Davidson artist Gail Prpick is currently transforming her two-floor home on Washington Avenue into an art gallery as she prepares for her Art Show and Sale this Friday.

Prpick said she is removing a lot of her and her husband Tom’s furniture and would be covering the walls with paintings for her first art show to be held in her home in five years. She said the show that begins at 5:30 p.m. and goes on till whenever would be a “come and go” that will feature her own creations.

“It’ll be all paintings,” said Prpick. “All different sizes and colours. I like to do faces, but I also like figuratives and landscapes (or) pretty much any kind of painting. I’m always experimenting.”

Prpick has always sketched or painted “or been the one at school to do all the backgrounds” of the school plays, but decided to practise the craft more seriously about 10 years ago. She said a few of her friends then asked to purchase a couple of her paintings and everything accelerated from there.

“I’ve had lots of support in Davidson over the years and appreciate that,” she said. “I thought I’ll have a show and people can come and see and have a night out.”

Right now the house is filled with works laying on the ground, up on easels and hanging on the walls or just leaning against them. As you walk through the front door her newest paintings of Mother Theresa and Albert Einstein smile out to greet you.

“I do them with lots of colour and try to get a little emotion in their faces,” said Prpick. “Right now I’m just experimenting with a few, last minute stuff.”

Prpick said it isn’t difficult for her to sell her creations because if it wasn’t for the sale part of the show she wouldn’t have funds to paint in the first place. She said the desire to always create something new keeps her from getting attached to any one piece.

“I get tired of one thing, so I might be in the middle of a painting and I flip over to a different one and (then go) back to it,” she said. “I’m kind of all over the place. I want to go on to something new instead of stick with the old.”

The Imperial Cougars senior girls volleyball team joined the school’s inMotion committee last month to raise money for breast cancer research and the group’s determined effort can only be categorized as a hit.

Katherine Rieger, principal of Imperial School and a Cougars volleyball coach, said the sixth annual Imperial Cougars senior girls volleyball team’s five-kilometre walk Oct. 17 raised over $1,589 for the Breast Cancer Research Foundation. She said this amount is incredible considering the team usually raises around $150 to $300 at the yearly walk that coincides with a Cougars home tournament.

“Our belief is parents and our community does so much for us and this is the one thing, once a year that we can give back in a really positive way and raise awareness,” said Rieger, noting the girls still baked their signature pink ribbon sugar cookies for the event. “I’m proud of the (senior) girls for doing that and I’m proud of the inMotion committee for helping us do it because, although it was the same girls for the most part, you can’t do it completely by yourself without all the other people of town joining in and helping.”

The inMotion committee is a student group that tries to keep kids at the school and members of the community healthy through an active lifestyle. The committee helped plan the walk through first mapping the route, divvying up the different jobs, putting up posters and then approaching members of the community.

“The kids themselves contacted the Town of Imperial to see if they would give us the Hall for free to have the burger (lunch) at,” she said. “The kids talked to the Service Club to see if they would cook the burgers and the (rest of the) town just fell into place and started donating things. We had a donation of hotdogs for us and a donation of condiments.”

Rieger said there was a little help from herself on the volleyball side and teacher Jade VanDamme with the inMotion committee to organize the walk, but for the most part the whole campaign was student-driven. She said the kids spearheaded the project and deserve the recognition for pulling off such a fantastic event.

“The students are the ones who took the initiative and kept working on it,” said Rieger, adding the Cougars finished second at their home tournament losing to the Loreburn Aztecs in the final game. “Its fun and it makes me feel pretty good.”

Fire is no laughing matter, but the folks in Hanley found much to chuckle about Oct. 26 at the Hanley/Rosedale Fire Department’s steak supper and comedy night.
The event featured comedian Dez Reed who gave people a case of the giggles.
It was all for a good cause: to raise money to build a new fire hall in Hanley.
The new building is needed because the fire department has outgrown its current facility, which was built in 1977.
The current fire hall has two bay doors, making it a tight squeeze for the Hanley/Rosedale Fire Department’s three trucks, says Hanley administrator Darice Carlson.
When the vehicles are in the hall, it doesn’t give much room for the volunteer firefighters to move around.
The Town of Hanley has dedicated a parcel of land to build the new fire hall and has allocated $13,500 from its 2013 budget.
The new building will have three main bay doors with a fourth additional bay, giving the fire department much more room to store equipment as well as incorporating a training room in the facility.
The steak and comedy night raised $5,000 towards the new hall, adding to the current $12,800 that’s been raised so far. This total includes donations from Millsap Fuel Distributors, $1,000; Brightwater Blackstrap Wildlife Federation, $2,000; Thall’s Service, $2,500 and the Hanley and District Ag Society, $5,000.
If they continue adding to the fund, Carlson said they hope to build the new fire hall starting in June 2014.
The steak supper was well supported with the community selling 134 tickets for the event that included a silent auction and 50/50 draw.
Carlson gives credit to Darren Grindheim for organizing and overseeing the steak night as well as all the volunteers who helped out.
As well as a new hall, the fire department is also looking for new volunteers. More members are always needed. If anyone wants more information, they may contact Fire Chief Les Kroeger, Darren Grindheim, emergency measures co-ordinator, or the town office.

“What is the right fight?”
This is a question Claude Weil will discuss at Davidson’s Remembrance Day Service next Monday.
Weil, who served three years in an Israeli combat unit in the 1970s, knows about conflict.
He was born in the French colony of Algeria (North Africa) in 1954 and grew up in the village of Mézériat near Lyon in France.
He remembers, as a schoolboy, how the entire school would march with First and Second Word War veterans to the cenotaph in Mézériat for Remembrance Day services.
While driving to Regina a couple years ago, he stopped in Davidson and visited the cenotaph on main street and was appalled by the number of casualties Davidson suffered on the Western Front. He told his childhood friend, Etienne Robin, who is now Mézériat’s mayor. Robin wrote the Town of Davidson a letter to let them know that these sacrifices are remembered. In the letter Robin wrote: “This letter is a modest homage from us to the long lost soldiers of Davidson who fought for the freedom of so many French people they did not even know and would never know. Be assured that the sons your village left in our soil are well loved and their graves well cared for. Their families are dear to our hearts. They did not sacrifice in vain.”
The letter was featured in The Davidson Leader last November and the story interested Gord McRae, president of Davidson’s branch of the Royal Canadian Legion, so he asked Weil to speak at this year’s Nov. 11 service.
“I thought the letter the mayor (from Mézériat, France) sent was intriguing and it encouraged me a lot to try something different,” McRae said of why he invited Weil to speak at Davidson’s Remembrance Day service.
For years McRae has worked organizing Davidson’s Remembrance Day Service. He wants to keep it relevant so as to ensure new generations participate in the act of remembering Canada’s war casualties. Partnerships with DICA and Davidson School have helped to keep the Remembrance Day Service going in light of the fact Davidson’s Legion branch isn’t very active due to declining membership.
“I thought (having Claude Weil speak) would be something different to try and get the public coming back to the service,” McRae said.
He hopes people attend the Remembrance Day service, but worries people may treat the statutory day off like a holiday because it falls on a Monday, giving people a long weekend.
To read more please see the November 4 print edition of The Davidson Leader.

The School Community Council (SCC) is trying to bring in a fitness and art pilot project to Davidson School that would bridge the gap between the school and the greater community.

Marcia McIvor, chair of the SCC, said Davidson School staff decided last year they want to focus on physical activity and reading as part of their two-year plan, which is done in conjunction with the Board of Education. She said the role of the SCC is to support the school staff while incorporating members of the community with the school, so to accomplish the plan they came up with the idea to introduce martial arts, yoga, archery and artwork into the school.

“We’re hoping to bring it in as a pilot project in the elementary to middle years in the school just to see how it goes,” said McIvor, noting the SCC has already or are planning to approach members of the community, who are involved with these activities, to come into the school to teach the students. “If it goes well that it is something that maybe we can continue. That’s where we’re going with that, (to) try and bring in yoga and martial arts and archery to just expose the kids to something different and give them a little bit of variety.”

McIvor said introducing art would be a way of bringing the students who don’t excel in sports into the community. She said the SCC is thinking about buying some frames and going to local businesses and asking them if they could hang the frames with the student’s artwork in them throughout the community.

That way “any business you go into you might be able to see a couple different students’ artwork,” she said. “Artwork could be a poem, it could be a picture (or) it could be a (creation) of leaves. It doesn’t have to be a drawing. It’s any form of art that the student feels they can do.”

Laura Willner, a Grade 2 teacher at Davidson School and secretary of the SCC, said these activities were decided upon through conversations around the SCC table between parents, community members and teachers. She said the consensus is that this pilot project is a good opportunity for the kids to experience non-traditional activities while building connections with the community.

“There is no question that kids are open to try so many new things,” said Willner. “It is really key (that) often in the early years (when) exposed to something the more open you are to trying it and it may well turn out to be something you love for a lifetime. The more experiences for kids the better for them and we’ve got great community resources here to access and hopefully cultivate interest in these different things for the kids.”

To read more please see the October 28 print edition of The Davidson Leader.