On Jan. 13, at approximately 6:20 p.m., Swan River RCMP responded to a stabbing on Main Street in Swan River. A 33-year-old male was taken to hospital but succumbed to his injuries. Swan River RCMP along with Major Crime Services, continue to investigate. Here, a Swan River RCMP member watches over the crime scene located in the 1200 block of Main Street on Sunday (Jan. 14). Check next week’s Star and Times for further details, if available.

The Parkland Rangers are slowly falling out of the playoff race in the Manitoba U18 AAA Hockey League after a pair of losses over the weekend.

The Rangers dropped a 5-3 decision to the Winnipeg Wild, Saturday in Winnipeg, before losing 7-1 to the Interlake Lightning, Sunday in Teulon.

As a result, Parkland’s record falls to 10-15-2-1 for 23 points, five back of the eighth-place Norman North Stars.

Rangers head coach Tyler Carefoot was pleased with the team’s play against Winnipeg.

“I thought, for the most part, we were in that game right from pretty much start to end,” he said.

Twice the Rangers trailed by three goals, but they pulled to within one with 2:41 remaining.

“We didn’t quit. We had good structure. We had good work ethic and we found a way to keep the game close,” Carefoot stated, adding he wondered to himself whether to pull the goalie or not. “One of my veteran players heard that and said, ‘what have we got to lose?’ So we did (pull the goalie) and tried to make a push and in the end, they got the empty netter to make it 5-3. But overall, it was a good game,” he said.

Sunday’s game was a result of a lack of self-discipline on the part of some of the Parkland players, who had a late night despite getting back to their hotel by 10 p.m.

As a result, one player slept in and missed the team breakfast at 9 a.m., which did not please the coaching staff, while others were not attentive during a video session prior to leaving for Teulon.

During the pregame warmup, the Rangers did not leave the ice in time, resulting in a delay of game penalty to start the contest. Interlake, subsequently, opened the scoring on that power play to start the game and things went down hill from there.

“Everybody was off. Guys that we lean on to perform really well, those guys were all off. We didn’t have our routine. Everything about our routine was off,” he said. “And it goes back to the night before and it goes back to the morning. And then we can’t expect these players, you can’t sleep in and then go on the ice and be a high-performance athlete and perform at a high level when you’ve only been up for three hours.”

Carefoot admitted to being angry at the situation and felt it was a lack of self-discipline that resulted in Sunday’s loss.

“At some point there has to be some self-accountability,” he said, adding the Rangers have proven they can play with any team in the league, with the exception of the Brandon Wheat Kings. “But in order to do that, our structure has to be good and our work ethic has to be good. It’s just all those little things that we talk about. We have the capabilities of doing all that,” Carefoot said. “But the moment we choose to either take a shift off or a game off, or in this case, some guys chose to basically not want to show up at all, it’s very frustrating.”

Having said that, Carefoot recognizes that Interlake is one of the top teams in the league, currently sitting in third place.

“Interlake is for real. They’ve got a nice roster there. It’s not a fluke or an accident that they’re a top four team this year. I think that’s great to see. The last several years, they’ve been battling at the bottom end, so I think that’s great for their program,” he said.

The Rangers will look to right the ship this weekend when they face the second-place Southwest Cougars in a home-and-home, beginning, Friday in Dauphin at 7:30 p.m., with the rematch in Souris on Saturday.

The teams split a home-and-home, Jan. 6 and 7.

Southwest is another team the Rangers can compete with.

“They’re very structured. They don’t have any flashy players that pull you out of your seats, but they have non-negotiables that play within their structure. Hopefully, we can match that and we can be ready, because every point now going forward is just so important,” Carefoot said. “The game results over the weekend, the teams that we’re battling with, they either split or they found a way to get four points. So we need points. And so we need to be ready to execute and, hopefully, that’s the case.”

The Dauphin Kings were busy at the Canadian Junior Hockey League’s (CJHL) trade deadline, with five deals made.

The deals started, Jan. 5, with the Kings sending forward Blake Boudreau, 20, to the Carleton Place Canadians of the Central Canada Hockey League for a player development fee (PDF).

Boudreau had 10 goals and 16 points in 25 games for Dauphin this season.

In a move that surprised many Kings fans, 20-year-old defenceman Anthony Bax, who led the team in scoring with 32 points, including 13 goals, was shipped to the Saskatchewan Junior Hockey League’s Flin Flon Bombers, the top team in the CJHL.

In exchange the Kings get forward Ashton Paul, 19, and future considerations.

In 28 games this season, Paul had four goals and 19 points.

Last season, playing with OCN, Paul tallied 26 goals and 56 points in 57 games.

Defenceman Nolan Wickham, 20, was sent to the Winkler Flyers for defenceman Ty Pratte, 18, and a second round draft pick in this year’s draft.

Wickham had two goals and 10 points in 29 games this season, while Pratte had a goal and an assist in 15 contests for Winkler.

Defenceman Aidan Brook, 20, along with forward Rhett Perrin were traded to the Portage Terriers in exchange for defenceman Brett Magarrell, 18, as well as a third and fifth round pick in this year’s draft.

Brook played 31 games this season, tallying four goals and 13 points, while Perrin had a goal and three points in 17 games.

Magarrell played 30 games with the Terriers and recorded a goal and six points.

Another deal saw the Kings send the list rights of forward Kai Clayton to the Swan Valley Stampeders for a PDF.

Kings head coach and general manager Doug Hedley said the trade landscape has changed with advisors now representing players.

Players, Hedley said, now have to consent to trades, which he understands when they are sent to a different league. But giving consent when being traded within the same league makes no sense to him.

“I think it’s going to have to be looked at,” he said.

Hedley tried to improve the team’s offence, but the deals he was working on fell through.

“Our original plan was to add some offence, some experienced guys that could score,” he said.

When those deals didn’t work out, Hedley gave the team’s 20-year-olds a choice to stay with the Kings or be moved to another team.

“We wanted to be fair to the 20-year-olds,” he said.

Only Logan Walker and Alex Senf chose to stay.

“They didn’t even hesitate. They came back in and said they wanted to be Kings, they wanted to wear the crest. They felt we had a good young group and we could challenge,” Hedley said.

Dealing away Brook and Wickham is particular was hard with both players being in their third year with the team, as well as being part of the championship squad that won the league in 2022.

“There’s all kinds of respect on our end for those kids. We just felt that they deserved a chance, they made the decision and we accommodated them,” Hedley said.

Hedley likes the return he got in the various deals.

“We think that we got some good young players back in return with Ty Pratte from Winkler and Brett Magarrell from Portage. Both are 18-year-olds that are going to be good D-men in the league,” he said. “In fact, if you look at our back end now, I really think we got younger, but we got more mobile and we’ve got real good speed, real good attitudes and real good work ethics.”

The Kings won their third straight game the day before the deadline, beating the Neepawa Titans, 3-0, with Cole Sheffield making 29 saves to record his second shutout in three games.

Hedley said the team played with a renewed energy and emotion in that game.

“We’re looking forward to working with this group and the work ethic and compete. Kyan Grouette has really helped us out as far as work ethic. He’s a real good addition,” he said.

Fans will get their first chance to see the new players in the lineup tonight when the Kings host the Stampeders at 7:30 p.m.

The Kings then visit the division-leading Virden Oil Capitals, Friday, before hosting the Niverville Nighthawks, Saturday at 7:30 p.m.

After all of the delays getting started, progress on the reconstruction Main Street South has been substantial.

The mild weather the area experienced up to last week allowed for excellent conditions for the contractor to construct several segments of the service road alignments along the eastern and western sides of the highway.

“Progress has been great thus far,” director of Public Works and Operations Mike VanAlstyne said. “We’re probably right on schedule. It was always intended that they would work on that, but the efficiency of the weather helped greatly with getting that in as quick as they did.”

As well as part of the drainage plan for the area, the majority of the western retention pond has been dug and the access to the eastern retention pond has been constructed off of Whitmore Avenue.

VanAlstyne expects work on the eastern pond itself to begin this week, leading to progress on another exciting project.

“The contractor will be hauling material from the east pond to Maamawi Park to begin the construction of the toboggan hill,” he said. “The plan is to start hauling material there Tuesday.”

Looking back to the drainage system, VanAlstyne expects work to begin on the construction of some of the storm sewer piping required over the next few weeks.

But, he added, things will be slowing down a bit when it comes to the highway work itself.

“Work along the highway corridor is temporarily on hold until the gas main relocation work takes place, which is expected to begin near the end of January,” VanAlstyne said, adding the gas main currently runs along the west side of the highway. “Until then there can’t be a lot of work done on the road alignments. It’s going to be slow for a couple weeks, from what we can see, but there’s lots of excavation work happening on the east pond.”

With 20 plus centimetres of snow falling across the area over the space of a few hours last week and temperatures plummeting to below normal values, the Parkland is now firmly in the grips of winter.

And for the City of Dauphin, winter means one very important thing. Snow clearing is the main function of the Public Works Department throughout the season and with last week’s weather event, crews jumped on the task of clearing the community’s roadways and sidewalks.

When major snowfalls occur the focus of clearing efforts fall on priority areas, such as the downtown core and clearing of urban highways.

“And the life and safety stuff. The hospital and that sort of stuff,” director of Public Works and Operations Mike VanAlstyne said. “Once we finished priority routes and the highway stuff, then we are doing streets so that the furthest anyone would have to go to get to a plowed road would be about 75 metres.”

Where that clearing of residential streets begins is dependent, VanAlstyne added.

“It just depends on what day of the week it is. If it’s garbage day somewhere, we try to go elsewhere so that we’re not moving around bins and whatever else,” he said. “And then we methodically go throughout the city.”

The city has been running clearing operations around the clock on 12 hour shifts and will continue to do so until the all streets are cleared, VanAlstyne said. When it comes to an event of this magnitude, cleanup should take around 72 hours, he added, assuming everything goes smoothly in terms of staff staying healthy and equipment not breaking down.

And in many cases, other city operations draw staff away from snow clearing.

“We still have to operate our landfill and we need an operator there who is trained to be compliant with our regulations and our license.” VanAlstyne said. “So we’re kind of juggling staff to make it work.”

In the end, VanAlstyne expects the price tag for that 72 hours of work to be average for a citywide cleanup, somewhere between $40,000 and $50,000.

“It really depends on what we end up with and what day of the week, because when you go into Saturday and Sunday all a sudden we’re paying double time on everything,” he said.

“It’ll be 50,000 by the time we remove extra snow because of how much we’ve had to pile.”

Prior to the weekend, all streets had been plowed and work shifted to clearing avenues, as well as removing the windrows from Main Street and the city centre. After plowing is finished and crews have had some time to recover from the long hours, they will finish off the cleanup by lowering some of the big snowbanks throughout the city to improve visibility.

The priority, VanAlstyne said is getting the snow off the streets and people need to be patient while public works crews put the finishing touches on the clean up.

“It’s all a matter of trying to do the best we can with what we’ve got,” he said, adding many city residents do not realize how good they have it when it comes to snow clearing. “We provide a higher level of service - a level of service that’s just outrageously high for the citizens of the city,” VanAlstyne said. “And it would be a lot worse if they were anywhere else I can almost guarantee that.”

Physician and nurse shortages, as well as closed ERs, are issues that aren’t going to be solved any time soon, especially for rural and northern Manitoba communities, but there is another option.

The online service Q-Doc has had a successful year in providing patients with virtual appointments with physicians and nurse practitioners, to help people who don’t have access to immediate healthcare in their community and to prevent unnecessary visits to the ER.

More in this week’s issue.

January is a month known for the promotion of mental health wellness and the Mental Wellness and Suicide Prevention Committee of Prairie Mountain Health has come up with a new venture for people to express the state of their mental health through a creative process.

The committee, formed during the pandemic to promote mental wellness and help eliminate the stigma associated with mental health illness, has put a call out for art submissions to be part of a travelling art exhibit called “Creative Reflections” to express feelings related to peoples’ mental health.

Check out the rest of the story in this week’s Review.

Having something stolen is more than a disheartening experience, but when it’s something that has sentimental value, the loss that is felt is that much more. On the evening of Boxing Day, 2023 Northern Manitoba Trappers’ Festival Fur Queen Gloria Ballantyne-Packo had the unfortunate experience of having her family’s vehicle broken into while in Winnipeg, and amongst the valuables stolen was her 2023 Northern Manitoba Trappers’ Festival Fur Queen parka.
This parka is a one-of-a-kind article of clothing that each of the Fur Queen Court receives. It’s tailored made for each person and has a unique design that reflects the theme for the Trappers’ Festival. Each parka also has the name of the Fur Queen court member embroidered on it.
“The Fur Queen jacket is so special to me because it represents the hard work and dedication that I have put into the fur queen competition and Northern Manitoba Trappers’ Festival,” said Ballantyne-Packo. “It also reminds me of the experiences I have had with my fellow reigning court. We decided on every detail about the jackets including the colour, embroidery, and fur.

Although January brings the start of a new year, it can also be a difficult time of the year for people in terms of managing mental health. The aftermath of the Christmas holidays and excitement, combined with the winter months can take a toll on people, as they try to keep their mental health in check.
“The winter months in general, and the month of January in particular, can be very difficult for many people in terms of how it affects their mood, energy, and general sense of mental health and well-being,” said Canadian Mental Health Association (CMHA) Swan Valley Branch Peer Support and Public Education Coordinator Rod Seib. “Of course, the shorter daylight hours have a real impact on mood, as light exposure has long been known to have an impact on mental health.

If you did your round of online shopping or were receiving a gift from someone through the mail for this past Christmas, you may have encountered longer wait times than what is the industry standard when it comes to mail delivery services in Canada. Many residents of The Pas and area vented on social media during the month of December about parcels being held in Flin Flon, due to insufficient space at The Pas Post Office.
The longest wait time that residents shared on the post, was over 11 days, that their parcel was sitting at the Flin Flon Post Office, waiting to come to The Pas.
The Opasquia Times reached out to Canada Post to ask why the continued delay to deliver parcels around this time of year and when this issue will be addressed.
“The Pas Post Office has been very busy this year,” said Canada Post Media Relations Lisa Liu. “Our staff has been working hard to process and move all mail and parcels to ensure customers receive their items during the holidays.