Interested students at Chief Kahkewistahaw Community School made major strides in the game of basketball last month thanks to a clinic run by a few Davidson School students and one graduate.

Grade 12 students Kim Baldwin and Matthias McCreary joined up with Grade 11s Jill Rettger and Grade 10 kids Tina Stone, Cheyanne Nordmarken, Huck Rettger, Sydney Booker and Gabe Ebenal along with 2012 Davidson School graduate Sydney Willner to run the Nov. 29 and 30 basketball clinic at Chief Kahkewistahaw Community School (CKCS). During the clinic the Davidson School kids imparted their knowledge of dribbling, shooting, basic defensive and offensive plays and the rules of the game to the group of aspiring players.

“Volleyball is a really big thing in (Kahkewistahaw),” Kim said. “The principal (Evan Taypotat), who interned here a couple years ago so we know him pretty well, was trying to get basketball started in their community, so they wanted a couple kids who had been playing basketball for a while (to help).”

Kim said they first received notice Taypotat hoped to get a basketball clinic going when he approached Tony and Sandra Baldwin in late October when the Raiders senior girls volleyball team were playing in a CKCS tournament. She said Sandra then organized how the clinic would operate before asking a few kids if they’d like to go and they were all for it.

“The first day and part of the second day we split everyone up and went over basics,” Kim said. “Then at the end of the second day we had a scrimmage, so we split the kids into two teams and they just played and some of our students played and me and Matthias coached the teams. It was really fun.”

Jill said the Davidson kids were able to show the CKCS students “little tricks” how to approach plays in a different way during the clinic. She said they were also able to give them a quick lesson what to do at different moments in a game.

“They got really good,” said Tina. “Everything they got pretty good at, but they were originally pretty good.”

Tina said this was the first time the Davidson School students have ever done anything like this before, but they would take part in coaching another clinic if given the chance.

Kim said they planned on conducting the basketball clinic at Kahkewistahaw for free, but their good will was rewarded by the generosity of CKCS students at the end of the second day to their complete surprise.

“We had lunch with them the second day (and) they supplied breakfast for us,” she said. “They also gave us all gifts. They gave us all a (CKCS) t-shirt, a pad and a pen and $40. It was really cool.”

Herman Crescent resident Pat Rhodes is asking anyone who lost Christmas decorations from outside their home to contact her, as they may be the ones she found spread around her property.

“We found some laying in the street in front of our house then we found more laying in the alley behind our house,” said Rhodes about her Dec. 4 and 5 discoveries. “The one in the front was the Abominable Snowman and he was claimed and then in the back there was a candle and a couple strings of lights and one of those white spirals…they’re supposed to look like a Christmas tree when you stand them up. Then there was three light-up gifts with a star and another set of lights attached to it.”

Rhodes said the candle and one string of lights was claimed by the United Church and returned, but the Christmas tree spiral, the gift bags and a string of blue LED lights is still in their possession. She said all the lights are still in working order and nothing seems too damaged.

“We’ve had some people phone asking about reindeer, but nope there wasn’t any reindeer,” she said. “So there was more (decorations stolen around town) and I guess the Catholic Church had some stolen too, but they found theirs by the school.”

Rhodes said there hasn’t been any mention to her of anyone else around town who found missing decorations. She said the job right now is just to get these ones back to their rightful owner before Christmas comes.

“It’s just they’re here for whomever that they belong to to come and claim them.”

The largest crop in Saskatchewan’s history and record yields all across Western Canada has resulted in some strains in grain being moved by trains this fall, but when taken in perspective everything is going smoothly.

Derrick Vetter, general manager of Cargill Ltd. in Davidson, said local producers have had “pretty good crops” the past four or five years while other parts of Western Canada have suffered through wet land, problems seeding or the crop just not coming in as big. He said this year is different as there are big crops spread out all across Western Canada.

“We’ve been lucky and maybe a little bit spoiled the last couple years when we’ve had good crops and good quantity and good quality, so we’ve been probably able to get a little bit more than our fair share when we talk (about) our local marketplace here, between the two cities and either end between the lakes,” said Vetter. “Now that this year when everybody has lots of quantity and for the most part the same quality it’s just getting spread out over a much bigger geography.”

Last week Statistics Canada estimated Saskatchewan’s 2013 crop is 38.4 million tonnes, which is 40 per cent above 2012 production and 48 per cent above the 10-year average. It further indicates this province’s canola crop is estimated to the largest on record at 8.9 million tonnes, an increase of 37.5 per cent over 2012. Production levels for wheat, canola, peas, lentils, chickpeas, oats and flax are all estimated to be above the 10-year average.

Vetter said this has resulted in a bit of a delay in grains being moved by trains, but it’s more company specific and they are “probably not” experiencing much of one. He said they still have a little bit of October grain to move, but for the most part they’re fairly current.

“When we’ve actually started looking into as far as trains running this year versus previous years, other than the month of October for us, we’re probably ahead of where we typically would be this time of year as far as shipping by rail,” he said. “It’s one of those things. There is lots of talk about the doom and gloom, (but) I think if people were to look at the stats it’s maybe not as bad as what the perception is out there.”

A Canadian Grain Commission release last week showed exports of Western Canadian grain to be higher this year to date compared to data from the same time last year and the five-year average. It states the volume of grain shipped by producer cars is also higher than at the same time last year.

As of Nov. 24, the Canadian Grain Commission states 5.1 million tonnes of wheat and 2.3 million tonnes of canola have been exported this crop year. The five-year average for exports of wheat by this time is 3.9 million tonnes and for canola 1.8 million tonnes.

That means 2013 exports have seen a 31 per cent increase in wheat exports and a 28 per cent increase in canola exports compared to the five-year average. This amounts to Western Canadian producers shipping 105,700 tonnes of wheat and 5,500 tonnes of canola to terminal elevators by producer car, while in the 2012-2013 crop year producers shipped 64,600 tonnes of wheat and 5,300 tonnes of canola to terminal elevators by this time.

To read more please see the December 9 print edition of The Davidson Leader.

It was the time when the Soviet Union was falling, the Berlin Wall was crumbling and apartheid was ending.
Important events that changed the world.
Closer to home, however, all newly engaged couple Colleen McMasters and Mark Frobisher want to do is plan a simple wedding.
They soon find out that nothing is simple when two completely different sets of parents get involved. Add some bridesmaids who are girls who just want to have fun, a cast of other eccentric characters, the unexpected appearance of an old girlfriend, set it to the soundtrack of the late ‘80s and early ‘90s and you have the makings of a pretty good musical comedy.
The version of Altar Egos, presented Nov. 28-30 by Davidson’s Kinsmen Club and Davidson Community Performers, was made great by the comedic and musical talents of the community’s performers.
From the band that played the music, the choir that provided the beautiful voices, to the actors on the stage, all turned in exceptional performances. Some gave memorable ones. Everyone in town now knows who Cory Dean is.
Mandy Tichit, delivered a Melissa McCarthy worthy performance as bridesmaid Maxine.
Appropriately big-haired Kelly Allan, as Colleen, conveyed the stress felt by many a bride-to-be who was foolish enough to have not eloped, despite her father’s (played by Peter Sarich) $20,000 incentive. Jason Low, as Mark, whose idea it was to have a simple wedding in the first place, quickly learns that nothing is simple when it comes to planning nuptials.
The audiences were appreciative of performers’ efforts and those of director Arlene Low, co-director Karen Reich and musical director Tracy Hodgins.
It took a lot of work, countless hours of preparation by cast and crew. In return, audiences received an evening of excellent entertainment and the opportunity to see yet another side, this one tie-dyed, of Jim Cross.

The Davidson United Church is trying something new in order to build the spiritual well being of the community and the individuals within it.

Mary Smillie, a leader with the multi-faith Rural Spirit Study project initiated by the Davidson United Church, said they are going to be installing “around $10,000” worth of audio-visual equipment in the church, so they can use the resources of the Internet to start content-driven conversations among community members. She said this would be phase two of the three-phase $30,000 research project that is funded by the United Church of Canada and is being conducted by the church and the Centre for Rural Community Leadership and Ministry (CiRCLe M) in Saskatoon.

“We saw, ourselves as a congregation, the need to understand better what it is that makes people’s spirit tick,” said Smillie about the purpose of the Rural Spirit Study. As “a church we’re supposed to exist for that, but as everybody can see in Canada and North America church populations are generally dwindling. That doesn’t mean people don’t still have a spirit that they want to nurture and we as a church need to change how we approach people from a spiritual point of view. We can’t do that unless we understand what it is that makes people’s spirit tick.”

Smillie said the word spirit is representative of things such as wonder, awe, and a person’s purpose, meaning, and connectivity in the world. She said religion is “not essential” in the steps they are taking to nurture the spirit of the community and individuals in the community.

“The end goal would be to take what generations before us built in terms of this church and this structure and this space…and continue to have it evolve and expand in what it does to be more relevant to more people in this community,” she said, noting they are not trying to get more people to attend United Church services with this project.

Cam Harder, executive director of CiRCLe M, said phase one of the study identified a number of factors through focus group research that resulted in a sense of spiritual well being in a person. He said one of these factors is the importance of having a place where people can have a content rich conversation about things that are important to them and that is something the church can provide using some of the funds from the scholarship.

“People felt that having these conversations was a really rich experience, so we thought what if we set up a space where we can for example Skype somebody in on a large screen TV from anywhere in the world really who could share something really interesting with us and we could have a back-and-forth with them,” said Harder, noting they could also show the self-development video TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) talks or YouTube videos and then have conversations about them. “We could (also) have the young people come in and they could share their favourite content piece from the Web…and it would allow for some intergenerational sharing of resources. It would allow for some content rich conversations.”

To read more please see the December 2 print edition of The Davidson Leader.