PembinaValley

As Mother Teresa once said, 'Kind words can be short and easy to speak, but their echoes are truly endless'.

Often, the first person someone in crisis speaks to during a critical incident is a police officer, and that's where our Regional Crisis Negotiation Unit (RCNU) comes in.

After two years of community-driven effort, École Morden Middle School (EMMS) is on the brink of reaching its $80,000 fundraising goal for a new, accessible play structure. 

“We are only about $3,000 short,” said Cathy Dueck, Parent Advisory Council member, “if we can reach that by the end of June, we have tentatively planned for an install over the summer.”  

Garden Valley School Division is looking into a new way to do high school that trades desks and textbooks for internships, hands-on projects, and real-world learning. 

The model is called Big Picture Learning, and a feasibility study will start this September to see if it could take root in Winkler. The division has tapped Garden Valley Collegiate principal Carrie Friesen to lead the study, a role she’ll step into after wrapping up her final year at GVC. 

A government push to steer Canada Post and the union representing 55,000 mail workers toward common ground hit a big pothole Monday.

As an increasingly acrimonious impasse drags on, Canada Post rejected a framework put forward by the union for a binding arbitration process, which Jobs Minister Patty Hajdu asked the parties to work toward just five days earlier.

The Winkler Family Resource Centre’s annual Teddy Bear Picnic made its way indoors this past weekend, having moved to the Winkler Curling Club to avoid inclement weather. However, the party was all the same for kids and families attending the picnic.  

Manitoba is urging tourists to reconsider visiting as it works to find shelter for a flood of wildfire evacuees now reaching 21,000.

“This is one of the largest evacuations in our province’s history,” Lisa Naylor, the Manitoba minister in charge of emergency management, said Monday.

“The government anticipates there may be a need for more hotel rooms as the wildfire season continues. For that reason, we are urging Manitobans and Canadians to reconsider non-essential travel and event plans within Manitoba."

The ongoing wildfire situation stretches from northern Ontario right across the prairies, with the threat to homes and communities and thousands of people being evacuated.

The Assistant Vice-President of Grain for CN, David Przednowek, says they are monitoring the situation very closely as their rail lines run through the north.

CN reports they've had some delays moving grain in and out of the Port at Thunder Bay but are also doing what they can to help with the wildfires. 

It was another show of support for our fellow Manitobans, this time during the Montcalm Heritage Festival in St. Joseph this weekend.

Fire fighters from St. Jean and Letellier took off their boots and passed them around during the parade, collecting loose change for the Canadian Red Cross Manitoba Wildfire Relief fund. 

Wilma Derksen labels herself a writer, coach/therapist, and an “accidental wanderer,” among other things, but she says that she is likely best known as a “mother of a murdered child.” 

Derksen, who now resides in Winkler, is the mother of Candace Derksen, the 13-year-old girl whose story has shocked and disheartened the public across the country (and beyond it) since 1985.  

Father’s Day is just around the corner — and if there’s one thing we know, it’s that dads love practical gifts. We’re talking tools over ties, gadgets over goofy mugs. In fact, 3 out of 4 dads say they’d take something useful over something decorative any day.

That’s why we’ve teamed up with MacMor Industries in Winkler for a Father’s Day celebration that hits all the right notes (and power tool settings).