Just outside of The Pas airport is a beautiful snow sculpture that both residents and visitors can take in. Calm Air came up with the concept of commissioning an artist to design a snow sculpture to both celebrate the community and the upcoming Trapper’s Festival.
“At Calm Air, we are beyond excited to get back to travelling and one thing we missed most was celebrating our communities, especially in winter,” said Calm Air Director of Marketing and Brand Management Amanda Camara. “So we thought, what better way to celebrate The Pas than joining in as a Northern Lights Sponsor for the Trapper’s Festival and what can we bring to the table to really celebrate who we are, which was a beautiful work of art with snow. It was fitting for it to be located at the airport.”
A Manitoba artist, who lives in Swan River, came highly recommended to Calm Air by organizers at the Festival du Voyageur. This artist dabbles in a variety of different mediums and his snow sculptures in the past have always caught attention

This coming weekend is hailed as a long weekend, but the designation for the holiday really has yet to be unified across the country as Louis Riel Day. The Pas MMF Region has always celebrated and honored Riel, long before the statutory holiday came into effect.
“During Trapper’s Festival, our region has always hosted a Metis Family Night,” said The Pas MMF Region Vice President Judy Mayer. “After we had already started celebrating Louis Riel and the Red River Metis, came the holiday recognizing him. There’s a lot more work that has to be done and should be a part of reconciliation, which would be recognizing Riel as the first Premier of Manitoba and the Founding Father of Confederation. That will take a partnership between the provincial and federal governments, along with the Red River Metis government to get this recognized nationally. This should be part of reconciliation with the Red River Metis people.

There is a definite need for more support and advocates for people with disabilities. Valley resident, Evelyn Yelinek, knows all too well about the needs people with disabilities have and recently, she’s been appointed to the Manitoba Intellectual Disability Advisory Council to share her experience and advocacy on certain topics.
“There was a call for interest on the Manitoba government website and I applied,” said Yelinek. “I first noticed that some people were being treated disrespectfully when I was in Grade 6. I recall telling a teacher that he was being a bully. This resulted in being sent to the office. I told the principal what happened. I was thanked and was asked to report back if I felt things like this happened again, but I should not address the teacher myself because then I was the one being disrespectful. Being the cheeky child that I was, my response was that maybe the teacher should be a better role model.
“I have a cousin who has Down Syndrome. When she came to visit, she was not allowed to play with us; she could only sit on the couch and look at books. I thought that she had a very sad life. When I asked my aunt why I was told it was not safe for her because she was very fragile.
“I also had an uncle who lived with us for a while,” said Yelinek. “He wasn’t able to care for himself and eventually he was placed at MDC because his behaviours made it unsafe for him and us. Then I became a mom to a couple of great guys. You really don’t know what love is until you have a child. My guys were born three and a half months early and I was determined to make their world very much unlike the one I witnessed as a young girl.”
Yelinek’s desire to advocate for fairness for others really developed through her own experiences as a mother.
“When I was a new mom, I was made to feel like I did something wrong that caused the early births,” said Yelinek. “The social worker constantly threatened my rights as a parent. She said that she was an educated woman and didn’t feel that she could care for the boys, so what would make me think I could? I felt she was judging me, and I was also feeling that way by some friends and family too.
“Every birthmark and bruise had to be explained. Little kids do get bumps and bruises. Add being blind to the mix, any educated person should understand that they too would get bumps and bruises.
“Then there were issues getting funding for support workers at daycare; issues getting funding for EAs; very little funding was available for respite because we lived in a rural area; the guys were not allowed to go on many field trips because of lack of support staff; while EAs came and went,” said Yelinek.
“Then comes adulthood and needing to rely on government assistance. This program was designed to help people for a short time until they can get back on their feet. It is not acceptable in any way to subject already vulnerable adults to a life of poverty in which the rent budget is so little that safe housing is very challenging, if not impossible to find. Some families have to have their adult children placed in homes outside their home community because of a lack of proper homes.
“These are just some of my experiences. People wonder why families of people with disabilities have a hard time trusting,” said Yelinek. “I never want any other mom to feel the way I did.”
Along Yelinek’s personal journey, she met some incredible people who helped her along the way. It was through their guidance that she found the inspiration to keep advocating for people with disabilities and to demand fairness for them on many issues.
“I have met some wonderful staff and friends along the way,” said Yelinek. “Dr. Rajani, a pediatrician, and Deb Ramsay, a mom from the Parents of Premature Babies club, were the first two people who provided amazing support. Deb and I are still close friends. Lois Paske, OT/PT from CNIB, told me that I was a great mom; she empowered me to stand up to the social worker. She and Dr. Rajani wrote letters on my behalf to that social worker.
“Then I moved to the Valley and met some wonderful workers here. Iris Jonsson, a Children’s Disability worker, heard my story and took me under her wing. I started working for the Department of Families and continued to be mentored by Lee Greig and Donna-Jean Slack, who were program managers, to become the best worker I could be. I was often matched up to work with families who had special needs kids; some were children and some were adults.
“At the Department of Families, I met a wonderful man named Phil Boguski, who was the Vocational Rehab Worker,” said Yelinek. “He provided so much guidance to me as a worker and a mom. I volunteered on the Association for Community Living board and met many wonderful people who attended the day program. My fellow board members were passionate about making this world our children are part of life, a much better place.
“Volunteering on the Community Mental Health board provided.

The Pas has been fortunate to have donors give back to the community on various different levels to keep projects going in the community. One donor in particular has given back tremendously over the years to a variety of different charities and notable projects that have greatly benefitted the lives of citizens in the tri-community area.
“I was born and raised in The Pas,” said Evans Premachuk. “In 1963, my wife, Mardene and I left Lynn Lake to move back to my home community to set up my law practice. Eventually we went into owning an apartment complex in The Pas after the pulp mill was built. This led to us slowly getting into some more real estate development.

The fisheries branch of Natural Resources and Northern Development released an update on Aquatic Invasive Species (AIS) for Foot Print and Cedar Lake recently. They have detected the Spiny Waterflea from five samples taken from Foot Print Lake during the 2022 open water season. The sample was confirmed in the laboratory in late November.
A total of 25 Spiny Waterfleas were found in five out of seven samples from Foot Print Lake. This detection indicates there could be an established or reproducing population of Spiny Waterflea in the lake.

A joint partnership between the federal and provincial governments, and Opaskwayak Cree Nation (OCN) will provide affordable housing in Winnipeg for Indigenous students, elders and young families. The project is estimated to cost around $17.4 million, with the federal government contributing $15.6 million, OCN spending $1.8 million and the Province committed $105,000 through Efficiency Manitoba.

The Town of The Pas Council met last week and has lots on the go, in terms of managing projects and operations for the community. Every week the Council makes a point of recognizing the efforts of organizations or events within the community for the work they do either on a certain project, event or situation.
“We wanted to throw out some recognition to our local RCMP and all the local members they brought in to help with an incident that resulted in loss of life. I’m sure it was a difficult situation with lots of long hours of work involved.

Businesses and entrepreneurs are often challenged with maintaining a successful business and putting for an expansion of some kind. Most who are successful in business, love what they do or have a real passion for it. Former Valley resident, successful photographer and body image activist Teri Hofford has spent quite a few years living her dream. Hofford had a bustling boudoir studio, awards and accolades from some well-known photography communities, speaking at engagements and workshops all around the world and creating work that challenged the status quo. Although it was all Hofford could dream of, inside she was feeling overwhelmingly exhausted,
alone, stressed and unable to ask for help. Her fear of resting led her to believe her business and accomplishments would fail or fall behind. This led to her exploring and challenging the beliefs set forth by the hustle culture, which
is very similar to the diet culture, that has deprived so many people’s bodies of what they needed the most.
This has opened up a new door for Hofford and it’s one she’s going through, without letting anything hold her back. “Over the last three to four years I’ve been building up the education side of my business to work with photographers and other creatives on how they can make their business more inclusive, that way there can be more progress,” said Hofford. “As one person I can only do so much, but I figured if I could teach people what I know, then the more impact we can have to make sure others understand they are worthy of being photographed and that we start seeing bodies of all types.
“In building that up, while running my photography business in 2018, I hit a bout of burnout and the worst depression I’d ever had. I’ve never experienced depression before that. It was going on a trip to Norway and not remembering anything about the trip that was the revelation moment that something needed to change.
“That’s when I went back to school for positive psychology and learned all about the mindset behind it,” said Hofford. “What I realized most was a lot of creative people create businesses they are passionate about and want
to make a change in the world, but they are also human and don’t recognize the toll it takes on themselves personally to do it.
“I started to shift my work to include mindset work because, ultimately, body image is mindset work as well. That’s where I’ve been heading for the last four years. This type of work that is done in the empowerment world is so
important, but the people who do this type of work are usually empaths.
They are givers and often don’t give to themselves. I want to make sure I can help others build sustainable business practices, even if it is not in photography, so they incorporate that into their model and not run the risk of burnout.” During the pandemic, Hofford faced a lot of similar pressures and anxieties many entrepreneurs had. Most were unable to continue their business or services the way they had normally done due to public health restrictions.
This led to Hofford challenging herself in new ways and as a result, she published a new book. “This book actually came out of the pandemic, because I wasn’t able to utilize my creativity or purpose to the extent I was used to,” said Hofford. “I couldn’t photograph clients as a part of my normal business, so I had to challenge myself with a task. I decided to go with taking a new self-portrait every day and also writing a personal post or story to go along with it.
“That’s when I really started to notice that one of my gifts was through my own honesty and humility, I was able to connect with people. I gravitate to following my intuition on things, such as what to post and when to do that. This became a self-practice to dig up some old stories and talk about how I’m working through them or how it relates to business creativity or body image.
By being able to condense it down, it made people feel more seen, heard and understood in their own mindset or what their brain was telling them. A lot of times, people felt they couldn’t open up and share those thoughts and
feelings with others. This led to people suggesting I put this into a book. “Essentially 2,200 Characters or Less is a compilation of 2,200 different posts I had on Instagram and the whole intent was to put out there all the things
that make us human, the parts of ourselves that we feel aren’t great or have shame about, how can we move through it,” said Hofford. “That’s the premise of this book.” Lived experience is becoming something that more people are connecting with when it comes to personal growth and recovery. There’s something about reading or listening to someone who has gone through something similar to what a person is experiencing, that has a positive and inspiring
effect. Hofford has been able to channel this energy to help those going through similar situations that she has encountered or is going through.
“Every time someone shares their story, it’s going to be easier for someone else to share theirs, which is why it was so important for me to put myself aside when I had these thoughts,” said Hofford.
“I know there are a lot of people who have stories they want to tell, but their fear gets in the way. The way I would get myself to share my writing, is to remind myself that my passion for helping has to override the fear of
whatever I’m feeling. “When I keep that in mind, that it’s not about me, it’s about the people that are going to read this, or the one other person in the world that this is going to greatly impact, the more honest it’s going
to be.
“Which is why we are seeing a lot of pushback from people who hate change,” said Hofford. “This is a little too dramatic or feelsy for them and it’s scary and contrasting to the way these people have always been. The more we do
this, eventually they will get on board or the movement will happen whether they like it or not. I focus more on who I am helping, not who is offended by what I’m sharing.” Looking back at 2022, letting go has been one of
the biggest achievements Hofford has been able to do. She felt that she was tied to all these titles and her studio in order to be successful. Once Hofford embraced that these things don’t define who she is or her work, she
was able to take her work to a new and higher level.
“This past year I feel that one of my biggest accomplishments has been being able to walk the talk, so to speak,” said Hofford. “I’ve always been a believer of one following their dreams, but I was holding on to having a studio and
being just a photographer. I had become so attached to all these identities that I created for myself and this past year, I proved that I don’t have to be attached to those. 
“I’m growing, changing and adapting, and that has been my guiding principle. I want to be a role model for those who want to try something new, but are afraid to or letting things hold them back. I had to detach myself from all
these things I thought Ihad to have to be relevant, valued and successful.” 
Hofford has set another goal for 2023 and is focusing on healing. “For this coming year, I would like to personally focus on healing,” said Hofford. “After putting myself in a state of chronic stress while I was building my photography
business, my body took a toll. Now I have to show more appreciation for my body through movement, rest, and nourishment. I also want to heal relationships that I didn’t keep up with while I was running my business and other
aspects of my business. Healing is going to be the theme for this coming year.
“I also hope to reach more than just photographers with my mindset and body image work. I want to expand to anyone that is ready to do the work in challenging their body image and mindset, which includes breaking down
biases and beliefs.”
Hofford’s new book, 2,200 Characters or Less is available to order online or through her website.