Cross country ski trails and motorized vehicles don’t go well together. So people with ATVs and snowmobiles would be doing the Nine Mile Trails volunteers a big favour by riding somewhere else. There are lots of other trails out there. Let’s play in separate spaces and everybody will be able to have fun.
Thanks!
We haven’t done any scientific studies on this, but word from a driver or two is that LaPrairie, the new highway maintenance contractor around here, is doing a better job than its predecessor did. If so, good for them and we hope it continues. The good highway conditions didn’t stop a loaded log truck from hitting the ditch the other morning, about 10 kms north of Slave Lake on Hwy. 88. But as we know, that sort of thing can and does happen in any type of conditions.
Speaking of road conditions, the streets in Slave Lake were glassy as anything on the morning of Dec. 10. Not good, but it did give the coffee shop cronies something to talk about.
Meanwhile, there was a lot of loud complaining in some places about the condition of those streets and intersections. The answer to most of it is probably something like this: The town will get to it. Crews are out there, working on snow removal, sanding, etc. according to the priorities set down in policy. It takes time. In the meantime, drive accordingly.
A fellow who competes in Legion cribbage tournament tells us a couple of locals did well enough at a district crib playdown event to qualify for the provincial Legion tournament in Calgary. Congratulations and good luck! If they win there they’ll probably go on to the ‘Dominion’ tournament, which in other sports would be called nationals.
Not to let the cat too far out of the bag, but how many people around here have worked recently in Afghanistan? We know at least one, and we might have a story about it coming up soon. Stay tuned, as they say…..
Is anybody giving away calendars this year? That was a topic of discussion in the office last week, and we didn’t come up with much.
Somebody sent us a link to an online article that attacks the management of AHS ambulance service in the northwestern part of the province. It pretends to be journalism, but it’s’ outright advocacy, utterly lacking objectivity. There’s no benefit of the doubt given or even hinted at. According to the unnamed author of ‘Strike Teams and Shutdown Dreams: How AHS EMS Set Fire to the North Zone (and Your Tax Dollars),’ the ambulance service in this part of the province is already a disaster and probably getting worse.
The tone is sarcastic and mocking, which does not help the article’s credibility. Hurts it, in fact.
It’s hard to see how such an attack can do any good, but who knows?
It does make some points, about service gaps, shortage of personnel and so on and seems to have data to back it up.
There’s a lot of ‘bandaid’ applying going on, the article alleges.
This probably should be a proper news story, but we didn’t get permission. However it’s still worth mentioning that a certain prominent Slave Lake resident got jumped and badly beaten up while walking in downtown Calgary. It happened at 8:30 in the morning, and apparently was unprovoked, and the purpose was not robbery, or so we’re told. Be careful out there.
Speaking of Christmas concerts (even if we weren’t), we are attempting to cover as many of them as we can. They are spread out over a couple of weeks. Pictures of two of them should appear in this edition of The Leader; others will follow.
About this time of year ice fisherpeople start to get itchy, wondering how fast the ice on the lake is getting to a decent thickness. Almost anybody knows more about that than we do, so we usually ask Canyon Creeker Brad Pearson what the state of affairs is.
“(I) hear only a few inches,” he said. “No one venturing too far from shore yet.”
The final Lakeside Leader of the year is labelled as December 25. However, it will be delivered on December 24. If the Canada Post mail carrier strike hasn’t ended by then, people who are picking their paper up in at the Slave Lake office can pick it up on December 24 or 27. We will be closed December 25 and 26.
The first paper of the new year will be on January 8.
