By Joel van der Veen

DAVIDSON — A weekend of drama was enjoyed at Davidson School as five one-act plays were presented in a high school festival.

Davidson hosted students from Hanley, Rosetown and Unity in the Saskatchewan Drama Association’s Region 6 Drama Festival on Friday, April 17 and Saturday, April 18.

Arlene Low, who served as festival host co-ordinator, said the students did a terrific job of playing host to their competitors over the course of the festival.

“They welcomed the other schools, socialized, made new friends,” she said. “Everybody did their part to make it a successful and welcoming weekend.”

The plays were presented in two sessions, with an attendance of roughly 100 people at each session.

The festival began on Friday evening as Davidson’s senior drama club presented “THS PHNE 2.0: The Next Generation,” followed by Rosetown Central High School’s “Pressure” and Unity Composite High School’s “Desperate Housewives of Shakespeare.”

On Saturday afternoon, two more plays were presented: “One Giant Leap” by Hanley Composite School, and “10 Ways to Survive the Zombie Apocalypse,” presented by Davidson’s junior drama club.

Serving as adjudicators were Joy Falk, a teacher in the Prairie South School Division with a background in theatre studies and arts education, and Bill Shiers, a former Saskatchewan Drama Association board member and director now based in Jacksonville, Fla.

Shiers was the front of house adjudicator, watching all that transpired onstage, while Falk kept an eye on all the backstage action.

Following their performances, each group was given the opportunity for a workshop with the adjudicators, who offered their praise and criticism, often having the students recreate certain scenes with a few changes.

An awards banquet concluded the festival on Saturday afternoon. While all of the plays were honoured with awards, Rosetown’s “Pressure” was selected the best overall production and will go on to compete in the provincial festival, coming up from May 7 to 9 at the University of Regina’s theatre department.

For the full story, check out the April 27 edition of The Davidson Leader.

By Joel van der Veen

DILKE — Highway 354 near Dilke was the winner of a dubious honour last week.

The weather-beaten road took first place in CAA Saskatchewan’s annual list of the Top Ten Worst Roads in the province, as selected by online voters.

Pictures submitted to CAA’s website show a deteriorating road with multiple patches of bulging, crumbling pavement, some of them marked with small red diamond signs.

The provincial highway runs east of Dilke and then south towards Bethune, ending at its intersection with Highway 11.

Colleen Duesing, who serves as village administrator, confirmed that the road is in “seriously bad” shape, blaming its current condition on the heavy rain from last summer.

Duesing said that two “seriously heavy rain events” — one at the end of June, and the other on August 16 — last year took their toll on the road.

“Both times we received over six inches of rain,” she said. “It was flooded in about three or four areas.”

Detours were put in place until the water could be pumped away, but the ground remained heavily saturated, and when the ground froze during the winter, the water pushed upwards, resulting in cracked surfaces.

“It’s all weather-related,” said Duesing, adding that the highway sees heavy daily use from commuters and is also used by travellers heading to resort areas.

The village also has had to cope with severe watermain breaks this year. Excavators had to dig through nine feet of frozen ground to uncover the damaged mains.

Christine Niemczyk, CAA Saskatchewan’s director of corporate communications and public relations, said the Worst Roads campaign attracted interest and nominations from across the province.

More than 260 roads and highways, including residential streets, were nominated this year.

The criteria for a “worst road” include a state of general disrepair with potholes or cracks, poor signage or congestion, or if the road is too narrow for drivers, pedestrians and cyclists to share safely.

Asked whether the campaign had resulted in roads getting repaired or improved, Niemczyk said CAA doesn’t track that information, but noted that some roads — like Highway 155 near La Loche — have made the top 10 multiple years in a row.

“We’re offering a resource, a tool, a mechanism,” she said, explaining that the campaign helps to put a spotlight on road conditions in the province that are troublesome or even dangerous.

At the campaign’s end, she added, the survey results are made available to the appropriate government bodies.

All of the Top 10 roads from this year’s poll were provincial highways, including roads near Val Marie, Silton, Coronach, Bulyea, Gravelbourg, Springside, Vonda, Fife Lake and La Loche.

The campaign ran between March 25 and April 17 and attracted a total of 4,556 votes. CAA Saskatchewan has held the campaign annually since 2012.

By Joel van der Veen

DAVIDSON — The white-tailed deer was once so prolific in Saskatchewan that it was declared the official provincial animal, but a string of harsh winters has cut the species’ population in half.

Rob Tether, a wildlife ecologist based in Meadow Lake who works with the Saskatchewan Ministry of Environment’s fish and wildlife branch, confirmed the reports in an interview with The Davidson Leader last week.

“Three of the last five years, we’ve had severe winters,” said Tether, “and they’ve had a negative impact on our white-tailed deer population.”

He estimated that the population has declined by 50 per cent from long-term levels across most of the province, including the south-central region in which Davidson is situated.

While the past winter saw milder weather, he said, “it’s still going to take several mild winters for our deer population to rebound.”

Tether said the ministry does not take an actual population count, but relies on ground surveys taken in the animals’ known habitat at specific times of the year. This information is then used to determine general population trends for the species.

This is not the first time the ministry has noted a decline in the white-tailed deer population. Severe winter weather in 2006 resulted in a drop in numbers.

Going back further, Tether said that a string of harsh winters with heavy snowfall in the early 1980s also had a negative impact on the population, which took between four to six years to recover to previous levels.

Tether said the ministry has observed a similar trend in the population levels of the mule deer, although the decline has not been so severe.

A decline has also been noted in the populations of specific game bird species, including the sharp-tailed grouse and the grey partridge. Tether attributed that downturn both to the severe winters and changes in the birds’ habitats over the last decade or two.

Concerned about the white-tailed deer’s plight, the ministry has taken efforts to manage the remaining population and prevent what Tether called “over-harvesting.”

Last year, in an effort to combat the decline, the hunting season for the white-tailed deer was reduced.

In zones 22 and 23 — which cover much of the area directly between Regina and Saskatoon, with Highway 11 dividing the two zones — the season ran from Nov. 20 to Dec. 2.

Dates for this year’s hunting season will not be finalized until mid-May, Tether said, but the ministry is recommending a similarly reduced season for 2015 as well.