Monthly Archives: March 2014

Obituary

Obit-Whalen,-Jamie

Whalen, Jamie
It is with great sadness that the family and friends of Jamie Lee Michael Whalen announce his death on February 18, 2014. Jamie was born in Wynyard, Sask. on April 21, 1976 to Cindy and Vernon Whalen where he lived until 1995. He moved to Saskatoon where he held various jobs in the entertainment industry, which was his passion.
Jamie will be greatly missed by his children Delane (16) and Seth (13) and his wife Sacha of 11 years. Also left to cherish Jamie’s memory are his mother Cindy Whalen (Vern Linn), father Vernon Whalen (Elsie Lamber), sister Amber Vey (Nathaniel), maternal grandparents Mike and Eleanor Solohub, parents-in-law Rhonda and Jud Wunsch, and sisters-in-law Treana Wunsch (Josh Evans), Stacey Hertz (Mike) and Lindsay Wunsch (Mike Dale) and nephews and nieces Brandon, Tyhlar, Sam, Shaye, Gemma and Rhys, as well as numerous aunties, uncles and cousins. Jamie was predeceased by his paternal grandparents Bruce and Eureka Whalen, great baba Anastasia Lysyk, and cousin and good friend Jason Wolfe.
All his friends and family will remember him fondly as the life of every party with his quick wit and great sense of humour. The memorial service for Jamie was held at Saskatoon Funeral Home (338 4th Ave. N, Saskatoon) on Saturday, February 22 at 2:30 p.m. In lieu flowers, donations can be made to The Children’s Hospital Foundation of Saskatchewan.
Hanson’s Funeral Home of Davidson in care of arrangements.

featured

Co-op bringing Tim Hortons to town

In a few weeks the construction of Riverbend Co-op’s new gas bar and convenience store on Highway 11 at Davidson’s north entrance will go to tender, learned the Co-op’s membership at the organization’s annual general meeting in Davidson Thursday.
The new facility will feature a four-pump eight-lane gas bar, five-pump five-lane cardlock, a large convenience store and “guess who’s coming to town?” Riverbend Co-op’s general manager Dale Firby asked the crowd.
He then quickly spilled the beans, coffee beans in fact, letting everyone know that the 24-acre site will be home to a Tim Hortons franchise.
Riverbend bought the land on the east side of Highway 11 in March 2012 so it could build the new gas bar and convenience store. If a restaurant were to be part of the project, Firby had said it would be a lease arrangement to a franchise with a recognized brand.
With Tim Hortons, “Our view is we’ve got the number one Canadian restaurant teaming up with the number one Western Canadian gas bar operator,” Firby said.
The franchise operator of the Tim Hortons has yet to be determined. Firby said Riverbend is working with a development company that has the job of finding a franchise operator. Riverbend Co-op will then lease the building to the operator.
If all goes well lining up contractors and the weather co-operates, Firby said he expects the new facility to be open in December.

Davidson

Measures needed to help grain movement

The federal emergency legislation designed to help clear the grain transportation backlog that is expected to be tabled today by the Conservative government is coming with high expectations and numerous demands.

Ralph Goodale, Liberal MP for Wascana, said they are glad the federal government is introducing emergency legislation to help deal with the crisis, but there has to be measures in it to make certain this doesn’t happen again. He said there are four key things that are required in the legislation starting with creating a completely independent agency tasked with monitoring the grain system, measuring the performance of what is happening and reporting on it publicly.

“The system has changed radically over the course of the last three years, biggest change in probably three generations, and there is no overall measuring system to report to farmers and others about the consequences of all this change,” said Goodale. “First of all you can’t manage what you don’t measure, so there’s got to be an independent system that is not controlled by the railways, not controlled by grain companies and not controlled by the government that will collect all the data and publish all the data so that everybody can be fully informed of what actually is going on.”

Goodale said the second measure needed is a procedure called a railway costing review, which was last done in 1992 and is a process where all the revenues and costs related to grain transportation are measured and calculated so it would be known exactly what it physically costs to move a bushel of grain and how that money is shared throughout the system. He said the railways have always said whenever they can be more efficient in moving grain they will share those efficiency gains with others in the system such as farmers, grain companies and truckers, but those words are being taken with a bit of salt now.

“There has been a lot of railway abandonment since (1992), a lot of closure of delivery points since then, different technology in hopper cars since then, the operation of the ports have changed, the grain commission has changed (and) the wheat board is gone,” he said. “It’s time to do another fully comprehensive railway costing review to examine what it costs to move a bushel of grain, what the revenue is available to the railways to move that bushel of grain and how efficiency gains in the system are being shared with all the players or as everybody expects are all those efficiency gains being horded by the railways and not shared with anybody.”

Lyle Stewart, agricultural minister for the Government of Saskatchewan, shares Goodale’s view for a third proposed measure that mandatory service level agreements with reciprocal penalties for non-compliance be implemented. Stewart said the reciprocal penalties on both grain companies and railways for failing to live up to their agreements would be in addition to the $100,000 a day fines imposed on railways in a March 7 federal government Order in Council for failing to meet targets of delivering one million tonnes of grain a week on a sustained basis by mid-April.

To read more please see the March 24 print edition of The Davidson Leader.

Davidson

Freezing lines won’t affect water bills

Neighbours helping each other gain access to running water due to a frozen line this winter do not have to worry about facing costlier bills.

Gary Edom, administrator for the Town of Davidson, said people running a heated hose from their house to their neighbours so they could have pressurized water will not have their water bill affected. He said the town is going to “make it right” for anybody that is helping people affected by the unusual cold that so far has frozen four resident’s lines in town during the past couple weeks.

“It’s copper lines…from the water main in the street into the house,” said Edom. “Exactly where they’re frozen we don’t know for sure. There is no way of telling. It’s somewhere between the water main and the house that they are frozen somewhere down in the ground.”

Davidson Mayor Clayton Schneider said his neighbour, Gloria Zdunich, is one of the people suffering from a frozen line this winter and his family is going to be helping her have access to running water until Mother Nature thaws the ground and frees the line from this winter’s icy grip.

“I got a heated hose from the farm and I hooked it up to my outlet on my house and hooked it into her outlet,” said Schneider. “I have a plug in to keep electricity (running) through the hose, so it doesn’t freeze because when we initially did it we just used a normal garden hose and it froze overnight. Just that little bit of heat in the hose works well.”

Schneider said the fix pressurizes Zdunich’s water system, so along with keeping a tap in the basement running to ward off another freeze she can now get water in the same way she was before. He said to make sure his family doesn’t get overcharged on their water bill for helping their neighbour they took a picture of their water meter when they began the fix and will again once the line unfreezes.

“The difference will be compensated,” he said. “As far as other people that are helping our their neighbour, if they haven’t done that contact Gary to make sure that is looked after.”

Edom said the town brought in a water line thawing machine from Saskatoon to try and fix the problem lines, but there wasn’t enough cables on the machine to reach from the pipe inside the house to the curb stop. He said current has to flow from one end of the line to the other to unfreeze it, so when the machine didn’t work it was decided the most economical way to fix the problem is just to wait out the cold.

“I’ve never heard about this happening (before),” said Schneider. There are “water breaks and all that, but never this. It’s been an unusual year.”

Sports

Cyclones post season come to an end

The Davidson Cyclones senior hockey team lost Game 3 of the provincial ‘A’ semifinal 6-3 last Monday at home to the Lanigan Pirates marking the first time in five years the team would not finish the season with a provincial title.

“We definitely played hard,” said Cyclones goaltender Mark Zoerb, who picked up the Game 2 win in Lanigan two days earlier to bring the series back to Davidson for the deciding game in the best-of-three semifinal. “It was a good series. They are a really good hockey team. It’s no shame losing out in the semifinals in ‘A’ provincials. There are a lot of good hockey players there.”

Zoerb said the Pirates clutch shooting in the third period when they snuck in four goals in the frame to the Cyclone’s one was Davidson’s downfall and that’s the way it seemed to go the whole series. He said the Cyclones were feeling good heading into the third with the game tied 2-2, but eventually a good team like the Pirates is going to get their chances.

“I know the goal that we scored and then got called off (on a shot from Kyle Bortis with 3:18 remaining in the second and the score tied at twos) definitely didn’t help any, but we still played strong after that,” he said. “It was just overall, they came back and scored a couple goals.”

Jason Shaw, coach of the Cyclones, said Lanigan “won the third period” in every game in the series and that proved to be the difference. He said everybody on his team gave it their all on the ice during the last two games of the series, but the breaks didn’t seem to go their way.

“We were up 3-2 in the third (courtesy of a Pat Cey tip 4:14 into the frame) and we couldn’t finish them off,” said Shaw. “They’re a good team. They finished first in our league and they’re in the league finals. It was disappointing to lose. Really we were disappointed after Game 1 (with) the way we played. Game 2 and Game 3 we didn’t play to our utmost potential, but the effort was there and it just didn’t work out.”

Shaw said the team played with a short bench “pretty much all year,” but the players that did come out worked hard. He said the Cyclones got the most out of what they had and should be proud of their season despite not winning a title.

To read more please see the March 24 print edition of The Davidson Leader.

Kenaston

Kenaston Dinner Theatre Troop to tame Wild West

Available tickets have dried up like a puddle in the desert for this Saturday’s performance of Kenaston Dinner Theatre’s “Taming the Wild Wild West in a Dress or Let’s Give the Villain the Slip” by playwright Billy St. John, but anyone looking to enjoy the show still has a good shot at grabbing a seat for Friday’s entertainment.

Melanie Kerpan, co-director with Kathy Enns of “Taming the Wild Wild West in a Dress,” said there are still some full tables open for their March 28 showing and anyone looking for a good catered meal courtesy of Zdunich and Company along with a funny performance of the St. John western is welcome to attend.

“We haven’t done (a western) for a long time,” said Kerpan, noting all funds raised from the annual dinner theatre performances go towards upkeep of Kenaston Place. “We were looking for a theme and something that was humorous. We had this play for a while and had not done it because it was similar to some others that we had done in a row, so we wanted to wait and get a variety.”

“Taming the Wild Wild West in a Dress or Let’s Give the Villain the Slip” centers on the lead character of Clarence Rawlins (played by Andrew Lynsley) and his theater company when they head west to Lucky Lady, Nevada, to inherit a supposed saloon. Unfortunately the saloon is actually a beauty palour and the group now must go to absurd lengths including raiding a costume trunk to make the salon a success. The theatre company’s luck runs out when two crooks played by Ryley Enns and Allison de Hoop decide to acquire Clarence’s salon as part of a scheme to rob the bank next door.

Kerpan said there isn’t a set goal on how much the Dinner Theatre committee hopes to raise with the two-day performance, but going from previous years they usually average around $5,000 each time. She said there would be about 50 volunteers helping make the dinner, which normally attracts around 250 people each performance, a success and that doesn’t include the 25 people involved with the cast and crew.

“We have lots of really good support that we appreciate from Davidson, Outlook and Bladworth (and) other communities as well,” said Kerpan, adding they have been practising to get the play ready for audiences since January. “This is a large cast this time and we have been having difficulty getting everybody together, but we’re doing the best we can and it’ll be ready on that day.”