WestCentral

A pair of stories out of Eatonia, and a paint night in the community for seniors headline this week's local look at stories.

It's also graduation season, and Kindersley Composite School held their annual awards day. Read about that and more from the week in the top five stories from June 16-20 below:

With files from Cooper Douglas

The Saskatchewan Association of Rural Municipalities (SARM) hit the road this past week, hosting a series of June Division Meetings in all six of its provincial divisions.

Between June 16 to 19, the meetings took place in Langham, North Battleford, Moose Jaw, Swift Current, Kipling and Kelvington. Each session featured presentations and updates relevant to local governance, rural issues, and municipal responsibilities.

First Nations youth leaders are warning Canadians can expect a long, tense summer of protests as governments push forward with plans to fast-track major projects — and young people will be leading the charge.

"You will see us in your cities, your city's hubs," said Ramon Kataquapit, a youth councillor with the Chiefs of Ontario and Nishnawbe Aski Nation and a member of Attawapiskat First Nation in northern Ontario.

A group of Elrose Composite School students recently traded places with select students from St. Mary's Catholic Academy in Toronto, Ontario.

Saskatchewan is leading the country in urban housing start growth, with new figures from the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation showing a 108.6 per cent increase in the first five months of 2025 compared to the same period last year.

The province ranked first in the nation for growth in housing starts during that period.

Scientist Daniel Shugar says images of the aftermath of Thursday's deadly rockslide in Banff National Park provide evidence of its cause — water flowing through the interior of the mountain.

“You can actually see some springs coming out of the cliff and actually coming out exactly from the scar itself,” said the University of Calgary professor of geomorphology.

He described how water from a lake above the cliff at Bow Glacier Falls had been seeping through rocks for decades before it eventually provided enough force to dislodge a boulder, triggering the rockfall.

The federal and provincial governments are investing $3.4 million over four years in a new genomics project aimed at advancing sustainable beef production in Saskatchewan.

The funding will support the development of two new facilities at the University of Saskatchewan (USask): the Omics Resource Centre at the Western College of Veterinary Medicine (WCVM) and the Beef Reprotech facilities at the Livestock and Forage Centre of Excellence (LFCE).

A swath of west-central Saskatchewan is bracing for a soggy Saturday as Environment Canada has issued rainfall warnings for dozens of rural municipalities, with 40 to 80 millimetres of rain expected by evening.

Rainfall is forecast to begin late Friday evening, intensifying into heavy downpours through Saturday before tapering off overnight. The agency warns the system could lead to flash flooding, water pooling on roads and localized flooding in low-lying areas.

One of the two people killed in a rockfall in Banff National Park has been identified as 70-year-old Jutta Hinrichs of Calgary.

The University of Alberta, in a statement, says Hinrichs was an educator in the department of occupational therapy in the Faculty of Rehabilitation Medicine. 

She retired last summer.

Her body was found shortly after a slab of mountain suddenly gave way Thursday afternoon, collapsing on hikers at a popular trail near Bow Glacier Falls, about 200 kilometres northwest of Calgary.

RCMP are asking for the public’s help locating a man wanted in connection with a vehicle theft and police chase in the Swift Current area.

Swift Current Rural RCMP responded to a report of a stolen vehicle from a rural property in the RM of Swift Current around 8 a.m. on June 19. Investigators say unknown individuals broke into two buildings on the property before taking off with a brown 2005 Ford F-350 truck.