A large group of talented performers from Craik, Elbow, Loreburn, Bladworth and Davidson entertained a delighted crowd of spectators last Wednesday at the Central Saskatchewan Music Festival Grand Finale held in Davidson’s Parish Hall.

Davidson Mayor Clayton Schneider welcomed the young musicians and speech artists along with an eager throng of family and friends at the beginning of the evening by reciting a Music Festival story involving his family. Schneider said his son Noah approached him a day earlier to express his nervousness of playing the guitar in front of a crowd, as he’s only a beginner with the instrument.

Schneider said he told his son that nervousness ‘is a sign that you’re pushing yourself, it’s a sign that you’re growing.’ He added it is the same with all the brave performers who took the stage during the 54^th Annual Central Saskatchewan Music Festival.

“This teaches kids how to grow as individuals,” he told the crowd. “It is lessons like this that the Town of Davidson will always support.”

The Davidson School Kindergarten class kicked off the Grand Finale performances with the songs “Rise and Shine” and “Four Hugs a Day.” The song-and-dance numbers thrilled the crowd of appreciative parents and grandparents and even had one young girl dancing along in the middle aisle.

A piano duet of “Rhythm and Boogie” by Elbow’s Emmitt Hundeby and Baylee Batza followed before Hayla Herback jumped on stage to play “The Balloon Man and Stepping Up and Down.” The first of many speech arts performances followed when Rhett Gust told the funny tale of “I Eat Kids Yum!  Yum!” that helped earn the performer two scores of 93 during the judging part of the three-day festival.

“We have to thank the ladies (Linda Haas, Laura Willner and Arlene Low) who were instrumental getting speech arts going in Davidson School,” said Grand Finale emcee Sharon Riecken.

Baylee then took the stage again to perform “Carefree Boogie,” which was followed by Craik’s Cohen Ter Heide playing a wonderful piano solo of “Spooks.” The guitar duo of Gavin Arend and Noah Schneider followed with the tune “Love Somebody” before Noah left the stage for Rosa Lee to come up and help Gavin play “When the Saints Go Marching In.”

Loreburn’s Nicole Yakimoski then sang a great rendition of “My Favorite Things” from “The Sound of Music” that came before first-time violinist Stephanie Elliott played “Au Clair de la Lune,” Jasmine Hundeby performed “Big Teddy Little Teddy” and Davidson’s Bailey Smith cracked up the crowd with “Bad Case of the Giggles.”

“We had so much talent in our speech arts this year it was unbelievable,” said Riecken after Bailey’s show, noting the young artist received a score of 90 during adjudication.

To read more please see the March 31 print edition of The Davidson Leader.

A loving husband is keeping his wife’s memory alive through speaking about how he was able to prepare for her death along with sharing vital information with others on how to successfully develop their own plan just in case something happens.

Harold Empey, who lived in Craik at one time with his wife Betty, will be presenting his free Davidson Library hosted seminar on the “Just in Case” binder April 8 at the Parish Hall. The “Just in Case” binder is a 12-section plan he created that others could use to make the decisions relative to and provide the information for all that is necessary in the event of death.

People “can expect to hear a presentation as to what needs to be done in order to give the individual peace of mind and provide information for their loved ones in the event of someone dying,” said Empey, noting the “Just in Case” binders would be available at the talk for $25. “The session will be provocative, suggestive and somewhat humorous because I can’t talk about the death of my wife (and) always be serious because it would be too hard to do. It’s a 45-minute presentation followed by questions and discussion.”

Empey said his “Just in Case” binder began in 2006 when he was sent home from the doctor and told to make funeral arrangements due to a serious heart condition. He said his wife expressed her concerns at the time that she did not know what to do about the family’s finances and other important matters if he was to pass away, so they decided to sit down and put all the information together into a comprehensive plan.

“Unfortunately my wife predeceased me, (but) everything was all prearranged because it was the same arrangements for her as for me,” he said, adding that when a friend approached him after Betty’s November 2012 death to ask how they could be so prepared a spark was created to build a plan for others. “I did it as a legacy to my wife, the gal I loved for 57 years. I’ve done over 125 seminars and gone through over 5,000 binders and Harold Empey doesn’t get one penny from it. It’s all a legacy to Betty, so (the $25) goes to recover the costs or to charity.”

September Brooke, branch librarian in Davidson, said she first heard about Empey and his presentation about a year ago, but it wasn’t until a friend’s husband passed away last fall that the importance of hosting this information session struck home. She said the young man’s death showed her that anything can happen to us at any time, so we should all be prepared to make things easier on the ones who are left behind.

To read more please see the March 31 print edition of The Davidson Leader.

Riverbend Co-op marked 100 years of the Co-operative retail movement in the community by paying tribute to the Davidson Co-op’s 100th anniversary.
“Co-op has had a long history in Davidson and the board felt it should be here to celebrate it with you,” Dale Firby, general manager of Riverbend Co-op, said at the Co-op’s annual general meeting in Davidson March 20.
The event was a sort of homecoming for Firby. He currently resides in Outlook, but Davidson is his hometown. Firby began his career with the co-operative system 30 years ago, April 9 with the Davidson Co-op as a fuel truck driver.
“Davidson Co-op has weathered many storms over 100 years both real and financially,” Firby said.
Incorporated on April 14, 1914 as Davidson Co-operative Association Ltd. its first activities involved buying goods by carlot to share among members. Over the next few years its enterprises grew rapidly beginning with fuel supplies, farm implements, hardware, home furnishings, dry goods, groceries and a bakery, one of the first to be operated by a retail Co-op. In 1928 the Co-op built a new grocery and dry goods building.
The Davidson- Co-op weathered the Great Depression and set up an emergency benefit service for its members during these hard economic times of the 1930s. In the 1940s the Co-op continued to expand its services including egg candling station, distribution of pasteurized milk as well as adding a spur track to accommodate increased carload shipments of fuel and other goods. Each decade the Co-op grew and expanded, adding new buildings and storage sheds.
The windstorm of 1976 that blew through Davidson didn’t leave the Co-op unscathed either and the Co-op had to spend much of the year rebuilding.
To read more please see the March 31 print edition of The Davidson Leader.

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.

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.”

Grades 7 to 9 students from Davidson School, Kenaston School and Loreburn Central School enjoyed a fun day of educational activities last week while also learning a serious message about the dangers of drug and alcohol abuse.

The kids participated in a Talking to Youth Live (TTYL) program put on by the Sun West School Division, Heartland Health Region and the Alcohol Awareness Wellness Network (DAWN). The TTYL program brought the students together last Wednesday at Kenaston Place for a full day of learning activities such as jeopardy, snakes and ladders, tug o’ war, the “What Am I” game and an obstacle course that helped create awareness about substance abuse while also teaching them about healthier alternatives.

“The purpose was to provide the students with the right information regarding drugs and alcohol (and) to give them a chance to be in a fun environment where they can learn about it,” said Sun West addictions educator Liza Dahl. They “talk to addiction professionals, people that work with people who struggle with addictions on a daily basis, and (it) allows them a chance to ask questions and be interested and find out some information.”

Nathan Ruten, a grades 8 and 9 math teacher at Kenaston School, said the activities at the event were geared towards educating the younger-aged kids, so they would know about the subject later on in life when it may become more of a pressing issue. He said having learning games also helps the kids become more engaged in the material rather than just telling them in the classroom to not abuse drugs and alcohol.

“We did snakes and ladders, but before you do it you had to answer a question related to drugs and alcohol and what they are,” said Ruten. “There was the obstacle course where they had to put on the drunk goggles and try to get through the whole thing to see what it would be like to do everyday activities while impaired. (Then) jeopardy, again it’s about educating, as the questions were related to drug and alcohol abuse.”

To read more please see the March 17 print edition of The Davidson Leader.