If you’re thinking of heading to lake this weekend you might want to wait until Saturday afternoon to leave.
The Roblin District Chamber of Commerce’s Summer Street Fair & Sidewalk Sale is coming up this Saturday, July 23, and is promising to be a fantastic event.

There’s nothing like a really good cup of coffee to start your day off, but a local barista is hoping to offer more that just that. KB Coffee has been hosting pop-ups all over the community and providing specialty coffee as well as creating awareness for Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, Girls and Two-Spirited people (MMIWG2S).
“I’m originally from The Pas and have lived here most of my life,” said Gloria Ballantyne-Packo. “After I went to school, I moved to Calgary, AB, and lived there for awhile. I came back home after everything that happened with my sister, Kendara Ballantyne, to be with my family. I stayed home for a couple of years, before heading back to Calgary.
“When I moved back, I got a job with Monogram Coffee and this is where my love of specialty coffee grew. I trained with some truly talented baristas and a few of them have gone on to win the Canadian Barista Championship. One of the women I worked with was the first female ever to win the championship, and that happened just last year. Some of them have gone on to compete in the World Barista Championship.

With school out for the summer, it can be a challenge to engage kids in any kind of summer learning or reading activity. The Pas Regional Library is putting out some excellent literacy programming for both youth and adults to engage in.
“All of our programs are based on accessibility and opportunity,” said The Pas Regional Library Activities Programmer Rebecca Johnson. “We acknowledge that the families here in the tri-community tend to be bigger in numbers, so we make sure our programs are free. Being in the north, we realize that the cost of things can be so much more expensive and harder to do, so we make it free for everyone to enjoy.”
Once again The Pas Regional Library is hosting another Story Walk in the community and this one has a theme of Indigenous spirit animals and connects participants to nature.
“Our Story Walks consist of taking apart a book and displaying each of the pages either in the windows of the businesses or along the trail, which is what we’ve done for the Story Walk on Rosie Mayne Trail,” said Johnson. “At the beginning of the trail is the first page of the book and as you walk along, there will be other pages, which allows you to read the entire book. This is a program that was made in 2007, and I heard about it last year. We started it then and it’s been going over really well ever since.

By now I’m sure we at the Opasquia Times have thrown some of our readers and people we interview for a real loop. Not since Bill Bannock’s column have we had so much confusion as to who is who in the newsroom. Many of you may have picked up on the difference in last names that appear at the end of the columns; rest assured, we haven’t made another Jennifer up.
There are two Jennifers now at the Opasquia Times. Jenn Cook remains the General Manager and Jennifer Laviolette is the new Editor. We just felt that two Jennifers are better than one.
Jennifer Laviolette will be working as our new editor remotely from her home in Grandview, Manitoba. She also writes for our sister papers, the Swan Valley Star and Times and the Roblin Review. Laviolette has 15 years experience working in the media in both the newspaper and radio industry.

At this year’s Manitoba Community Newspaper Awards (MCNA) a well-known former newspaper owner and columnist was recognized for his 44 years of being in the industry. Co-founder and columnist for the Opasquia Times, Murray Harvey, was nominated and received the MCNA Silver Quill Award for his 25 plus years in the newspaper industry.
“I definitely spent a lot of time working in the newspaper business over the years, but I was just shy of being nominated for the Gold Quill Award for 50 years in the business, so the next option was the Silver Quill Award, recognizing 25 or more years,” said Harvey.
“I started the Opasquia Times with my partner Dennis, back in 1978, which was a result of a series of unrelated events. At the time I was working in a department looked after by the provincial government and when it changed, they decided to close it down. I knew it was time to try my hand at something else, but I didn’t know exactly what I was going to do. I knew I wanted to go into the consulting business, but everyone who was leaving the government at that time had that idea and I figured everyone would starve to death at that point.

The Swan Valley Credit Union (SVCU) capped off last week with their annual Beef on a Bun fundraiser on Friday (July 8). Patrons could choose to drive through, walk up or sit down to enjoy their meal with a record setting 700 meals served - including 168 free meals to Prairie Mountain Health employees as thanks for their efforts toward our community’s health. Proceeds of $7,000 were split evenly between the Swan Valley Health Centre for a CT Scanner and the CMHA Enhanced Community Mobilization Program/Meet off Main.

The Swan River Royals played host to the Baseball Manitoba 15U (Zone 2) Provincial Championship last weekend (July 8-10) with games happening in the Swan River Legion Park. 

Two Dauphin minor baseball teams were competing in Baseball Manitoba Provincial Tournaments this past weekend.

In Winkler, above the local 13U team was in tough losing three straight games, 15-4 to the Winkler Giants, 19-5 to Glenboro and 14-4 to Russell.

In Swan River, Dauphin’s 15U side opened  the tournament with a 14-4 win over Niverville before dropping a 12-0 decision to Virden.

The team missed the playoff round after losing to Manitou 12-1.

Dauphin Farmer’s Market got a late start  to the season this past week, although participation by vendors was minimal, with only two booths set up.

Market co-ordinator Joyce Huska says although she was expecting more vendors for opening day, the weather as of late has market gardens well behind schedule. 

Anyone interested in joining the group as a vendor can contact Huska at 204-548-2244.

The market will run every Friday in the parking lot across from the Dauphin Active Living Centre until Sept. 25.

With the registration period for those seeking council seats in the Oct. 26 general municipal election opening last week, Kirk Dawson has been busy.

The Senior Election Official for the City of Dauphin and the Rural Municipality of Dauphin said inquiries from prospective candidates and requests for registration packages have been brisk.

“There is tons of interest. (In the City) We’ve already got five registered and none of those are incumbents,” Dawson said. “We’ve had a few other inquiries beyond that. So for the first week basically, it’s under a week actually, it’s been very active.”

At this point, registered candidates for city council include Joe Houston, Ted Rea, Michael Winter, Carter Luke and Sharon Riehl while the mayorality is being contested by David Bosiak and Kerri Riehl.

In the RM two candidates have registered with incumbent councillor Tom Gibbs entering the race for reeve while incumbent reeve Ron Ryz has registered to contest for a council seat.

“Again there are a couple of other packages out, where we’re waiting for the registrations,” Dawson added.

Prospective candidates will have an opportunity to get a better feel for the job of an elected official when the City and RM hold prospective candidates forums, at the RM of Dauphin Office, July 13, at 7 p.m. for rural candidates and at City Hall, July 14, at 7 p.m. for city candidates.

At each forum municipal staff will lay out what is involved in being a councillor in terms of duties and time commitments while the two governments have partnered to bring in former Association of Manitoba Municipalities executive director Joe Masi as a keynote speaker each night.

“He’s been around politics for a long time and he’s going to be coming out and talking about what makes good councils and what doesn’t,” Dawson said. “It’s for anybody that’s considering running, to give them a little better perspective on what it might look like if they did put their name forward.”

While he waits for other registration packages to be returned Dawson is busy preparing for polling day. Currently he is hiring voting officials and assistant voting officials. About 30 people will be needed to assist with the city election while another 10 are required to help out in the RM process.

“These are the people that work at the polls on election day and the advanced polls.” he said, adding he already has an extensive list of interested applicants.

Anyone interested in getting on that list can contact city hall at 204-622-3200 or by email at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

“We’ll probably start phoning next week. We have a list of the people in the past and I’ve got several other people that have mentioned their names, but I can always take more names. It’s sort of a first come, first serve thing,” Dawson said. “We’ll certainly get their names down and as they go down the list we’ll make sure we consider them.”

The nomination period for both head of council and council positions runs Sept. 14 to 20 with Sept. 21 as the withdrawal deadline.

Advance polling runs Oct. 3 to 21, and election day is Oct. 26, with polls open from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m.