After a one-year delay, construction on Highway 15 has finally begun.

Greg Brkich, MLA for Arm River–Watrous, said the repair and upgrade to 13 kilometres of Hwy. 15 east of Kenaston was pushed back a year due to a combination of factors including financial, weather conditions and a late tendering on the project, but he’s “glad” work has begun on it now. He said improvements needed to start for two reasons including the poor condition of the roadway and the necessity of a new high-clearance corridor in the province.

“We needed to make it a wide-load corridor to get some of the wide-load (trucks) off Highway 11,” said Brkich. “Highway 11 is getting busier all the time.”

Grading on the stretch of highway that spans from about 2 km to 15 km east of the junction with Hwy. 11 began May 27 and is scheduled to be completed by late fall depending on the contractor’s schedule and weather conditions. The cost of the project is $4.3 million.

Brkich said this construction is the “first stage” in a three-stage project to improve the highway. He said the total cost of the project would come to around $30 million once completed.

The second stage of the “long-range plan” for Hwy. 15 involves work closer to Highway 2 and that is slated to begin next year, said Brkich. He said the final stage in the development would focus on the intersection of Hwy 11 and 15 at Kenaston.

“That will be the last section that will be fixed,” he said. “When it’s finally completed they may change the intersection. They are looking at it (now), but nothing has been decided yet. That is a couple years away.”

The new Davidson Swimming Pool committee has a chance to win $50,000 towards the construction of the new pool if they can garner enough votes from community members.
It was announced at the Roughriders game this past Saturday that an application to fund health and wellness initiatives in their community from Swimming Pool committee members Laura Williams and Brenna Siroski has made it into the top eight and they now have the opportunity to take home one of three prizes from Richardson Pioneer Rider Nation Community Celebration. The top three finalists would be announced at the Riders’ Sept. 14 home game and be mentioned during the half-time show.
In order to make it into the top three, people have to vote for the Swimming Pool bid online at www.101greycupfestival.ca and they can cast their vote daily. The winning community would receive $50,000 and the two runner-ups will get $25,000 each.
The three winning communities will also be awarded $10,000 each to host a Grey Cup Festival party that Richardson would be bringing to the communities.
“Its up to the fans to determine who the top three (are) and eventually (who) the grand prize winner will be,” said contest volunteer committee chair Craig Fiske.
New Davidson Swimming Pool committee member Jesse Foster said they are really excited over this announcement and happy to show people how to vote if anyone has any questions. She said Davidson would be profiled on CBC, CTV, Harvard Broadcasting and in The Leader Post as part of the contest.
“However the rest is up to us,” said Foster. “The community with the most votes wins.”
The Pool committee invites everyone to visit the Grey Cup Festival website and vote for their community of choice.

A massive new wholesale outlet planned for Dundurn is one step closer to opening day after a successful trade mission to China last month by a contingent of local officials.

Fred Wilson, Reeve of the Rural Municipality of Dundurn, said 12 local representatives headed to Beijing, Chongquing and Hangzhou July 7 to 15 on an invite from the mayors of those cities to show Chinese investors the 155-acre Dundurn International Exhibition Centre is for real. He said while in China the officials met with potential investors and entrepreneurs in an effort to drum up interest in the centre.

“My understanding is it was very successful,” said Wilson, noting Dundurn Mayor Doug Narraway and Saskatoon Mayor Don Atchison were part of the 12-member contingent that went to China. “The language barrier restricted our exposure considerably…but just by talking to the Brightenview staff and other people that were there, they were very pleased with the reception that we had.”

Wilson said each member of the group made a presentation when arriving in a new city to extol the virtues of doing business at the wholesale outlet that could potentially house 350 Chinese businesses and employ over 1,000 people once construction is completed in late 2014. He said the mission was “helped out quite a bit” by the participation of the Saskatoon Regional Economic Development Authority (SREDA) when it came to the marketing of the centre and the area.

“It’s a little bigger than Dundurn, it’s a regional thing now,” he said. “Their participation is very (much) needed.”

Narraway said the mission was “very well attended” by Chinese businesses and city representatives at all the group’s stops and everyone they met in China seemed really interested in the project. He said this should go a long way in showing potential investors the Dundurn International Exhibition Centre is a good way to develop their business.

“At the end of the day it was all a SREDA driven mission and the Chinese believe pretty firmly in titles and so on, so having the mayor and the reeve and the mayor of Saskatoon definitely showed our support of SREDA and the Brightenview project,” said Narraway. “SREDA also represents the Town of Dundurn and the RM of Dundurn, so they are the ones that are helping us to better ourselves to get the growth growing and to bring in companies to help us.”

To read more please see the Aug. 12 print edition of The Davidson Leader.

The risk of infection of the West Nile virus has escalated to moderate in the Heartland and Five Hills heath regions, but the possibility of the risk increasing to severe is high.

Dr. David Torr, consulting medical health officer for Heartland Health Region, said this is the peak season for contracting the virus in the region because the migrating birds that bring in West Nile are in the area, the Culex tarsalis mosquitoes are here in high numbers and there are more people active outdoors during August. He said there have been no cases of the West Nile virus reported in humans yet, but if people do not take precautions that is going to change.

“We identified (West Nile) in the birds and the mosquitoes are around and are biting or will have bitten infected birds and that will lead to human infections,” said Torr. “As much as we haven’t seen (human cases) we are expecting them. We are hoping that if people take the appropriate precautions that we will see much less or much fewer cases.”

Torr said people need to wear protective clothing, use insect repellent containing DEET, clean and empty containers that collect water and keep screens on windows and doors in good shape. He said reducing time outdoors between dusk and dawn is also important because the Culex tarsalis mosquito that transmits the virus is an evening and morning biter.

“The Culex tarsalis requires some warmth, but it doesn’t like the mid-day heat,” he said. “It’s rare that you’ll be bitten by it in the mid-day sun although it can happen in shady areas. The other mosquitoes, the nuisance mosquitoes, come all the time (and) anytime, but they are not responsible for spreading the virus.”

To read more please see the Aug. 12 print edition of The Davidson Leader.

The new swimming pool in town is $19,000 closer to reality thanks to a successful partnership last month between the new pool committee and the Davidson Cyclones senior hockey team.

Jessie Foster, new Davidson Swimming Pool fund committee member, said the Cyclones helped move along the construction of a new pool by allowing the committee members to auction off a few items at their annual golf tournament and a few of the guys even donated their hair to the cause.

“Everything was really successful,” said Foster. “The group that comes out to support the Cyclones were also very supportive of the pool, so it was a great partnership between the two groups.”

Foster said Colton Allan, Keith Lawson and Brayden McNabb offered to shave their heads for donations to the new pool fund, which proved very prosperous for the committee. She said the auctioning off of the CASE IH Scout utility vehicle that was previously donated to the committee by Young’s Equipment really helped move them closer towards their final goal as well.

The committee has now raised $218,000 towards their goal of $1.3 million, which they hope to raise over the next year-and-a-half in order to start construction on the new 84 feet long by 35 feet wide six-lane pool by 2015. The next fund-raiser organized by the committee is coming up on Oct. 19 when they would be holding the Harvest Hoe-Down at the Davidson Communiplex.

“That is where we will be doing the Duck Drop,” she said, noting people can still pick up their ducks through Danielle Schneider. “There will be 12 cash prizes we’ll be giving away for that. It’s also going to be a family event, so there will be lots of activities for the kids and the families.”

Foster said the group is also going to be having the King Farmer competition at the Hoe-Down where entrants will be tested on various fun farm skills on equipment donated for the contest by John Deere.

“We’ll do things such as parallel parking combines and the farmer that can do it in the fastest time without hitting any of the objects that we’re going to place around the course will win a trophy and have the bragging rights of being Davidson’s King Farmer.”