“Snow plane nuts” from across Saskatchewan came to Davidson Jan. 27 to compare the fruits of their labours and offer free “at your own risk” rides for anyone brave enough to hop into a cockpit.
“It was a pretty good turnout,” said Charles Deaver, a local snow plane enthusiast and organizer of the rally. “Something I didn’t do is advertise it a lot because I didn’t want a lot of people to come out, especially younger kids. I didn’t have things set up right for that. If this happens again, I’ll know how to plan it better.”
Deaver owns two out of the six planes at the rally held at C&M Motors, a larger one he rebuilt four years ago and a smaller one “built right from the bottom up.” He said it takes him about four months to build a snow plane working on it part-time, when he’s not busy playing guitar for his old-time country and dance band, 3 For The Show.
A snow plane doesn’t actually fly, but can zip around a snowy field at close to 65 kilometres an hour. They’re kind of like a hovercraft, except made for Saskatchewan winters instead of Florida swamps.
Watrous’ Jack Isabelle came out to the rally to show off his homemade, other than the propeller and 290-Lycoming aircraft engine, snow plane. He said the whole body of the plane is made out of wood and there were no blueprints to fall back on when he was building it.
“You just look at other things and decide what you’ll put into it,” said Isabelle. “When it runs good, it’s a sweetheart. When it doesn’t, it’s a pain in the ass.”
Isabelle said he has been building snow planes for about 20 years. He said he first saw a picture of one and was intrigued and when one of his buddies built one, he had to have one too.
“Anybody can buy a skidoo, but these you have to build,” he said.
Lorne Winslow, who travelled from Wadena for the rally, brought along his “Snow Dragon” plane. He said the plane is equipped with a 235-horsepower Continental aircraft engine and six-foot propeller, plus a propane furnace inside the cockpit “so it stays nice and warm.
“I had a ride in one when I was six years old and I said I had to have one,” said Winslow. “They are a fun machine.”
To read more please see the Feb. 4 print edition of The Davidson Leader.
Category Archives: Davidson
Raiders girls win home tournament
The Davidson Raiders junior girls basketball team took their competition to school at the Davidson gym Jan. 25 and 26 winning all three games they played in their home tournament on route to taking the first place honours.
Sandra Baldwin, coach of the Raiders, said Davidson was “pretty strong” at the tournament, first beating the Outlook Blues 43-28 and the Eatonia Spartans 49-19 in pool A action before moving on to the first place game, a 61-35 win over the Eston Mustangs. She said the other teams at the tournament were pretty young, comprised of mostly grades 7 and 8 players, so her team that dresses four Grade 9s proved formidable to their opponents.
“They are good leaders on the court,” Baldwin said of Grade 9 players Tina Stone (guard), Kaitlyn Baldwin (post), Cheyanne Nordmarken (wing) and Sydney Booker (point guard).
Cheyanne was particularly strong on the offensive side against the Mustangs scoring a team high 18 points including a couple long threes. Sydney netted 13 points during the blowout that saw Davidson go up 19-3 in the first quarter and 35-9 by the half.
Tina was all over the court during the final game coming down with numerous rebounds and playing a quick transition game to get the ball back up to her wings, while Kaitlyn was solid on the defensive side wrestling for any balls that an opposing Mustang dared try advance into the key.
“My girls thought Davidson was going to be difficult to begin with and they were a little bit slow getting out of the gate,” said Mustangs coach Marea Olafson. “Finally, it was like ‘oh, we can play with Davidson so let’s play,’ but we started slow.”
The Mustangs dominated the third quarter scoring 18 points to Davidson’s 10, bringing the score to 45-27. The home side came back to form in the final 8 minutes, putting the game away for good and taking first place with the 26-point victory.
Olafson said the tournament as a whole was “great” for their club, as it let their younger players get in some game action and grow more as a team.
“We were able to win a few basketball games,” she said. “The Grade 7s are getting stronger and the Grade 9s are helping them. Our team building is really strong right now.”
Baldwin said her girls played extremely well together as a team even though she mixed her players up position-wise throughout the final game.
“They still went out and passed well to each other,” she said. “They made sure everybody touched the ball and they spread out the points.”
The Raiders coach said the junior girls have enjoyed a solid season so far and they look forward to playoff action come the beginning of March.
“I expect us to be at districts in the final game,” said Baldwin. “That’s our goal.”
Braves wallop Cyclones in LLHL action
The Davidson Cyclones senior men’s hockey team came within 20 minutes of giving themselves a good chance of securing a second place finish and first round bye in the Long Lake Hockey League (LLHL) playoffs last Tuesday, but then the wind shifted dramatically their opponent’s way.
Leading 4-2 heading into the third against the LeRoy Braves in a must-win game, the Cyclones would give up seven goals in the third frame to eventually lose 9-7 to the team they are trying to leapfrog in the LLHL standings. After the game, Davidson sat tied with the Braves and the Lanigan Pirates for second place in the league, with LeRoy having a game in hand. The Cyclones regular season is finished while both Lanigan and LeRoy have makeup games scheduled for this week.
“We probably didn’t finish the way we wanted to (against LeRoy),” said Jason Shaw, head coach of the Cyclones. “We worked hard to get up to 4-2, but then in the third period guys got tired and everything that (LeRoy) shot seemed to go in. It’s tough when you only have a limited number of players, but I thought our guys tried their best. It’s just that a few mistakes cost us.”
Shaw said the Cyclones “just ran out of bodies” against LeRoy. Forward Pat Cey, who is trying to make a comeback after suffering a wrist injury earlier in the month, had to shut it down after taking the warm-up and captain Derek Allan injured his knee in the first and couldn’t go in the second and third.
The Braves onslaught came early in the third and was prolonged. Braves forward Ryan McDonald scored his second of the game and first of three in the third at the 2:54 mark. Thirty-four seconds later the game would be tied at 4-4 on a shot by Pearce Gourley.
The Braves had all the momentum. They were hitting any Cyclone that dared touch the puck or enter their zone, but a meltdown on the power play could have cost them.
Cyclones forward Kevin Johnson wristed a nifty top glove side on Braves goaltender Nathan Unrau shorthanded once again giving the home side a lead at 5-4 just over five minutes into the third. This was short lived as the Braves continued to press and tied it up less than two minutes later on a weak shot past Cyclones goalie Brady Willner, who seemed to be fighting the puck all night.
Cyclones forward Steve DeSilva, despite struggling around the ice after taking a hard hit in the first period, scored his second of the game 20 seconds later on a nice bobbling puck play in front of the LeRoy net making the score 6-5 Davidson.
The Braves tied it up again just over two minutes later and took the lead for good three minutes after that, at the 13:49 mark of the third, on a power play goal by Devin Moore. The game could have easily been called here because the Cyclones were done. They couldn’t move up the ice without getting crunched by a Brave and when they did manage to get a shot towards goal LeRoy players sacrificing their body for the win blocked it.
To read more please see the January 28 print edition of The Davidson Leader.
Loreburn wins Mars Bars contest for rink upgrades
The home of the Loreburn 19ers is about to get a $20,000 improvement after being named one of five grand winners of a Mars Bars Play Your Part Promotion.
The contest was open to rinks across Canada with five eventually moving to the final round and a chance of $20,000 if they could get enough pins, found in the wrappers of Mars Bars, entered online. Loreburn faced off in the final round against rinks in Mission, B. C., London, Ont., Warwick, Que. and Marsh Lake, Yukon.
Vanessa Tastad, Loreburn recreation board president and village councillor, said the whole village jumped behind the cause. She said, if chosen, the arena proposed to paint, add stick racks and door closures and install new flooring in their two new dressing rooms at the 48-year-old arena, which sees around 50 skaters come through its doors weekly for their hockey, figure and public skating fix.
“Everyone was pretty pumped around here through the whole cause,” said Tastad. “The rink sold just Mars Bars. The (high school) football team sold Mars Bars at their games and anything that the school had on sold Mars Bars. Everybody was entering pins and they’d drop them off for me to enter at the RM office too. Everyone was really good.”
Tastad said she found out they had been selected to receive the $20,000 prize through a phone call from Mars Bars on Dec. 27, with the announcement going national Jan. 8 informing all five rinks that they would get the full $20,000 for their great work getting their communities rallied around the cause.
“It was a pretty good Christmas present,” she said.
Loreburn is scheduled to receive the cheque by the end of January with the improvements beginning in February or March. Tastad said they will first have to get “organized” concerning getting quotes for the work, but the $20,000 will fully cover everything that needs to be done.
“We have two other dressing rooms that we can use while we’re in the process (of renovating), so we’ll be able to keep the rink running through the work,” she said.
Tastad said she first sent in the application to Mars Bars in March and were informed they advanced to the second round of competition two months later. They was picked as one of the five finalists in June and the community has been eating nothing but Mars Bars ever since.
Marc Garneau reaches out to westerners
Federal Liberal Party leadership candidate Marc Garneau is making the West a priority in an effort to build Liberal memberships in Saskatchewan, Alberta and British Columbia as those provinces take over the economic engine of Canada.
Garneau was in Saskatoon Jan. 10 meeting with students at the University of Saskatchewan on another stop in his cross-country tour of Canada.
“The centre of gravity, economically speaking for the country, has shifted to the West,” said Garneau, who represents the Quebec riding of Westmount–Ville-Marie. “If you look at the province of Saskatchewan, it has a booming economy with great resources (like) uranium, potash and of course grains as well as oil and gas. It also has strong potential with respect to the knowledge-based economy with great universities and good companies.
“There is a great shift in terms of where things are at in Canada economically speaking, so the message that I carry when I go to Saskatchewan, Alberta and British Columbia is that I understand how the situation has changed and how important the West is.”
Garneau, 63, said he entered the Liberal leadership race on Nov. 20 due to this desire to change the focus of the country’s economic policy. He said the economic centre of the world has shifted to Asia where there is a high demand for western Canadian resources and, as a result, Canada must find an “efficient way” to get these resources to countries like China and India.
To demonstrate a way to do this, Garneau released his four-point economic strategy earlier this year, which includes a desire for open foreign investment in Canada under transparent and concrete rules, an investment in transportation infrastructure for resources moving to the BC coast for shipment to Asia, environmental protection based on scientific evidence and partnerships with aboriginal communities through resource revenue sharing.
While he believes this may be a start in keeping Canada on a strong footing economically, Garneau said these changes couldn’t right the ship all by themselves. He said with an aging population and underused youth that Canada will not be able to keep up with powerhouses China and India unless an investment is made in a “knowledge-based economy” as well.
“The Harper government is only focused on resource development, but should also focus on diversifying the economy,” he said. “On occasion the price of a resource is going to go down, because there are fluctuations in the world market and in world demand for our resources.
“Having a diversified economy means focusing on trying to exploit that other wealth within this country, which is its people. It’s a focus on putting in place a federal policy that will help to make us more innovative in this country and more competitive with respect to other countries.”
To read more please see the January 28 print edition of The Davidson Leader.
Unused steel billboards cost taxpayers thousands
The Town of Davidson is out tens of thousands of dollars after a previous town council’s idea to generate revenue for the community didn’t quite work out as planned.
According to discussion around the council table last Monday, it was a well-meaning idea to erect two large steel billboards by Highway 11, which the town bought for around $30,000, in order to generate revenue for the town through paid advertising.
The steel signs were purchased less than two years ago in order to replace the wooden signs that grace the side of the highway. Council decided to replace the wooden signs because they are susceptible to damage by wind, but the new steel signs are now being sold without ever being put up due to the cost of erecting them.
At the April 20, 2010, Davidson town council meeting a request was presented by then-recreation director Morgan Grainger to purchase two steel billboards from Abacus Signs for an approximate total cost of $37,000 and that the funds be taken from the town recreation capital account. The motion was carried.
After purchasing the 12 feet by 48 feet steel billboards for $27,540 plus PST, it was learned that to erect them the town would need to put in three feet square by 16 feet deep concrete piles at a further cost to the town of $27,000. This is due to concerns of the large signs blowing over during a windstorm.
The idea to put up the billboards stopped there and they have been lying on the ground behind the Davidson Communiplex ever since.
Town council passed a motion to advertise for tenders for the two billboards at their March 20, 2012, meeting in an effort to sell them and recoup the cost. They have been unable to find any takers so far.
At the recent Jan. 14, 2012, town council meeting a motion was passed to try and sell the billboards at a reduced cost as a way to cut their losses instead of sinking any more money into the project.