Most of us get pretty excited to get front row seats for our favourite concert or live theatre production. But former Roblinite Jeff Boguski has the best seats in the house when it comes to events like these.

Boguski has been working behind the scenes as a production manager for several music artists and entertainment productions all over the world. Although it wasn’t a career he had in mind when he first ventured out, it definitely became the experience of a lifetime.

Find out who he's toured with in this week's issue.

Hundreds of Manitobans who are waiting for hip or knee replacement surgery will be able to access care more quickly with three new agreements recently signed by the Manitoba government.

The province is partnering with Big Thunder Orthopedic Associates in Thunder Bay, ON; Sanford Health in Fargo, North Dakota; and a clinic in Cleveland, Ohio to help address surgical wait times.

Find out more in this week's Review.

A group of community-minded moms are stepping up to the plate to try and raise funds to upgrade the playgrounds off Newton Bay – known as the Lions Park, and on 2nd Street N.W., aka the Children’s Legacy Park.

There were some discussions last year about forming an actual committee and now it’s on to the next portion of planning and fundraising.

Read all about it in this week's Review.

The Municipality of Roblin’s new recreation manager says she knew the community was struggling a bit in the recreation department.

The on-again, off-again search to find a replacement for long-time manager Trish Boguski hadn’t been going too well and she had been thinking about applying for the job.

Find out more in this week's Review.

During Opaskwayak Indigenous Days (OID), a display was set up in the Otineka Mall with all 50 beaded crowns from OID’s 50th Anniversary. Mother and son duo, Tracy Desjarlais and Cory Constant, beaded the crowns for the anniversary celebration. Desjarlais’ beading talent was recognized locally, after she had designed and beaded a crown for a contestant in one of the pageants.

“I was asked by a friend from Opaskwayak Cree Nation (OCN) to make her little girl a crown because she was in the Angel Princess pageant,” said Desjarlais. “She knew I did bead work and she wanted a crown and moccasins for her daughter who was running as Little Miss Big Eddy. I beaded a crown and moccasins for her, and it wound up being the very first crown I had ever made. I had to figure out a design and how I was going to actually make it.

“From her wearing it around the community that weekend and her mom running the Angel Princess and Little Miss Sweetheart pageants for a while, I was asked to make the crowns for those categories and it went on from there. I believe I started in 2012 when I made my first crown for the Angel Princess, the next year was for the Little Sweetheart Princess, and then I wound up making them for all the pageant categories.”

Get the full story in this week's paper!

If you’re looking for bargains on some really good books to read, then The Pas Regional Library’s second annual book sale is the place to check out. Right now the library is accepting donations of used books and other materials for their sale.

“The library is accepting donations of books for the book sale right up until the day before the event,” said The Pas Regional Library Administrator Caitlin Henderson.

“For the sale we accept any subjects and genres of books, any magazines, DVDs, and even CDs, if people are trying to find somewhere to donate them. The only limitation is any items donated need to be in relatively good condition."

Read all the details in this week's Opasquia Times!

It was official last week with the crowning of the OID Princess, Junior Princess, Little Miss Sweetheart and Angel Princess for 2022. Each and every contestant that ran in this year’s pageants were outstanding in their own ways and possessed qualities that made them all princesses.

Miss Otineka Mall Julia Bignell was crowned OID Princess for 2022. Miss KB Coffee Gigi Blacksmith was crowned OID Junior Princess 2022. Miss Missinnipi Airways Deshawna Whyte Personius was crowned OID Little Miss Sweetheart 2022. Miss Jordan’s Principle Cherish Halcrow Personius was crowned OID Angel Princess.

OID Junior Princess Gigi Blacksmith seized the opportunity to reaffirm why she was the chosen candidate this year by announcing she and her family will be funding an award every year for an OID Princess and Junior Princess candidates, as part of raising awareness for MMIWG2S.

The awards are in memory of Kendara Ballantyne and will be presented by KB Coffee and the Blacksmith family.

Full details in this week's paper!

Two significant murals in The Pas are getting restored with the help of a couple of community organizations. When The Pas Rotary Club President Jim Scott learned that the original artist who painted the murals would be in the community for the summer, he knew the opportunity had perfect timing.

“These murals, especially the two Little John is working on, have become very iconic in the community and a lot of people have had their pictures taken beside or in front of them,” said Scott. “Over time, the weather has taken its toll and the murals have seen better days. It came up that Little John was going to potentially be in The Pas this summer visiting family. I negotiated a price with him to touch up his murals and then our group went about raising the money for it.

“We approached The Pas Destination Marketing Committee and the Rotary Club, and between the two organizations, we were able to come up with the money need to have Little John touch up the murals. These are being restored and repaired for there was a tremendous amount of behind the scenes damage to the one on Edwards Avenue, due to the elements.”

Read the full story in this week's paper!

Back in the day, the Valley has its own array of musical talent that originated right within the area. This is part one about a group of talented local musicians, who fostered their love of music by developing a band, which led to them playing all over the Valley and eventually creating a record to put in local jukeboxes.
The Group started up about 1965 and originally consisted of Gordon Hornbeck on the drums; Jim Hooper on lead guitar; Aaron Burnett on rhythm guitar; Glen Kerestes on bass guitar and Raymond Fulford on keyboards. In 1966, the band underwent some band member changes with Hooper and Kerestes leaving and Doug Scales joining in.
“I recall being in Grade 10 and Mrs. Clara Stirling was my biology teacher at the time,” said Hornbeck. “One day we assembled at her class to find her sitting on the edge of the desk and she asked if any of us had seen the Ed Sullivan Show the previous evening. The whole class erupted because it was the Beatles who appeared on the show. Everyone got very talkative in class about the phenomena of popular music.
“After that discussion, I went home that night and talked to my parents about it. It was a short time after that, I found a friend in high school, Jimmy Hooper, who had an electric guitar and I told him I had an acoustic guitar. He invited me over to his house.
“I met Jimmy’s parents and while we were talking, his mom kept playing the piano,” said Hornbeck. “She was crazy on the piano and played everything you could think of. She kept asking if there was anything we wanted to hear. She played by ear and all these songs with such enthusiasm. Looking back, I kind of associated her with Jerry Lee Lewis, because she had that same enthusiasm for music.
“A few weeks later I had Jimmy over to my house to see what I had set up to play my guitar in the basement. I had a quiet section in the basement all to myself. Jimmy picked out the song with chords and flat-picking; it was Wildwood Flower. It’s a famous old song that talks about the effects of smoking cannabis. Jimmy played the song so perfectly; you’d think you were listening to a recording.
“I suggested we meet more often so he spent a lot of time at my house and we spun 45 records from Scalf’s Music Store,” said Hornbeck. “That was a source for studying music. Jimmy could listen to that song off the portable record player and identify each chord by listening to it. Without any formal music training or education, Jimmy had the same talent as his mother and could play by ear. He really had the inside track to listening and copying music. We were so drawn to his musical talent.
“Aaron Burnett was another friend from school who heard about our enthusiasm for listening and playing music. Aaron wanted to join us and bring his guitar. He came over and we plugged his guitar into Jimmy’s amp and started making some real noise. That was the beginning of the band.
“Another friend of mine from school, Glen Kerestes, was working as a furniture deliveryman,” said Hornbeck. “He got his older brother’s guitar, took the top two strings off and tuned down the bottom bass strings. Once he had it to where he wanted it, he said he would join in playing bass.”
The newly formed band began to experiment with their sound during rehearsals and soon found themselves upgrading musical instruments and equipment.
“By then this little amplifier of Jimmy’s that had a speaker the size of a butter plate was really overloaded,” said Hornbeck. “Jimmy set out to get an amplifier in the Sears catalogue. He found a Sears Silvertone amplifier that had two 12-inch speakers and a separate power head on top with about five or six inputs. For the first year, which would have been 1965-1966, we played everything through that one big amplifier.
“One day we went outside and set it up to play in the backyard. The next day at school, a couple of classmates told me that their parents heard us playing music in the backyard from about three miles away. We must have been playing pretty loud, but when you’re playing rock n’ roll music, you don’t always know how loud the volume really is.
“Eventually Glen purchased a Fender Mr. Bassman amplifier and a Fender Jazz bass guitar,” said Hornbeck. “Then Aaron went out and bought a Fender Mustang and his own large amp. Now we were really rocking.”
It wasn’t long after before the band was asked to do their first live stage performance in town. Luckily Hornbeck’s father captured all those early moments on stage by filming it.
“We were soon asked to play live music for the Canadian Girls In Training (CGIT) dance behind the United Church in Swan River,” said Hornbeck. “It was our first gig and my dad had this small 8 mm movie camera came out and started filming the band and the crowd. I still have those 8 mm movies and transferred them to DVD, which allows me to watch it anytime I want. It’s amazing to be able to watch that live stuff from the past.
“We all decided that if we were going to perform as a band, we were going to have to be presentable. So for that first performance, we wore white T-shirts with red cardigan sweaters, white pants and white tennis shoes. I have lots of photos of us dressed like that. There was no money involved and the greatest joy was to be asked to come and perform.”
After their first performance, they realized they needed a name for the band if they were going to continue on taking bookings and performing.
“Once the dance was over, we all sat down and realized we had a golden opportunity to form a band, but we had no name,” said Hornbeck. “We went through a brainstorming session in my parents basement and were throwing out names. We knew the names of all the popular bands at the time. Glenn was very quick and came up with some names. We couldn’t come up with a name that we could all agree on, so we decided on the name called The Group.”
Hornbeck has many classic memories of The Group and some of the adventures they had as a band. This was the beginning for many of the band members to develop a long-time love for music and the start of their musical careers.
“I have the original stamp we used for the dances at the Legion and community halls we would rent on a Friday or Saturday night to play a dance,” said Hornbeck. “We had a guy sitting with the stamp and a cash box at the door. The admission price was one dollar and he would stamp their hand to show they had paid.
“We travelled and played in community halls numerous times. At that time, it became popular to have a light show travelling with the band. Bands would perform and this different array of lights would come on. So I got some coloured lighting from my parents Christmas floodlights and I wired them all up through a board at my feet so my high hat foot could punch these switches on and off. It also allowed me to rotate the lights, which allowed me to put on a light show. Looking back it was pretty psychedelic for our time.
“There was this one time we were set up to play in Bowsman,” said Hornbeck. “We had the stage all set up and I wired up the lights.
We figured we were going to have a real good show that night. Well to my surprise, I had wired up the perfect short circuit, so about the third song into the first set, I start punching the lights and my foot goes down and there’s an explosion under my foot and fire going across the stage.
Bang! All the lights and cords were melted, the entire Bowman Hall breakers went at once and it was pitch black, so everyone turned on their cigarette lighters to see. The amplifiers have tubes and they don’t die instantly, they make a strange sound cooling off. I will never forget our amplifiers making that sound. It was definitely a night I will not forget.”
The story of The Group will continue in next week’s Star and Times.

Two local youth have been trending on the streets by selling lemonade and iced tea to keep the people around them hydrated during the warm weather. Here,
Benson Bordian (left) and Landen Rooks (right) work together on selling some fresh iced tea.