The Temple Baptist Church was the site of the annual Carol Festival this past weekend (Dec. 3), with many different entertainment groups performing in front of the Swan River faithful...

The Dauphin Clippers senior girls volleyball team entered the Manitoba High School Athletic Conference AAA Volleyball Provincials as the third seed and that is exactly where they finished, capturing the bronze medal on their home court, Saturday.

Dauphin opened the tournament in the power pool, with the other top four teams. When all was said and done, the Clippers came out in fourth place, losing to Westgate (25-14, 14-25 and 12-15), Neelin (16-25 and 18-25) and Linden Christian (25-23, 22-25 and 6-15).

All four teams earned automatic berths into the quarterfinals.

That is when Dauphin faced Balmoral Hall, earning a 25-20 and 26-24 victory.

In the semifinals, the Clippers again faced Linden Christian, losing, 18-25 and 21-25.

In the bronze medal game, Dauphin defeated Westgate, 17-25, 25-22 and 15-13.

Clippers coach Chris Wolfenden was proud of his team and what they accomplished on their home court.

After losing the first set, Wolfenden told his team to just have fun.

“And they just rallied around that. It didn’t matter where we were in the match. They were dancing on the bench and they kept it light, which meant they were loose in the match and they were able to play free. And they played freely and did awesome. So I’m proud of them, for sure,” he said.

In the final two sets, the Clippers stepped up their blocking game, scoring several points off blocks.

Check this week's Dauphin Herald for the full story!

Dauphin Fire Department has been less busy so far in 2023 compared to the same period last year and fire chief Cam Abrey is okay with that.

Between Jan. 1 to Oct 31, the department responded to 201 calls compared to 206 during the same period last year, Abrey told Dauphin city councillors at their regular meeting, Nov. 27.

“So only a 2.4 per cent decrease in calls. But any downward trend is always a good trend in emergency services,” he said.

False alarms continue to account for the largest volume of calls at 37 per cent, Abrey said, followed by motor vehicle collisions at 18 per cent.

In total, 3,628 hours were spent at calls with responses to the Rural Municipality of Dauphin accounting for 19 per cent of those hours and city responses accounting for 80 per cent. The final one per cent of time was spent offering aid to neighbouring departments in the Riding Mountain Mutual Aid District.

In addition 1,854 hours were dedicated to training during regular Wednesday evening training sessions, Thursday evening classes and Manitoba Emergency Services College sponsored weekend seminars.

“We continue our firefighting level one and two class held each Thursday evening for members of the Riding Mountain Mutual Aid District,” Abrey said. “We have several members from Dauphin, as well as members from Gilbert Plains, Ochre River and Ste. Rose fire departments attending this weekly training here.”

Looking back at the year so far, Abrey said among the workshops the department has hosted was Incident Command 200 training.

“It’s an excellent training opportunity for personnel that are likely to assume a supervisory position within the incident command system,” he said. “And we believe in that, training our members for the potential of assuming that role of command.”

A vehicle extrication seminar, an advanced fire dynamics program, a Pumps Basic seminar, a Pumps Advanced seminar and an emergency vehicle driving skills seminar were also offered throughout the year.

Recently, the department hosted an instructor from Alberta, who provided 40 firefighters from across the region information about fires and extrications involving electric vehicles, Abrey added.

“We were the second location that he was instructing in Manitoba, teaching us about the electric vehicle safety regarding extrication and the fires that are associated with the lithium ion batteries,” he said. “He uses a combination of classroom theory and he actually has a cutaway vehicle of a Tesla which shows where the access for extrication is possible, the location of the batteries and what our methods of control and attack may be.”

Finally, Abrey updated council on the status of the new pumper truck, which has been ordered from Fort Garry Fire Trucks. A recent meeting with the manufacturer resulted in some changes which might affect the $828,447.90 purchase price. Abrey told councillors the emergency lighting system has been upgraded, while some equipment has been eliminated to allow for additional storage in the cabinets.

“We are currently waiting on the pricing adjustments from Fort Garry Fire Trucks and we will advise once those changes are there and how that will affect our original pricing,” he said.

Abrey added while the new truck was originally slated to replace the department’s 2002 Freightliner pumper, a decision has been made to instead replace the department’s 2011 Spartan pumper, which has been costing the department thousands of dollars to continually repair its emissions control system.

“We do have two years until the delivery of the new pumper to come up with the final decision,” he said.

The Province of Manitoba and the City of Dauphin have once again come to terms with regards to snow clearing on provincially-owned roads in the community.

Mike VanAlstyne, director of Public Works and Operations, said the province approached Dauphin with a lump sum offer of $50,000 to provide winter maintenance on the urban highway system after several years with no agreement in place. The streets in question include Main Street, Second Avenue Northwest and First Avenue Northeast.

“The Province approach us a few months ago to start discussions about it and they were able to offer, or come up with a new calculation for how much municipalities should get,” VanAlstyne said, adding city council approved the deal at its Nov. 27 regular meeting. “We felt that this was more fair than previous offers had been. And we know that we can provide probably a better level of service than they can at the moment, just with their staff levels and some challenges they’re facing.”

VanAlstyne added the winter maintenance will still take a team approach with plenty of communication between the two levels of government.

“The Manitoba government has offered to continue the sanding and salting services, so the ice control stuff, and we’re going to take on more of the plowing. We’re just able to prioritize it better than they can with their set levels of service,” VanAlstyne said. “Their set levels of service is lower than they probably should be, and where they would want them to be from a community of our size, but they have to follow their policies. So this is where the opportunity is there for us to recover most of our costs and to provide everyone with a better level of service.”

The end result should be easier passage on some of the main routes in the heart of the city, VanAlstyne added.

“The hope is that we can provide everyone with a better level of service than the previous few years,” he said, adding it is still unclear whether the $50,000 sum will fully cover the costs. “We’ll have to wait and see, I guess it depends on the winter. Right now, financially, we’re enjoying the warm weather and the lack of snow, but that could turn around quick on us. We’ll have to see how it plays out.”

VanAlstyne added that putting the provincially-owned roads back into the snow clearing mix should not adversely affect the level of service in other parts of the city.

“I don’t think it will be too bad. Our priority routes and our emergency routes and school routes will all still remain a priority, as well as our sidewalks and whatnot around the schools. We plan to address everything the same as we have,” he said. “The residential streets might see a 12-hour delay compared to where they used to be, but I don’t think it’s going to be a burden on the community. If those main arteries are opened up, we should see a lot of relief.”

Dauphin Lake is facing a health crisis, but it just might make it through the challenging time with a little help from its friends.

A group, Friends of Dauphin Lake, has been formed to address health and vitality issues facing the water body with an eye to ensuring its future as a residential area and tourist destination.

The immediate problem, says group member and long-time advocate Bill Griffin, is weed overgrowth threatening the future of the lake’s south basin.

“The lake is dying and way back when I was chairman of the Lake Advisory Board in the 1990s, I said the south end of the lake will be a marsh within 25 to 30 years and everybody laughed at me,” Griffin said. “We’ve had weeds the last three, four, five years and then this year they just went nuts with low water, high temperatures, lots of new sediment in front of the Dauphin Beach area this year. You couldn’t use a boat, you couldn’t get out with a boat, couldn’t water-ski, you couldn’t whatever.”

Griffin added the weed beds present in recreational areas are more than inconvenient, they are a safety concern.

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

Thousands of kilograms of fresh, frozen and packaged perishable grocery items – including deli products and fruit and veggies – had to be disposed of after an equipment failure at the local Co-op grocery store.

Sometime after 7 p.m. Monday (Nov. 27) after the store shut down for the evening, the store’s main compressor providing cooling for freezers and display cabinets went down.

Find out more in this week’s issue.

CALLING ALL COOKS!

We at the Dauphin Herald want YOU to submit your awesome holiday recipes so we can share them with everyone in the Parkland this holiday season! We're looking for anything from desserts to sides to drinks and more!

Email yours to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. and it could end up in our Christmas Special Section in December!

Deadline is Thursday December 7th!

Christmas can be a financially stressful time of year as many people struggle to just to provide the basic necessities, never mind the added expenses of the holiday season. The Pas Family Resource Centre (TPFRC) is raising funds for their annual Christmas Hamper Drive, which helps those in need to have a magical Christmas too.
“Christmas is a joyous occasion for many and also a very difficult time for others, particularly those who find themselves struggling to make financial ends meet, which can contribute to holistic unwellness,” said TPFRC Executive Director Renee Kastrukoff. “The cost of groceries, rents, gasoline, utilities and many other basic essentials in life are at an all-time high. The rising costs of living are not being matched by rising incomes and this creates financial hardship for many, including families whose income earners work at lower paying jobs.

The field of trades is being more recognized than ever before, as more students enroll in trade related fields. University College of the North (UCN) has been a leader when it comes to providing education and training in the field of trades, and recently one of their instructors was nominated for an Apprenticeship Manitoba Awards of Distinction Instructor the Year.
Emile Paradis has spent many years working in trades from an early age and holds a few different tickets in various sectors of the trades.
“I started working in trades at a really early age,” said UCN Instructor Emile Paradis. “I worked at a welding fabricating shop close to my home community in Ste. Rose, where I grew up. I left home at 18 years old and went north, where I began working in the mining industry. I ended up going into the apprenticeship program when I was 19 years old, and then four years later I became a Red Seal Journeyman Millwright.

In the world of building and engineering, it still seems to be a male-dominated industry, but a former Valley resident has been breaking ground in this field, as she is building infrastructure for the future. Sarah Soprovich has completed her Masters in Engineering and has worked on projects in Canada and the United States.
Her interest in engineering came from her love of math and science in school.
“We moved to Swan River from Winnipeg in 1991 when I was one year old,” said Sarah Soprovich. “As a kid, I was mostly interested in sports, playing volleyball, basketball, and fastball, as well as snowboarding at Thunder Hill. I graduated from the Swan Valley Regional Secondary School in 2008 and moved to Winnipeg to do my Bachelor of Science in Civil Engineering at the University of Manitoba, followed by my Master of Engineering in Civil Engineering at the University of Calgary. I’ve always wanted to do my Masters and my employer was willing to help financially for a Masters in Engineering. It was a course-based program and I mainly took courses in Project Management.
“I was always really strong in math and science in school. I initially thought that I wanted to be an architect, but my high school physics teacher told me that the engineers were the ones who applied the science and that I should look into that instead.”
There are several different fields in engineering, and if one is not in that industry, it’s quite easy to assume it’s all the same thing when it’s not.
“Engineering is effectively the practice of using science, math, and technology to solve problems,” said Soprovich. “Civil engineering is very broad but usually refers to the design of infrastructure that the public regularly uses. Civil engineering can include structural transportation, water treatment, hydrology, hydraulics, and geotechnicals.
“I’m a structural engineer and am mainly focused on bridge design, so the majority of my projects have included bridge and structure design. I have worked for Stantec Consulting Ltd. for my entire career. I started with them as a summer student between my fourth and fifth years of university.”
Soprovich started her career in civil engineering in Manitoba but has worked on several keynote projects in Calgary and in Chicago as well.
“I actually started in Winnipeg, and it included a lot of construction inspection on rural and urban bridge replacement projects, along with some design and eventually project management,” said Soprovich.
“When I moved to Calgary, I was involved in a few projects, including the Green Line, which is the design of Calgary’s future LRT line running north-south through the city; the design of the Airport Trail Overpass, which is a two-span concrete bridge on 19th Street over Airport Trail; and two pedestrian tunnels at 90th Avenue and Southland Drive.
“Chicago was amazing,” said Soprovich. “I moved to Chicago in 2019, to work on the Chicago Transit Authority’s Red and Purple Modernization project, which is the largest and most high-profile project I have ever worked on. I was leading a segment of the project that included 2 km of new structure and track, as well as four new stations and two temporary stations on the Red and Purple lines of the El Train, Chicago’s transit.
“I joined the project about six months in, which was pretty wild, and ended up having to come back to Canada in March 2020, while continuing to work on the project remotely for about three more years. The project is still under construction and we won an award in May 2023, due to the number of women we had leading the project, which is rare in engineering.
“As a result, I was able to travel back down to Chicago for the awards ceremony and see how construction has progressed,” said Soprovich. “The project was very high-stress, but I met some of my best friends at Stantec due to it.”
Soprovich is back residing in Winnipeg and working on a lot of municipal projects. These projects are smaller in scale than some of the projects she was a part of in Calgary and in Chicago.
“Since I have started working in Winnipeg again, the projects are a bit smaller scale than what I have worked on elsewhere, but it is still rewarding to complete projects in rural communities,” said Soprovich. “In 2022, there was significant flooding in Manitoba and I spent much of the summer inspecting damaged bridges and culverts. We have now moved on to replacing this infrastructure and I have completed or am working on projects in the Town of Neepawa and the Municipalities of Souris-Glenwood, Ethelbert, and Lorne.”
Out of all the projects Soprovich has been a part of during her career, the one that stands out the most was the one in Chicago.
“The Chicago project is absolutely the largest and most high-profile project I have worked on,” said Soprovich. “It is a $2 billion design-build project and we worked hand in hand with both the contractor and the owner.”
Working in civil engineering is still a male-dominated field, but Soprovich has been working hard at training and mentoring women to become engineers. Slowly the field of engineering is becoming more diverse as more women are entering studies in university.
“Civil engineering is one of the more diverse engineering fields, but it is still primarily male,” said Soprovich. “I’m on a few committees that are trying to address this, and the goal overall is for 30 percent of the engineering field to be female by 2030; however, progress has been slow moving. On my current team, I have two female Engineers In Training (EIT) and a female student. I’m very passionate about providing them mentorship for their careers.”
Soprovich is part of a couple of initiatives that are geared toward getting more women into the field of engineering and consulting.
“The Association of Consulting Engineering Companies Canada - Technical Women in Consulting Engineering (ACEC-TWICE) is actually more focused around retention and growth of women in the consulting field,” said Soprovich. “A lot of what we do is promote awareness, often through hosting events with speakers, networking, and a yearly reception in March.
“I’m also involved with two committees with Engineers Geoscientists Manitoba (EGM)- Engineering Changes Lives and the 2030 Coalition, which are both focused on increasing diversity in the industry and meeting that 30 percent goal by 2030.”
Soprovich recently won the 2023 Early Achievement Award for her work in the industry. She was recognized by her peers working in the industry and so far, it’s the start of more big things to come for her career.
“This was through our professional association, EGM,” said Soprovich. “It was really an honour to be acknowledged for my hard work, and I am truly grateful for the team and mentors I have at Stantec who have supported the development of my career thus far.
“I would like to continue to work on large, multi-disciplinary projects both locally and across the country, and continue to see the work that I do come to life to make other’s lives easier.”