Ecole Macneill principal Monique Lefebvre welcomes students back to the first day of school, last Wednesday.

There was an air of excitement among students, staff and parents at the French immersion school in Dauphin, to be returning to a “normal” school environment, free from many of the public health restrictions which guided education over the last two years.

There will be 193 instructional days in the MVSD 2022-23 school year.

Carissa Caruk-Ganczar’s work at The Hub in Dauphin is not going unnoticed.

The program manager and leadership coach at the local entrepreneurship centre and coworking space has been nominated for a prestigious Award of Distinction from the Economic Developers Association of Manitoba (EDAM).

“It’s exciting and a great honour in terms to be recognized. We do so much of this work in our field that isn’t done for public recognition, or even being able to talk about, because so much of the work that happens in all the economic development fields is behind the scenes working with private pieces,” Caruk-Ganczar said.

“So to be recognized by peers who we’ve worked with a long time across the industry is quite an honour honestly. Just to be able to know that they see those things and they see the work that is done and the approaches that we take, to the industry and also to work with any of our partners across the province, as well.

“It’s a humbling piece to have the light shone on you, but it’s definitely the work of a team, that’s for sure.”

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

Set to embark on a school year that will more closely resemble a prepandemic environment, there is no shortage of excitement among the educators at Mountain View School Division (MVSD).

“It’s such an air of positivity that’s out there amongst staff and amongst administrators,” MVSD superintendent, CEO Stephen Jaddock said. “I just met with our admin council group yesterday . . . we had lots of optimism surrounding the type of startup that we’ve got going this year.”

Students return to MVSD classrooms tomorrow (Sept. 7) and Jaddock said everything is in place to ensure a smooth start to the school year.

“We’re at more relaxed COVID-19 protocols. So we’re not under a mask mandate nor are we under any sort of distancing requirements,” Jaddock said. “So we’re hoping that it’s probably one of the most normal startups we’ve had in the last number of years.” Jaddock added their will be some health measures left in place such as opportunities for frequent hand washing, hand sanitizer placed strategically throughout schools and frequent cleaning of high touch surfaces.

As well, school staff will work closely with parents to ensure children who are displaying symptoms stay home. “The kind of things that we’ve had in place through the pandemic, some of those will not be disappearing,” Jaddock said. “And I think that extra vigilance on making sure that everyone was healthy at school had an effect on the overall numbers of colds and flus that we had. We saw a reduction in that.” Jaddock added the early part of the year will be used to evaluate where there might be a need for MVSD to invest some extra money received from the province to support needs surrounding post-pandemic academic needs. The division received a share of $11 million allocated by the province at the end of the last school year, as well as a yet-to-be-determined share of an additional $6.5 million announced last week.

“We’ve got some ideas as to how we might spend that and we shared that with our board of trustees. We’re just now waiting to see what happens when startup actually is occurring in all of our schools,” Jaddock said. The second allotment, Jaddock added, is more focused on students who left the public school system during the pandemic and are now returning and the need for additional staffing which might be required. Weight was also given to the social economic status of families based on Statistics Canada data. “What they were recognizing there is those families that had lower SES, had more struggles even when we were in the remote learning phase,” Jaddock said. “Maybe some of them didn’t even have the luxury of having a computer, or if they had a computer, they didn’t have internet access. I think this was more of an attempt to bring equity to the allotment that was going out to school divisions.”

A third factor in determining the allotment is considering children in care.

“Again recognizing that those children were more challenged to accomplish the learning goals that they’d want to accomplish in the last two-and-a-half-years,” Jaddock said. “Part of this, too, is to look at student well-being and mental health. It’s not a huge amount of money.

“I guess what we’d really like to do is just look at where we’ve got some hot spots and where we’ve got some additional challenges that we would like to address through that additional funding.”

Canada’s National Ukrainian Festival hosted a fund-raising barbecue outside its office on Third Avenue Northeast, Wednesday, to mark Ukraine’s Independence Day.

Proceeds from the event were earmarked for next year’s festival after $2 from every order was donated to UHelpUkraine, a Canadian organization supporting the Ukrainian Ministry of Defence. 

The list of local candidates in the upcoming Manitoba municipal elections is growing.

In the city of Dauphin there is still just two contestants in the mayoralty race - David Bosiak and Kerri Riehl.

While several packages have been picked up and remain outstanding, those registered for the councillor vote include Jason Alf, Randy Daley, Ted Rea, Joe Houston, Michael Winter, Bev Sarkonak, Sharon Riehl and Carter Taylor-Luke.

In the Rural Municipality of Dauphin, Ernie Sirski and Tom Gibbs have registered in the race for reeve, while council papers have been filed by Jack Bremner, Ken Shewchuk, Midge Sametz, Ken Plustwa and Ron Ryz.

The race for school board trustees has yet to register a candidate although Senior Election Official Kirk Dawson says several packages have been picked up by potential candidates.

Jim Perchaluk of the Parkland Ukrainian Family Fund accepts a cheque for $1,203 from general manager Wade Thiele, while, from left, Dean Cooley, family fund committee members Don Tarrant and Larry Hrytsay, and the dealership’s Business Development manager Alyson Sametz and Marketing co-ordinator Taylor Cooley join them for the presentation.

The funds were raised at the Dauphin Ford Anniversary Barbecue held in June.

Dauphin put on its best face last Thursday as judges from Communities in Bloom (CiB) toured the city evaluating beautification efforts and a variety of other criteria such as environmental action, heritage conservation, tree management, landscape and plant and floral displays.

I just want to say your town looks fabulous you’re doing a really great job. Kudos to you, you’re well on your way to making this sparkle,” said Susan Ellis, national chairperson of the CiB board of directors who was judging the community along with Alex Pearl from Centerville, Ohio.

Dauphin is competing internationally this year against Ingria, Italy; Velika Polana, Slovenia; Glaslough Tidy Towns, Ireland; Lewisburg, West Virginia; and Sussex, New Brunswick.

“In order to be here in this competition you have to have been invited and there are only five other communities in the world in the international smallest category,” Ellis said.

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

Ashcroft Vision Care is partnering with the province to provide advanced eye care options for Parkland residents that does not involve travel to Brandon or Winnipeg.

Health Minister Audrey Gordon was in Dauphin last week to announce a retinal specialist pilot program, which will see retinal specialists from Winnipeg travel to Dauphin once a month to deliver services normally not available in the community.

“Manitobans living in the Parkland region currently have to travel all the way to Winnipeg to access a retinal specialist and this can create an unnecessary financial burden, as well as additional stress for patients and their families,” Gordon said. “To have a specialist provide services right here at Ashcroft Vision Care will help reduce out-of-pocket expenses for these patients and families, strengthen health care in the region and ensure the same level of care closer to home.”

Retinal specialists diagnose retinal diseases and treat a wide variety of eye conditions including age-related macular degeneration, hereditary diseases of the eye, diabetic retinopathy, retinal detachment and cancers of the eye. They also treat patients who have experienced severe eye trauma.

According to Dr. Kara Vanderheyden of Ashcroft Vision Services, intravitreal anti-vegf injections are imperative to prevent permanent vision loss, as well as blindness in individuals who develop certain eye diseases such as wet macular degeneration, retinal venous occlusions and proliferative diabetic retinopathy, and can only be performed by retinal ophthalmologists.

Beginning this fall, the program will service 60 to 80 patients each month, which Vanderheyden said will make a real difference in the lives of area residents displaying “increased concern and anxiety” around the need to travel to Winnipeg for treatment. “I’d say there’s around 200 patients from this area that are traveling and there’s new ones all the time.” she said.

“At this point, I am unsure of whether or not we will be over capacity to not accommodate all the patients from this area. Not all patients have to have injections every month, so we should be able to accommodate most patients in this area from having to go to Winnipeg. That is the goal of this project.”

The Manitoba government will cover travel expenses for the specialists and supply costs to support the project. Ashcroft Vision Care will provide space for the retinal specialist to perform procedures in one of their clinic rooms.

“It was becoming very evident, particularly over the past two years, the financial and physical burden patients were experiencing having to travel to Winnipeg as much as once a month,” Vanderheyden said. “Doctors (Randy) Ashcroft, (Jeremy) Mills and myself are more than pleased to provide our clinic for this pilot project and facilitate in bringing this important service closer to home for many Manitobans.”

This pilot project is in alignment with Manitoba’s Clinical and Preventive Services Plan’s goal to provide care closer to home, Gordon said, adding the initiative is expected to run over the next year to evaluate its effectiveness and impact on patient care.

“We’re saying this is a pilot and the pilot will initially benefit a certain number of individuals, so that we can test demand and look at how often we need to bring those specialists in,” Gordon said. “So in the pilot it may be one day, but once the program is fully up and running it may be more.”

The province has opened a second intake of the Municipal Service Delivery Improvement Program and the city of Dauphin is ready to take part.

The program, which provides funding for municipalities and planning districts to find ways to improve services and find efficiencies was piloted last year, however, the timing was not right for the Dauphin to take part, city manager Sharla Griffiths said.

At the time of the program launch the city had some key positions open and some personnel who had only been on the job a short time.

“I think this is a far better time for us to take a look at this program. With staff members being present in senior management and throughout our organization, as well as coming out of the pandemic, our operations are a lot more representative of normal operations right now,” Griffiths said. “Last time this came around we had holes or very new staff, in terms of public works. (Director of Public Works and Operations) Mike VanAlstyne was very new. He was only with us for three months at the time and we thought it would be quite unfair to take a big review of that department when he hadn’t even had a chance to really get to know the department.”

By participating in the program municipalities and planning districts can apply for provincial funding to conduct service delivery reviews to identify opportunities for savings.

Delivery programs in the areas of transportation, protection, water and sewer, recreation and culture, waste management, planning and general government administration and other core services can be reviewed.

“Senior management is looking at the options and we’ll be talking about it with council at a planning and priorities committee meeting,” Griffiths said. “It’s a program that the province is funding and a consultant will be hired and paired with us who will look at the processes and the financial structure of different departments, or whatever department we asked them to look at, and we’ll review it for efficiencies and see if there’s a better or easier or more efficient ways we can do things.”

Potential savings from these initiatives will stay with the municipality and can be reallocated to other priorities in the community.

“We’re looking at something that it will be worthwhile, maybe a bigger budget line item, but we’re not sure exactly which one yet,” Griffiths said, adding she feels the City is already very efficient in its operations. “There’s always room for improvement and it’s great to have another set of eyes looking at things, to see if we can do something differently.”

In March 2021, the Manitoba government committed up to $5 million over four years to support the program.

Last year, the first intake resulted in 11 successful projects receiving more than $1.1 million.

The deadline to apply for the second intake is Sept. 5.

The Parkland Ukrainian Family Fund held a special get together, July 19, with its many volunteers and sponsored families to celebrate the success of the endeavour and express its appreciation for all of the efforts that were made to ensure that success.

The barbecue, held at Selo Ukraina that evening, honoured the many committee members, drivers, hosts and others who gave generously to ease the families’ transition into the community.

In a recap of the project Ukrainian Folk Arts Centre and Museum president Jim Perchaluk said the initiative raised more than $200,000 in cash along with immeasurable donations of materials and in-kind support, adding 100 per cent of donations were used to support the families which arrived in Dauphin from Ukraine.