The saws and nail guns should be in action real soon.

Mountain View School Division (MVSD) and the provincial government are proceeding with plans to develop 104 new child care spaces at Roblin Elementary School as part of the government’s child care expansion initiative.

Read all about it in this week’s Review.

The Home Routes concert series is back on the road again and kicking off their first concert this month with singer and songwriter Onna Lou. Onna Lou is from Buenos Aires, Argentina and her music has flares of Latin American rhythms including Argentine folklore, flamenco, tango and jazz. Onna Lou has a degree in Contemporary Writing and Production from Berklee College of Music and another in Classical Music Composition from Universidad Católica Argentina in Buenos Aires.
She has worked with Latin Grammy winner Javier Limón and performed at the 2013 Latin Grammy Awards with Alejandro Sanz. Then she met and performed with internationally acclaimed Spanish singer and songwriter Rosana at her New York show during her USA tour.

The Pas and Area Animal Shelter has a new shelter manager working to keep things going and helping pets to find their forever home. A current volunteer has taken her love of animals and stepped up to fill the role last month.
“I was actively doing the role in summer with the summer students as a temporary position and enjoyed it immensely,” said The Pas and Area Animal Shelter Manager Tina Donaldson. “The shelter cannot run on volunteers alone and we unfortunately had no one apply when advertised to do the managerial position.

The art of conversation seems to be getting lost the more we use technology. It’s not very often that people have the chance to engage in a deep and meaningful conversation about what they think about life. A couple weeks ago, La Philomobile Philosopher Dominique Poulin stopped in the community to have random philosophical chats with people about whatever they wanted to talk about.
Poulin comes from Quebec and was on her way to Lethbridge, AB, and during her travels, she was stopping in various communities along the way and having conversations with people from the area.
“I love to travel, explore and observe, but mostly it’s because, like Simone Weil, I believe that there is only one reason for all humanity, and we become strangers and impenetrable to each other when we stray from it,” said Dominique Poulin. “Plus, in this age of polarization and isolation, there is such a need for public places where we can listen and learn from each other face to face.”

Pow Wow Pitch has been supporting Indigenous entrepreneurs since 2021 and has recently had their 2024 finalists complete their final pitch for the competition. Opaskwayak Cree Nation (OCN) member Simon Monteith, known as Simon the Scientist, has made his way back into the Pow Wow Pitch circle.
“I pitched the same concept as I have in the past few years, but this time, some of my goals are different,” said Monteith. “I would like to focus more on in-person events rather than online.”
Monteith has had a busy year so far, with big plans ahead for the future. He has focused a lot more on attending events in person and expanding his presentations and teachings in science.

Voters in three wards of Mountain View School Division will head to the polls at the end of the month to select four trustees to fill vacancies at the board table.

On Oct. 30, voters in Ward 1 (Roblin) will choose two new trustees, while those in Ward 2 (Gilbert Plains, Grandview and Ethelbert) will elect one trustee and voters in Dauphin will select one new Ward 4 trustee.

Often it can be difficult to get the information you need to make an informed choice in the ballot booth and the further you head down the levels of governance, the more difficult that quest can be.

With no formal candidate forums or debates announced, the Dauphin Herald and the Roblin Review partnered with the Manitoba Teachers’ Society to ask the candidates six questions so voters can get a better idea of exactly who is hoping to help shape the local education system

Questions asked included:

1. Reflecting on your life experience, what has prepared you to run for school trustee?
2. If you are elected, what would your priorities be as a Mountain View School Division trustee?
3. What would you do to make those priorities a reality?
4. There has been a great deal of talk about racism and discrimination at the board level in Mountain View. How would you work to combat the hurtful misinformation that has been spread in recent months, commit to Reconciliation and repair the harm caused to students and families in the division?
5. What would being a school trustee mean to you?
6. How can voters reach you to discuss further?

Eight of the nine candidates responded. Their candidates’ unedited answers follow, sorted in order of where their name will appear on the ballot.

To see the full Q&A, read this week’s edition of the Dauphin Herald.

On Oct. 3, the first official harvest of the SVRSS Growcer Farm took place, celebrating the multi-year effort it took to get this hydroponics project off the ground, housed right on the campus of the regional secondary school.
The hydroponics farm – which uses carefully managed water, nutrients, light and temperature in a year-round controlled environment – with the first few rounds of produce being different varieties of lettuce to start with, soon to be followed by some other leafy greens.
Known as the Rural and Northern Food Security Initiative, the cutting-edge program aims to develop a regional research and training centre that focuses on growing and managing health and traditional foods within local, rural and northern communities.
The initiative not only aims to provide students with access to nutritious food but also equips them with essential lifelong skills in leadership, sustainability, environment and agriculture.
“The process starts out with seedlings getting planted in what’s called rockwool with no soil, being fed nutrients in the water,” said SVRSS teacher Kari Goethe, who leads the Environmental Management curriculum and is a part of teaching the students who are actively managing the Growcer farm.
“The plants stay in that seedling area until they grow their first true leaves in about two weeks. Then they get moved over to the main racks and can stay there for about 4-6 weeks, depending on the cultivar that has been planted.”
The first seedlings planted at SVRSS were on Aug. 16.
Goethe also explained how students and supervisors monitor the hydroponics system every day, testing the pH and specific nutrients that the plants need, as well as temperature, humidity, salts and so on.
The Growcer farm also comes equipped with its own sensors so that the system can be monitored remotely, and can be able to send out alerts if there is a metric that is outside of the levels of where it is supposed to be.
The managers of the Growcer farm will be consulting with the cafeteria and Culinary Arts program at the SVRSS to see how they can collaborate and make use of the produce, so some of the leafy green foods that will be available in the SVRSS cafeteria this year could have been grown just outside of the regional school in an unassuming, white building.
At this time, there are six students registered and taking the course where the primary focus of the course is maintaining the Growcer farm. Other students in the school have also had the opportunity to at least view the farm and learn what it’s about and how it works.
“The students are really enjoying it,” said Goethe. “Everybody has been really positive with their experience in there so far.”
Goethe also showed her appreciation to all the community partners that made the project possible, which has included the Sapotaweyak Cree Nation, Wuskwi Sipihk First Nation, and the Swan River Kinsmen Club, with additional support from the Manitoba government, Farm Credit Canada and Westman Communications Group. The initiative has interested local First Nations communities as it opens up the possibility of starting greenhouse opportunities of their own to provide their communities with year-round nutritional produce products.
With SVSD’s educational expertise, the program envisions having a research and training academy where students can learn hands-on skills and return to their home communities to implement what they’ve learned.
The Growcer farm will educate Environmental Management students and Culinary Arts students directly. Those outside of those programs also benefit as this resource helps to alleviate food insecurity and foster a greater appreciation for local food systems.
“By establishing a Growcer farm at our school, we can provide our students with the skills they need to thrive in an evolving job market,” said Goethe. “They will leave with job-ready skills and a deeper understanding of sustainable food production.”

The Aurora Borealis have been lighting up the northern hemisphere of our globe last week as geomagnetic storms have been creating intense Northern Lights.

With no formal candidate forums or debates announced, the Dauphin Herald and the Roblin Review partnered with the Manitoba Teachers’ Society to ask the candidates six questions so voters can get a better idea of exactly who is hoping to help shape the local education system.

Eight of the nine candidates responded. Their candidates’ unedited answers appear in the next two issues of the Review.

Want to know more about the candidates in Wards 1 (Roblin) and 2 (Grandview)? Pick up a copy of this week’s paper.

Halfway through his mandate, Dauphin mayor David Bosiak is pleased with what has been accomplished and excited about what the next two years might hold.
That excitement is piqued even more considering the culture of co-operation and teamwork that is prevalent around the council table and throughout City Hall.
“The willingness to communicate. The willingness to share ideas. The willingness to have discussions even though we don’t have to agree on things, that we’re not having to fact check each other. We are talking about realistic things,” Bosiak said.
“I can probably speak on behalf of the entire council that we are all motivated to make Dauphin a better place. Not better by cutting things or reducing spending, but by providing beneficial and needed public good. We want to do everything possible that a city can do to make it a great place to live, a great place to own a business, a great place to want to own a business.”
While talk around Dauphin often revolves around the recreation opportunities and natural beauty that surrounds the community, a list of the city’s attributes has to include the educational opportunities, the world class health care availability and the volume of development currently under way.
But perhaps Dauphin’s strongest attribute is its people, he said, who consisently step up when called upon, such as during the recent Manitoba Summer Games.
“We have positive energy. We’ve had tremendous success with our events getting back up and running post-COVID,” he said.
“There’s an enthusiasm with the volunteers in our community that I’ve seen, which is so consistent with post 2004, the last time we hosted the summer games. I recall back in the day we were saying ‘well, we did that, what else can we do?’ And I have a sense of the same kind of energy and enthusiasm now. There’s just so many small examples of a synergy, of people willing to work together.”
With planning already underway for 2025, Bosiak is hoping city council can build on that momentum and enthusiasm to champion some new initiatives with potential to make life in Dauphin even better.

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