This year’s Northern Manitoba Trappers’ Festival (NMTF) Fur Queen pageant was another successful highlight, with eight contestants running. This year’s Fur Queen is Autumn Graff, with Krissy Kirkness as 1st Princess and Trinity Flett as 2nd Princess.
“It feels unbelievable to be the 2025 NMTF Fur Queen,” said Graff. “I never would have thought that I would be this year’s Fur Queen, which I’m so honoured and grateful for this title. I cannot wait for what the future holds for us girls together.
“I think the most exciting part was all of us girls coming together as a family. Seeing each other’s shells break open and bonding with each other was the most exciting part, especially the dance practices. It brought us all together

The Town of the Pas hosted a Special Service Levy Information Meeting on February 20 from 6:30 p.m. to 8 p.m. to help inform the public of how special service levies work and why council is exploring this option. The meeting had approximately 65 people in attendance, but the streaming of the meeting online had 167 views.
Mayor Murphy addressed the meeting stating he did notice a lot of comments on social media and the speculation of a conspiracy theory, which validated the need to have a public meeting to explain special service levies and how it would work. He noted that he doesn’t respond to social media complaints because it can get out of hand. He welcomes people to contact the office and have a diplomatic conversation on the matter. Mayor Murphy also asked people to refrain from attacking staff on social media about matters that aren’t relevant to the issue of the meeting.

The Swan Valley Stampeders Junior A Hockey Club held a special fundraising evening for Amara’s Amigos on Feb. 14 during their home game against the visiting Niverville Nighthawks.
While the Stampeders didn’t come away with a win on the scoresheet that evening, the fundraiser was overall a success with local businesses and individuals showing their support for the Amara’s Amigos cause, which was started by Blaine and Lee-Anne Campbell in support of their teenage daughter Amara, who passed away from cancer in 2020. The Amara’s Amigos fundraiser also serves as a memorial for their teenage son Joel, who passed away from a snowmobile accident that same year.
The evening fundraising activities included a shootout auction, Amara’s Amigos merchandise sales, as well as raffles and cookie sales. Overall, the Swan Valley Stampeders and their Hockey Fights Cancer night was able to bring in $11,678.11 for Amara’s Amigos, which will be donated to CancerCare Manitoba, and more specifically to the PROFYLE program, or the PRecision Oncology For Young PeopLE, which Amara was a patient in while she was fighting her cancer.
“We appreciate the ongoing support from the Stampeders group and the community at large, as well as all the businesses and donations,” said Lee-Anne Campbell. “This is part of our mission to supporting other children and families who may have the same devastating diagnoses. We continue to pay it forward.
“It’s great to partner up with them to remember our children’s names,” said Blaine Campbell.
The special game-worn jerseys were also auctioned off, and that brought in an additional $6,400, which the Campbells decided to split evenly between the Amara’s Amigos and the Swan Valley Stampeders. Campbells also intend on putting up more money next year to purchase another set of jerseys and continue the partnership for a third year.

The break in the cold weather has been welcome for many, making things like a walk in Swan River Legion Park feel a bit more like a walk in the park. Pictured here, Bryce Atkinson takes his dog out for some noon hour exercise.

Members of Roblin’s 50 & Over Club gathered at the Drop-In Feb. 18 for the club’s annual general meeting.
There was a Moment of Silence to remember members who passed in 2024: Julius Zimmer, Muriel Dixon, Jodi Wizniak, Hazel McGinnis, Cassie Bailey, C.J. Beattie, and Eleanor Poyser.
Pick up a copy of this week’s Review for the rest of the story.

Funding for Manitoba schools will increase by $67 million for the 2025-26 school year.

Background information concerning the announcement, made last week by Manitoba’s new education minister Tracy Schmidt, shows increases will vary between one per cent and almost 10 per cent for individual divisions, with the inclusion of federal nutrition funding.

For Mountain View School Division (MVSD) that means a 6.5 per cent bump to $28.1 million in provincial operating support for the coming year.

MVSD secretary-treasurer Lori Slepicka said while the announcement did not include major changes to the way support is calculated, the division did receive a much needed increase in provincial funding.

“They did continue with some of their what they call one-time funding amounts,” Slepicka said.

“So probably our biggest increase within that area were under a line that they call wage and enrollment growth redistribution. We haven’t seen a huge amount of enrolment growth so that’s just kind of a catch line for all the school divisions. So it definitely helps with the salary increases, with the contractual obligations, for sure. We also got a small amount of an increase for the nutrition program funding.”

Slepicka added while this year’s announcement does not provide all of the predicability and stability school divisions have been asking for, there were some positive steps towards that goal.

“We’re on the formula guarantee now, as well, so what that means is that your formula support won’t decrease from the prior year,” Slepicka said.

“So we have that amount which when your enrollment fluctuates or decreases a little bit, unless it takes you out of that formula guarantee, it really doesn’t really affect your formula support.”

The province says “incremental” changes to the funding formula for school divisions are being made.

“This includes calculating funding based on the best of the last three years of enrollment,” Schmidt said.

“In addition, we will be reconstituting the stakeholder advisory committee on school funding to identify further opportunities to improve the way education is funded in our province going forward.”

A complete overhaul of the funding model was announced by the former Progressive Conservative government, but was not pursued by the current administration, at least when it comes to this year’s announcement.

Schmidt vowed, however, to continue dialogue with school divisions, staff, and families to “provide stable and predictable funding” for schools. The system as it exists, with a reliance on property taxes, can make it harder for divisions in poorer areas to raise adequate funding, she said.

Read the full story in this week’s edition of the Dauphin Herald.

The status quo was maintained this past weekend as both the Northern Manitoba Blizzard and Neepawa Titans split their weekend sets. That leaves the Blizzard two points up on the Titans with two games in hand in the battle for second place and home-ice advantage in the first round of the MJHL playoffs.
Blizzard Head Coach and General Manager says Eric Labrosse says while first place is still possible and within the realm of possibility (see this week’s MJHL column), playing Game One of their first-round playoff matchup at home remains the ultimate goal.
“We don’t want to lose any games, but the key part in all of this is to have home-ice advantage in the playoffs, whether it’s first or second,” he said. “It would be great to finish first, but my focus is to stay ahead of Neepawa.
“They’re two points behind us and though we still have two games in hand, they’re breathing down our backs – we can’t seem to pull away from them,” he added.

Recently the tri-community welcomed some international guests to experience all the charms of northern Manitoba and the true north way of life. Students from Margaret Barbour Collegiate Institute (MBCI) hosted some international students from France a couple of weeks ago. This was a wonderful opportunity for all the students involved for a variety of reasons.
“This is the third international exchange program we’ve run,” said MBCI French Immersion Instructor Chris Afatsawo. “The exchange is between MBCI and a sister school in Bordeaux Jean-d’Arc d’Ascension, France. The purpose of the exchange is both linguistic and cultural.

Every year provincial government dignitaries come in to take in the Northern Manitoba Trappers’ Festival (NMTF). This year, five provincial Ministers took in the event, including the Minister of Culture, Sport and Heritage, Nellie Kennedy.
“Since we arrived in The Pas it has been non-stop excitement and we’ve had a lot of fun,” said Minister Kennedy. “This is my first time attending the NMTF and it did not disappoint. Everything that other people had told me about the event was true, but it was so much more.
“I was here with my colleagues, Minister Bushie, Minister Marcelino, Minister Simard and Minister Wiebe and our local MLA Amanda Lathlin showed us around.”

Connor Gottfried of Calgary, Alta., formerly of the Swan Valley, is flexing his creativity and trying his hand at creating contemporary art, art that has grown from an experimental hobby to finding a footing with an international audience.
Gottfried has taken to making interactive sculptures that is inspired by video games and culture of the 1980s and ‘90s, putting playable screens inside replicas of video game boxes as well as incorporating other technology and creating modified icons of the era.
“I’ve always been inspired by contemporary art, especially street art from my years skateboarding and snowboarding, and around 2016, I decided to buy some canvases and try to create some large artworks,” he said.
“I started with paint scraping and soon realized that I could print sheets of paper from my computer and glue them to the canvases to add digital realism in spots. Then, in 2019, I had an idea to put a small screen into a canvas that could play video games on it. Something clicked and it just resonated with me to explore the intersection of art and technology.
“I started building pieces with larger screens and these started doing well on the internet, with lots of people connecting with me on Instagram and a feature in an online magazine,” Gottfried continued. “Seeing how much joy these were bringing people really inspired me to create more.”
The first two pieces Gottfried made were intended to be prizes for the local-to-him University of Calgary campus radio station CJSW, to benefit annual fundraiser.
“Initially, I was just exploring an idea that I thought might be a cool prize for someone who donated to the station,” he said. “When that piece was featured on a popular American blog, it made me realize that it was connecting with something larger.”
The pieces are comprised of two categories of components: the electronics; and the sculptural aspects. In general, Gottfried buys the electronic components from Amazon since the small pieces are difficult to find in brick-and-mortar stores. Some items he’s also been able to source directly from China to lower costs.
“For the sculptural elements, I design the piece in Photoshop using layers and then these layers are printed onto an Aluminum Composite Panel, or ACP, at a print shop in Calgary,” said Gottfried. “ACP is a material commonly used in signage which has a layer of aluminum on either side of a plastic core. It’s both strong and lightweight so it’s perfect for these.
“I provide the print shop with the images and the tracing paths, and they use the tracing paths to cut out the parts for me using either a laser or a CNC router. This way, I can get 100 percent accurate pieces to assemble.”
Tinkering with computers and technology has been a lifelong passion for Gottfried, with his parents bringing home an Apple II computer when he was only five years old. In the 1990s, Gottfried was also involved with the local AccessTV committee, what is now known as a WCGtv Community Media Committee that produces local content for WCG cable, as well as being a major part of bringing internet connectivity to the Swan Valley. Today, Gottfried remains a leader in his company Leara eLearning, which provides a software e-learning and training product.
“When I was young, I was really blown away by the concept of an interactive game, how you could control the character in a virtual world, a world that you could create through programming,” said Gottfried. “Seeing this evolve over my lifetime into what it is now has been fascinating. I think it’s interesting how, in a sense, we shared a childhood with technology itself. We played together with the technology and, as we matured, so did the technology.
“Now, technology has matured into things like AI, which is highly complex. There will never be another generation who will experience the innocent relationship to technology that we had in our youth.”
Many of Gottfried’s pieces feature Nintendo properties such as the Super Mario Bros., Pokemon and the Legend of Zelda, as well as other video game icons – such as Sonic the Hedgehog and Tetris – and wider pop culture staples such as the Golden Girls, the Simpsons, Mr. T, Spongebob Squarepants, and more.
Gottfried’s collection has connected with an audience enough to soon find its way into a contemporary art gallery in Taipei, Taiwan, where he will display 65 pieces in the Dopeness Art Lab beginning on April 12.
His first piece went viral on Instagram in December 2021, and he has also had a solo exhibition at the S16 Gallery in Montreal, as well as contributed pieces in group shows held in Toronto, New York City, New Orleans and Los Angeles.
“I definitely have a personal love for video games of that era,” said Gottfried. “I’ve also chosen games that I think will help the audience feel nostalgia for themselves, so I often create pieces for games that I’ve never played. The underlying connection with all these pieces is the concept of play, which is why I’ve called my collection ‘Play’. Play is where we take risks, problem-solve, and explore curiosity and our imaginations. It’s an integral part of human development, but we often stop playing as adults for a variety of personal and social reasons.
“One of the things that I find interesting is that in this early era of video games, not only were the players playing, but the game designers and hardware designers were playing as well. They were taking risks, experimenting and problem-solving in playful ways, and so the whole industry was in a state of play at that time. With this exhibition, I’m inviting the audience to re-engage with that sense of wonder and to both physically play with the art while also considering how they play – or don’t play – in their daily lives.”
Gottfried also feels like having a solo display at the Dopeness Art Lab is very significant for him as an artist.
“The Dopeness Art Lab is the most visited gallery in Taiwan.” he said. “They have a beautiful gallery space, so it will be really cool to see all of the pieces together in that environment. It’s also significant for me to exhibit in Asia, since this is the birthplace of the video game industry and many of the game characters that we cherish in North America. I’m excited to see how they respond to this exhibition.”
Gottfried added that the Canadian, American and European art scenes have so far been welcoming to him. He has sold pieces in Canada, the US and Europe and would love to do a solo exhibition in the US or Europe in the coming years. In general, his local art community in Calgary is more focused on a different style of art, leaning towards “western” art, so he’s had to reach out to other locations to connect with artists and curators who are interested in exploring technology-related art.
Gottfried’s pieces sell for between $2,000 and $6,500 USD, with all sales now going through Dopeness Art Lab. While he has previously done one-of-a-kind pieces, he now typically will produce five of each kind, allowing more than one person to collect a piece.
Gottfried concluded that even he is now connecting with a global audience with his work, his art and his passion, he doesn’t forget that it was cultivated in the Swan River Valley.
“When I was growing up in Swan River, I was exposed to skateboarding and snowboarding at an early age. At that time, both of these sports were considered outsider activities and were frowned upon by many people in Swan River,” he said. “The sports, however, had a vibrant culture of art and music that was disseminated through videos, clothing and skateboard graphics and this enriched our lives as youth in the Valley.
“This connection to a global culture of visual design, punk music, freedom of expression and joy changed the course of my life and I see this as the root of my artist practice.”
Gottfried also sent a special shoutout to the old Short Stuff store that used to sell and rent video games – video games whose packaging tapped into his wonder with design – as well as his former art teacher Paul Freed, who taught him freedom of expression at an important time in his life.