The Major Pratt School graduation class of 2022

Activities in the area included pancake breakfasts in Minitonas and Benito, baseball and slo-pitch, live music, a car show, a picnic-in-the-park at Swan River Legion Park, fireworks and plenty more fun for all.

The Swan Valley celebrated Canada Day on Friday (July 1), marking Canada`s 155th anniversary of Confederation.

Tyler Carefoot will return behind the bench of the Manitoba U18 AAA Hockey League’s Parkland Rangers next season.

Carefoot guided the Rangers to an 18-17-2-3 record, good for fifth place in the league last season. The Rangers advanced to the semifinals after winning their first playoff series since the 2005-06 season.

Carefoot met with the team’s board of directors at the end of the season and during the discussion he expressed his feeling that he owed it to the program to continue coaching.

Having coached several Rangers players in minor hockey, Carefoot felt he had some unfinished business with them.

“I want to help them continue to develop. I’m excited for next season and beyond,” he said.

Get the full story in this week's Dauphin Herald!

Cole DeLaMare won four awards at the Dauphin Clippers hockey team’s awards banquet, June 27.

DeLaMare took home the Top Scorer Award, Top Defenceman Award and the Playoff MVP and MVP awards.

Other awards winners included Jake Kuzmiak as Most Improved Player, Landon Brown for the Player’s Choice, Oliver Dandeneau for the Top Defensive Player, William Miner for the Clipper Commitment Award, Bradyn Paskaruk, who won the Coach’s Choice Award, Liam Chartrand for Rookie of the Year, Austyn Roos as Hardest Working Player, Owen Chubka as Top Goaltender and Logan Chapman for Top Forward.

Thanks to the generosity of local supporters, 42 students were recognized with over 100 scholarships totaling over $90,000 at the DRCSS graduation last week.

Winners included Katherine Kowalchuk, she took home the Dauphin Herald's Scholarship!

Check out page seven and eight in this week's Dauphin Herald for all the winners. 

Organizers of the Dauphin Agricultural Society’s (DAS) Fair and Exhibition could not have asked for a better return after a two-year hiatus caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.

DAS president Teren Stykalo said it was a fantastic weekend with a lot of people hitting the fair grounds to check out everything the fair had to offer.

“We just finished up our demo derby. We had a great success with that. The fireworks on Friday night were amazing. The midway has been great to work with. The people walking through there have been unbelievable. The kids zone in Credit Union Place, home living, everything has been littered with people. It’s great to see it back in the community,” he said.

DAS could not be happier with the crowds that attended the three-day event. The midway was packed full of people on Friday with lineups 20 deep or more. Stykalo hopes that bodes well for future fairs.

“We hope that continues in the next fairs. But we can’t thank everybody in the community enough for making this one of the most successful fairs we’ve had yet,” he said. “I talked to the midway owners on Friday night and they said it’s been a long time coming since they’ve seen lines like that at their rides. So everybody involved was pretty happy.”

One tradition that did not take place this year, one that organizers and patrons alike are thankful for, is rain. It seems like it usually rains at least one of the three days of the fair every year, but that wasn’t the case this year, which played a large part of the fair’s success.

“We were joking around the other night and we were saying that no president in history has probably had a three-day non-rain event. So this might go down in history as one of the best ones we’ve had yet. So I couldn’t be happier for it to come in my time as president,” Stykalo said.

Organizers will look at hosting more events at the grandstand in the future.

“Those facilities are amazing. The amount of people that they always draw in is fantastic and we need to try and utilize those. So we’re looking at doing a couple more shows there potentially and bring some different entertainment in, as well to just kind of make it an all-around great weekend once again,” Stykalo said.

The success of the fair’s return would not be possible without the support of the many sponsors and volunteers who stepped up as they always do every year.

“Without those people, we would not be able to have any of this. Once again, thank you to all of our sponsors and all of our volunteers,” he said. “The amount of volunteers that we had come forward has been just unbelievable. We can’t thank them enough. We just hope everybody is able to come back and support us again next year.”

Stykalo also wishes to thank the local media for their coverage and support of this year’s fair.

Planning and executing a world class music festival is a lot like riding a bike - it doesn’t matter if you haven’t done it for awhile, muscle memory kicks in and everything comes flooding back.

At least that is the experience for Dauphin’s Countryfest organizers who brought Canada’s longest running country music festival back to Selo Ukraina after a two-year absence due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

There might have been some rust on day one, festival president Ann Ransom said, but by day two everyone was “back in the groove.”

“Of course, there is always going to be a few things where you think ‘right, I forgot about that’ or ‘how did we do that in the past?’,” Ransom said. “Everybody was pitching in and everybody was helping each other out. We have a really, really, really good team. Everybody rolls up their sleeves and everybody pitches in. When you need somebody you are never on your own. We work really well together, so it has made it a lot easier to shake off the cobwebs and get going again.”

In fact the return of the festival exceeded all expectations, Ransom said, adding she was cautiously optimistic heading into the weekend. Comments organizers received from patrons throughout the weekend were encouraging, Ransom said, adding the smaller crowd this year was a highlight for those attending and is something organizers will put on the table for discussion when it comes to the future of Countryfest.

“Because it was truly a unique experience that we hadn’t had before because we have always had the big, big crowds and that just doesn’t feel the same,” she said. “This a little bit more personable and it really just had a different vibe this year. And we would like to replicate that for future festivals.”

Of course, limiting crowds affects income and it is a fine balancing act to a combination that works, Countryfest general manager Rob Waloschuk added.

“We’ve made adjustments in some things like the entertainment, the production, all of that sort of stuff. We’ve tried to play both sides of it. We’re going to have less income we know that, so how do we how do we make it work on this other side? So we’ve been working hard at trying to do that,” he said.

One of the big changes this year was a return to a three-day festival with Thursday night set aside for an appreciation evening in honour of festival patrons who rolled over their tickets for Countryfest’s two-year hiatus in 2020 and 2021.

“We went back to what we originally started this festival as, a three-day festival. However, we made that Thursday available to everybody who kept their tickets,” Waloschuk said. “So many people came up to us and said ‘we just want to thank you for doing this for us.’ And I said to them that ‘we want to thank you for doing this for us. You saved us’.”

That nod to the past was a big theme of the 2022 festival, Ransom added.

“We had this whole ‘Return to the Hill’, but I think we also had a return to our roots. We have really found a core of people for our festival who will always come out and support us and we just really need to recognize that and thank them for it. Applaud them for helping us out and knowing how important it is to keep this festival going. “Those that really truly believe in the festival have shown up and lots of kudos to them. It has just been fantastic.”

Other changes made for this year around vendors and the use of tokens rather than cash for purchasing food and merchandise have, after some initial pushback, worked as predicted, Waloschuk added. It was always the plan to cut back somewhat on vendors to make things more viable for all vendors, he said.

“This year we knew would be a little slower than normal, so cut a few back and help those vendors that are here actually make more money. And that’s been successful,” he said, adding one vendor, a festival veteran, sold out of her weekend supplies by the end of Friday night, restocked for the weekend the next day and sold out again that night. “So that’s kind of been the story everywhere.”

Ransom added vendors are already signing up to return next year.

“From the festival patrons there has been lots of comments about the variety and the unique items that we have up there. Which is always kind of nice,” she said. “It’s great feedback for us because, of course, we changed something. We went a different way. We are just trying to stay at pace with other festivals and other events in what they are doing. And we are finding it works for us. It is good to see.”

Change is always hard, Ransom said, but the results speak for themselves.

“Obviously, we had to make money this year to keep the festival going. And we didn’t want to do that unsustainably, or by causing hardship for others, so we came up with a system that we thought would be fair and the feedback has been really good,” she said. “The vendors definitely bought into the process and are fully supportive of it. And it is great that they are already interested in next year.”

And that means big things for the community, Waloschuk said, reflecting on all of the development and support Countryfest has provided Dauphin over the last three decades.

“I just want to make sure everybody realizes how hard this organization has worked for this community and how much it means for this community. I think that gets lost sometimes and when it’s been gone for a couple years,” he said, adding the festival did have some difficulty securing volunteers this year. “All the local sponsors have stepped up, and beyond what they would normally do, absolutely stepped up in more ways than just their sponsorship, just to make sure this happens. We can thank them by doing certain things throughout the year and having a reception and stuff here. But I just want to thank them publicly like this.”

That support and confidence adds up to a bright future for Countryfest and the community.

“We are back, baby, and we are excited to be back,” Ransom said, “We are definitely alive and well and healthy and that bodes well for the city of Dauphin.”

Organizers, she said, are ready to go and feel like they have turned the corner.

“We will see some changes. The board of directors will be busy meeting after the festival, once we have all caught up on our sleep, just to debrief and say this worked well, we need to fix this. We are always looking at other festivals to see what they are doing and listening to our patrons. We are constantly trying to be innovative and change things, but also keeping our core values in place,” she said.

“We weathered the storm and we are starting to pick up steam and we are going to be in a good place.”

Many of us take Canada Day for granted and really don’t give it much thought, but for the Patel family, this year’s national day is also the start of a new journey for their family as Canadian citizens. The Patels came to Canada looking for more opportunities and were sponsored by family friend, who was already residing in the community.
“We’re originally from India and we came to Canada in 2017,” said Hemangi Patel. “We’ve been here now for five years and just got our Canadian Citizenship on June 7. Our family came to Canada seeking a life with better opportunities and a brighter future.
“One of our family friends sponsored us to come to Canada. At the time, he lived here in The Pas and recommended the community to us. We stayed with him until we were able to find an apartment and find a job. Over time we fell in love with the people and community, which led us to staying here.”

Local organizers of the proposed Maamawi Park were joined by local dignitaries and supporters for the sod turning ceremony, June 23, at the Brewers diamond where Dauphin’s newest recreation park will be located.

The park, which will include a toboggan run as part of Phase 1, will eventually become an all-season facility that will be free to use for all residents.