Goose Lake High’s Junior Varsity Angels and Raiders volleyball teams, both ranked #2 in the province, hosted their home tournaments Friday and Saturday and despite some weather-related delays, the tourney went off without a hitch.

The boys side featured teams from Warren, Russell, Swan Valley, Hamiota, Virden, Ebb & Flow and The Pas while girls teams from Swan Valley, Warren, Hamiota, Gilbert Plains and Killarney battled it out.

Check out some actions shots and find out how the home teams fared in this issue.

Another well-deserving community member from The Pas has been presented with the Sovereign’s Volunteer Medal. Bev MacTavish was also presented with the prestigious award for her volunteerism with a few different entities in the community.
“I received the Sovereign’s Volunteer Medal for my involvement with the choir, Sam Waller Museum and my work at the hospital,” said MacTavish.
“I got involved with the Sam Waller Museum in 1978, when I first came to The Pas to teach at the high school. I really love history, so that made me get involved. I got on the board and have been on it ever since.
“I knew Sam Waller and he was such a unique and interesting person,” said MacTavish. “He collected all of the stuff in his school house at Opaskwayak Cree Nation. When he retired, he had nowhere to put it. Then The Pas Rotary Club built him a bigger building and then outgrew that, because there were donations from all over the world to add to the collection.”

With the success of finalizing the build of the boardwalk for the Boreal Trail, the Opasquia Trails held a planning meeting last week, to determine what the board and trail’s needs would be for the foreseeable future.
“We wanted to have a planning meeting, because we haven’t had one since inception,” said Opasquia Trails Board Member Al McLauchlan. “The board thought it was time to get together as a board and with organizations in the community, to make sure that we still had community support and were on the track we had anticipated. We were pleasantly surprised and the ideas that came from the planning meeting were consistent with what the board had wanted.
“There is still a huge interest in trails and unbelievable support for what our board is doing. That is evident from what we saw at this meeting and in terms of the number of people using the trail. Our visitation numbers are outstanding and it’s great to see how many people are actually using the trail. This summer we estimated around 14,000 people walked the boardwalk, and that’s a very conservative low estimate. We’re still seeing high numbers of people using the trail during the fall months.”

The litter of discarded sharps in the tri-community has been a long-standing issue that has yet to be properly addressed. While there is a great need for harm reduction in the tri-community, there is also a great need for more public sharp disposal containers to be put out.
There has been some earlier dialogue about this issue, but what it ultimately boils down to is the severe lack of sharps disposal containers in public places and no one wanting to seem to take ownership of that responsibility.
The Pas Bear Clan Patrol has been busy once again picking up discovered discarded sharps in various places throughout the tri-community. Just this month alone, The Pas Bear Clan Patrol has received an overwhelming number of calls about discarded sharps. They were notified of sharps found at Margaret Barbour Collegiate and behind North of 53 Industrial.

31 Paramedics from across Manitoba attended an Awards Ceremony last week at Government House, hosted by the Honourable Anita Neville, Lt. Governor of Manitoba. They were honored with the Governor General of Canada Exemplary Service Medals. These Awards are part of the Canadian Honours System, for members of Pre-Hospital Emergency Medical System. They must have served Canada at least twenty years in a meritorious manner with the highest standard of good conduct and seen as an example for others to follow. Recipients came from Winnipeg Fire/Paramedic Service, STARS, North, South and West Districts of Shared Health Emergency Medical Services.
The North District had its largest presentation of Awards, with seven Recipients.
Jody Ssuki, Quality Officer, Flin Flon. Robert Trubiak, Manager, Flin Flon.
Carol Ross, EMR, Cranberry Portage. Dennis Fourre, Paramedic, Grand Rapids.
Jarett Ketcheson,
Manager, The Pas. Cam Ritzer, Executive Director Allied Health.
All received their Medal for 20 years of Exemplary Service.
And Darren Baker, Regional Director of Emergency Medical Services, received the next highest Honor. His First Silver Bar, for 30 years of service.
Of the 2,200 Paramedics in Manitoba, Only 263 have achieved 20 years, only 67 have achieved 30 years, and only 10 have achieved 40 years.
Ken Gurba, Chairperson
Manitoba EMS Awards Committee

During the pandemic, it became more apparent that there needs to be healthy and positive coping mechanisms for students. Students come to class from different backgrounds, experiences and home lives that all have an impact on their ability to focus and learn. Swan Valley School Division (SVSD) recognized this need, which led staff to create a program to apply for funding to assist in giving students a space with activities to help them reset and resume learning.
“In 2020, the SVSD recognized the need to improve the quality of our student’s mental health in order for them to be successful in school,” said SVSD Student Services Achievement Coordinator Patti Hack. “Based on neuroscience, and the research from top trauma specialists such as Dr. Bruce Perry and Dr. Stuart Shanker, we created a four-prong approach to address these needs.”
“The four prongs are first to create a co-regulation room in each school,” said SVSD Counsellor Kerrilynn Behrman. “According to research, there is a correlation between adverse childhood experiences such as abuse, poverty, and parental addictions; and later in life social, emotional and psychological struggles. The one thing that can help them off that trajectory is having one person they feel connected to. Dr. Stuart Shanker’s research also indicates that in order to be successful in school, we need to be connected and regulated so that we can access the cortex or thinking part of our brain. There are many different ways that we can regulate our bodies and nervous systems that are incorporated into the co-regulation room.”
“The co-regulation room has an active area with stationary bikes, mini trampolines, swings, and gliders that help students upregulate,” said SVSD Counsellor Jocelyn Bender. “There is a quiet area with bubble towers and rocking chairs that help students calm their autonomic nervous system. The third area of the room is an expressive area with arts, crafts, and sand trays or games. The co-regulation room also has a caring, trained staff member who connects with the students and helps them choose up to three activities to help them regulate and return to class, ready to learn.
“The students and activities are tracked to ensure the choices are effective. This room is a proactive approach, not a punishment, for all students in the school, as everyone gets dysregulated from time to time. Some are scheduled for regular 15-minute intervals in the day, others may be drop-ins from time to time, depending on life events.”
“The second prong is educating all staff on trauma based on neuroscience and Dr. Bruce Perry’s neurosequential model of therapeutics,” said Hack. “Staff have learned about trauma, its impact on the brain, and tools to help their students.”
“The third prong is teaching all the students about their brains and therapeutic tools that they can use during difficult times,” said Behrman. “They learn about the parts of their brain and make a play dough brain, and how to listen to their bodies to identify and name how they feel. Students then learn different tools in a sequential way, based on neuroscience, to calm their bodies and become regulated. These include body-based tools such as breathing, mindfulness, muscle tension and relaxation, and butterfly hugs and tapping. Later in the year, cognitive tools such as helpful versus unhelpful thinking and how to change our brain channel, as well as empathy and gratitude are learned. In each session, students add a tool to their toolbox and at the end of the year go home with a toolbox full of ideas to help them become regulated through difficult times.
“The final prong was to educate parents about what we are doing and we created a video that can be found on our school division’s website,” said Bender.
Through the Teacher’s Idea Fund, SVSD has been successful in receiving funds to not only pilot the program but to build and expand it to other schools in the division.
“In the fall of 2020, we applied for the Teacher’s Idea Fund with the Manitoba Government and received $15,000 to pilot it in one school, which was Taylor School,” said Hack. “With its success, we then applied the following two years to continue to build and use the full framework in Taylor, Heyes, Benito, Bowsman and Minitonas schools. Swan River Ecole School will be using two of the prongs this year; the co-regulation room and staff training. In the following two years, we received $150,000 to cover staffing and materials to facilitate this program and its framework.
We currently have funding until the end of the 2023/2024 school year.”
This program will focus on elementary and middle school-aged students, with the goal being that by the time they reach high school, they will have all the positive and healthy coping mechanisms they need to be successful in learning.
“The framework has currently been used from students in Kindergarten to Grade 8,” said Behrman. “It has been incorporated in their daily learning by having access to the co-regulation rooms and knowing what the purpose of the room is and how to use it.”
“As well, staff are encouraged to continue using the classroom tools taught, as we know repetition helps create habit,” said Bender. “Their coping toolboxes they create throughout the year are kept in the classroom and we encourage the teachers to have the students use the items in the room when they become dysregulated.”
This program was developed by a local staff member and is being taught to other staff in the division to implement with students.
“The program initially was created and facilitated by Kerrilynn Behrman,” said Hack. “Kerrilynn has a Master’s Degree in Counselling Psychology and training in Dr. Perry’s NME model, as well as play therapy and various therapies used in classroom activities.
“In 2022, the school vision recognized the importance of fostering positive mental health and hired a second counsellor, Jocelyn Bender. Jocelyn is a long-time educator at SVSD. She has a Master’s Degree in both Special Education and Guidance and Counselling and has training in child development, behaviourism, and various therapies including play therapy.
“Together the two have trained the educational assistants who manage the co-regulation rooms in trauma, what co-regulation is and how to manage them,” said Hack.

On Oct. 19, local residents were invited to the first open house of the newly renamed Swan Valley Fire Department (SVFD), formed through the amalgamation of the Swan River Fire Department and the Thunder West Fire Department. Here, SVFD firefighter Joel Fedorchuk (left) assists Grant Rewerts (right) with the fire hose...

A lack of urgency and compete resulted in the Parkland Rangers winning just one of three games over the weekend.

In the team’s annual Hockey Fights Cancer Game, the Brandon Wheat Kings scored five times on the power play en route to a 9-2 win.

The next day, it was the Norman North Stars which took advantage of Parkland’s penalty kill, scoring three times in a 4-2 victory.

Parkland got a measure of revenge, Sunday afternoon, when they connected four times on the man advantage in a 10-1 rout of their northern counterparts.

Rangers head coach Tyler Carefoot said Brandon’s top players proved to be hard to play against, which is something he hopes his players can take away from that game.

“That was the message that we wanted to have overall, as an entire team. We don’t have three or four players that are going to break the game open. We’re a team that has to work together,” he said.

Prior to Saturday’s loss, Carefoot asked his players what type of player to they want to be.

“All these players and families aspire and hope that they’re going to play at higher levels of hockey. In order to do that, you need to ask yourself if you are a competitor. If you are tough to play against and you have that internal drive to be the ultimate competitor. And (Saturday) we lacked that,” he said.

The Rangers turned things around, Sunday, and earned the two points to build some momentum going into next weekend, when they host the winless Kenora Thistles, Saturday at 7:30 p.m., and Sunday at 1:30 p.m.

Despite the number of power-play goals the Rangers gave up, Carefoot said that is not why they lost.

“It just comes down to being ready to play and being hard to play against and tough on pucks. It doesn’t matter what level of hockey you watch, whether it’s the NHL, the junior leagues, the Western League, junior A, the Kings, all the language is the same. And that’s the question you have to ask yourself. Am I hard to play against?” he said.

“Going forward, we have to have that mindset. Every player. You have to be on the right side of pucks. All of us need to buy in. And that’s the message going forward.”

Three Parkland businesses figured prominently as Fusion Credit Union held the finals for its 2023 Community Infusion program, last week.

The Bloom n’ Bean in Dauphin finished the competition in second place, receiving $4,000 to support its plan for a space that welcomes customers with the inviting aromas of premium floral arrangements and specialty coffee while fostering a sense of community and warmth.

Dauphin’s Grow Media Group and Total Equipment Care Service each placed in the top five earning $2,000 each to progress their businesses.

Grow Media Group is a social media marketing agency, working with businesses and organizations across the country through social media management, video production and photography services.

Total Equipment Care Service exists in the realm of sports and PPE cleaning, offering eco-friendly cleaning and maintenance solutions that not only prioritize safety, but also save on wear and tear, ensuring that equipment is always game-ready while extending its lifespan, reducing environmental impacts and saving money.

The big winner in the evening was Danielle’s Studio 12, earning $20,000 in grant funding.

Danielle’s Studio Twelve is the building blocks for the start of a non-profit organization that will provide support to women suffering from infertility/loss/postpartum depression in southwestern Manitoba.

For the past three years, Community Infusion, a business idea competition that infuses economic growth and prosperity into communities served by the credit union, has supported entrepreneurs with either a new business idea, or existing business they are looking to grow or purchase.

An agriculture project in which 160 acres of canola was planted will benefit the Dauphin and District Community Foundation.

Jason Beyette spearheaded the grow project starting in the spring, with various sponsors donating everything that was needed to make the project a success.

“We had received donations from various retailers. The Co-op was instrumental in getting the seed organized for the field and then they followed it up with the chemicals to spray the crop,” he said. “And we’ve had other retailers, like 360 Ag Consulting. They provided the agronomy for us and told us what we needed to do on the field.”

Reit-Syd Equipment looked after all the custom spraying, as well as donating two combines to harvest the crop, which took place, Oct. 17.

“And the Michaeleski family has been trucking it into town for us to the elevator,” Beyette added.

The idea came from one of the DDCF board members, Beyette said.

“Sherrie Volk had noted that in her hometown of Elkhorn, their community foundation had done a grow project and she thought it would be neat to do that here,” he said.

The land used for the project was owned by the late Peter Sklepowich.

Beyette does not yetknow how much the project will raise and it will be a while before they do.

“But we’re hoping to raise a substantial amount of money through this grow project,” he said.

Because of the success of similar grow projects as a fund-raising endeavour, Beyette feels it would be a wonderful fund-raiser for DDCF if they can get the land to do it again.

“I think retailers are very charitable in giving product to organizations to get a crop in the ground. And I think there’s always producers willing to lend a hand to help that succeed,” he said, adding his thanks to everyone who has contributed to the project. “And thank you to the foundation for taking the leap and going forward with it,” he added.

Kit Daley, DDCF executive director, said the project will have a huge impact on what the foundation can grant every year.

“Obviously, every donation helps, but the hope with this crop is it will be a substantial gift and it will increase annually what we can give back to the community. So the more projects and organizations we can support through our granting program, the better it is for our community,” she said.