Category Archives: featured

Craik, featured

Cure to Craik doctor dilemma still needed

The Five Hills Health Region and the potential new doctor for Craik are in negotiations to open a clinic in the town, but emergency services operating out of the Craik Health Centre still appear to be off the table.

Randy Weekes, Saskatchewan Minister of Rural and Remote Health, held a meeting at the Rural Municipality of Craik office last Monday where he met with Craik Mayor Rick Rogers, RM Reeve Hilton Spencer, Davidson Mayor Mary Jane Morrison, Five Hills CEO Cheryl Craig, Dr. Francisco Lang and the potential physician to try and open up a dialogue among the different parties.

“I asked for the meeting because of their concerns and just wanted to get together with all the stakeholders in the community to discuss their concerns about the doctor leaving,” said Weekes about Dr. Maree leaving Craik for a practice in Moose Jaw at the end of July.

“It was a very positive meeting we had with all the stakeholders. I think there was a lot of information given about various issues. Now the health region is negotiating with the physician to work in Craik.”

The terms of the contract, namely what services the physician can offer and their working conditions such as on-call services, has been left up to Five Hills to negotiate with the doctor. The minister’s involvement was mainly to make sure “open communication and good dialogue” is kept up.

“I think the health region has a plan in place to continue to provide very good primary health care to the citizens in Craik,” said Weekes. “If they negotiate a contract with the physician, that would be an important piece of that health care. In Craik, they have a nurse practitioner and other health care professionals that are providing health care as we move forward.”

Weekes added that it is a “challenge” to attract doctors to rural areas, so community involvement as well as working with their health region is “so important” to attract and then retain physicians.

To read more please see the July 23 print edition of The Davidson Leader.

featured

RCMP advise boaters to batten the hatches

The Southey/Strasbourg RCMP detachment is asking all vacationers along Last Mountain Lake to be vigilant when it comes to suspicious activity around their resort communities.

The force has seen increased calls for service since the hot weather brought on more traffic along the lake and if anyone sees anything out of the ordinary, a call to police with a description of the perpetrators involved could be really helpful in solving a few unsolved thefts, while also decreasing the chance of more happening.

“We’re really trying to impress on the public that if you see any suspicious activity, especially the full-time residents in our resort communities, to let the police know,” said Cpl. Conrad Logan of the Southey RCMP. “If you see vehicles out of place, give us a call and we’ll check it out.”

Police are asking citizens in the area be mindful of suspicious vehicles or people around their properties after a number of thefts in the Strasbourg Resort area occurred over the past few months. The latest incident happened July 9, when a pontoon boat docked at Glen Harbour was robbed of electronics and fishing equipment.

“The best thing to do is write down the description of the suspicious vehicle and write down the plate number if you can get it,” said Logan. “If you can’t get the plate number, the vehicle might have an interesting characteristic, such as it’s got the big overhead lights or a big grill on the front of a truck, or maybe a sports car and it’s got spoiler on it or things like that.

“These are very good descriptions for us and for police officers, people always like to know what we drive, well we have a very good idea of what the locals drive. There are a lot of things that we can pick up.”

Logan said there are a variety of ways to protect your property when at a resort, but the main thing to remember is that even though you might be on vacation the weather and criminals will not.

“If you’ve got a boat on your lift, make sure it’s up out of the water high enough, so if the wind does get up the waves aren’t splashing against it,” he said. “Tie up you boat and don’t leave any valuables in your boat if you’re leaving it on your lift or in the dock.

“There are a lot of resort communities here on Last Mountain Lake where the shoreline is actually owned by the communities themselves and lots of members of the public walk up and down those shorelines. Late at night, you never know if there might be people down there walking and maybe somebody is just up to no good.”

Bladworth, featured

Twisters touch down

Lawrence and Margaret Ann Beckie got the shock of a lifetime last Tuesday when a tornado touched down on their Allan Road farm, five miles east of Bladworth.

No one was injured in the violent storm, but it did tear apart trees, move their barn off its foundation, and throw around huge grain bins like they were baseballs.

Lawrence said the couple could see something serious was coming their way before the twister hit as very black clouds starting rolling and moving in fast towards them from the northwest. He said they heard a continuous rumbling, but saw very little lightning and decided to head inside the house before the storm got worse.

“The tornado hit about 2:30 p.m. when the hail started,” said Lawrence. “The heavy rain started about 2:00 and it was ferocious. I’ve never been scared of a storm before, but I was scared of that one.”

Once inside, the couple couldn’t feel the devastation taking hold outside or the funnel cloud ripping up their yard only a few feet away from their home. They said the power went off and they looked for a candle, but taking more precautionary measures didn’t occur to them at the time.

“We have a basement, but we never even thought about going down there,” said Lawrence. “If the house went, we didn’t care if we went either.”

The whirling winds caused widespread damage to rows of trees lining their farm, toppled over one grain bin and picked up another and threw it on top of a tree. The twister also moved their barn off its foundation on its north end and damaged its east wall.

“The most serious damage is to the barn, but that is covered by insurance,” he said. “We have two tractors in there and we’re lucky they didn’t go. That would have been a serious loss.

“We didn’t get any damage to the house though and that’s a good thing, a real blessing.”

The Beckie family has been on this corner section of Allan Road since 1916, starting with Lawrence’s grandfather, but this is only the second time Lawrence can remember a tornado barrelling through. His said the first time was in 1976 when a large barn that he used as a granary was completely flattened.

The cleanup was well on its way only a day after the storm, thanks in large part to their grandson Jory Cooper, 17, and full power has been restored to the farm after SaskPower removed a tree that fell on a line.

The tornado that struck the Beckie farm was one of three confirmed twisters that touched down in south-central Saskatchewan July 3 according to Environment Canada.

Davidson, featured

Primary-care model needed to cure what’s ailing rural medicine

Dr. Francisco Lang needs help. The number of patients that are walking through his doors at the Davidson Family Practice seeking assistance along with those coming to emergency services at the Davidson Health Centre are increasing every day and he simply can’t keep up.

Lang said this growth in problems that he is dealing with is due to the “migration of doctors” in nearby communities to group practices in bigger centres such as Saskatoon or Regina or even to other provinces. The fact that these patients are coming from different health regions other than Heartland Health is of no importance.

“As a result, there is an accumulation of the need for medical services here and you immediately realize that you are not enough to support and satisfy those expectations from the community,” said Lang. “It’s not that the community gets more illnesses; it’s not that the community is losing their healthy status. It’s simply that the volume and the problems around the communities are getting more complicated. This reason is why in rural communities or small communities, sole practitioners disappear.”

The Davidson Family Practice has seen a steady increase in patients since the doctor in Imperial left a few years ago and is likely to get a huge boost when Dr. Narinda Maree leaves for Moose Jaw at the beginning of August. Emergency services at the Davidson Health Centre have also seen a wide growth and will continue to do so considering all emergency services run out of Craik will now be shifted to Davidson when their doctor leaves.

Lang said a new primary-care model is needed to fix this situation or the same result will occur where a sole practitioner simply burns out. He said a team of doctors is needed to cover such a large area with two ideally placed in Davidson and a third operating out of Craik with basic emergency services at a minimum in that town.

“Patients do not consider the boundaries to move around to get medical services that are needed,” he said in reference to the existence of the different health care regions. “As such, a doctor in a community may not consider those boundaries either in terms of geographical division. Medically, I find it inappropriate for me to not treat a patient from Craik just based on the fact that patient belongs to another health region.”

To read more please see the July 9 print edition of The Davidson Leader.

Davidson, featured

CTRC to close Davidson campus

The Carleton Trail Regional College (CTRC) is closing its Davidson campus “around” July 20, but any services that are required by residents of Davidson can still be accessed through a different location, according to the CTRC interim CEO.

“The activity in Davidson was not as active as the other campuses were,” said Bill Cooke, referring to the small number of students who use the school compared to the campuses at Southey, Watrous, Wynyard and Humboldt and the limited number of instructors willing to teach at Davidson.

“We have fixed resources. Frankly, we don’t have any more money to do anything differently (than close the campus), so we have to work within what we have.

“With the building closing, it doesn’t make a whole lot of difference to the provision of services,” he said. “Any services needed in Davidson can be provided through Southey, it can be provided through Watrous or it can be provided in some sort of unique way. This is really making do with what are becoming quite limited resources.”

The CTRC is involved with upgrading basic adult education as well as credited trades programs such as emergency medical services (EMS), carpentry, plumbing and electrical as well as non-credit programs like photography and gardening.

Mary Jane Morrison, the mayor of Davidson, said she was not consulted prior to hearing from Cooke on June 21 that the campus would be closing. She said the town would fight to keep services in Davidson and will keep all lines of communication open to remain a voice in discussions to keep some programs here.

“I think it’s a real loss for our community,” said Morrison adding some jobs would be lost because of this decision, not to mention the harm done to mature students who don’t have the time to get to other campuses after their day jobs. “It’s always nice to provide that post-secondary education here, so people wouldn’t have to travel.

“When he told me they were closing, he said the numbers were down in Davidson. I understood that from some of the research that was done; however, I said that I didn’t agree. First of all, I don’t know how hard they tried to deliver a variety of programming here. At earlier times, there was a better job done at that.  I tried to point out a few things like Davidson is a growing community and there are a few classes here that they had taken away (that were well used).

“When he delivered the news to me, I said I wouldn’t keep Davidson out of the loop in the future,” she said.  “We mean that.”

To read more please see the July 2 print edition of The Davidson Leader.

featured

Wicked winds wallop region

Shortly after 10 o’clock last Wednesday morning, Al Hiebert was in Hanley running some errands.

The trip may have saved his life, or at least saved him from serious injury because otherwise, he’d have been building partitions inside his new Hot Shop currently under construction.

Instead, he returned to the shop at the edge of Shields around 11 a.m. to find the 50 x 150-foot building flattened by the near Hurricane-force winds that wreaked havoc over much of central Saskatchewan.

Hiebert said the wind most likely “lifted the roof up like an umbrella. The roof came up and the walls fell down.” Then the wind set the roof back down exactly where it should be, except the walls were no longer there to support it.

Hiebert said that none of the windows, all 18 of them, were broken. Most of the metal siding came through without a scratch, power tools remained where he left them, unharmed and the insulation remained secure in the walls.

The shop, which was being built by a contractor, was nearly finished. Hiebert said all that was left to do was to close in the ceiling.

“We were just starting the electrical,” he said. Once that and utilities were connected, he planned to bring in a furnace and other specialized glass-blowing tools so that he and wife Joan could get back to creating their art.

The Hieberts have been making original and beautiful objects out of blown glass from their Shields location for years.

But they’ve been unable to do so since October after a fire destroyed the Hot Shop.

The structure destroyed by wind was to replace the building they’d lost in the fire.

They’ve had a run of bad luck, but Hiebert said this latest setback won’t deter him and Joan from rebuilding the Hot Shop.

“It’s just stuff. Nobody was in it (when it blew over)…It’s just kind of a kick in the butt,” he said. “There will be another building here in a couple months.”