A fire tore through an unoccupied house on Hamilton Street last week causing extensive damage to the home, which was in the process of being renovated.

Don Willner, deputy chief of the Davidson Fire Department, said the Aug. 18 fire started in the living room at the front of the house at 210 Hamilton Street and worked its way up an interior wall into the attic. He said the department arrived on scene at 3:55 a.m. to find the house partially in flames, but got it “knocked down” quick enough that the fire didn’t even “melt the siding” on the neighbouring homes.

“We cleared scene at probably 7 or 7:30 in the morning,” said Willner. “There was flame on the exterior of the house and on the front end of the house, but we had that knocked down right away. We had to pull down quite a few ceilings and cut a lot of access holes through the roof itself to get the attic vented out and to get it cooled down.

“The actual flame we had knocked down probably within 20 minutes, but that’s a lot of work to get into the attic area to get the remaining hot spots cooled down.”

Engine 41, 42 and the Davidson Fire water tanker along with nine firefighters were involved in combating the burn. Davidson EMS and members of the Craik RCMP detachment were also present.

To read more please see the August 27 print edition of The Davidson Leader.

Eileen McCreary and Judy Gust are travelling across the Canso Causeway, a rock-fill road through the Straight of Canso, and onto Cape Breton Island from the Nova Scotia peninsula this week for a game of bridge.

The two Davidson card players are heading to Sydney, Nova Scotia, for the 2012 Canada 55-plus Games where they will compete with bridge players from across the country. The Aug. 29 to Sept. 1 Games are a celebration of fitness for Canadian seniors, bringing them together every two years to try their hand at one of 23 sports competitions ranging from ice hockey to bowling to swimming and all taking place at various locations across the Island.

Gust said this will be her first time in Nova Scotia and the plan is to get in a little sightseeing on their weeklong trip to the East Coast, but she’ll come up with a list of things to see with McCreary after they get there. As for the tournament play, she said it is not really that important if they come home with gold medals, it is the people they’ll meet and the good times they’ll have that matters.

“We’re there just to have fun,” said Gust. “If the cards that are given to us are good, then that’s great. If not, we’ll still have a lot of fun anyways.”

McCreary said she has been to the Canada Games once before in 2006 when it was held at Whitehorse, Yukon. She said that she and Gust have competed in quite a few tournaments over the years and won a few times, but they’re not exclusive in their partnership.

“We both belong to the bridge club here and play on Thursday nights at the Seniors’ Centre,” said McCreary. “You don’t always play as a team here as you change partners when you play locally, but as you play together you just get a good idea of how the other person bids and likewise. Then you hope you get some good cards to bid.”

She said as far as the sightseeing goes, they’ll wait until they get there to find some information on the various attractions, but the Fortress of Louisbourg National Historic Site off Gabarus Bay is something she would really like to see.

“I’ve heard quite a bit about it,” said McCreary. “It’s a British fortress. It was a hub of commercial trade back in the early days and they’ve kept it in its original state.”

It is too early to tell how yields will be this fall, but the quality appears to be good according to early reports despite an armyworm infestation among canola crops and fusarium outbreak with wheat.

Kent McLeod, manager of Viterra, said among the crops of canola, lentils, wheat, peas and barley that are seeded in this area, it is just the peas and barley that are starting to “come off.” He said the quality so far “seems to be fairly decent,” but it will still be a few more weeks before everything can be classified as successful.

“There has been some diseases in the canola and the armyworm in the canola,” McLeod said. “Spring wheat has been suffering from fusarium. It’s kind of new to us here. We’ve had some, but not to this extent. Until the guys get combined, it’s going to be hard to say just how much damage has been done to both quality and to yield.”

Grant McLean, cropping management specialist for the provincial Agricultural Knowledge Centre, said the higher humidity that Saskatchewan has experienced this summer has brought on more leaf diseases and the armyworm population is “quite high,” but for the most part crops across the province are looking quite good.

“With the humidity and moisture, we are seeing higher incidences of leaf diseases in the wheat, barley and durums,” McLean said. “Certainly we are seeing higher incidences of other diseases in the canola and the sclerotinia in particular has been a bigger risk and in some cases causing concern, but it’s too late to do anything about that now.”

A farmer’s only hope in stopping the outbreak is applying a fungicide or insecticide to the leaf surface to protect it, which is “like trying to saran wrap a three-year-old on a tricycle and keep him dry in a rain storm,” he said.

To read more please see the August 20 print edition of The Davidson Leader.