Even your newspaper is pausing for a much-needed vacation.
We’ll be on vacation from July 1st - 16th
PLEASE TAKE NOTE THAT THERE WILL BE NO PAPERS ON JULY 10TH OR 17TH.
Deadline for advertising for the JULY 24th paper will be Friday, July 19th at 12:00 noon.
WRITTEN BY ANTONIA SHUBERT
It’s finally happened after 4 ½ years! My name is Antonia Shubert and I live in Oyen Long Term Care. I asked the nurse if I could have something to do; she suggested the hangers. Well, I took her up on it. Dr. Muller encouraged me to keep going after I hit 500. It all happened on account of the people donating wool and hangers that they wanted done and they didn’t care what colors. Thank you to everyone who donated. I’ve reached 5000 woven hangers! Finally! And I’ve really enjoyed it. At first it was hard to quit, but now I don’t mind taking breaks. The hangers have travelled many places in Alberta and British Columbia. If you want to talk to me about the hangers, just give me a call. I might do a few more hangers now as a pastime!
SUBMITTED BY JOHN HERRON
The Oyen Crossroads Museum is Open for the Summer! We are open Tuesday to Saturday, 9:30 am to 12:30 pm and 1 pm to 5 pm. Drop in for a tour, we’d love to see you. Once again the Crossroads Museum is hosting a family friendly treasure hunt. Match wits against the nefarious Robert Dazzle. In retaliation from last years loss of his treasure by local treasure hunters, he is exacting his revenge against the museum. He has hid a prize artifact, an item that holds significant sentimental value to local citizens. Come and see if you can find the item in the allotted time!
Phone the museum at (403)664-2330, email us at oyenmuseum@gmail.com or message us on FB to book a time to treasure hunt.
CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1
es exceeding 50%, which would have made it financially difficult to maintain current staffing levels and keep the budget balanced. “Immeasurable amounts of creativity and hard work, including collaboration with various government entities, ensued and we were fortunate to receive the support we needed to begin operating a fleet in our most rural routes,” explained Weeks. “We learned throughout the process that many rural divisions in the province internally operate transportation because they found some savings from that approach. The financial projections indicate we will be able to follow suit.”
Operating a fleet of buses for the most rural routes in PRPS will allow the division to sustain current staffing levels. “The most important thing for us as a division is ensuring we have the people because that is the difference maker in Prairie Rose, the people who work here and we certainly didn’t want to lose any of them,” stated Weeks.
Some compromises within transportation were required for the division to find additional savings. The acquisition of buses for 39 of the 81 PRPS routes will result in projected savings of just under $700,000. This year there were 87 routes and those additional route adjustments
You’ll never know what treasures you will find at Oyen’s Crossroads Museum.
allowed the division to reach the $1.1 million savings required. “We have consulted, or are scheduled to consult with, all the regions we serve and collaborate with them on how to optimally serve that area,” said Weeks. “They often know the roads, the maintenance of them and where the pickup spots are better than us. Through that collaboration we found as many efficiencies as we could. It is our hope we will be able to add some routes back as our costs stabilize.”
For school-based staff to do their best work, they require a supportive, engaged, and intentional administrative team at the school. In turn, the admin team performs optimally when they have a supportive, engaged and intentional executive team at the division office. Additionally, an engaged, intentional and supportive Board of Trustees will provide the foundation required for the executive team to effectively meet division goals. “We are fortunate in PRPS to have that line well established,” concluded Weeks. “It allows us to do some really creative things and find solutions that are innovative even when they also come with a bit of risk, which is only possible when you have high levels of trust.”
BY MADONNA HAMEL
I cut across the village campground behind my place to get to Page’s in time for the puck drop. But when I saw the couple with the Maryland plates from a bike ride I had to stop and introduce myself. They’ve been here once before, they tell me and are surprised how few people know about it. “Yes,” I say, leaning and whispering, “and let’s keep it that way.” “Nonono, they say, people need this…” and they wave their free arms over the wide open view, embracing the open sky, including the Convent Inn and the monster black clouds humping our way.
Oh, I know. I can’t really discourage visitors from coming to Grasslands National Park, especially considering that I myself was rescued by this place. “Rescued?” they asked. It sounds like a dramatic word, but it fits exactly the situation I found myself in in 2010 when I first drove through here, a year after my mother died.
Hey, you have a hockey game to get to, I tell myself. THE hockey game of the season. Still, I stay to explain. “See that building across the road? That’s the old convent school. My mom went to it as a kid. But that’s not the story. The story is that 14 years ago, my youngest sister, Mich, decided to leave Toronto and move back west. She got a job at the Lake Agnes Tea house in Banff National Park and asked if I would caravan with her, leading the drive across the country, via the States, passing under Chicago and then up into Saskatchewan, via Montana. “Sure, I said. “Who doesn’t love a road trip!”
I’ll never forget crossing at Monchy and driving
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that little highway up to this very spot. I felt like I was on the moon, or Newfoundland, with no one and nothing except big rocks in open fields. We had been on the road for an exhausting week and were thrilled to see, when we pulled up to the Convent, that our sister Jody from Medicine Hat was already here and had a meal and a bottle of wine laid out for us in our room.
That night, we slept like big rocks. At one point Mich felt someone put a blanket over her and pat her hand. Whoever did that, she said, thanks. I was too tired to get another blanket. “It wasn’t me,” I laughed. “I was out cold.” Me neither, said Jody, “I slept like a log.” Of all of us, Mich is the least given to supernatural imaginings, so we agreed we’d believe it was our mother, back home in her birthplace, here to comfort us.
It’s ten minutes into the first period now but I have yet to tell the Marylanders what I tell everyone who comes here and walks around their first few days looking stunned and in a bit of a daze. “It’s what happens when you enter the quiet zone where the only racket waking you in the morning is birds who have the gall to begin their songs and calls as early as 3:15 am, not garbage trucks or partyers home from the club.
Often, unwitting Canadian travellers “stop” in Val Marie and the Park. They assume, erroneously, that this is simply a sleep station en route to bigger, more impressive hot spots. But then, after a deep sleep and sudden shift in pace and mood, they regret they didn’t plan for an extra day or two. Removed from the imposed pace of the city, where we are forced to adapt to rush-hour traffic, timed stop lights, bus and subway schedules, this place changes you in a nuanced but substantial internal rhythmic way, the way it changed me. Saved me, I’d even say.
But am I going to attempt to convince them what
I have learned? That the bird calling and the sun setting are far more sustaining benedictions than any bequeathment of power, property or prestige? That success, as measured by mere mortals, doesn’t motivate me anymore? That I’ve lost my edge? I know, as a writer, I’m required to write every day. Which means, to edit, to revise, to find le mot juste. I tell myself this constantly - Hey, this shit doesn’t get written by itself. So, daily, I put in a good few hours tweaking and cutting bits, and I end up sneaking back in. But, then, I hear a rumble of thunder, or a meadowlark, or the winnowing of the snipe’s feathers, and I am up and out of here. Hey, you’re supposed to be writing a book, an inner judge hollers, get back in here. I am drawn to the book of dirt.
“So you stayed?” The Maryland couple ask me, returning to the story. Yes, three years later, after selling the family home where I lived with my dad after my mom died, I phoned the Convent Inn and asked - begged, really - if I could come write. You see, on that first trip, I spied a young girl in the chapel-turned-quiet room sitting at a desk beside the old confessional. (Perfect, for a writer trying to Keep It Real). I asked the owner about her, and she said: “Oh, she’s our writer in residence.” Then she sealed my fate with: “Call us when you’re ready.”
Three years later, I was ready. I lived in the Convent for three months. I was smitten by the silence and the sensation that someone was looking over my shoulder as I wrote, egging me on, in the same way Mich was blanketed and reassured with a soft pat on her shoulder. Was it my mother? The Mother Superior? A patron saint of writers and patience? An older ancestor of this territory, child to Motherland? I don’t know. But I stayed. The couple smiled, then said: “Welcome home.” “Thanks, I laughed,” running to catch the game. “Let’s hope we can say the same to the Stanley Cup!”
The Oyen & District Leisure Society (ODLS), in partnership with The Big Country Agricultural Society, is excited to welcome Alberta Superstar Drew Gregory to perform LIVE in concert for our “Fall ‘Pickle’ Ball” fundraising event, happening Saturday, October 19th, 2024, at the Crossroads Centre in Oyen, Alberta.
Last fall, the ODLS was resurrected, and we hosted our first fundraiser, “Dancing with the Stars,” which resulted in great success in achieving our future goals. As a non-profit organization, our mission is to help create more leisure activities for the community and surrounding areas to enjoy. Our first project of focus is the reconstruction of the town’s unusable outdoor tennis courts into new Tennis/Pickleball courts. As you may have heard, pickleball is the fastest-growing sport in Canada, and it is a great activity for people of all ages to enjoy. With help from our local town staff, government grants, and years of hardworking individuals fundraising toward this goal, we hope to see the demolition of the old courts begin in 2025 and the construction of the new court shortly thereafter.
Drew Gregory is our entertainer for the evening, not just because he’s a locally sourced superstar talent but also because he’s a true inspiration. Hailing from rural Alberta, he’s not just an award-winning country music sensation but also a farmer. In 2023, he was again named Horizon Male Artist of the Year by Country Music Alberta. Over his burgeoning career, he’s shared the stage with stars such as Miranda Lambert, Kip Moore, and Old Dominion. Get ready to dance the night away with a high-energy show from a small-town farm kid who’s more at home on stage than anywhere else!
The evening will kick off with doors opening at 5pm. Get ready for a night of fun and excitement with games to play, prizes to be won, and plenty of dance floor to enjoy. There will be a concession booth and bar areas where customers can purchase food or liquor throughout the night. Our VIP Ticket holders
will enjoy a delicious Steak Supper, to be served from 5pm-7pm by The New Brigden Community Association. The entertainment will begin at 7pm, welcoming local talents, Jerilyn Norris & Jessica Bailey as opening acts. Our headliner, Drew Gregory, will take the stage at 8pm, with an electrifying performance of his hit tracks, paired with covers of everyone’s favourite country and rock hits of the past. Come and be a part of this fun-filled fundraising event, and celebrate your bountiful harvest with this amazing talent!
BY BRUCE PENTON
Professional golfers don’t like to use the word ‘choke’, but how else to explain what Rory McIlroy did to hand the 2024 U.S.Open championship to Bryson DeChambeau?
BY BRUCE PENTON Sports Columnist
Putting superbly all day and not only overcoming a three-stroke deficit but building a twostroke lead with five holes to go at Pinehurst No. 2 in North Carolina, McIlroy missed a putt of two feet, 11 inches on No. 16 and another shorty, three feet, nine inches, on 18, to open the door for DeChambeau’s victory. It was the second U.S.Open title for DeChambeau, who plays on the LIV tour. He needed a spectacular shot of his own on 18 to win the tournament and he didn’t miss, manoeuvring a 55-yard bunker shot to within three feet and sinking the putt to earn a onestroke victory.
McIlroy has done this type of thing before. In 2011, while he was just a pup of 21, McIlroy seemingly had the Masters title in his grasp. He started the final round with a four-stroke lead and, incredibly, finished 10 strokes behind. His downfall was on the back nine, where he triple-bogeyed No. 10, bogied 11 and doubled-bogied 12 en route to an 80..
Now that he’s 35, the ghosts of Choke City are evidently still in his head. He’s gone 10 years without winning a major and it’s not an overstatement to say he was the dominant player of his era. Winning zero majors over a 40-tournament span is hard to believe, especially when the likes of Brian Harman, Wyndham Clark, Gary Woodland, Patrick Reed, Danny Willet, Zach Johnson, Shane Lowry, Jimmy Walker and Jason Dufner — journeyman players mostly — all won a major during McIlroy’s dry period.
McIlroy isn’t the first professional golfer to mess up when the pressure rose. The most famous choke job was that of Jean van de Velde of France, a virtual no-name who somehow stood on the 18th tee of the final round of the Open Championship in 1999 at Carnoustie with a three-shot lead and proceeded to make
a triple-bogey seven to fall into a three-way playoff, which was won by Scotland’s Paul Lawrie. Hall of Famer Sam Snead had a glorious career, but never won a U.S. Open. In 1937, he led the Open with one hole to go, but carded a triple-bogey on the last hole to lose. Doug Sanders at the 1970 Open Championship, Scott Hoch at the 1989 Masters and Bernhard Langer at the 1991 Ryder Cup all embarrassingly missed short, vital putts.
It’s hard to know whether McIlroy will ever be able to shed the scar tissue that has built up between his ears, and whether he’ll ever be able to sink a relatively easy putt to win a major. But it seems the more he misses those significant putts, the less chance there is for him to generate the mental toughness needed to finally succeed.
• Super 70s Sports: “In 1971, Juan Marichal tossed his 50th career shutout. Fifty years later, scientists are baffled when they discover that if you throw even one complete game your entire arm will blow up.”
• RJ Currie of sportsdeke.com: “In early November, 1963, Ronald Howes marketed the first Easy-Bake Oven — three years before the start of the Maple Leafs last Stanley Cup-winning season. Since then both have run on the same principle: just replace one dim bulb with another hoping the final product won’t be half-baked.”
• Toronto Globe and Mail columnist Cathal Kelly, on hockey: “Other sports claim to be vicious. Hockey was the only one in which participants routinely lost half their teeth.”
• Headline in the New York Post: “Tall order: 7-foot9 Florida recruit is about to make college basketball history. Oliver Rioux makes Zach Edey look like Muggsy Bogues.”
• Canadian parody website The Beaverton: “The Chicago Blackhawks set an NHL record in 1968 when their entire roster looked like dads who expected their daughters to be home by 9 pm and you didn’t want to find out what was gonna happen at 9:02.”
• Janice Hough of leftcoastsportsbabe.com: “And if anyone who even casually followed the NHL and the Stanley Cup playoffs says they expected (a Game 7) after the Florida Panthers went up 3-0 on the Edmonton Oilers…. well, drug test them or give them a lie detector test.”
• Bob Molinaro of pilotonline.com (Hampton, Va.): “Next week marks the 40th anniversary of the NBA draft, in which the Rockets selected Hakeem Olajuwon No. 1, the Portland Trail Blazers took Sam Bowie second and the Bulls reluctantly chose Michael Jordan third.”
• RJ Currie of sportsdeke.com, giving the No. 1 reason why more than 50 teams competed in England’s 12-hour, overnight lawn tractor race: “The mow, the merrier.”
• Another one from Currie: “American Andy Roddick went into the tennis Hall of Fame despite being a winner in only one major event. Two, if you include marriage to SI cover girl Brooklyn Decker.”
Care to comment? Email brucepenton2003@yahoo.ca
Over the last two months, a love affair developed between hockey fans coast to coast and the Edmonton Oilers.
Whether right in the mix down at Rogers Place, out on the road in another country, watching the atmo sphere at the Mosh Pit from afar, or downtown after a big win, every single moment was a gleaming show case of what makes this fanbase so special and what sets this city apart from the rest of the league. This run truly was something special, and on Mon day night in Florida, it came to an end.
The crowd in Florida was very good, and the Pan thers came out, which gave them a lot to cheer about.
We saw a Panthers team that was moving quick er and hitting harder than they have at any point this series. They recognized the moment, and the crowd really fueled them.
LOOK! Some nice farmer did all the meal prep for these antelope so they could enjoy a leisurely lunch.
The Oilers couldn’t get a sniff in the final 90 seconds, a comment on both their stars being absolutely gassed and Paul Maurice’s smothering coaching style working to perfection and the rats poured onto the ice. A remarkable run. An improbable, damn near impossible comeback on the biggest stage, and it ends in
We waited nearly two decades for a run like this, and it ends with heartbreak that we haven’t felt in 18
Much like 2006, we as a fanbase will look back on
The emergence of Phillip Broberg. Games 6 and 7 against the Canucks. The Nuge game in Dallas. Winning the Western Conference at home. Three straight
But for now? Nothing but pain for a fan base that
BY LEE SWITZER
Seeding operations have pretty much been completed. Spraying crop and hoppers continues. A few ditches are being cut as haying will soon begin. Rain continues to make the countryside lovely and green.
Congratulations to Steven and Luan Woods on the birth of their daughter, Lily. Lily arrived on June 10. A little sister for big brother Kayson.
Heather Norris was away attending her grandson, Derrick Pedersen’s, Grade 12 graduation in Tahoe, California on June 14. His mother, Marie, and sister’s Sydnee and MacKenzie, also attended. Everyone watched Derrick in a hockey tournament in Las Vegas.
The hall has been a beehive of activity for the past three weeks leading to the Sibbald Quilt Show held on June 22 and 23. The hall was transformed with over 200 amazing quilted projects. Quilts were everywhere! The stage was transformed into a quaint old fashioned bedroom. Quilts filled all areas, even the ladies washroom held these works of art. I have never been to a quilt show before. It is like being at an art gallery with amazing vibrant colourful works, muted natural tones, whimsical pieces, all stitched with love from the heart. Some quilts were divided by seasons; such as Christmas and fall work. Its is really hard to describe
“I always try to have a vacation.“
Sophia Loren
Quilts filled all areas, even the ladies washroom held these works of art.
the works that the Sibbald Quilting Club have created. Over 200 people attended this event from all over Alberta and Saskatchewan. Thank you for travelling and taking in this show.
The people’s choice awards for their favourite quilt went to: first place Deb Mundt, a second place tie was awarded to Ruth Munroe and Kim Smith, Margaret Shipley received third place in voting. Over 18 bucket draws were donated and presented, as well as, three wonderful door prizes. The compliments and praise given to the Quilting Club and their dedicated work was simply outstanding. Some ladies who had attended shows in huge venues in the United States said the attention to detail at this show outshone what they had seen before! Lots of hard work, but what a wonderful showcase of the creative souls that reside in Sibbald and nearby communities.
This will be my final column for 2024. Wanda Molzan will take over in July for the rest of the year. Happy Canada Day everyone and have a safe wonderful summer! Take care.
BY DIANNE SPATH
Hello Everyone. It’s hard to believe June has gone so fast, and we haven’t even had a hot summer yet, but July is here, so the weather may be unpredictable.
was supposed to be coffee time in the courtyard, but the weather did not cooperate, so we had coffee and visited indoors.
Wednesday morning started with exercises and crosswords. Wednesday afternoon was shuffleboard games. Wednesday afternoon, a resident joined the biking program, which is called Orion Tandem Cycling Therapy, and Alberta Health Services Recreation Therapy Staff implements it. This is such a wonderful program, and the residents love it.
June 26 was Beauticians Day, so I hope all the hairdressers had a wonderful day.
Monday started with exercises. Then, I did a “oneon-one” activity with a resident, and the resident decided we should bake some cookies. One-on-one activities are when the Activity Coordinator takes the time to spend with the residents and do a specific activity of their choice. Monday afternoon, there was card bingo.
Tuesday morning was our regular bus run downtown, followed by cards. Tuesday afternoon
Thursday morning was Horseshoe games in the courtyard, which was a lot of fun, as many of us haven’t played them in a while. Friday started out with exercises followed by Horse races.
On Friday afternoon there was bingo and in the evening music by the Jorgenson’s.
Happy Birthday to Dianne Spath on June 24 and Happy Birthday to Wanda Sweet on June 25. Hope everyone enjoyed their Canada Day long Weekend. Have a great week everyone.
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