A donation from the local Cargill elevator has secured an important piece of equipment for the fire departments which make up the Riding Mountain Mutual Aid District.

The local agribusiness provided $4,400, which was used to purchase a coffer dam and pencil auger that is used in grain entrapment situations that require rescue efforts, Dauphin fire chief and Riding Mountain Mutual Aid co-ordinator Cam Abrey said.

In a release, local Cargill employees expressed their pleasure at being able to partner with the mutual aid district in increasing safety levels throughout the region.

“The Cargill Dauphin location is pleased to help support the Riding Mountain Mutual Aid District safety program through a donation of life saving grain engulfment prevention equipment. Ensuring safe facility operations is our first and most important focus and we are proud to partner with our local fire departments.”

On Sept. 7, Ethelbert firefighters Roger Stratuliak and Andrew Spek demonstrated the equipment for the staff at Cargill and thanked them on behalf of the district departments for the generous donation.

Read the full story in this week's TMC Dauphin Herald!

The list of local candidates in the upcoming Manitoba municipal elections is growing.

In the city of Dauphin there is still just two contestants in the mayoralty race - David Bosiak and Kerri Riehl.

While several packages have been picked up and remain outstanding, those registered for the councillor vote include Jason Alf, Randy Daley, Ted Rea, Joe Houston, Michael Winter, Bev Sarkonak, Sharon Riehl and Carter Taylor-Luke.

In the Rural Municipality of Dauphin, Ernie Sirski and Tom Gibbs have registered in the race for reeve, while council papers have been filed by Jack Bremner, Ken Shewchuk, Midge Sametz, Ken Plustwa and Ron Ryz.

The race for school board trustees has yet to register a candidate although Senior Election Official Kirk Dawson says several packages have been picked up by potential candidates.

With the registration period for those seeking council seats in the Oct. 26 general municipal election opening last week, Kirk Dawson has been busy.

The Senior Election Official for the City of Dauphin and the Rural Municipality of Dauphin said inquiries from prospective candidates and requests for registration packages have been brisk.

“There is tons of interest. (In the City) We’ve already got five registered and none of those are incumbents,” Dawson said. “We’ve had a few other inquiries beyond that. So for the first week basically, it’s under a week actually, it’s been very active.”

At this point, registered candidates for city council include Joe Houston, Ted Rea, Michael Winter, Carter Luke and Sharon Riehl while the mayorality is being contested by David Bosiak and Kerri Riehl.

In the RM two candidates have registered with incumbent councillor Tom Gibbs entering the race for reeve while incumbent reeve Ron Ryz has registered to contest for a council seat.

“Again there are a couple of other packages out, where we’re waiting for the registrations,” Dawson added.

Prospective candidates will have an opportunity to get a better feel for the job of an elected official when the City and RM hold prospective candidates forums, at the RM of Dauphin Office, July 13, at 7 p.m. for rural candidates and at City Hall, July 14, at 7 p.m. for city candidates.

At each forum municipal staff will lay out what is involved in being a councillor in terms of duties and time commitments while the two governments have partnered to bring in former Association of Manitoba Municipalities executive director Joe Masi as a keynote speaker each night.

“He’s been around politics for a long time and he’s going to be coming out and talking about what makes good councils and what doesn’t,” Dawson said. “It’s for anybody that’s considering running, to give them a little better perspective on what it might look like if they did put their name forward.”

While he waits for other registration packages to be returned Dawson is busy preparing for polling day. Currently he is hiring voting officials and assistant voting officials. About 30 people will be needed to assist with the city election while another 10 are required to help out in the RM process.

“These are the people that work at the polls on election day and the advanced polls.” he said, adding he already has an extensive list of interested applicants.

Anyone interested in getting on that list can contact city hall at 204-622-3200 or by email at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

“We’ll probably start phoning next week. We have a list of the people in the past and I’ve got several other people that have mentioned their names, but I can always take more names. It’s sort of a first come, first serve thing,” Dawson said. “We’ll certainly get their names down and as they go down the list we’ll make sure we consider them.”

The nomination period for both head of council and council positions runs Sept. 14 to 20 with Sept. 21 as the withdrawal deadline.

Advance polling runs Oct. 3 to 21, and election day is Oct. 26, with polls open from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m.

Ecole Macneill principal Monique Lefebvre welcomes students back to the first day of school, last Wednesday.

There was an air of excitement among students, staff and parents at the French immersion school in Dauphin, to be returning to a “normal” school environment, free from many of the public health restrictions which guided education over the last two years.

There will be 193 instructional days in the MVSD 2022-23 school year.

Carissa Caruk-Ganczar’s work at The Hub in Dauphin is not going unnoticed.

The program manager and leadership coach at the local entrepreneurship centre and coworking space has been nominated for a prestigious Award of Distinction from the Economic Developers Association of Manitoba (EDAM).

“It’s exciting and a great honour in terms to be recognized. We do so much of this work in our field that isn’t done for public recognition, or even being able to talk about, because so much of the work that happens in all the economic development fields is behind the scenes working with private pieces,” Caruk-Ganczar said.

“So to be recognized by peers who we’ve worked with a long time across the industry is quite an honour honestly. Just to be able to know that they see those things and they see the work that is done and the approaches that we take, to the industry and also to work with any of our partners across the province, as well.

“It’s a humbling piece to have the light shone on you, but it’s definitely the work of a team, that’s for sure.”

Get the full story in this week's Dauphin Herald!

Set to embark on a school year that will more closely resemble a prepandemic environment, there is no shortage of excitement among the educators at Mountain View School Division (MVSD).

“It’s such an air of positivity that’s out there amongst staff and amongst administrators,” MVSD superintendent, CEO Stephen Jaddock said. “I just met with our admin council group yesterday . . . we had lots of optimism surrounding the type of startup that we’ve got going this year.”

Students return to MVSD classrooms tomorrow (Sept. 7) and Jaddock said everything is in place to ensure a smooth start to the school year.

“We’re at more relaxed COVID-19 protocols. So we’re not under a mask mandate nor are we under any sort of distancing requirements,” Jaddock said. “So we’re hoping that it’s probably one of the most normal startups we’ve had in the last number of years.” Jaddock added their will be some health measures left in place such as opportunities for frequent hand washing, hand sanitizer placed strategically throughout schools and frequent cleaning of high touch surfaces.

As well, school staff will work closely with parents to ensure children who are displaying symptoms stay home. “The kind of things that we’ve had in place through the pandemic, some of those will not be disappearing,” Jaddock said. “And I think that extra vigilance on making sure that everyone was healthy at school had an effect on the overall numbers of colds and flus that we had. We saw a reduction in that.” Jaddock added the early part of the year will be used to evaluate where there might be a need for MVSD to invest some extra money received from the province to support needs surrounding post-pandemic academic needs. The division received a share of $11 million allocated by the province at the end of the last school year, as well as a yet-to-be-determined share of an additional $6.5 million announced last week.

“We’ve got some ideas as to how we might spend that and we shared that with our board of trustees. We’re just now waiting to see what happens when startup actually is occurring in all of our schools,” Jaddock said. The second allotment, Jaddock added, is more focused on students who left the public school system during the pandemic and are now returning and the need for additional staffing which might be required. Weight was also given to the social economic status of families based on Statistics Canada data. “What they were recognizing there is those families that had lower SES, had more struggles even when we were in the remote learning phase,” Jaddock said. “Maybe some of them didn’t even have the luxury of having a computer, or if they had a computer, they didn’t have internet access. I think this was more of an attempt to bring equity to the allotment that was going out to school divisions.”

A third factor in determining the allotment is considering children in care.

“Again recognizing that those children were more challenged to accomplish the learning goals that they’d want to accomplish in the last two-and-a-half-years,” Jaddock said. “Part of this, too, is to look at student well-being and mental health. It’s not a huge amount of money.

“I guess what we’d really like to do is just look at where we’ve got some hot spots and where we’ve got some additional challenges that we would like to address through that additional funding.”

Canada’s National Ukrainian Festival hosted a fund-raising barbecue outside its office on Third Avenue Northeast, Wednesday, to mark Ukraine’s Independence Day.

Proceeds from the event were earmarked for next year’s festival after $2 from every order was donated to UHelpUkraine, a Canadian organization supporting the Ukrainian Ministry of Defence. 

The list of local candidates in the upcoming Manitoba municipal elections is growing.

In the city of Dauphin there is still just two contestants in the mayoralty race - David Bosiak and Kerri Riehl.

While several packages have been picked up and remain outstanding, those registered for the councillor vote include Jason Alf, Randy Daley, Ted Rea, Joe Houston, Michael Winter, Bev Sarkonak, Sharon Riehl and Carter Taylor-Luke.

In the Rural Municipality of Dauphin, Ernie Sirski and Tom Gibbs have registered in the race for reeve, while council papers have been filed by Jack Bremner, Ken Shewchuk, Midge Sametz, Ken Plustwa and Ron Ryz.

The race for school board trustees has yet to register a candidate although Senior Election Official Kirk Dawson says several packages have been picked up by potential candidates.

Jim Perchaluk of the Parkland Ukrainian Family Fund accepts a cheque for $1,203 from general manager Wade Thiele, while, from left, Dean Cooley, family fund committee members Don Tarrant and Larry Hrytsay, and the dealership’s Business Development manager Alyson Sametz and Marketing co-ordinator Taylor Cooley join them for the presentation.

The funds were raised at the Dauphin Ford Anniversary Barbecue held in June.

Dauphin put on its best face last Thursday as judges from Communities in Bloom (CiB) toured the city evaluating beautification efforts and a variety of other criteria such as environmental action, heritage conservation, tree management, landscape and plant and floral displays.

I just want to say your town looks fabulous you’re doing a really great job. Kudos to you, you’re well on your way to making this sparkle,” said Susan Ellis, national chairperson of the CiB board of directors who was judging the community along with Alex Pearl from Centerville, Ohio.

Dauphin is competing internationally this year against Ingria, Italy; Velika Polana, Slovenia; Glaslough Tidy Towns, Ireland; Lewisburg, West Virginia; and Sussex, New Brunswick.

“In order to be here in this competition you have to have been invited and there are only five other communities in the world in the international smallest category,” Ellis said.

Get the full rundown in this week's Dauphin Herald!