Finding fosters for animals can be challenging most times, but is increasingly more so during the summer. Recently The Pas and Area Animal Shelter put out a call for help, looking for people who would be able to transport a canine companion or two to some locations west or south of the community.
Normally dogs are immediately placed with fosters and not kept in the shelter, but the increase in dog intakes has spiked.
“The number of dog intakes we receive varies greatly,” said The Pas and Area Animal Shelter Secretary Lynda Geswin. “I remember one week we had over 30 intake requests, so it’s rare not to have any. Like many other rescues, we have had an overwhelming number of owner surrenders this year. In the last two weeks, we have had requests for 13 dog intakes. Some of these come to us from the pound, as their owners did not claim them.

There’s a new way for northern artisans to promote their work and sell it without the hassle of trying to create something on their own. Uptown Emporium 54 is a sub-organization of the Flin Flon Arts Council that offers an online platform and a storefront in Flin Flon, that showcases handcrafted items by northern artisans.
“We first opened up our shop in December of 2020,” said Uptown Emporium 54 Project Manager Sophia Charuk. “It has started because our 40th annual Arts and Crafts Sale, which is usually put on by the Flin Flon Arts Council in November, had to undergo some changes because of the pandemic. With the public health restrictions in place, there was no way it could be set up for artisans to sell their arts and crafts in a traditional way.

American singer, songwriter, artist and author, William McCarthy, played at a free concert this past weekend held at The Pas Royal Canadian Legion. McCarthy was former the lead singer for The Augustines and has now struck up a solo career touring and performing all over the world. His experience in the community was definitely a notable one for him.
“My experience here in The Pas has been literally fantastic,” said William McCarthy. “I played a two hour show and it was like a long winding odyssey. I’ve had a really nice time here in the community.”
McCarthy had the opportunity to travel through The Pas and Opaskwayak Cree Nation (OCN) to see some of the local sights and scenery. He’s never quite seen an area like northern Manitoba and has fallen in love with its charm.

Many of us take Canada Day for granted and really don’t give it much thought, but for the Patel family, this year’s national day is also the start of a new journey for their family as Canadian citizens. The Patels came to Canada looking for more opportunities and were sponsored by family friend, who was already residing in the community.
“We’re originally from India and we came to Canada in 2017,” said Hemangi Patel. “We’ve been here now for five years and just got our Canadian Citizenship on June 7. Our family came to Canada seeking a life with better opportunities and a brighter future.
“One of our family friends sponsored us to come to Canada. At the time, he lived here in The Pas and recommended the community to us. We stayed with him until we were able to find an apartment and find a job. Over time we fell in love with the people and community, which led us to staying here.”

A well-known and accomplished musician will be making his way to play a free concert this week in The Pas. William McCarthy, former lead singer and songwriter for the band, The Augustines, will be performing a night of acoustic rock ‘n roll at the Royal Canadian Legion thanks to The Pas Arts Council and The Pas Friendship Centre.
McCarthy’s musical career debuted in 2004 when he released the EP All In Time with the band Pela. The band split in 2009 with a half finished album and some heartbroken fans. From there McCarthy teamed up with one of his former band mates to form a three-piece folk music act known as the Augustines.
The Augustines were signed to Votiv Records and released their first debut, Rise Ye Sunken Ships, on June 6, 2011. The album received praise reviews and was named iTunes Best Alternative Album that year. The Augustines did many network televisions performances and toured globally until they amicable disbanded in 2016, due to financial challenges.

There’s a future leader in the making who is originally from Sapotaweyak Cree Nation (SCN). Zoe Quill is currently studying at the University of Manitoba in the Faculty of Science and she’s recently been awarded the 2022 Indigenous Award of Excellence for Student Outstanding Achievement through the university. Her academic pursuits in the field of science are opening doors to a promising future for her.
“I was awarded the BMO Financial Group Indigenous Leader of Tomorrow Scholarship to study at the University of Manitoba in 2018,” said Quill. “I entered directly into the Faculty of Science with interest in pursuing Genetics. Throughout high school, I was always interested in the sciences and wanted to explore these fields more in-depth at university.”
Quill has been contributing to researching internships, which has allowed her to combine her science background and work with Indigenous communities. This has allowed her to start her own journey as an Indigenous leader in the realm of science.
“While pursuing my degree, I have had the pleasure of participating in four research internships,” said Quill. “For two of these internships, I was given an opportunity to combine my knowledge of the sciences and work closely with Indigenous communities. I have come to witness the resilience of Indigenous peoples and their ambition in becoming self-determined in research.
“It was inspiring to my own journey to be able to collaborate with leaders of the community and take part in supporting their success. Indigenous representation is growing among the science community, and I hope to always empower Indigenous scholars and communities through research.”
Quill recognizes the challenges that many Indigenous students face while attending any schooling. She is focused on harbouring and fostering nurturing environments for other Indigenous students by being a leader and mentor to them.
“I recognize that there are barriers that Indigenous students still face and gaps in the supports that are available,” said Quill. “As an Indigenous student, it was important to me to create a positive and supportive environment.
“I achieved these efforts through community involvement. I became a mentor to first-year Indigenous students to provide guidance in facilitating a smooth transition into university life and participated in question and answer sessions as an UN Ambassador, sharing personal experiences to prospective students. I also became the Indigenous Students’ Representative for the Science Students’ Association to advocate and uplift Indigenous student excellence in the Faculty of Science. In this position, I have hosted culturally informed events for Indigenous students as a way to support their well-being.
Quill is persevering in the field of Science and has plans to attend graduate school. She has been determined and dedicated in her research, and gaining experiences that will help her to pursue that goal of obtaining a MD or PhD.
“I’m pursuing a Bachelor of Science, Genetics Major,” said Quill. “I have only one more year to go. Since I’m planning on attending graduate school, I sought opportunities to conduct research at both Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, and the National Microbiology Laboratory of Canada. These experiences will give me the opportunity to explore my interests in Public Health.
“So far, I have gathered four years of research experience in various fields. I have published two peer-review papers and am currently working on publishing three more by the time I graduate.
“I have always had the goal of becoming a doctor and recently, research has become a passion of mine,” said Quill. “After graduation, I’m planning to pursue a Master of Science in Medical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases that combines aspects of Public Health. Then, I will pursue either a MD or PhD. In research, I hope to always incorporate collaboration with Indigenous communities.”
With National Indigenous Peoples Day happening, Quill has been advocating to see more positive changes for Indigenous people. She feels her experience can be an example for others to overcome any obstacles they may face and be leaders for Indigenous people.
“As an Indigenous student heavily involved on campus and in research,” said Quill. “I have had the opportunity to meet like-minded individuals who are driven, resilient, and aspire to create changes that advocate for the rights of Indigenous peoples. To be part of a community that seeks to empower the next generation of Indigenous leaders, I am always motivated to contribute to these efforts.
“There is evidence that despite the hardships we have endured, we have the power to not only overcome these obstacles but to thrive as a community. I believe National Indigenous Peoples Day promotes a positive message describing this very strength every Indigenous person carries within them.”
Quill realizes that the process has been slow when it comes to the reconciliation portion for Indigenous people in Canada, but she focuses on the Indigenous people who are achieving reconciliation and pushing forward for a better and brighter future.
“I recognize that we still have a long way to go in fulfilling the 94 Calls to Action, but action is happening,” said Quill. “There are many Indigenous leaders in the community whom I met that are breaking barriers in their fields and contributing to the efforts of reconciliation.
“I have had my fair share of hardships experiencing discrimination, but I am motivated to continue to uplift Indigenous voices and support our movements of self-determination.“

One can only dream about being recognized on a prestigious level for their work, but for former Valley resident, Dr. Evan Eichler, it’s become a reality he never imagined. Dr. Eichler has been named as one of Time Magazine’s Top 100 Most Influential People of 2022. His work and study on the human genome has been groundbreaking and led to his team being selected.
Dr. Eichler’s education has taken him all over the world and resulted in him studying in some of the most outstanding universities in his field.
“I went to the University of Saskatchewan, in Saskatoon, Sask, from 1986 to 1990, where I got an Honors B.Sc Degree in Biology,” said Dr. Eichler. “After a post-back year at the Ludwig-Maximillians University (LMU) in Munich, Germany, I was accepted to the Baylor College of Medicine (BCM), in Houston, Texas. Here I received my Ph.D. after four years of study in 1995 in the field of Human and Molecular Genetics.”
Dr. Eichler’s field of genome sciences is a fascinating one. He focuses on what's in a person’s genetics as it refers to genetic disease.
“Genome sciences is the study of the complete genetic instructions of a species,” said Dr. Eichler. “In the case of humans, it is essentially human genetics, but starts by having the complete set of instructions and then using it and new technology which is often referred to as genomics technology to understand biology and the basis of genetic disease.”
His extensive study and research began in Germany and has continued on throughout his career. Dr. Eichler’s work has placed him in many different universities across North America.
“In Germany, I interned in Molecular Veterinary Medicine and at Baylor, I worked on human genetics,” said Dr. Eichler. “My specific work at BCM involved understanding the genetic susceptibility to Fragile X Syndrome, which is a form of developmental delay due to an unstable piece of repetitive DNA on the X chromosome.
“After finishing my Ph.D., I moved to the Livermore National Labs in California, where I completed a postdoctoral fellowship from 1995 to 1997. It was here where I began some of my work on the Human Genome Project. I received offers for faculty positions from the University of Toronto, University of Ottawa and Case Western Reserve University (CWRU). I accepted a position as an assistant professor in the Department of Human Genetics at CWRU in Cleveland, Ohio, where I started my research lab in 1997.
“I continued my work on the Human Genome Project with a specific focus on characterizing unstable regions of our genome,” said Dr. Eichler. “I was tenured and promoted to Associate Professor in 2003 and offered a faculty position in the Department of Genome Sciences at the University of Washington, in Seattle, Wash., in 2004. I was promoted to full professor with tenure in 2008 and the National Academy of Sciences in 2013.”
Dr. Eichler received the honour of being appointed to the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) for his work on genome science. This is another outstanding achievement and recognition that comes with an incredible source of funding to do research.
“After I arrived at the University of Washington, Seattle, I was nominated by the University for this honour and was appointed in 2005 to the HHMI. HHMI is a virtual position, which does not require a change of universities, but it has the advantage that it pays your salary and gives you a research budget of approximately $750,000 million per year to pursue research.
“The position involves doing everything that a professor does. This includes running a research laboratory in size from 15 to 20 people; teaching classes; mentoring students and working with them to help get their Ph.D.; considerable travel giving lectures and seminars as well as serving on university and national committees."
Dr. Eichler’s research program is dedicated to understanding human genetic disease in relation to the human genome.
“My research program is focused on understanding the mutation of large repeats called segmental duplications,” said Dr. Eichler. “Our hypothesis is simple; we believe these repetitive regions contribute disproportionately to both human genetic disease and human evolution. We’ve shown over the last few years that many forms of autism, developmental delay and epilepsy are caused by mutation of these regions.
“On the flip side, some of the genes that make us uniquely human correspond to these same regions. Since the original Human Genome Project, back in 2001, our laboratory has been focused on finishing these regions, because we believe they are critical to understanding our species and genetic disease. These were however particularly difficult regions to accurately resolve. Most scientists left these and other regions, which is about eight percent of our genetic code, unresolved back in 2004.
“New sequencing technologies made it possible for us to sequence and assemble these for the first time in 2015,” said Dr. Eichler. “For the last 20 years, we have been working to finish all of these regions in the human genome, which we successfully did with a large team last year. The papers were published in April 2022 and we completed every human chromosome from telomere-to-telomere, from one end to the other without gaps. That’s why the project was called the T2T consortium.”
Being recommended for Time Magazine’s 100 Most Influential People of 2022 has been both an extreme honour and mystery for Dr. Eichler. He was nominated along with his team for their work, but to this date, they still aren’t sure just who exactly recommended them for this honour.
“I honestly don’t know who recommended us,” said Dr. Eichler. “There’s a rumour that the Nobel Laureate, Jennifer Doudna, who wrote the description in the TIME 100 nominated us, but I don't know this for sure. It was a team effort and Adam Phillippy, Karen Miga and I led the project. Michael Schatz was one of about 96 other scientists in the project.
“I was honoured and to be honest completely surprised that we received this recognition. It's not the sort of thing that a human geneticist ever expects and it certainly isn't our usual crowd of peers. When I first received the notice, for example, I thought it was a hoax, but my secretary assured me that it was the real deal."
Dr. Eichler still has plans to continue his research and work in both human and non-human genomes. This time, he plans to focus on characterizing the genomes in children with autism.
“This is only the beginning,” said Dr. Eichler. “The next step is to complete more human genomes as well as non-human genomes to help us understand the genetic basis of disease as well as help better define the mutational processes that occur in our genome. I believe the telomere-to-telomere approach will be applied to children with unsolved genetic diseases. I have already received funding to characterize the genomes of more than 100 children with autism, cases we haven’t resolved with more traditional approaches.
"We believe that T2T sequencing of the genomes of these kids will provide us to new insights into how autism occurs and the genetic variants that underlie it. It's a long road but I believe the methods we have developed will be applied more routinely in the clinic 10-20 years from now.”

A new feature-length film is currently in the works featuring Opaskwayak Cree Nation (OCN) Elder Wilfred Buck, and will be in The Pas filming drama re-enactments set in the 1960s and 1970s in a couple of weeks. The hybrid documentary, titled Wilfred Buck, weaves together his challenging past and his present life with star knowledge stories and explores colonization’s impact on Indigenous ways of knowing, such as land-based teachings.
“I first heard about Wilfred Buck in 2017 at an Indigenous star knowledge conference at the University of Toronto,” said Door Number 3 Productions’ writer and director Lisa Jackson.