By Joel van der Veen

DAVIDSON — It’s another year of strong enrollment at Davidson School, principal Jason Low reported last week.

The new school year began Thursday, with a total of 261 students registered locally — identical to the count from last year.

This includes 23 children beginning their educational journey in the Kindergarten classroom.

Davidson also welcomes a handful of new staff members this year, including secretary Kelly Allan, who joins Barb Moskaluke in the school office.

The school has two Grade 1 classrooms this year. New arrival Sandra Delorme will oversee one, while Crystal Johnson looks after the other.

Kristin Dolman returns to Davidson to teach Grade 6, while Tenille Kirtzinger, who interned here last year, will teach Grade 4, filling in for a maternity leave.

The school will not have any interns this year — a sharp change from last year, when seven interns were working in Davidson.

Interns are in short supply in general, with a total of five working across all of Sun West School Division.

It’s “quite a different year that way,” said Low, but aside from that it’s mostly business as usual.

A meet the teacher evening is scheduled for Sept. 29, and the Student Leadership Team is organizing its annual Spirit Week beginning on Tuesday.

For the full story, including updates from Craik, Kenaston, Loreburn, Hanley, Dundurn, Imperial, Bethune and Holdfast, please see the Sept. 5 edition of The Davidson Leader or call 306-567-2047 to subscribe today.

By Joel van der Veen

DAVIDSON — Planners and contractors say Davidson’s new pool is less than a month away from being completed and commissioned.

“We’re going to see a lot of finishing work being done in the next three weeks here,” said recreation director Trevor Ouellette, adding that the project has remained on schedule for much of the summer.

Construction began on the new facility in late May and is expected to wrap up by mid-September, allowing the pool to open for the 2017 season.

“I’m extremely pleased with how smooth everything has been,” said the recreation director. “There’s headaches with any construction job, but there haven’t been any major, major ones.”

Davidson’s new pool is classed as a junior Olympic size. It is L-shaped with the largest part being 25 metres long and 17 metres wide, and a beach entry measuring 15 metres long by eight metres wide.

The pool will feature a deck level board, less than one metre high, plus a second board atop a diving tower three metres high.

Five lanes will be available for lane swimming and instructional use. At its deepest, the pool is 3.8 metres deep, or almost 12.5 feet.

The pool has a capacity of 690,000 litres, or about three times the size of the old pool. The facility will be equipped to allow future expansion, such as a slide or other fixtures.

It uses five sand filters and four pumps, each capable of pumping out 150 gallons of water per minute.

Once landscaped, the facility will include a grassy area measuring about 17,000 square feet, easily dwarfing the 400 sq. ft. lawn adjacent to the old pool, along with a common area between the pool and poolhouse of about 3,000 square feet.

The building, about 1,700 square feet in size, will include both the mechanical rooms and the change areas.

For the full story, please see the Sept. 5 edition of The Davidson Leader or call 306-567-2047 to subscribe today.

By Joel van der Veen

DAVIDSON — Inside the change house at the Davidson swimming pool is a historical record written with Sharpie markers.

The roof rafters bear dozens of names, accompanied by dates, plus the occasional inside joke.

At some point in the pool’s 49-year history, it became tradition for the staff to inscribe their names somewhere inside the building.

The scrawled collection now forms an incomplete record of generations of teens and young adults who spent their summers working as lifeguards, swim instructors and cashiers.

Some, like Ellen McConnell, came back year after year.

“Growing up in Davidson, the pool was the hangout place for us kids all summer,” Ellen recalled last week.

“I had always wanted to be a lifeguard. I thought it was one of the coolest jobs ever as a kid.”

Ellen spent several summers working as a lifeguard and instructor, including one year where she was co-manager. Her younger sisters Emiley and Elise also worked at the pool.

She said her favourite classes to teach were the Bronze Medallion and Bronze Cross, which are required training for lifeguards.

Ellen said being a lifeguard taught her a lot of responsibility, adding, “It is something that I would push any kid to become.”

Construction is moving ahead quickly on the town’s new pool and all signs indicate it will be ready for the summer of 2017.

But the old pool — or the Kinsmen Centennial Swimming Pool, as it was originally known — will live on in the memories of those who enjoyed it over the past 50 summers.

Before Davidson’s pool opened for business in July 1967, there were a few options for swimming — most of which sound unappealing or even unsafe to modern ears.

For decades, the dam at the east end of town served as the local swimming hole, with lessons provided for several weeks each summer. (Today it’s known as the reservoir, located past the A&W restaurant.)

Gloria Zdunich, who grew up in Davidson in the 1950s and 1960s, recalled taking a bus to Etter’s Beach for swimming lessons one summer, leaving each day at 9 a.m. and returning at 5 p.m.

“Nobody took water bottles and nobody had sunscreen,” she said. “Can you imagine how burnt we got?”

Another year, she recalled taking Red Cross lessons on a dugout at her uncle’s farm near Kenaston.

She also remembered one of her sisters taking lessons at the dam and “coming home with bloodsuckers on her leg.”

“People didn’t go to the lake and people didn’t have cabins back then,” she said. “It was pretty rare to learn to swim for my generation.”

For the full story, please see the Aug. 29 edition of The Davidson Leader or call 306-567-2047 to subscribe today.

By Joel van der Veen

DAVIDSON — John and Susie Slemming’s upcoming move has a touch of déjà vu to it.

The couple returns to Davidson this week, where John will take on the role of pastor at New Life Pentecostal Assembly — the same church he previously served from 1993 to 1999.

John said he and his wife, who have spent the last 17 years in Shellbrook, had been anticipating a major change for close to a year.

He said the move to Davidson has been officially in the works for about three months, confirming what they were already expecting.

“We knew we were supposed to be there,” said John, adding that they are “looking forward to a lot of good things.”

He said they have fond memories of their time in the Midway Town and hope to reconnect with lots of old friends here.

The Slemmings have five children — Paul, Joy, Tavis, Kent and Rylan — ranging in age from 17 to 27, plus two grandchildren.

Rylan, their youngest son, will join them in Davidson to finish his last year of his school.

For the full story, please see the Aug. 29 edition of The Davidson Leader or call 306-567-2047 to subscribe today.