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Helen Fornwald
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Fornwald announced her retirement following 34 years of work with the city.
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The City of Estevan will see one worker who has spent her whole career leave her office this winter with Helen Fornwald announcing her departure.

Fornwald worked with the city for 34 years, most recently working as the city's Safety Coordinator who worked with the city's infrastructure projects and other areas around Estevan.

Fornwald says that her retirement - which officially takes place December 13 - comes after a lot of thinking about what she wants to do.

"I finally decided after almost 34 years to retire and start the next chapter of my life. So I'm leaving the legacy and leaving the city in a better place than when I first came that many years ago."

With an over three-decade career behind her, Fornwald says that she's proud of the impact she's had on the community.

"I was hired in 1991 to come help build the leisure centre, so that was a milestone in itself, followed by, we built the skateboard park and then we started building in 2009, our affinity place and opened that up in 2010."

"It's something in a career to be able to build a multi-facility like that, but to have the opportunity twice was pretty exciting to be a part of that and see that from ground zero and do the fundraising in the beginning with the leisure centre in the early 90s. It was an eye opener and the support we had from the community has been something and then all the achievements that we've done in safety so far with our core certificates and our WCB audits and things like that."

Even as she leaves the City of Estevan's government, Fornwald will still be helping out the city in her other current role.

"I still have one more term as Curl Sask's president, so that takes me travelling around the province for the winter right straight through to summer. I'm also on another provincial board that I will be busy, so volunteering doesn't just stop for me, but I'm going to spend some time with family and friends and see what other opportunities are out there."

Fornwald says that a top priority for her this summer will be to get the bid sealed for Estevan to host the next Tournament of Hearts.

As she's leaving the city's government, Fornwald says that there's plenty to look forward to in Estevan for the future.

"Estevan is a great community to work at, to raise a family. It's a safe community, the community support here for sport, culture, recreation, and arts is outstanding. Bringing events is really exciting and they've got a great team of staff and managers to work with and of course, we'll have a new Council and a new mayor to work with and they've been fantastic and supportive over the years."

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