A family bond is much more than just a DNA match; it can be about having similar passions, talents, and interests. This is the case for the Stevenson family. Norm Stevenson has been racing dogs for many years and got into mushing from other members of his family.
“I got my own dogs in 1972, but was on a dogsled before that even,” said Norm Stevenson. “I got into dogsledding from my Uncle Jack and cousin Bob McPhail. They had dogs also.
“I then learned to become a musher by trial and error, and from both of them.”
A musher usually has a close bond with their dogs and it’s that connection that makes dog sled racing so enjoyable. It’s a sport that usually requires a true love of the dogs and the outdoors.

A group of avid snowmobilers have embarked on a cross-country snowmobile journey from Grand Rapids, Minnesota to Fairbanks, Alaska and will be passing through Swan River and The Pas on their trek. Rob Hallstrom is the youngest rider in the group at age 65, Paul Dick is 72 and Rex Hibbert will turn 70 while on the trip. Hallstrom, Dick and Hibbert refer to themselves as 3 Old Guys and they’re always up for a challenge.
“We’re always up for some kind of adventure,” said Hallstrom. “We went to Churchill in 2019, and at the end of that trip, we were already kind of talking about what we could do that would be bigger than that. We had a really good time on that trip and that sort of started the rumblings for us to go to Alaska.”

A big portion of the Opasquia Trails project has been in the works and it’s got lots of people excited for the finished product. The boardwalk component of the trail has been laid out over the ice and now the Opasquia Trails Board is putting all the pieces of the trail together.
“We’re really excited about this newest development for the Opasquia Trails,” said Opasquia Trails Board Member Alan McLauchlan. “Our contractor, Dave Uffleman, has been busy all week installing the boardwalk pieces over top the ice. People can now see where the boardwalk is going to go and can visualize how things are going to look.
“I recently had someone tell me they are excited to take photos from the boardwalk once it’s completed. This is going to allow people to see the lake from a different angle and I think that’s really important.”

It looks like there’s a new candidate coming out of the gate for the next provincial election. Alan McLauchlan recently announced that he is running as the PC Candidate for The Pas-Kameesak riding. McLauchlan is no stranger to politics and has a few different reasons for running in the provincial election.
“I have a couple of reasons for entering the provincial political ring,” said McLauchlan. “My first reason, is pretty much the reason why do a lot of different things, is to give back to the community. When I came here to The Pas 47 years ago, I knew no one. I came here when I was 18 years old. The north really embraced me, allowed me to learn and taught me. I want to give back to the riding in that way. I feel I have a lot of skills and abilities that I can give back to the area on this level.

A group of avid snowmobilers have embarked on a cross-country snowmobile journey from Grand Rapids, Minnesota to Fairbanks, Alaska and will be passing through Swan River and The Pas on their trek. Rob Hallstrom is the youngest rider in the group at age 65, Paul Dick is 72 and Rex Hibbert will turn 70 while on the trip. Hallstrom, Dick and Hibbert refer to themselves as 3 Old Guys and they’re always up for a challenge.
“We’re always up for some kind of adventure,” said Hallstrom. “We went to Churchill in 2019, and at the end of that trip, we were already kind of talking about what we could do that would be bigger than that. We had a really good time on that trip and that sort of started the rumblings for us to go to Alaska.”
All three of the snowmobilers have extensive experience in long-distance riding, but this may very well be the longest journey yet. Each of them will tow sleds with supplies that include spare snowmobile parts, gasoline, a hot tent, sleeping bags and essentials.
“We’re coming from Minnesota and we’re estimating it will be about 4,500 miles to make the journey,” said Hallstrom. “When we went to Churchill, that was about 3,000 miles, but that was a round trip.
On this trip to Alaska, we will be snowmobiling there, and then flying back.
“We’ve done quite a few trips and I’ve done even more on my own. My partners, Rex and Paul, have been in the Iron Dog Race in Alaska and all three of us have been in the Cain’s Quest in Labrador. We’re all getting a little older, so instead of racing, we’re doing some touring.
“We riding 8000x Arctic Cat Norseman snowmobiles with all three of us riding the same model,” said Hallstrom. “We have a general plan that the entire trip will require 22 riding days. I’m sure there will be times when we want to take a day off or need to stop and do some repairs or due to the weather. There are quite a few unknowns in this, but we have a route planned and figure it should take about a month depending on what we find on the trail.”
The 3 Old Guys are a bit daredevil, as they embark on this journey without having someone following them in a vehicle along the way.
“We’re not planning on having someone follow us with a trailer on this journey, because from Grand Rapids, Minnesota to Flin Flon, Manitoba, there’s a good trail network, even though that would work for that portion of the trip,” said Hallstrom. “After we leave Flin Flon, we’re going to be going through such remote areas, that it will be extremely difficult to have someone follow us closely with a chase vehicle, so we’re basically going to be on our own.”
They have their route charted with much of it being in remote areas across northern Canada. They will have a few different satellite communicators that will allow them to send text messages and let a few people follow their journey in real-time. This also allows them to call out for assistance in case of an emergency.
“We’re going to take the trail up to Flin Flon, then we going to take the old Cat trails to Sandy Bay, then go on to the south end on Reindeer Lake,” said Hallstrom. “From there we’ll head to Wollaston Lake and cut across to Lake Athabasca and cut across it. Then go up to the Great Slave River to the Mackenzie River and all the way up it to the Arctic Ocean. Then we’ll cross by the Richardson Mountains to the Porcupine River and take that down to the southwest part of the Yukon River. From there we will follow the Yukon Quest sled dog trail into Fairbanks. It’s quite a route and pretty remote, so it would be hard to follow by vehicle.
“We’re trying to stay in hotels along the way, wherever we can. There are a few places where we may stay in a trapper’s cabin and we have a tent with us for those places where we have to camp out. We’re prepared for that and definitely think we will have to do that a few times.”
As the 3 Old Guys make their journey into Manitoba, they have plans to stop in Swan River and will be passing through The Pas as they head into Flin Flon.
“We’ll be entering Canada close to Falcon Lake, go through Gimli and Lake Winnipeg,” said Hallstrom. “Then head west to Swan River and follow the trail north to The Pas and Flin Flon.
“If everything goes according to plan, we hope to be in Swan River and The Pas on Wednesday or Thursday. We are planning to make a stop in Swan River before heading north to The Pas and Flin Flon.”
The group was more than ready to get on the trails and blaze across Canada to Alaska. They started their journey on Monday and are looking forward to experiencing friendly Manitoba once again.
“We’ve been raring to go and at this point, we’re super ready to go on this trip,” said Hallstrom. “We’ve been talking about it enough and we’re ready to get going.
“The last time we were in northern Manitoba was our trip to Churchill and we really enjoyed it. We went through a lot of northern communities and stopped in The Pas. Everyone was so nice to us there and when we had some minor problems on the trail, people bent over backwards to help us get going again. It was just a great experience overall and we’re hoping for that again this time.”

The Swan Valley U11 Stampeders gathered on ice to celebrate their gold medal win during the Hockey Manitoba U11 Rural A Provincial Championships on Sunday (March 5). The team dominated their weekend of play with the final battle coming against the Dauphin Kings gold team...

By the 1970’s parts of the rest of Canada were beginning to wake up to the true facts about our Canadian history and the involvement of many of our descendants in the killing of Metis involved in the North-West Resistance.

Meanwhile, in 1974 in Russell, we were still erecting plaques in honor of Major Charles Boulton. Historian Tyla Betke who is a PHD candidate and an instructor in History at the Carleton University in Ottawa was more than a little shocked when she found that the long held stories of the heroics of Major Charles Boulton that she’d grown up with here in Russell, were not entirely true.

Despite the fact that this particular issue is not the subject of her doctorate, the more she learned about the untruths in the story our monuments and our verbal history have told, the more Tyla Betke was drawn to bring the real history of the founder of our town to a public forum.

Get the full story in this week's Russell Banner!

Kyle Forsyth topped the field at the Dauphin Men’s Bonspiel, presented by Dauphin Clinic Pharmacy, over the weekend.

Forsyth and his team of Jarvis Whyte, Trent Hill and Cody Hill won the championship event, sponsored by Embroidery by Design, beating Dave Marohn in the final. Rob Rempel was third and Logan Devos was fourth.

In the second event, sponsored by McMunn and Yates Building Supplies, Seth Gares and his team of Darcy Gares, Jeff Campbell and Blaine Johnson beat Dwight Bottrell in the final, with Jared Nimegeers in third and Nolan Hadway in fourth.

Darcy Todoruk and his team of Mark Graham, Dustin Mayuk and Chris Todoruk won the third event, sponsored by Parkland Source for Sports, beating Rob Fisher in the final.

Third place went to Steven Michaleski and in fourth place was Craig McLean.

The fourth event, sponsored by Baker Computers, was won by Greg Todoruk and his team of Barrett Procyshyn, Jeff Abrahams and Jeremy Mills. They beat Mike VanAlstyne in the final. Third place went to Peter Prokopowich and in fourth place was Luke Michaleski.

The Dauphin Kings moved back into a playoff position following a split of a home-and-home with the first-year Niverville Nighthawks.

Niverville scored a controversial 3-2 shootout win, Friday in Dauphin.

In the five-minute overtime, the Kings thought they had scored the winning goal, but the referee had blown the play dead before the puck crossed the line.

In the shootout, Josh Paulhus, Niverville’s second shooter, skated in and made a shooting motion, missing the puck. He made another shooting motion and scored on the second try, which the on-ice officials counted, giving the Nighthawks the victory.

According to Kings head coach and general manager Doug Hedley, the referees stated Paulhus faked a shot, before he scored.

“He shot twice. There’s no doubt about it,” he said. “We asked if we could appeal a shootout decision, but we can’t. The league has no process in line to appeal a referee’s decision on a shootout goal. There’s nothing else, it’s just a judgement call.”

Dauphin got a measure of revenge two days later with a 7-4 win in Niverville.

“I’ve been really proud of the guys and the way they’ve been playing, because since we beat Steinbach on the Friday at home, we’ve had that urgency, that compete level. Sure we’ve gotten some tough breaks, but we played well enough,” he said. “We stuck to the process in Niverville and we bent a little bit, but found a way to get it done. So that’s the biggest thing, is finding that resolve, that rebound ability and that push back that makes a team tough to beat in playoffs.”

Sunday’s win was the 349th of Doug Hedley career as Kings head coach, moving him one ahead of his former assistant, Marlin Murray.

For Hedley, it is just a number. What is more important to him is the people and players he has worked with over the years.

“Obviously, it’s been an honour and priviledge to coach them. But it’s just a number to me. What it does make you do, is reflect on the players and coaches I’ve worked with in Dauphin,” he said. “It’s more about who I’ve worked with and what they’ve gone on to do later.”

One of the things Hedley has focused on over the years is developing players to get to the next level.

“Hockey is such a great sport. There’s so many life skills to learn in a team sport like hockey, whether it’s being a teammate, whether it’s getting a long with guys, whether it’s learning how to commit to getting better every day,” he said. “All those things are life lessons and a lot of players that I coached have gone on to have successful careers. That means the most to me.”

While he is grateful for the opportunities to coach the Kings on three different occasions, winning, Hedley said, is about more than the success of players and coaches on the ice, noting the board of directors and scouts put in a lot of work, as well, making it a true team effort in building a winning culture.

With three points over the weekend, the Kings improved to 28-21-2-2 for 60 points, moving into the fourth and final playoff spot, one point ahead of the Waywayseecappo Wolverines.

The Kings can widen the spread from the Wolverines tonight when the two teams meet in Waywayseecappo at 7:30 p.m.

On the weekend, Dauphin faces the Centennial Cup host Portage Terriers, Friday in Portage and Saturday in Dauphin. Both games begin at 7:30 p.m.

Hedley feels the younger players will benefit from playing such tightly contested games this late in the season, adding the Kings have beaten Portage in both games they’ve played this season.

“They’re rolling right now, so it’s going to be a great test for us, a good challenge. That’s the kind of team you want to be playing down the stretch because you don’t want to be taking anything for granted,” he said.

Kings court:

Defenceman Aidan Brook was a finalist for the Brian Kozak Memorial Award as Top Defenceman, which went to Winkler’s Trent Sambrook.

Selkirk’s Lucas Brennan won the Steve “Boomer” Hawrysh Memorial Award as Most Valuable Player.

The Ed Belfour Top Goaltender Award went to Swan Valley’s Kobe Grant, while Carter Cormier of Selkirk won the Kim Davis Rookie of the Year Award.

Ryan Botterill of Portage won the Frank McKinnon Award for hockey ability and sportsmanship and Virden’s Tyson Ramsey won the Muzz McPherson Memorial Award as Coach of the Year.

False alarms continued to haunt the Dauphin Fire Department in 2022.

Fire Chief Cam Abrey singled out the call category in his first report to Dauphin city council since the municipal election last fall.

Throughout the year the department responded to 236 calls, an increase of 17.5 per cent over the previous year, and false alarms accounted for 38 per cent of those calls.

“Our initiative this year was to educate property owners and managers as to how to reduce the number of false alarms that are happening in their facilities,” Abrey said, adding many of the false alarm calls are to repeat addresses. “They just keep having these calls regardless of the education.”

looking at the remainder of the calls, motor vehicle collisions were the next largest category by volume at 20 per cent, followed by kitchen fires and structures and structure fires at eight per cent each. Remaining call categories include outdoor fires at seven per cent, vehicle fires at six per cent, carbon monoxide alarms, mutual aid assists and a catchall “other” category, which includes calls not falling into another column.

In 2022, 4,993 hours were dedicated to those 236 incidents, Abrey said.

“Thirteen per cent of the time was spent in the RM, 86 per cent within the city of Dauphin and one per cent was mutual aid,” he added.

A considerable number of hours were also dedicated to training in 2022, with firefighters accumulating just under 2,500 hours through weekly training sessions every Wednesday, as well as the weekend courses offered by the Emergency Services College and hosted locally.

Currently, the department has once again started a level one and level two training class, which it has opened up for the 11 departments which make up the Riding Mountain Mutual Aid District - Inglis, Roblin, Grandview, Gilbert Plains, Ochre River, Ste. Rose, Laurier, Sifton, Ethelbert and Pine River.

“We have several members of Dauphin taking part in this training along with members from Gilbert Plains, Ochre and Ste. Rose taking advantage of the training opportunity,” Abrey said.

The department also recently hosted an incident command system training session offered by an instructor from the Manitoba Emergency Services College in Brandon, which defines the unique qualities of incident command, Abrey said, and focuses on the management of single resources.

“It’s a great training opportunity for anybody that’s likely to assume a supervisory position with incident command,” Abrey said. “So we had a number of our officers, as well as some firefighters that attended that training.”

In the near future, the department will be hosting a vehicle extrication seminar for the mutual aid district and neighbouring districts.

“We open up training opportunities like this to the Lake Winnipegosis Mutual Aid District, as well as the Swan Valley Mutual Aid District, where the smaller departments may not have the numbers in order to host a program themselves,” Abrey said, adding the seminar will cover internal combustion engine powered vehicles, hybrid vehicles and electric vehicles.

“This prepares personnel to respond to motor vehicle collisions that may require extrication, promotes the importance of working with trained and authorized EMS professionals or paramedic partners and the seminar covers topics such as vehicle safety systems, the anatomy of the vehicle, extrication tools and the use of hand tools.”

The following weekend the department will host a unique training opportunity. Winnipeg Fire Paramedic Services will offer information on an advanced fire dynamics program and an occupational hygiene program, Abrey said, adding he was able to arrange for the opportunity through some contacts he has in the city department.

“They sent several of their members to Ottawa to take this training,” he said. “Ottawa has since cut their funding for the program, so it doesn’t exist there any longer. Winnipeg is continuing to carry it on and they are quickly becoming a center of excellence for this level of training in Canada and beyond.”

The fire dynamics program offers a scientific, evidentiary based firefighting curriculum addressing both theory and practical approaches to modern firefighting, Abrey said.

“It’s currently delivered to all levels of personnel within Winnipeg Fire, from brand new recruits right up the ladder to the district chiefs, providing them with the knowledge and practical skills required for sound decision making regarding strategies and tactics on the ever-evolving and dynamic fire ground within which we operate,” he said.

The occupational hygiene section is a cornerstone of that program, considering the ever-increasing incidence of firefighting-related cancers.

“We have to learn the skills to provide protection to ourselves to minimize exposure to carcinogens in post-fire time frame,” Abrey said. “So it’s not only on the fire ground, it’s that time following, as well.”

Abrey said the department will host 80 firefighters from several mutual aid districts, as well as West Region Tribal Council departments over the two days of training.

“So we’re extremely excited about this unique opportunity,” he said.

Other training opportunities planned for the coming months include a pumper truck basics course and an emergency vehicle driving seminar.

The department is also offering some lifestyles training for members which does not involve the fire ground.

Recently, the DFD brought in a yoga instructor to help members work out some kinks.

“I really thought that there would be some opposition from some of our members to sit and do some chair yoga, but it went over so well that they’re asking if we can get that instructor back again for another night,” Abrey said, joking he heard a lot of snap, crackle and pop happening in the room. “You could hear some really weird noises besides the groaning with the stretches that were happening.”

Recently, the department also hosted members of Project Resilience 911, who shared information on various mental health initiatives and resiliency training opportunities.

Plans are to expand the opportunities with a dietician, information about therapy dogs and training on personal fitness.

“We’re focusing on a health and wellness initiative to better educate our members on how to protect themselves off the fire ground.” Abrey said.