The members of Serenity Chapter #113, Oyen, Order of the Eastern Star, are committed to supporting the youth in their local communities. This year, they are pleased to make donations to the nutritional programs in all of the schools in Oyen and surrounding areas, including Warren Peers School in Acadia Valley. Pictured is Lora Fletcher-Wilson (left), principal of the school accepting a $500 cheque from Leanna Meers. More photos and story on page 2. SUBMITTED
BY LEANNA MEERS
The members of Serenity Chapter #113, Oyen, Order of the Eastern Star, are committed to supporting the youth in their local communities. This year, they are pleased to make donations to the nutritional programs in all of the schools in Oyen and surrounding areas, as well as the athletics program at South Central High School. In the past, they have reached the youth through donations to the Oyen Day Care, Oyen Minor Hockey, the Badlands Badgers Baseball Academy, and the public libraries in Oyen, Acadia Valley, and Cereal. They recently contributed to the Oyen Food Bank, Oyen Ministerial Association, and the New Brigden Hall fund, among other organizations.
Serenity Chapter #113, Order of the Eastern Star, was instituted on December 17, 1952. The Order of the Eastern Star is an international fraternal organization comprised of both men and women and is part of the family of Freemasonry. It is a non-profit organization whose members are dedicated to improving the quality of lives in their communities through the charities they support, fellowship, social enjoyment, and charitable works.
FRIDAY APRIL 19
MINI MART: 10 AM - 2 PM
SOUP & SANDWICH: 11 AM - 1 PM
Adults: $15 • Kids 6-12 : $5
Under 6: FREE
202 - 1st Ave. E., Oyen • 403-664-3987
Email: Pioneerpastoralcharge@gmail.com
Website: www.bigcountryunitedchurches.ca
If you are interested IN RENTING A VENDOR TABLE PLEASE CALL 403-664-9676 Tables are $20
“Do not trouble your hearts overmuch with thought of the road tonight. Maybe the paths that you each shall tread are already laid before your feet, though you do not see them.”
Galadriel (J.R.R. Tolkien, Lord of the Rings)
www.anchorglass.ab.ca
#2 Replace the Window
email: tim@anchorglass.ab.ca Phone: 403-854-4414 Toll Free: 1-800-463-3148
BY TRICIA ROLHEISER Principal, Assumption School
In the spring of 2021, after more than five years of dedicated fundraising by Assumption School families and with the help of matching grants, we were thrilled to be on the brink of choosing our new playground. The old playground had seen better days and was in need of some TLC to meet today’s safety standards. But with determination and a sprinkle of magic, our Parent Council set out to find the perfect replacement.
After some careful searching, we discovered Playworks, whose mission stole our hearts. They have this amazing knack for breathing new life into old playgrounds like ours. In the fall of 2021, we broke ground and built our playground as Playworks hauled our old, well-loved one away. Through their efforts, our tired playground got a makeover, complete with fresh paint and repairs, ready to spread joy in a whole new
community. As Christmas 2023 approached, our old playground set sail for Cambodia, carrying with it the warmth of our community’s generosity.
Teaming up with a playground from Edmonton, our refurbished structure was set to bring smiles to over 1000 kids, brightening up communities with limited play opportunities.
The photo above captures the wonderful crew who journeyed to Cambodia to build the playground this February. Despite facing a few bumps along the way (including a delayed shipment), their spirit never waned. With the help of Cambodian volunteers and government support, they made it happen! Now, seeing the joy on the kids’ faces as they play day and night, it’s clear that all the hard work was worth it.
A heartfelt thank you goes out to everyone who pitched in, whether through donations, sweat, or simply believing in the dream. Because of you, our playground is now a source of happiness for both our community and the children of Cambodia.
BY JOAN JANZEN
Here’s some wisdom from a fiveyear-old: “I’m going to sleep with my mouth open so the tooth fairy can just grab my loose tooth out of my mouth.” It was such a great plan, and I hope the tooth fairy cooperated and ensured it worked out for her.
Four men from Chestermere, Alberta, had a plan. They saw some strange things going on in their city of 30,000, located near Calgary, so they got elected in October 2021. Jeff Colvin was elected Mayor, along with three retired businessmen who were elected councillors. Laura-Lynn Thompson invited them to share their story on her online show.
Jeff had a background in developing condos, office buildings, subdivisions and water and sewer development for over twenty years. “With that background, I started seeing things in our city that weren’t making sense,” he said. In 2016, voting residents had signed a petition to investigate the council for corruption. “The petition went to Municipal Affairs and they did nothing with it which seemed odd.”
“Coming into office, we had a platform of reducing corruption and looking at ways of saving taxpayer dollars. I wanted to introduce standard business principles to government,” Jeff acknowledged.
Stephen Hanley said before being elected, he had noticed some “crazy stuff happening” in Chestermere. Because he was a retired senior partner of Canadian Railways, he had time to look into what was happening.
“We were only in office for two weeks when Municipal Affairs had obtained a legal opinion, drafting a letter asking what steps can be taken to remove the city council. They were told there are no steps. The election didn’t go their way, and some people were upset with us and the types of things we were uncovering,” he said. After just two months of being in office, Municipal Affairs investigated the newly elected Mayor and council.
Upon coming into office, Jeff was told the city was broke and needed to raise taxes by 25%. Because of his business background, he wanted to look at the numbers, but he said, “We were getting extreme resistance from our staff who didn’t want us to look into the numbers.”
The new Mayor couldn’t find any paper or electronic files in his office, and the IT manager had deleted all the emails. “We brought this up to Municipal Affairs, but they weren’t interested in looking at it,” Jeff said.
“When I was in business, I didn’t pay attention to what was happening in government. But when I got in office, I
DICTATORSHIP:
was surprised by the apathy employees had towards residents,” he observed. “They just wasted money.”
Some examples of what they found were sixty Visa cards and 300 cell phones for 120 staff. They cut up 54 of the cards and kept forty of the 300 cell phones.
Jeff asked for a quote to purchase a TV for the board room so they could do presentations. He was shocked when he was given a quote for $100,000, but they were serious. Jeff and the CAO went shopping and bought a TV for $1300. However, he noted they had spent $100,000 on the previous TV and were proud of it.
“Our previous administration had put in a new bylaw called a civil discourse policy, giving them power to go after citizens who offered criticism. We repealed that when we came in. Senior staff and Municipal Affairs raised questions and wanted to have this policy,” Jeff explained.
It soon became apparent why they wanted the policy because they discovered the interim CAO had paid out $600,000 in hush money. “There’s a lot of hush going on there,” Jeff said.
“We had a dog park come to us that we wanted to build. Staff came back with a quote of $475,000,” he recalled. He solicited bids and best prices and built three dog parks for a total of
$175,000.
During the two years they were in office, they were able to triple their performance in their city with twenty-five percent less staff. They reduced the budget by 30 percent, added four new RCMP, hired six new firefighters plus equipment, reduced taxes by 25 percent, and were able to put money aside.
But what was their reward? In December of 2023, Jeff and three councillors were removed from office by Municipal Affairs.
Because of all the corruption they had discovered, the new council had started a lawsuit in Calgary. “A few days after we were let go, one of the first things they did was terminate that lawsuit,” he said.
When asked if it’s possible for Jeff and the councillors to get back into office, he replied, “We can, but they’re coming up with a manufactured reason why we can be disqualified. We can win in court, but it would be after the by-election. The whole idea that we’ve done something wrong is nonsense.”
After working 12-hour days for the past few years to help taxpayers, Jeff advises people to stand up for justice. “If you divide the budget by the number of people, it tells you how much is being spent per person. That will tell you if you’re doing well.”
Has Canada’s Democracy quietly been eroded away? Did we become so complacent and let it slip away? I don’t think any middle-class people in Canada can see any light at the end of the tunnel, and there is no hope of any kind for the homeless and the destitute. If we can survive for another year, we should be able to recover our Democracy, unless, like other Dictatorships, our elections are rigged. God forbid, forcing a Carbon Tax on people that are relying on Food Banks to survive doesn’t seem to be too Democratic, does it? We need to stand on guard for Canada! This has to be one for the record books when a Prime Minister weighs the steam that comes out of our chimneys and charges $80 dollars a ton for it. A Democratic country would call this Racketeering. I would like to have a Liberal MP come out to southeastern Alberta and live for a month or two and then tell us they’re getting more Carbon Tax dollars back than they are paying out. They would find out that we would need the rebate back every month to try to break even!
Robert Blagen Youngstown
We welcome the opinions of our readers in the form of letters to the editor, as long as submissions do not include: • Profanity, vulgarity and/or obscenities • Slurs and/or personal attacks • Misinformation We reserve sole discretion to decide whether or not a reader submission will be published. We will not publish anonymous submissions or letters containing personal attacks. We reserve the right to edit or refuse all letters.
BY MADONNA HAMEL
On every birthday, I feel a need to drive and read, not at the same time. Last week, we drove to Eastend to roam the dinosaur-boned hills and eat burgers at Jack’s Cafe. I wanted my brother to “see” the landscape, not easy after his stroke. But that steep drive down into the Frenchman River Valley, where the highway drops dramatically, and the long banking curve gives way to sky and time before it suddenly climbs again, is so big that what is not seen is definitely felt.
The best gift others can give me is the willingness to listen as I read to them from my favourite authors. So I hauled several books with me, classic Western standbys: Lorna Crozier’s “Small Beneath the Sky,” Kathleen Norris’ “Dakota,” and Wallace Stegner’s collection of essays: “Marking the Sparrow’s Fall. I wanted to bring Sharon Butala, Trevor Herriot, Wendell Berry, Larry McMurtry and Candace Savage. But there’s only so much room in the car. I had to stop somewhere. And for how long should friends and family be expected to sit still and listen to me read from the voices who made Western Lit mean more than gunslinging cowboys and sassy saloon girls? Even on my birthday, loved ones should be allowed to eat before their food gets cold.
The day was a wet one. But, as we say in these parts, “we need the moisture.” While waiting for our meal to arrive, I pulled out my first reading, appropriately addressing the fact of lack of moisture. “Aridity makes all the difference,” writes Stegner. “It clarifies the air,” “electrifies the distances,” and “dictates the very landscape.” And more than that, aridity “inspired barbed wire and the windmill, altered laws and social organization, profoundly affected men, myths and moralities.” “It’s like the cold up North,” my brother observed, referring to his time building scaffolding in Fort Mac.“If you didn’t seal every possible hole in your clothing, it would seep in like water and
turn you to ice.”
Kathleen Norris’ memoir “Dakota” is subtitled “A Spiritual Geography.” Her descriptions of a landscape and its folk captivated by it ring similar to our own up here in Canada, so much so that the border cannot separate our shared embodied experience of being plains people. This is a place for spiritual ecologists, the kind of folks who say: Nature is my religion. Or, the planet is my church. This land facilitates mystics, like those desert fathers and mothers and that skinny Jew Jesus who wandered off into the arid openness to empty their heads of noise and invite in the Divine. Even those who might never name themselves as such understand the “mystic” needs time alone to hear the voice of The Beloved. Once heard it becomes evident that cathedrals are not the sole domain of holinessthat all places are holy.
Not that I besmirch the church. (And, for that matter, nor does Norris, who becomes a lay Benedictine after discovering a nearby monastery.) The church is where we test our smug certainty that we are “very spiritual people.” Can we sit next to strangers in pews and pray ensemble? If not, sorry, we are “barely spiritual people.” We enter cathedrals deliberately in search of holiness. We go looking - so we’re receptive. They were created for lost souls, busy types. They are intended to make us religious in the true sense of the word “religio” - to re-link with something divine. They are not an escape the way some see the wild and the land, but a gateway.
The plains of the West made my parents and my parent’s parents. I did not know until I moved here that my predisposition to yearning and mystery came as much from the land as to their mystic Catholic aspects. The mysterious light and the immeasurable expanse of open prairie - the kind one finds in ranch and grasslands - strips us of a sense of time and space and even place. And we are left hanging.
This “left hanging” sensation will terrify some - as it did the birder I met here in Val Marie back in 2014. A native of Washington DC, he couldn’t wait to get back to the familiar noise of the city after crossing the Baird sparrow and long-billed curlew off his life list. The rest of us will be drawn in, like Wallace Stegner.
Even though he only lived in Eastend for a handful of years, Stegner insists the place defined him. He writes with a touching certainty as - to paraphrase - an American who is uncertain who he is but knows from whence he came: “…a good part of my private and social character, the kinds of scenery and weather and people and humour I respond to, the prejudices I wear like dishonourable scars, the affections that sometimes waken me from middle age sleep with a rush of undiminished love, the virtues I respect and the weaknesses I condemn, the code I try to live by, the special ways I fail at it and the kinds of shame I feel when I do, the models and heroes I follow, the colours and shapes that evoke my deepest pleasure, the way I adjudicate between personal desire and personal responsibility, have been in good part scored into me by that little womb-like village and that lovely, lovely exposed prairie of the homestead.”
But you don’t have to be born here. You don’t have to stay. More recently, another big city dweller, Alex Ross, The New Yorker’s music critic, travelled to the home of Willa Cather in Nebraska and found there a landscape and prairie where “you move not only backward in time but also out into symbolic terrain, one in which the self becomes a ‘something’, in which a moment of supreme bliss is indistinguishable from death.”
It is, for me, as if, after hundreds of walks on the land a kind of human erosion happens, evoking with it a natural sense of dying.
BY GREG BUCHANAN
On Sportsnet’s Hockey Night in Canada broadcast, Elliotte Friedman leaked potential rule changes for junior hockey. If enacted, the rule changes would allow Canadian Hockey League (CHL) players to play in the NCAA after tenures in the Ontario Hockey League (OHL), Quebec Maritime Junior Hockey League (QMJHL), or Western Hockey League (WHL).
[NHL general managers] were told that the NCAA is actively considering removing all restrictions for CHL players to play after their CHL careers are done. Friedman went on to explain that no timeline or agreement has been announced, but the NHL is preparing for it. “There’s no question that this is now on the NHL’s radar, and it could be a very big change, A
“Not all those who wander are lost.“
Bilbo Baggins (Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien)
big change, not just for the NHL, CHL, NCAA, but undoubtedly also for U SPORTS.
Previously, players who wish to play in the NCAA can have a CHL team cover expenses for them for up to 48 hours as a one-time allowance for a tryout. This is one of a few strict rules regarding NCAA eligibility, which consider players from the major junior leagues in Canada as pro players and thus ineligible to play amateur hockey at their colleges and universities.
U SPORTS, however, does not just allow CHL players to play after their time in the league but encourages it. The league covers a year of tuition for each season a player competes in the CHL —and according to the CHL, over 956 graduates were utilizing that funding during the 2019-20 season. The Canadian univer-
sity ranks are dominated by CHL alumni, with over 80 percent of players at the recent U SPORTS Men’s Hockey Championship coming from the CHL.
So why now? The CHL-NCAA blockade has long been a point of debate among hockey fans, but for years, the NCAA would not budge. However, following the US Supreme Court ruling in 2021 that the NCAA was not allowed to limit any education-related payments to students, the association has seen widespread changes in the past few years.
This makes for great competition in U SPORTS, however. The players are older than their counterparts in the NCAA, more experienced, and generally play out their entire eligibilities with their Canadian universities, minus some players who are signed to ECHL contracts at the end of the season.
It’s always great to see our youth becoming engaged with the political process. In Oyen last month during a town hall, in addition to a great turnout, MP of Battle River-Crowfoot, Damien Kurek, had two classes from local schools stop in to join the discussion.
BY BRUCE PENTON
Now that the 1,312game preliminaries are almost over, the 16 National Hockey League playoff teams get down to serious business. Last year’s Vegas-vs.-Florida final didn’t appear on many experts’ radars and the likelihood of more upsets is always real.
BY BRUCE PENTON Sports Columnist
So who can win the Stanley Cup this year? All 16 qualifiers, of course, but realistically, some of the playoff teams would need a truckload of four-leaf clovers, a few rabbits’ feet or Mafia-style bribery to win it all.
There are three levels of contenders: Those who can; those who might; those who can’t.
Those who can (in no particular order):
Boston Bruins didn’t miss a beat after the retirement of superstar centre Patrice Bergeron, and have been at the top, or close to it, all year. The President’s Cup jinx got to the B’s last year, so maybe they’ll play so-so down the stretch to avoid finishing first overall.
Florida Panthers: Neck-and-neck with Boston all season for first in the Eastern Conference, the Panthers are playoff-tested after last year’s run to the final.
N.Y. Rangers: Igor Shesterkin in goal and an offence led by Artemi Panarin provide the ingredients for a long run.
Carolina Hurricanes: The Canes have a solid defence with Brent Burns, Brett Pesce and Jaccob Slavin and picked up solid playoff performer Jake Guentzel in a trade, adding to the scoring prowess of Sebastian Aho, Seth Jarvis and Andrei Svechnikov.
Colorado Avalanche: Nathan MacKinnon and Cale Makar can win games by themselves and make the Avs an always-dangerous team.
Dallas Stars: Solid in goal (Jake Oettinger) and up front with eight 20-plus goal scorers, the Stars have been battling Winnipeg and Colorado for top spot in the Central Division all year.
Vancouver Canucks: Coach-of-the-year candidate Rick Tocchet has guided the Canucks to one of their most successful seasons ever. No reason to think it’s going to stop any time soon.
Edmonton Oilers: After a horrendous 5-12 start to the season, the McDavid-Draisaitl-led Oilers have compiled one of the best records in the entire league.
Those who might:
Toronto Maple Leafs: The 1967-to-present day Cup drought probably won’t end this year, but goal-scoring machine Auston Matthews is in his prime, so there’s a chance.
Winnipeg Jets: Among the top teams all season, the Jets have Connor Hellebuyck, the best goalie in the league and the addition of Tyler Toffoli and Sean Monahan mesh nicely with the Jets’ core of Scheifele, Connor, Ehlers and Morrissey.
Nashville Predators: Defenceman Roman Josi might be the best all-round player in the league and the Preds were red-hot down the stretch. Never ignore a team with a mountain of momentum.
Tampa Bay — Playoff experience can never be underestimated.
Those who won’t
Anyone battling it out down the stretch for a wildcard position — Detroit, Washington, Pittsburgh Philadelphia, Los Angeles, Las Vegas.
(Keep in mind that this same pre-playoff column
“Deeds
will not be less valiant because they are unpraised.“
Aragorn (Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien)
So who can win the Stanley Cup this year? All 16 qualifiers, of course, but realistically, some of the playoff teams would need a truckload of four-leaf clovers, a few rabbits’ feet or Mafia-style bribery to win it all.
There are three levels of contenders: Those who can; those who might; those who can’t.
last year gave a no-chance outlook to Florida Panthers, who made it all the way to the final.)
• Retired NFL great J.J. Watt, after the league deemed the hip-drop tackle illegal: “Just fast forward to the belts with flags on them…”
• And comedy writer Alex Kaseberg on the same subject: “In addition to helmet-to-helmet and around the knees, it is now illegal for NFL players to make hip-drop tackles. At this rate the only option for NFL tacklers is to give ball carriers a stern talking to.”
• Jack Finarelli, aka the sports curmudgeon, after discussing the Ohtani-interpreter gambling situation: “The surest way to double your money is to fold it in half and put it in your pocket.”
• Comedy writer Alex Kaseberg: “In Texas, former NFL QB, Vince Young, was knocked out cold in a bar fight. Young was hit so hard, when he came to he said he wanted to make a comeback with the Washington Commanders.”
• Super 70s Sports: “Tony Gwynn could’ve gone 0-for-1,199 at the end of his career and still retired as a .300 hitter. Think about that.”
• Janice Hough of leftcoastsportsbabe.com: “The Oakland As are reportedly talking to Sacramento about relocating there for at least three years. But wait, doesn’t Sacramento already have a minor league team?”
• Headline in The Beaverton, Canada’s parody website: “NHL player declared legally dead before trade deadline expects to be ready for playoffs.”
• Mike Bianchi of the Orlando Sentinel: “Step aside, Messi, Mahomes and LeBron, and make room for America’s biggest sports superstar — Caitlin Clark.”
• RJ Currie of sportsdeke.com: “NBA star Russell Westbrook admitted to lying about his wife’s birthday at a restaurant to score some free cake. Typical of today’s over-paid athlete: getting their unjust desserts.”
• From theonion.com, on ‘Signs You May be Addicted to Sports Betting’: “Every sports gambler has heard horror stories about someone who, at their lowest point, watched an entire baseball game from beginning to end.”
• Another gambling addiction indicator, from theonion.com: “You Convinced The Gambling Addiction Hotline Operator To Put $20 On The Knicks”
Care to comment? Email brucepenton2003@yahoo.ca
& 22nd
Call to schedule an appointment
BY BERNIE KREWSKI
Infrastructure like railways are systems shaping our world, as Deb Chachra describes in her new book “How Infrastructure Works.” Although many of us take this for granted, they are mechanisms meeting our basic “biological needs,” serving a “public good” and fostering new economic and social relationships.
Plans to construct the Goose Lake rail line from Saskatoon to Calgary was unquestionably a large infrastructure project. Its aim was to advance the food supply of grains, especially wheat, “the most important cereal in the world” according to The Canadian Encyclopedia. Having confined Aboriginal peoples onto “reserves,” a rail line was expected to entice an influx of new settlers from Britain, the U.S., central and eastern Europe. It would address the necessities of local transportation, creating towns every ten to twenty km, accommodating the challenging realities of farming with the economic requirements of railroading. This, elected officials argued, would enhance the growth of the Canadian economy.
The first task for CNR officials was to establish a right-of-way, purchasing thousands of acres of prairie land. Farmers know a lot about owning land. My family lived in a railway house in Alsask from 1943 to 1952. It rested on
CNR wisely turned to an outsider, a non-railway official, someone who was highly knowledgeable about “the lay of the land.” This was not a simple process of physically examining the terrain, as that term once suggested. Rather, it necessitated understanding the potential use of the land for its original owners, its future occupants, and the impact on people in the surrounding area.
The man CNR chose to achieve that task, I have recently discovered, was the mystical Clarence Graham (18591935). He arrived in Saskatoon inconspicuously one day around 1908 - 1909 according to a later news report. Without announcement or making known his intentions, he chartered a horse and buggy with a driver. This duo left Saskatoon early one morning for the southwest, finding their way on the open prairie devoid of trails, “disappearing” for many days and nights. Graham was described as someone who possessed “a remarkable sense of direction.”
This headline, “A Trail Blazer and Practical Dreamer Spied Out Land For the Goose Lake Line” was published on August 5th, 1935, at the time of Graham’s death.
Since no one has written a history of the Goose Lake Line, and it is not cited in the 1070-page “Encyclopedia of Saskatchewan,” Graham’s legacy is deeply
buried in the past. News reports, however, offer compelling glimpses of this western Canadian.
His father, a United Empire Loyalist, migrated from the U.S. to the Peterborough area of Ontario, northeast of Toronto. The population of Ontario in 1867 was about 500,000, less than half the current size of Calgary. Thus, it was not too surprising that frequent visitors to the Graham home were two founding Fathers of Confederation John A. Macdonald, Prime Minister, and Charles Tupper, Minister of Railways and Canals (1879-1884). In other words, Clarence Graham had political connections, although never elected to public office.
In 1879, age 20, and single, (remaining so throughout his life), he arrived in Winnipeg, a city incorporated in 1873. It was in the early stages of rapid growth, becoming the third largest city in Canada by 1911. Immediately, Graham became engaged in what we would now call real estate – the development, purchasing, and the selling of properties.
Like other patriots, he joined General Middleton’s militia forces in suppressing the North-West (Riel) Rebellion in 1885, a dispute over entitlement to land. That event was also interrelated with the construction of the Canadian Pacific Railway – opposition to its route across Canada and its very existence.
Having become an expert on Western lands, he was subsequently engaged in settling disputes between farmers and ranchers in southern Alberta and southwest Saskatchewan. He also led land-seeking parties from the U.S. into the Canadian West for many years.
After firmly establishing the pathway for the construction of the Goose Lake Line, Graham took on an even larger project – building a railway to Hudson Bay. Called the “On-to-the-Bay” movement, it briefly implicated the village of Oyen. Freight rates then, as later, were constantly hot political issues.
A delegation consisting of J.R. Wilson, a Saskatchewan politician and former mayor of Saskatoon, John MacLean, an On-to-the-Bay Association executive from Winnipeg, and J.J. Kelly, a local lawyer representing Oyen’s Board of Trade met with the Premier of Alberta in August 1924. They were seeking Herbert Greenfield’s support to establish a new and more efficient outlet for the transportation of grain through Hudson Bay.
Greenfield refused to support the project, indicating that “Alberta has heavy railway liabilities already on its hands compared to Manitoba and Saskatchewan.” Graham proceeded, nonetheless, celebrating the successful completion of the Hudson Bay Railway at the Saskatoon Exhibition in July 1929, driving in a symbolic last spike!
BY SAMANTHA JOHNSON
Prairie Rose Public Schools Content Writer
On Tuesday, April 9, the Council of School Councils had their spring meet up at Prairie Rose Public Schools (PRPS) division office. Representatives from the councils of Bow Island Elementary, Burdett, I.F. Cox, Margaret Wooding, Parkside, Ralston, Schuler, Seven Persons and Warren Peers schools were in attendance. The evening started off with a supper before moving into the activity for the evening. Roxanne Doerksen of TRAD Worm Industries joined the meeting with enough supplies for attendees to pair up and create a functional vermicomposting bin.
“This was an activity they could learn that the students can do at schools. We are hearing lots of about schools building outdoor learning areas. This is the time of year with it being spring and this is curriculum related so why not get the elementary students engaged. The compost can be used in outdoor or flower gardens they are building in the schools,” said organizer of the evening Trustee Patty Rooks. “There is lots of cross-curricular learning here that can be taken back to teachers and it’s a great way to get parents engaged with those teachers where they can show them what they are learning and possibly volunteer in the classroom. You never know what may transpire between what we’ve created here with the parent councils, the parents and the school community.”
At the last meeting in fall 2023, the activity was chair yoga and the PRPS therapy dogs were brought in. A discussion took place about the resources available in the schools, such as Family School Liaison Workers (FSLWs). “The aim was to get the word out because the more our parents know and can share with their councils, the more they can engage parents and utilize the resources we have and just engage the whole community so much better,” explained Rooks.
After the activity there was a short break before Karen Blewett, Community Development Officer with Alberta Arts Culture and Status of Women gave a presentation on designing effective meetings with a focus on creating agendas.
Rooks feels lucky that the PRPS Board gave her free reign to design the Council of School Councils meetings. The purpose of the meetings is to engage all parent councils from across the district and have them come together to have a learning opportunity. Rooks wanted to create a format that was engaging with topics and activities those in attendance could take back to their schools. She also wanted to enhance, improve and/ or build upon their knowledge by providing them with tips and strategies, particularly those schools with new councils.
It was a good turnout with representatives from schools who have never attended these meetings in the past. “I’ll be honest, it can be scary to
come to a new meeting you’ve never been to before, but I’m proud of them for coming and picking up on those tips. I’ve watched them throughout the night engaging with other parents and
asking for some feedback. That’s what tonight is about as well, is talking to your peers and learning how they are successful or not successful,” concluded Rooks.
