Dauphin city councillors have received their marching orders for the final year of their terms.

At their regular meeting, Jan. 5, councillors approved appointments to internal committees and community boards.

Internal committees

The Audit and Finance Committee will be comprised of mayor David Bosiak and councillors Ted Rea and Christian Laughland, while the Employee Relations Committee includes Bosiak, Laughland and councillor Kathy Bellemare.

The Environmental Stewardship and Climate Adaptation Committee, as well as the Planning and Priorities Committee will involve the full council.

The Property Standards Task Force Committee will include Rea and councillor Devin Shtykalo.

The Protective Services Committee will be comprised of Bosiak, Bellemare and councillor Randy Daley.

External committees

(Governed by City)

Councillor Steve Sobering and Rea will represent the City on the Active Living and Transportation Committee, while the full council will sit on the Board of Revision.

Bosiak and Laughland will sit on the City of Dauphin Liaison with the RM of Dauphin Committee, while Laughland and Bellemare will serve on the City Beautification Committee. 

The Community Safety and Well-Being Advisory Committee will include Bellemare and Rea, while Sobering and Shtykalo will serve on the Dauphin Business Park Committee and Rea will represent the City on the Dauphin Community Band Committee.

Bellemare will return to the Dauphin and District Allied Arts Council Liaison Committee, while Bosiak and Sobering will sit on the Dauphin Economic Development Committee.

The emergency measures committee will include Bosiak, Rea and Daley, while Rea will represent the City on the Municipal Heritage Advisory Committee.

External committees

(Governed by others)

Rea will represent the City on Dauphin At Risk Teens, while Bellemare will sit on the Dauphin and Area Welcoming Communities Committee and the Dauphin and District Allied Arts Council Committee for the Watson Arts Centre.

Sobering will continue to serve on the Dauphin and District Handi-Van Committee, while Bellemare will sit on the Dauphin Public Library Committee.

Rea and Shtykalo will sit on the Dauphin Recreation Services board, while Laughland will join Shtykalo on the Dauphin Regional Airport Authority Board and Daley will remain with the Dauphin Veterinary Services Board.

Bosiak will represent the City on the Inter-Mountain Watershed District Vermillion River Sub-District Committee, while Laughland will sit with the Parkland Chamber of Commerce and Bellemare will sit on the Parkland Regional Library Committee.

Bosiak will represent the City on the Parkland Regional Municipal Working Group, the Riding Mountain Regional Liaison Committee and the Riding Mountain UNESCO World Biosphere Reserve Committee, while Bellemare and Sobering will sit on the Riverside Cemetery Board.

Citizen appointments

Shirley Genik and Mark Kohan were appointed to the Dauphin Community Band for two-year terms expiring December 2027. Lynn Smith was appointed to a one-year term on the Dauphin General Hospital Foundation expiring in December, while Mavis Wood, Regan Lemieux and Todd Pedersen were appointed to two-year terms on the Dauphin Public Library Board expiring in December 2027.

Every year, a local firefighter is recognized for their efforts in serving the community by being presented with the Firefighter of the Year Award. This year’s recipient was Matthew Linnick. Linick is one of the Swan Valley Fire Department (SVFD) instructors and a firefighter who demonstrated active volunteerism in the community and took part in the wildfire deployment to Flin Flon.
Linnick first got involved with the SVFD over three years ago. His interest in joining the local fire department was sparked by his longing to help others in the community.
“I joined the department in the fall of 2022,” said Linnick. “I joined because I wanted to be able to serve my community.”
Over the years, Linnick has done a lot of training to become a firefighter with the SVFD. In this role, he realizes that one must always be willing to learn and train when it comes to emergency response and firefighting techniques.
“You never really complete your training; there are always new skills and techniques to learn,” said Linnick. “When we are not learning new skills, we are training to keep up with our current ones. The most challenging aspects of training can be the physical demands and the amount of information you must absorb in a short amount of time, especially when completing your Level 1 training.
“We have great instructors, officers and senior firefighters on our department to help us overcome any challenges we face. This year, I completed my Firefighter Level 1 training. Additionally, I have taken various courses throughout my time in the department, including Emergency Services Instructor 1, vehicle extrication, and pump operations.”
Linnick stepped up to the call when one of the largest forest fires in Manitoba’s history broke out last summer, up north and in Flin Flon. This has provided Linnick with even more experience when it comes to firefighting and emergency disaster response.
“Late in the spring, I was part of a crew of four members from our department that went to Flin Flon with our pumper truck to assist,” said Linnick. “While there, we worked with Flin Flon and many other departments from around the province. We worked to extinguish hot spots on the fire lines around Flin Flon, and later, when the fire was threatening cabins in and around Bakers Narrows, we worked to protect these structures from the fire.
“It was great to see all the departments from around the province come to assist.”
Linnick enjoys his time with the SVSF for a variety of reasons. The camaraderie and ability to help others are something that he finds personally fulfilling.
“Since joining the department, I have been able to develop and grow my skills as a firefighter,” said Linnick. “This is all thanks to the other firefighters on our department who have taken the time to teach and work with me, and all the new firefighters.
“The thing I enjoy most about being a firefighter is being able to serve my community.”

Whether or not we in a prairie province need to be concerned about a sailor’s warning of an early morning red sky, a painted sky first thing in the morning is a welcome sight as we settle into 2026.

Mackenzie Collette was born in Curacao, Netherland Antilles and now lives in Toronto, Canada. She graduated the University of Manitoba from the Asper School of Business and is a certified PADI diver and avid sportsperson.
In 2014 she was accepted as a Student Member of The Explorers Club and reclassified after graduation to Member. She is also a Fellow of the Royal Canadian Geographical Society.
For years, Mackenzie - who is a graduate of Major Pratt and is the daughter of Linda Witty and granddaughter of Ron and Darlene Witty has explored North America, alongside her father David Collette. Now the Canadian family along with Johann Sigurdson also a fellow in world famous Explorers Club and The Royal Canadian Geographical Society, are re-writing North American Viking history in a new series which debuted on the Super Channel Quest January 4th.
Quest for the Lost Vikings, a new eight episode documentary travel series about modern day explorers on a mission to discover the truth about their Viking heritage. The series debuted with the first two episodes shown back-to-back on Super Channel Quest on January 4th.

Read more in this week's Russell Banner on page 2.

There are some people who just aren’t phased by anything. And because of their adventurous spirit and attitude, quite often they’re the kind of folks who manage to be good at everything they put their minds too.
Hailee Durocher is one of those people.
Since Hailee’s arrival in this area, she’s taken on the Beef and Barley Buckin’ Charity Rodeo a couple of times. Or if you live anywhere near the south eastern part of the RM of Riding Mountain West, you’ll likely know her as the much-loved grader operator in your part of the world.
Hailee recalls driving through Russell with her dad on his semi delivery trips.
“Growing up in Winnipeg, I’ve always loved seeing small towns which are so filled with history,” Hailee said.
As fate would have it, she met Angusville’s Garrett Rubeniuk who is now her fiancé and ended up here, planning their life adventures together.
Part of that new path started with a small flower farm while she settled into life at her fiancé’s family farm in Angusville.
“So, what began as a small project quickly turned into a big love for flowers and that passion has grown into what is now ‘Stella’s Florals’,” Durocher explained.
At that point, things just started to fall into place.

Get the whole front page story in this week's Russell Banner.

Saturday was Hockey Day in Roblin with the community’s minor hockey teams, with the exception of the U13 Stars who were playing out of town, all seeing action.
The first game, between the U9 Stars (Poyser) and GrandPlains McDonald, got underway at 9 a.m. following a ceremonial puck drop honouring Jean Addis.
Have a look at photos of the celebration in this week’s paper.

As the calendar turns to 2026, Dauphin mayor David Bosiak is looking ahead to the coming year with optimism, while reflecting on 2025 with satisfaction.

“I think we had a pretty good year. We had some challenges and some opportunities in the public works department,” he said, citing the resignation of Public Works and Operations director Mike VanAlstyne and the retirements of Public Works foreman Terry Genik and Utilities foreman Jeff Weselowski.

“Which gives us tremendous opportunity to bring in some new blood, young people, but also you lose almost 100 years of experience. It has an impact on the organization.”

Despite the changes, Bosiak is pleased with the connection between City hall and the public works shop, saying morale is good on both sides.

The changes in leadership have also provided an opportunity for restructuring in an effort to find efficiencies, he added.

“We’re looking at restructuring a little bit, so we can have our Public Works manager looking after the multi-million dollar projects, but not losing oversight on smaller projects because they are too busy doing the big stuff and there’s no one else to help,” Bosiak said, adding the creation of a project manager position late in the year is paying dividends in that regard.

“Justin Tokarchuk has become our new project manager and that’s worked out,  I think, really well so far in the sense that he’s latched on to all those smaller projects.”

In the past, there has been some frustration among councillors when some of the smaller projects fell by the wayside, he added.

“We often had a surplus at the end of the year, but it was not because we did great stuff. It was because we didn’t do a couple of little things that we wanted to do,” Bosiak said.

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

WEEK 1 | JANUARY 7 - The New Year has arrived, with the early days of 2025 welcoming the Swan River Valley with one of winter’s cold snaps. Temperatures reached their coldest this year on Jan. 4 with a reported -38.7C low. Forecasts indicate temperatures to return to single digits this week.

The sun sets on the Swan Valley – pictured here on the edge of the Saskatchewan border – just as the year sets on 2025, promising a new and hopefully better day in 2026.

It’s been said that you cannot know where you are going without understanding where you have been.

So with a new year looming we took the opportunity to look back at some of the news, good and bad, that made headlines in the Parkland in 2025.

January

• The early part of winter saw Dauphin Public Works’ focus set squarely on snow removal.

Several citywide cleanups took place in January and the work performed by the crews was been exemplary, said Public Works and Operations director Mike VanAlstyne.

“The way our crews operate and the efficiency and the ability to clean up time and time again after these major storm events is remarkable,” he said.

“Within 72 hours we’re pretty well back to normal. I don’t think many communities could say the same, especially communities of our size.”

With the work on Main Street South completed, there was additional work to do, however, a new services agreement with the province provided compensation for the extra work.

February

• As the health region spending the most, Prairie Mountain Health was directed to reduce private agency nursing costs by 15 per cent by the end of the fiscal year.

March

• Justice Minister Matt Wiebe was joined by local MLA Ron Kostyshyn in the City to meet stakeholders regarding the Dauphin Community Justice Centre project. Both mayor David Bosiak and reeve Ernie Sirski left the meeting pleased to see the project moving forward.

April

• The Rural Municipality of Dauphin presented its financial plan.

In a press release, council stated it put together a budget it felt ensured quality service to its citizens through a modest increase of two per cent to the municipal requirements.

For the full story, read this week’s edition of the Dauphin Herald.