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.

CRAIK—Until her granddaughter won an award at it, Steff Schneider says she’d never heard of the Sundance Film Festival.

Nor has Steff seen Indie Game: The Movie a feature film created by Lisanne Pajot and James Swirsky. The pair won the best editing award in the World Cinema Documentary Competition at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival.

Pajot is the daughter of Remi and Debra (Schneider) Pajot of Winnipeg and granddaughter of Ken and Steff Schneider of Craik.

Members of the Schneider clan and most Canadians will have a chance to watch the film, which for one night only, on May 3, is headed to theatres across Canada, including Cineplex movie theatres in Regina and Saskatoon.

Steff says she won’t be able to attend, but will soon catch a glimpse of the movie because Pajot has promised to send a DVD to Craik.

Indie Game: The Movie tells the story of four independent video game designers, who rather than work for major game developers, work independently to conceive, design and program video games with hopes they will become a success.

Pajot and Swirksy spent over a year gathering stories from indie game developers all over North America and did all the producing, directing, cinematography, editing and writing for the feature film.

Theirs was one of nearly 12,000 submissions to the Sundance Film Festival and one of 200 films selected for exhibition. More than 50,000 people attend screenings in Park City, Salt Lake City, Ogden and Sundance, Utah. This year’s festival took place from Jan. 19 to 29.

To win an award at the Festival, which recognizes and celebrates the efforts of independent filmmakers around the world, is a pretty big deal.

“You better believe I’m proud of her,” Steff says.

She hasn’t been able to speak with Pajot, who’s busy making the rounds of film festivals and games conferences.

“She’s on tour now at 15 cities in the States,” Steff says.