By Joel van der Veen

SASKATOON — A Davidson native was part of a group of dentists, hygienists and other assistants who spent nine days in Guatemala last month, bringing dental care to patients in some of the country’s most remote regions.

Erik Johnson, 27, the son of Everett and Vonné Johnson of Davidson, is finishing up his four-year program at the University of Saskatchewan’s College of Dentistry.

He said he and a fellow graduate, Dacre Hamilton, were invited to join the trip by Dr. Nekky Jamal, who operates Wayside Dental Clinic in Lloydminster and has hired Johnson and Hamilton to begin work there after their graduation.

The group — which included seven dentists, three assistants, two hygienists and about a dozen other helpers — visited Guatemala from March 13 to 22.

Johnson said the group saw hundreds of patients as they travelled to different villages, most of them in remote, mountainous areas, where poverty is widespread and access to dental care is limited.

On top of that, many of the locals have little access to clean drinking water and instead consume soft drinks like Coca-Cola. The high level of sugar in those drinks exacerbates the problem, allowing for cavities and extensive tooth decay to run rampant.

The trip was organized with the non-profit group Kindness in Action, which has sent other groups on similar missions to Peru, Nicaragua and various African countries.

The group set up mobile clinics and offered their services to any patients who showed up. This included pulling teeth, performing fillings, doing general cleaning — “whatever we could do for them,” in Johnson’s words.

Johnson said there was some “culture shock” as many of the locals had never encountered Caucasians before, but they were welcomed and thanked in each place.

“We were these white guys that were rolling into their village,” he recalled, adding that even some of the teenage patients they saw had never visited a dentist before. “They definitely don’t have routine dental care going on. . . They’re basically left alone up there to fend for themselves.”

While the team did not have the equipment to perform complex procedures like root canals, they handled hundreds of patients each day, also presenting each one with a small gift and toothbrush after their check-ups were complete.

To read the complete story, pick up the April 13 edition of The Davidson Leader.

A bank slip found at the scene of a dead bull moose that had been shot near Elbow was a key piece of evidence that resulted in two Saskatchewan men recently being fined a total of $6,970 in Outlook provincial court for unlawfully hunting moose near Elbow.

The two hunters, Wade Hassett of Craik and Craig Hassett of Saskatoon, pleaded guilty to four charges under the Saskatchewan Wildlife Act and Regulations for unlawfully allowing a hunting licence to be used by another person, unlawfully possessing wildlife taken in contravention of the Act and two counts of unlawfully allowing edible game to be wasted.

Craig was fined $4,760 and Wade was fined $2,210. Both men were also suspended from hunting for one year.

The charges resulted from a call to the Ministry of Environment in October 2014 after someone found a dead bull moose in the Elbow area. Conservation officers investigated the complaint and found a dead bull moose that had been shot and left. No meat, antlers, hide or other parts had been removed from the moose. Evidence found at the scene led to both men being charged.

The evidence was a bank slip from the Craik RBC branch.

Through further analysis of the bank slip, conservation officers were able to determine the source of the slip and learned, “a local man and son were involved in shooting the moose,” Gary Provencher, a conservation officer with the Ministry of Environment’s compliance education and training unit in Prince Albert, said last Wednesday.

Conservation officers found out that Wade had a Saskatchewan resident either sex moose licence for Wildlife Management Zone 23, which covers the Elbow area. Craig did not have a licence.

Provencher said the two men were out hunting near Elbow on Oct. 1, 2014, the opening day of moose hunting season.

The men fired a number of shots at a group of moose. Provencher said they were not aware they hit one moose and kept firing and knocked another moose down.

Provencher said when they found they’d hit two moose they loaded up the larger bull moose to take home and left the smaller moose in the area where they shot it, which was later discovered and reported to conservation officers.

“We rely on the public to give us a call,” Provencher said.

People are encouraged to call Saskatchewan’s Turn In Poachers (TIP) line to report violations or if they discover a carcass and to provide them with as much information as possible such as activity in the area, vehicle sightings and descriptions of people.

In the case of the dead bull moose near Elbow, Provencher said it was lucky the bank slip didn’t blow away. In other cases, officers will look for a bullet and analyze it to see if they can tell the type of gun it came from.

Provencher said conservation officers receive quite a few calls during hunting season.

“Illegal violations like this occur every year all over Saskatchewan,” he said.

In 2014 Saskatchewan Environment issued 60 either sex moose hunting licences and 40 antlerless moose hunting licences in Wildlife Management Zone 23. The season lasted four weeks, from Oct. 1 to 14 and from Nov. 1 to 14, 2014.

If anyone suspects wildlife, fisheries, forestry or environmental violations, they are asked to call a local Ministry of Environment office, Saskatchewan’s toll-free Turn In Poachers line at 1-800-667-7561 or #5555 for SaskTel subscribers or report a violation online at Saskatchewan Environment.