A new movement created to help children who are removed from their homes due to crisis circumstances such as abuse, neglect and other factors, has established a chapter in the Valley. Bags of Love is a charitable organization that provides the Department of Family Services with bags filled with items a child would benefit from having when being transitioned to a new living arrangement.
The Canadian Program was started in Alberta in 2009 and is making its way across Canada, and now here in the Valley.
“We recognize that certain children, upon being displaced from their normal or perhaps abnormal home life due to domestic violence and or drug or alcohol abuse, are left with nothing, not even their favourite toy or blanket,” said Bags of Love Volunteer Linda McCullough. “It is our intent that working through the Department of Families, to provide to each of these children, from newborn to age 17, a Bag of Love with age and gender appropriate items for their care and their enjoyment that they can truly call their very own.
“We believe that this small token of love and affection will go far toward helping these children adjust to a foster or adoptive home, whether temporary or permanent. We pray that these children will long cherish their Bag of Love and endeavour to remember other children who might be subjected to the same plight in their growing years.
“When given their very own Bag of Love, it can give them a sense of security, comfort and care to support their emotional and physical wellbeing,” said McCullough.
“While attending a Women’s Retreat in May of this year, Pauline Rogers from North Battleford, SK, spoke on this project that has been moving across Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba. We were impressed to start a chapter in Swan River, as we believe there is a need in our community and we want to make a difference in a child’s life.
“We officially became a chapter in September and have delivered eight Bags of Love to the Department of Families,” said McCullough. “We plan on delivering more in the near future.”
Items that are new or gently used can be donated to go into the Bags of Love.
“Items suitable for donation could be a handmade quilt/blanket, stuffed toys, dolls, new toys and games or clean and like new condition, school supplies, books, coloring books, journals for older children, flashlights, nightlights, hygiene products such as shampoo, body wash or bar soap, deodorant, sanitary napkins, dental hygiene products, combs/brushes, hair accessories, Kleenex, socks etc.,” said McCullough. “Also, baby items such as diapers, bottles, pacifiers, baby shampoo, lotion, powder, blankets, knitted hats, toys, stuffies, etc.”
The Swan River chapter for Bags of Love is also looking for volunteers to either help put the bags together or to make handmade items to go into them. 
“It takes a village to raise a child, and it also takes a community to make a project for children work,” said McCullough. “It relies on volunteers of all ages and walks of life to meet the needs of displaced children by donating the above items as mentioned.
“If you sew or knit, we can use homemade quilts, baby blankets, bibs, pencil cases or makeup bags, hats, mittens and scarves. Please contact me or Donna Leming.
“We are a nonprofit organization and will be operating through the Swan River Seventh-day Adventist Church. If someone wishes to make a monetary donation, please make cheques payable to the Swan River Seventh-day Adventist Church and mark ‘Bags of Love’ and a receipt will be issued. Please contact me at 204-281-0483 or Donna Leming at 204-731-4553 if you have any questions or email us at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..”

A new Ukrainian dance program is being offered through the Benito Vesselli Dance Club to help engage children at a much younger and earlier age into the art of Ukrainian dancing. It is important to see cultural programs continue and to create a succession plan where there is a variety of ages when it comes to participants.
“Our club has had an increase in enrolment every year for the past couple of years,” said Vesselli Ukrainian Dance Instructor Amanda Bulycz. “I know right after the pandemic, our club took a hit, we were down to only seven dancers total in the whole club. Now we have over 35 dancers and that number continues to increase.
“We are extremely excited to see such a large increase in enrolment and involvement in Ukrainian dance, especially in our small town. Our club works extremely hard to keep the Ukrainian culture and traditions alive, and having an increase every year helps. We look forward to welcoming our new families into our dance family and community.”
Bulycz is bringing a new age category for Ukrainian dancing that will engage pre-school-aged children. She has seen other communities in bigger centres offer Ukrainian dance programs for tots, but hasn’t seen anything like it in the area.
“Our club has offered a Rhythm and Movement Class for three to five year olds for many years and has had great success,” said Bulycz. “As for a toddler class, I have seen other Ukrainian dance clubs in cities offer a parent and tot class, but nothing within the Valley. I’m looking forward to bringing the Ukrainian Dance Tots Class to the Valley.
“Tots in Motion is for our littlest dancers to join in on the Ukrainian Dance Fun. It’s a brand new program that the Benito Vesselli Dance Club is offering new this season for children 18 months to three years of age.
“Tots will explore the studio, meet our instructors, enjoy movement and dance while building confidence, all while having fun with simple dance activities,” said Bulycz.
“Austin Spencer and I are the Vesselli dance instructors and will lead this group. Parents are encouraged to stay, help and join in on all the fun with their toddler.
“I’m planning something special for our Tots in Motion class to perform at our Year-End Concert on May 9,” said Bulycz. “We might even have a small performance at Vesselli’s Malanka on Jan. 10.”
There are several more reasons other than succession planning that led to the creation of the Tots In Motion class. Bulycz has experience working in Early Childhood Education and will use that to help create the programming for the Tots In Motion classes.
“I thought about creating a tots group for a few reasons, one being the younger siblings of our current dancers always trying to sneak into the gym to join their siblings’ dance group,” said Bulycz. “We have many siblings who weren’t old enough to join dance, but wanted in on the fun. I thought, why not create a fun class made just for them and other tiny dancers that are ready to move. The program is created to be welcoming for our youngest dancers, focusing on building connections and having fun.
“I have many activities planned, but our main focus and goal will be creating a fun and welcoming environment for children to build coordination, rhythm and confidence. We will dance with scarves, feathers, tambourines and drums, move to traditional Ukrainian dance music, and learn basic steps such as marching, running, skipping, clapping, etc.
“The class is designed with toddlers in mind,” said Bulycz. “I’m an Early Childhood Educator as well, so I have been able to combine my knowledge as an ECE when making up lesson plans for the tots class. The class will be laid back, calm and meet the dancers at their level. I’m really looking forward to all the fun we will have.”
There is still time for those who are interested in the Tots In Motion class to sign up. The first class started last week, but there is still time to try it out and register for the season.
“Our Tots in Motion Class started on October 16, and will be running Thursday evenings from 5:30 p.m. to 6 p.m. in Benito,” said Bulycz. “Tots are welcome to join anytime and our first two classes are free to try before committing. The fees for the Tots in Motion class are $125.00 for the dance season. Anyone interested in registering can contact me or message Benito Vesselli Dance Club on Facebook to register or for any questions.”

Viewers who catch television shows via streaming, especially fans of Apple TV’s The Morning Show, can now watch the editorial works of a former Valley Resident. Andrew Gust has been working on The Morning Show for a few years now and has worked his way up to become an editor with the production.
“I first started on The Morning Show a few seasons ago, in season two, and I came in as an assistant editor,” said Gust. “We worked for three weeks before the pandemic hit and shut the entire world down. Film sets are places where people work in very close proximity, so filmmaking was put on pause for a while. I wound up going to a different project for a little while and then came back for season three of The Morning Show as an assistant editor.
“My mentor with the show gave me more creative opportunities to get involved with the process and by the end of season three, I became a creative editor. For season four, they brought me back as a full-time editor, joining a team of four editors for The Morning Show. I worked my way up on the show by spending a lot of time with the directors and producers, as well as demonstrating to them my creative abilities.”
A lot of work goes into producing just one episode of a television series like The Morning Show.
“On a film of this size, while filming, they capture an incredible amount of footage from multiple camera angles as well as different performances by all the actors,” said Gust. “When they are done shooting an episode, the editor receives this mountain of footage to go through. It’s the editor’s job to piece together all the best footage from all the different performances, camera angles and components that make up an episode.
“Editors, some days, will receive up to five hours of footage a day for a couple of weeks straight, and then they have to whittle that down to one hour for the entire episode. The ratio of footage shot to what actually ends up being seen by the audience is vastly different. There are a lot of decisions that go into what remains on screen.
“The story and performance are number one,” said Gust. “Editors have to piece it together in a way that feels cinematic and allows the audience to become absorbed in the show. The best work an editor can do is sort of invisible. If you are watching a show, if you think about editing too much, it can become distracting. Sometimes, if you watch a show and you just think about the story, and not the editing at all, that is when the editor has done the best job. It’s like being an invisible artist and putting it all together.
“Once the editor has pieced together the footage for an episode, they then present a rush cut of it to the director of the episode. From there, it will go through several different stages with producers, actresses such as Jennifer Aniston and Reese Witherspoon, because they are producers on the show as well. Then it finally goes to Apple to take a look and give their notes. From there, it goes through all the other stages of post-production. A composer will write music for the episode for all the different scenes and moments.
“There are also a ton of visual effects on the show that people are not aware of,” said Gust. “This is a show set in New York City, but it’s actually shot in Los Angeles. So any time there is a scene inside an apartment or office, the windows in reality are just a blue screen. That all just gets replaced later on by our video effects team to give it the façade of being in New York. Some scenes will be shot in New York, but the filming will only last a few weeks.
“The episode then goes through an extensive sound design and colour production. It’s a long process to get to the final product that people get to view at home. From start to finish, it could take several months working just to finalize the edit for an episode and then months afterwards to finish it.”
The Morning Show has a storyline that focuses on the pressures of working in mainstream media. The episodes reflect a lot of the social issues of our time, such as the Me Too movement and other political issues. It takes a lot of time to get the writing and production work done for each episode, while making sure it is still relevant with the times.
“A show like this with big-name stars is a complicated beast for sure,” said Gust. “The scripts for a show like this try to be as topical as possible, with the news cycle and covering cultural discussions that are happening at the moment. At the script writing stage, they almost take a full year to write it and then finish it, because things are always changing in the world. It takes a very large village to make this show come to fruition.”
Being an editor on a production like The Morning Show has been an incredible experience for Gust. He has learned so much in working his way up and looks forward to other projects in the future as well.
“I’m still pinching myself,” said Gust. “To work on a show that not only has a wide global audience, but also tries to have a social commentary of different sorts, is really a dream come true. To be working on something like this that hopefully can spark discussion amongst people about the topics it covers. It covers a wide range of topics and social issues, and ones that hopefully resonate with everyone, even if the character lives in this larger-than-life world. The relationship conflict and situations they find themselves in, hopefully, resonate with audiences.
“It’s sort of surreal to see my name on the credits of something like this. I’ve always hoped I could get to this point and am extremely grateful to be part of a big project like this. I never would have thought that growing up in rural Manitoba that something like this was a possibility for a career path.
“Season five of The Morning Show is coming up and we will start filming that in February or March. I also just concluded a very different and much more wholesome comedy series for Hallmark called The Chicken Sisters. It’s a lighter watch and was a lot of fun to work on.
“Right now, I’ve really enjoyed working on a project like The Morning Show, with all these people who have had all this exposure in the industry,” said Gust. “I would love to also sink my teeth into a grounded feature film that features blue-collar people and their lives as well. I think that is more of something where I come from and I know that those stories are ones that are important to put out into the world. I’m just waiting on a Manitoba director to write the feature film script about a farmer in rural Manitoba.”

Concerned citizens gathered for the Swan River Crime Meeting facilitated by the Town of Swan River on Wednesday, October 1, at the Veterans Hall. The meeting had many in attendance, both in-person and virtually, with the recording of the meeting gaining around 1,715 views in less than 24 hours.
Roger Bouvier was the moderator for the evening and this time the focus of the meeting was to answer questions from the public. In attendance to answer questions were: RCMP West District Staff Sergeant Scott Linklater; Swan River RCMP Corporal Cole Plaetinck; James Wigley, Stacy Grindle and Jakki Lumax for Canadian Mental Health; Andrew Minor, Executive Director of Manitoba Police Commission and Senior Advisor, Public Safety Division; Mark Lafreniere, Director of Manitoba Prosecution Services; Dr. Erin Knight, Health Sciences Centre; Lanna Many Grey Horses, Assistant Deputy Minister for Homelessness for the Manitoba Department of Housing, Homelessness and Addictions; Owen Fergusson, Assistant Deputy Minister for Manitoba Justice.
The following organizations were invited but declined: Shannon Isley, Director for Manitoba Harm Reduction; Treena Slate, CEO for Prairie Mountain Health; Province of Manitoba Department of Health and Office of the Chief Provincial Public Health Office.
There were some discussions regarding police staffing levels. Out of 22 regular members, there are 12 who are active for duty. The Swan River RCMP detachment is expecting three more members coming in around November. The GIS Unit positions are new ones, with the majority of the positions yet to be filled, except for the Corporal position, which has been given to a member who is on maternity leave currently. Staff Sergeant Linklater indicated that they are holding off on the constable positions because there has been some interest shown within the detachment for these positions. They don’t want to take members away from the regular detachment to fill the GIS Unit, so as the detachment numbers go back up, those positions will be filled.
“From July 1, 2024, to June 30, 2025, there have been 124 serious violent crime occurrences,” said Staff Sergeant Linklater. “That ranks amongst the top three detachments in the Manitoba West District and 14th in the division of 70 detachments.”
The stats presented indicated that property crime in the Swan Valley is trending below the five-year average in the most recent quarter. Within the same timeframe, there were 676 property crime occurrences that took place. This also placed Swan River in the top three detachments and sixth in the division for property crimes.
Shoplifting in Swan River is also trending below the five-year average, according to stats presented. The worst year for shoplifting occurrences in Swan River was in 2023, with 353 occurrences reported. This year, to date, there have been 56 shoplifting occurrences reported.
When it comes to repeat offenders, ten repeat offenders have caused 89 property crime occurrences, 43 person crime occurrences, 33 CDSA occurrences; 170 total occurrences under the criminal code in one calendar year. These repeat offenders have committed crimes not only in the Valley, but in Winnipegosis, Dauphin and Ste. Rose.
A question was asked about why there were so many repeat offenders. It was explained that there are a lot of proposed changes being made to the federal government about holding repeat offenders. Much of this is related to the Criminal Code, which is handled by the federal government, not the provincial government.
In Manitoba, specially tasked units have been created to focus on repeat offenders. An ankle monitoring program has also been established to help keep track of those who are out on bail or probation who have repeat offences in their criminal record.
Comments from attendees were that the data was cherry-picked, that bureaucrats are talking in circles and that a lot of people have given up on reporting the crime. Community member and lawyer, David Gray, pointed out that there were some issues with the meeting and that an agenda is not simply a list of speakers and the need for direct answers.
Some questions were asked about CMHA’s activities and why the building was put on Main Street. James Wigley took the time to explain to people about harm reduction. He explained that although CMHA does do harm reduction methods, they do not hand out sharps or do any medical type of harm reduction. CMHA focuses on housing, employment, education, life-skill training, rehabilitation and peer support as harm reduction methods. Health organizations and regions are the ones that handle the medical supplies for harm reduction.
Wigley did note that there has been tremendous success and progress in helping people; however, the need is so great that the general public is only seeing what is not working rather than what has worked.
Another question was asked about whether or not any of the municipalities had a say on whether or not harm reduction services would be offered in the community. Presenters stood by their stance that harm reduction saves lives, from naloxone to new needle distribution and is evidence-based. The same person talked about how the discarded needles are scattered all over public places, such as playgrounds, parks, and how there is now an HIV outbreak. They asked if this was not enabling the problem. The Assistant Deputy Minister for Homelessness did note that the province provided $45,000 for needle clean-up.
Questions stemmed around how to get rid of harm reduction supplies and the risk it has put people in the community at with all the discarded sharps. A direct question was asked on how to get harm reduction out of the community. No one on the panel was able to answer that question. Citizens asked Mayor Jacobson to ask this of the province and PMH, and to look how to get rid of handing out sharps in the Valley.