring Pro Division event in Kindersley, Saskatchewan, Coy Robbins from Camrose, Alberta rode supreme to win the Energy Dodge Dakota Buttar Invitational.
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The event featured a special tribute to Dakota Buttar, showcasing his inspiring journey from growing up in Kindersley to becoming a two-time Canadian champion on a big-screen video. Host Brett Gardiner, a 13-time announcer of the year, added to the excitement, rallying the crowd with his dynamic commentary: “PBR friends, together with the champions of champions, celebrating the greatest bull riders on the face of the planet, all preparing to do battle 8 seconds at a time! Kindersley … welcome the bull riders of the PBR!”
When the dust settled, Camrose, Alberta’s Coy Robbins emerged victorious, going a perfect 2 for 2 with scores of 81 and 86 for 167 points. This win marks Robbins’ third in the current Touring Pro Division sea-
son, tying him with Dakota Buttar for the third-most events won in 2024 on Canada’s developmental tour. Finishing in a close second was Lonnie West from Cadogan, AB, who scored 166.50 points.
Notable rides from the night included William Barrows (Foremost, AB) with 85 points, Aaron Roy (Yellowgrass, SK) with 84 points, and Gilmar Santana (Ouro Preto, Brazil) who earned 83.5 points. Dakota Buttar, a crowd favourite and two-time reigning PBR Canada Champion, unfortunately went 0-for-1, but remained honoured by the community’s support.
“I’m humbled by the support Kindersley has shown me over the years and is now showing for the first-ever PBR event with my name on it,” says Dakota. I grew up in Kindersley, and I’m very proud to be able to bring the best of the PBR to my hometown; it’s a dream come true.”
A warm welcome to our new residents
BY DIANNE SPATH
“All
the months are
crude experiments, out of which the perfect September is made.“
Virginia Woolf
Hello Everyone. I hope everyone had a wonderful Labour Day weekend. The weather is still beautiful for this time of year. Hopefully, everyone’s harvest is going well. Summer holidays are over for the kids, and they are getting back to the school routine again. Tuesday morning, we had our regular bus run downtown and walked outdoors. The shoe company “If the Shoe Fits” was here from 10 to 2. In the evening, there was a resident council meeting.
Wednesday was another shopping day, as Alberta Clothing and Avon were at the Lodge from 10 to 2. In
the afternoon, there was shuffleboard. Thursday morning, there were crossword games and walking outdoors. In the afternoon, everyone enjoyed the ice cream parlour.
Friday morning, exercises were followed by horse races. In the afternoon, bingo was held, and in the evening, music by the Jorgensons was played. Some residents went to the last Farmer’s Market.
The Oyen Lodge would like to welcome two new residents, Mel Schaefer and Katherine Knull. September 8th is National Grandparents Day, and Beltone will be here on September 11th.
Have a good week, everyone.
OYEN LODGE REPORT
OPINION:
Revealing what’s “hidden in plain sight”
BY JOAN JANZEN
A young mom said she and her daughter play a game when they’re in the car. Her daughter plays a song and her mom guesses the artist and title within seconds of listening. However “my daughter is unaware the song information is on the dashboard,” she confessed.
The information on the dashboard was “hidden in plain sight” for the young girl, who wouldn’t be aware of it until her mother pointed it out to her. Recently, a British Columbia woman brought something hidden in plain sight to light.
Gwen O’Mahony’s recent video went viral. The MLA candidate for the Conservative Party released a video of her using a harms reduction vending machine outside a B.C. Hospital. Most Canadians were unaware of the existence of the machines until the video was released.
Gwen told journalist Drea Humphrey she had expected the video to get a few thousand views. “But I put the video out, and it just exploded! It got close to a million views,” she said. The video showed Gwen using an easy-to-operate vending machine. She followed the simple instructions and,
within a minute, received a free cocaine smoking kit. After scanning a Q.R. code, she accessed the additional instruction video on how to snort cocaine as safely as possible.
“The most shocking part is the location of the machine and how accessible it is,” Gwen noted. “It’s right outside the hospital where people go to take a smoke break. It’s a touch screen, slick, high-end, sophisticated piece of machinery.”
However, it filled her with a sense of sadness when she realized there was an instructional video as well. “It was an eerie feeling,” she commented. She asked herself what it was doing there and why taxpayers were paying for it.
Gwen wasn’t motivated by political gain; she did it because she had lost her sister. “I lost my sister a month and a half ago to the opioid epidemic. I didn’t want my sister to be handed drugs endlessly and to have someone pat her on the hand and tell her that’s OK - you’ve got a disease. This is where we’re at. This is the way the party is handling addiction; they are keeping people in a cycle of addiction. It’s called enabling,” she said.
Gwen continued to say, “We know this isn’t working, because in spite of all this harm reduction it’s getting worse.”
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Someone who watched Gwen’s video commented, “I went to use the hospital washroom and found three used kits on the washroom counter. What have we become?”
Another listener wrote, “My nephew had to go to rehab, and his family had to pay for it. All this free drug stuff given out, but you have to pay for rehab.”
“So what’s the solution?” Drea asked. Gwen replied, “Treatment is the best hope for somebody. I believe people can get treatment and can break free from addiction. I would like money to go into treatment; we need to be driven by data and common sense.”
There isn’t a community that hasn’t been impacted by this crisis, and people are tired of funds being wasted on vending machines while treatment centres have to conduct fundraisers in order to operate.
As the video went viral, the general public said, “What a waste of taxpayer dollars!” As a result, the government is forced to review these vending machines, which were approved by the B.C. premier in the fall of 2023.
Here are a few questions the public asked after watching the video. How much taxpayer dollars is this costing us? I wonder where they get all the harm reduction paraphernalia from … China?
Why are we paying for perpetual homelessness when it now costs thousands of dollars for treatment? Why aren’t nurses and staff and their unions, as well as doctors, protesting against this? Who is making money off of these dispensers?
The fact that Gwen said her sister “died with cocktail drugs in her system, both street drugs and prescription drugs” is worth noting. Doctors like Suneel Dhand have been speaking out about this for some time.
“The entire philosophy is to prescribe, prescribe, prescribe, and it isn’t working. People are seeing their family members get sicker every single year while more and more drugs are being prescribed,” Dr. Dhand said on a recent podcast. Even comedian Bill Maher devoted a segment to the topic, and when comedians get you to laugh about something, you know it’s a serious problem.
Like Gwen O’Mahony, the public is more likely to reveal things hidden in plain sight if it impacts them personally. Meanwhile a select group of politicians make a decision to set up harm reduction vending machines at hospitals, without consulting the public.
A wise proverb states, “In a multitude of counsellors, there is safety.” That’s where true, authentic harm reduction lies.
Pop89: Nature-loving nature
BY MADONNA HAMEL
As the gate on the right closed on the horizon and the field, the gate on the left opened to a new lot of heifers. The fifteen Black Angus were herded into the ring for all of us to get a good look at them. “You might want to sit on your hands, Madonna,” teased Ervin, sitting next to his ranch hand Ian. “You French have a tendency to wave your hands around a lot, and I wouldn’t want you bidding on more than I’m already prepared to buy.”
Some of the red-headed heifers seemed more than a little bewildered and began swirling, like dervish cattle. A couple of others stopped to stare at us in the bleachers, eating our beef on a bun and drinking our fortified coffees. I wondered how far ahead into their futures they could see.
One young virgin gapes with big, wet eyes, and I can’t resist the urge to speculate on her emotional state. Is she upset by the pounding gavel or the tight confine of the pen? Is she yearning to be back outside, or is she longing for her ancestral homeland and its far milder climate? How long before she’ll adapt? I’m trained as both an artist and a journalist to ask questions, even dumb ones like these. But I know better than to pose them to a room full of ranchers. Instead, I lean in to whisper to Amber, Ian’s girlfriend, a biologist, animal behaviourist, gymnast and fellow observer: “Do you find yourself comparing these animals to our animal selves?”
One thing I do know is that this is the first time I’ve gotten this close to farm animals. To be honest, I never gave them much thought when I moved here. Apart
Shadows of history
BY BERNIE KREWSKI
Several more deeply rooted connections to the past drew my interest while surveying news items in 1965. One was about establishing the Alberta Provincial Museum and Archives. The other was Peter Lougheed’s entry into public life. Both are intricately linked. Each of them, pragmatically and symbolically, have wide ranging significance in the history of this province.
MUSEUMS & ARCHIVES
Museums and archives inevitably have stories to tell. What are the important stories represented by the exhibits and collections at the Crossroads Museum and Archives (CMA)? Agriculture and farming? Rural life? Changing necessities for daily living? How might
from horses, my animal interests lie in the wild: coyotes, owls, badgers, turtles, and, of course, the reintroduced buffalo.
Several years ago, a friend introduced me to animal totem cards. I always knew that the Indigenous worldview embraces all animals as brothers and sisters. In fact, even trees - one-legged - belong to this large, embracing circle of relatives, as far as native cultures are concerned. The totem cards reminded me of this knowledge on a daily basis. The animals in my deck are North American, among them: eagle, hawk, elk, lizard, snake, skunk, moose, porcupine, coyote, wolf, raven, spider, bat and salmon. I’ve been using this deck for years, and there are some animals I have yet to pull, like jaguar or blue heron. But ant shows up practically every day - with his infernal life lesson: be ‘patient’. An ant, I am reminded, will strip a forest bare for food, even if it takes a year. Also, it is a builder like a beaver, is aggressive like a badger, has stamina like elk, scrutiny like a mouse, and give-away like a turkey.
Once I integrated animal awareness into my life, I watched as they arrived in my every day- in images and in sky and on land. Most religious origins understood the importance of love and respect for nature. Christ exhorts, “Ask the beasts for council.” Theologian Elizabeth Johnson, in her book “Ask the Beasts,” uses Job:12 as a kind of crowbar to pry open dry theology. Her book is a conversation between Charles Darwin and a Christian. While, as one reviewer suggests, “about half of the Christians in the United States would consider such an encounter inconceivable,” Johnson suggests that, in fact, “a creation that is infinitely loving” would, in fact, look very much like “the extravagantly rich and self-creative drama of life that Darwin narrates so compellingly in The Origin.”
I am jolted back by the voice of the auctioneer: “Startin’ at nineteen hundred nineteen and a half, I’ll take nineteen seventy-five if you wanna go boys yes-
residents of Oyen and district answer that question if they were asked?
For those who are unaware, there is a functional difference between museums and archives even though, as in Oyen, they may be housed in the same facility. A museum is dedicated to displaying and preserving culturally and scientifically significant objects. Items are customarily unique – the raw material of study and research. They are removed in time, place, and circumstances from their original context. Exhibits are usually organized around specific themes in the arts, science and technology, natural history or local history.
An archive, by contrast, is an accumulation of historical records deposited by individuals, organizations, and especially various levels of government.
The CMA, I might note, seems to have few records about local governance.
One void that could be filled is a list of reeves and mayors that have served this community since 1913.
Alberta was a dawdler, historically, in developing a provincial archive. Regina was the seat of government in the former North-West Territories as
early as 1883. This gave Saskatchewan a head start in developing a publicly accessible archive.
sir boys one more time nineteen seventy-five.” The rhythm and speed of his hustle trips along nicely, a kind of rap for cowboys.
I keep my hands safely grasped around my third cup of strong coffee and watch Ervin seated at the end of the bleacher to see if he’s bidding. It’s hard to tell. He sits calm but steely-eyed. The only sign of a bid is the slightest wave of his program at his side. He passes on the dervishes blazing across the turd-matted stage, and a rancher from Wyoming buys the lot. Stage door right opens to release the more-than-willing starlets out of the glare and into the great, chilly outdoors. I catch another glimpse of the bright December sky stretching over the blonde brush-cut landscape, and the door closes again. Exit stage right. All the world’s a stage for ourselves and our critters. And then it’s over. And we drive home, followed by a swiftly rising full moon.
The following Sunday, snow began falling heavily and blowing mightily. I rode up with Ervin and Ian to Ervin’s pastureland at Beaverdale. After we cleared the area of stones, we sat in the warm truck, awaiting the animals being ferried down from Cadillac. It wasn’t a good day to be hauling anything; the roads were slippery, with snow piling and visibility lessening by the minute. In the blowing sleet and the growing darkness, lights appeared on the horizon, but it turned out to be a plow. But ask me if I was nervous, sitting between those two burly men. I was not.
Over the years, I’ve watched ranchers work with their animals. I’ve watched them get up early to feed every morning in freezing weather. I’ve seen them they go searching for lost calves, treat foot rot, birth babies at 4 am. I listen to stories of encounters with bulls, protective moms, babies stuck in badger holes. I cringe at night when calves get taken away, and their mothers cry for them all night long for weeks on end. Indubitably, the “infinitely loving nature of creation” goes both ways. Ideally, we are nature-loving nature.
That also provided other advantages. “The Encyclopedia of Saskatchewan” (2005) is a wonderful, user-friendly, source of history, 1071 pages, also available online. British Columbia and Manitoba have similar encyclopedias published in 2000 and 2007. Alberta has no equivalent.
Public pressure to establish an archive in Alberta began as early as 1944. In the meantime, the Glenbow Museum in Calgary, an art and history regional museum, was established as a private non-profit foundation in 1955. Another small step took place in 1958 when the Alberta government included the construction of a museum and archive in its five-year plan, selecting Edmonton as the site for its eventual location.
Preparations in 1965 for Canada’s Centennial in 1967 was a major turning point. In February, Ambrose Holowach, Provincial Secretary and Chair of the Alberta Centennial Committee, announced that construction of the Provincial Mu-
seum and Archives would be one of the capital projects celebrating Canada’s Centennial. The $5 million cost of the project would be jointly shared by the Federal Centennial Commission and the Alberta Government. This matching grant arrangement was restricted to capital works of an historical, educational, cultural, or recreational nature.
The construction site chosen for the future museum and archives consisted of 13 acres overlooking the river valley near Edmonton’s city centre. Quite mysteriously, news reports innocuously mentioned an existing building on this site, referred to as the “old mansion,” at that time serving as a veterans’ hospital.
While these developments were happening provincially, comparable activity was occurring in Hanna. The Pioneers’ Association was again discussing the establishment of a museum, having moved the former “cottage school” to the exhibition grounds the summer before. Plans proceeded quickly with the incorporation of The Hanna and District Historical Society in May 1965.
KREW KUTS
Bernie Krewski
Posting Date September 2, 2024
1. GEOGRAPHY: How many lakes are in the Great Lakes Basin?
2. MOVIES: What is the little girl’s last name in the film “Matilda”?
3. TELEVISION: What is the name of the teacher on the animated kids’ series “The Magic School Bus”?
4. LITERATURE: In which historic period is Jack London’s novel “Call of the Wild” set?
5. U.S. CITIES: Which city’s nickname is “City by the Bay”?
6. ANATOMY: How much of the human body is made up of water?
7. SCIENCE: What is heliology?
8. HISTORY: Which world leader’s birth name is Jorge Mario Bergoglio?
9. ASTRONOMY: In what year did a U.S. astronaut land on the moon?
10. ENTERTAINERS: Which famous actor who starred in “The Notebook” was once a member of “The Mickey Mouse Club”? © 2024 King Features Synd., Inc.
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Acadia Municipal Library is looking for a Library Manager and/or Library Assistant. This could be a job share between two applicants depending on availability.
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