While Santa was busy with other engagements, Mrs. Claus paid a visit to the NorthWest Regional Library in Swan River on Saturday (Dec. 9). Along with refreshments, visitors could get their photo taken with the Mrs., participate in a colouring contest, write their letters to Santa and sing some carols.

The Dauphin Kings are showing signs of coming out of their slump, but they are not getting the results.

The Kings lost two of three games, last week, including a pair of home ice losses to the division-leading Virden Oil Capitals.

Virden scored a 2-1 win, Dec. 5, and a 4-3 triumph, Sunday.

In between was a 4-1 Kings victory over the Winnipeg Blues, Saturday.

In their last 11 games, Dauphin has a 3-7-1-0 record and have scored just 24 times in that span, while allowing 32 goals against.

With a 16-9-1-0 overall record, the Kings now sit in third place, one point behind the OCN Blizzard and they now trail Virden by nine points. Dauphin has two games in hand on both teams.

Kings head coach and general manager Doug Hedley, who is serving a 10-game suspension for a gross misconduct assessed in a 5-1 loss to Steinbach, Nov. 24, said the Kings have gone through a stretch where the work ethic wasn’t good.

“And prior to that, we were winning games, but finding ways to win. We got away from our what our strengths were and doing little things well. It finally caught up to us in certain games where we lost one-goal games,” he said. “We got away from being patient. We got away from playing on the right side of pucks and managing pucks. Basically, right now, we’re finding ways to give games away instead of finding ways to win.”

Sunday was an example of that.

After Virden built a 3-0 first-period lead, the Kings slowly chipped away and tied it in the second.

But the Oil Capitals took advantage of some sloppy play on the first shift of the third period and scored what proved to be the winning goal.

“It starts from goaltending out. You have to have goaltending. You have to have guys buying in and getting into shooting lanes and making smart plays and reading off teammates,” Hedley said. “The last two weeks there’s been some individual play rather than team play. We’ve just got to figure it out and get better.”

Among the positives the team can take from Sunday’s loss is the comeback from that early 3-0 deficit.

“There’s a lot of little things we can get better at. We know we’ve got a good hockey club. It’s just a matter of staying on course and thinking about the process it’s going to take,” Hedley said. “The league is getting better and we’ve got to get better.”

The Kings have relied on balanced scoring all season, with Jordan Bax, Logan Walker and Blake Boudreau leading the way.

But they got offensive contributions from Gavin Nemis and Madden Murray on Sunday, and Rylan Gibbs and Alex Senf on Saturday.

“We knew coming in that the back end was going to run (things) and help us win games. But right now we’re at a point where the forwards have to start contributing regularly,” Hedley said. “We have done a lot of experimenting, moving guys in and out and different line combinations. And the last few games, we’ve been creating opportunities. For a while there we weren’t.”

The great start the Kings had at the beginning of the season, Hedley said, allows the team to go through some adversity.

“But we’ve got to find our way here, soon,” he added.

The Kings have two games left before the Christmas break.

They are in Selkirk, Friday, before visiting the Flyers in Winkler on Sunday.

Both games will be tough.

“Selkirk is playing really well. They’re beating some good teams lately. And they always play us tough at home,” Hedley said. “We’ve got to get hungry on the road. It’s the Christmas break, guys have other things on their mind. But at the same time, it sure would be a good way to finish with two road wins.”

Don Tarrant of Reit-Syd Equipment draws the $100,000 winner of the Dauphin Kings annual tractor lotto, Sunday.

Normand Gagner of Winnipeg was this year’s grand prize winner, while Chastity Ek won $10,000 and Tim Lendvoy and Alice Prestayko each won $5,000.

Bob Mazer and Kevin Boyachuk each took home $2,500 and winning $1,000 each were Derek Yanke, Paul Pachkowski, Doug Westhouse, Stephen Durston, Debby Gusnoski, David Fulham, Mark Dewar, Libby Moroz, Bob Mazer and Nick Chudobiak.

Roger Lungal, Paul Van Dekerckhove and Phil Fafard each won a lawn tractor, while Lee Stirling of Grandview won the 50/50 prize of $30,940.

Dauphin city councillors are back from the fall Association of Manitoba Municipalities convention in Brandon and, as always, the event was well worth the hotel bill, mayor David Bosiak said.

In particular, the Cities Caucus meeting gave Bosiak some perspective on how stable things are in Dauphin compared to some municipalities, which are struggling to fund proper infrastructure and services resulting from rapid growth and skyrocketing costs.

As an example, Bosiak pointed to Winkler, where a new sewage treatment facility is critical and comes with a price tag of $51 million. Or Steinbach, he said, where a new community centre and arena is being developed at a cost exceeding $71 million.

“That’s 10 times what we paid for our rec complex,” he said. “If we had to replace Credit Union Place, are you kidding me? We’d never be able to do it.”

The lesson is that Dauphin’s problems and concerns are all relative and the community can handle them.

“I have to give past councils and administration credit for building up our reserves so that now we are debenturing two big projects - the sewage lagoon and the South Main drainage, but we have an ability to do so because we have no debt and we have reserves,” Bosiak said. “We can talk about comparatives all over the place, but we’re in relatively decent shape.”

The convention also provided an opportunity for councillors to meet with officials from the provincial level and have a productive meeting RCMP D Division commanders.

“They indicated to us that we are one of the only municipalities that talked to them that didn’t complain to them about needing more police,” Bosiak said. “We’d love to have some more, like a full compliment, but we understand, as a community, that the challenges we face aren’t going to be solved just by policing. The RCMP said what we’re doing in the community has been very positive and they’re glad to be working with us. And glad that we indicated that we’d love them to be a full compliment, but we didn’t point our finger at them and blame them for it.”

That meeting meshed well with a meeting involving deputy minister from Manitoba Housing, Mental Health and Addictions about an internally-driven Manitoba Housing project under way in Dauphin, which is looking at provided a higher level of tiered support services for those needing them, at Parkview Lodge.

“That was a positive meeting,” Bosiak said. “We’re very hopeful that there’ll be some support from the Province for the proposal that’s been presented to Manitoba Housing.”

A meeting was also held with Sport, Culture and Heritage minister Glen Simard about potential provincial support for next year’s Manitoba Summer Games.

When taken as whole, Bosiak said the convention was a worthwhile endeavour.

“We had very positive meetings with all of the ministers and offices that we were engaged with, had good conversations with other communities and basically, in a very subtle way, compared ourselves to everyone else,” he said. “And you know, putting it all on the table, the strength of our council, the capacity of our administration, the fact that our taxes are reasonable . . . generally speaking, really we’re in pretty good shape.”

In an effort to not get caught without an umbrella, the City of Dauphin is approaching the Public Utilities Board about a possible increase in its water and sewer rates.

Mayor David Bosiak said the city has been receiving hints from provincial agencies such as the Manitoba Water Services Board.

“And there was a presentation at the last AMM convention again saying don’t get behind. If you ever get behind, you’ll never catch up in the sense that if your rates don’t match your operational costs and provide some funding for the future, just to make sure that your reserve has funds so that when you have to fix pipes or anything else, you have the ability to do so,” Bosiak said.

The City, Bosiak added, has been reluctant to ask for an increase because it is still experiencing a 30 per cent loss of treated water somewhere within its system.

“Because they’ll likely say ‘well you have a 30 per cent water loss still in your system. Fix that, or address that and then we’ll talk about potential rate increase’,” he said.

While the City does not have the problem of some southern municipalities, which are experiencing explosive growth, its issues stem from aging infrastructure.

“We’ve been working to reduce the amount of water loss in the system. Now as you can imagine, half the town has got nearly 100-year-old pipes,” Bosiak said, adding while the underground system is aging the rest of the water distribution organization is extremely efficient. “The guys at the water treatment plant, they do it very well and it’s modern, but our problem is our distribution system.”

It is kind of a Catch 22 situation, Bosiak said, as senior administration is promoting the need to spend money to improve the system, but the costs of doing so are exceeding the City’s ability to pay for the improvements.

“All that income and expense has to be in the water utility side, not on the general revenue side,” Bosiak said, adding he appreciates the efforts of senior administration in providing a heads up for council. “So these are just sort of warning shots, saying it takes time to have a rate increase approved. There’s usually conditions applied to it and then those funds need to match your operations. So all we’re doing is being prepared.”

In its application, the City is seeking an 11.7 per cent increase in 2024, 4.2 per cent in 2025 and 2.3 per cent in 2026.

Also waiting in the wings is the long-awaited expansion of the City’s lagoon system, the cost of which is expected to increase significantly from its original $10 million to $12 million as a result of inflationary pressures.

“So again we will be debenturing to pay for that, but we also have to have enough revenue in our water utility reserve to make sure that other stuff doesn’t kick us in the teeth,” Bosiak said, adding in conversations with other municipalities he is hearing some are struggling to make ends meet.

“What we’re trying to do is to be in front of it. Our rates are generally middle of the pack or maybe to the lower end in terms of municipalities of our size and other jurisdictions. So we believe this is sort of a somewhat modest increase.”

Russell’s “Take a Year Off’ lottery committee drew its winning tickets recently and a local woman won the top prize of $1,000 a week for a year.

The grand prize of $52,000 went to Cathy Yellowaga with Jennifer Zimmer of Russell winning $27,720 on the 50/50 draw.

Check out the other winners in this issue.

With the Christmas season vastly approaching, now is a good time to think of those who may not have someone to spend the holidays with. The Pas Community Renewal Corporation’s (TPCRC) Be a Santa to a Senior Program is now collecting donations for the program.
“Be a Santa to a Senior is a program that works with community partners to provide a holiday gift to Seniors in our community who are isolated, often homebound, and possibly alone during the holiday season,” said TPCRC Community Engagement Coordinator Holly LaJambe. “Our hope is to let them know someone is thinking of them and cares.
“This program has been a holiday tradition for TPCRC since 2016, so this is our eighth year hosting it, and we look forward to it each and every year.”

Christmas parties and outings will be happening over the next few weekends and Operation Red Nose is ready to go make sure people get home safe and sound, after enjoying a night out. Operation Red Nose is run by a group of volunteer drivers and the proceeds go towards a local organization, so it’s a local service, provided by local people and gives back to the community
“Operation Red Nose is a community fundraising program that has a goal of making sure everyone arrives home safely during the holiday season,” said Jen Mathews. “This year Operation Red Nose The Pas started on November 24, and it will be in operation on December 8, 9, 15, 16, 30, and 31. The phone number to call is 204-623-3003, and everyone who uses Operation Red Nose, can enter to win two tickets from Calm Air.”

The Pas Culture Days is nationally acknowledged once again for their efforts and has been ranked seventh in the Top Participating Communities in Canada for 2023, in the Towns and Rural Areas category. This year’s The Pas Culture Days saw a boost in participation, with new events that many enjoyed and appreciated.
“The feedback this year was overwhelmingly positive and the event turnout was significantly increased,” said The Pas Culture Days Organizer Gabrielle Swan. “I heard a lot of people buzzing with excitement after the opening night event with Young Voices of The North Podcast; people were blown away by how much young local talent we have in The Pas.”

The 16 Days of Activism against Gender-Based Violence (GBV) is a call to action to raise awareness and is also an international movement to call for an end to violence against women, girls and 2SLGBTQIA+ individuals. The Pas Family Resource Centre (TPFRC) has been taking part in the 16 Days of Activism and engaging with other community partners as well about the issues on hand.
“The 16 Days of Activism is an annual international campaign to eliminate violence against women,” said TPFRC Executive Director Renee Kastrukoff. “The campaign started on November 25, 2023, which is the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women and concludes on December 10, 2023, which is Human Rights Day. The campaign started in 1991, to speak up and call out GBV and to request commitment to end violence against women, girls and individuals who are 2SLGBTQQIA+.