February is heating (or maybe frosting) up, with Frost Fest and other events. See articles about Frost Fest and All-In Winter Slave Lake in this week’s paper.
Later in the month, there is also Pink Shirt Day on February 23 (mostly in schools focused on stopping bullying).
On the last Saturday (Feb. 26), Stage North has a concert at the Legacy Centre.
Events being planned in March include the Lakeside Figure Skating Carnival on March 19 at 2 p.m. in the MRC.
The Leader gets the Alberta Teachers Association paper, which can be a handy way to keep up on school news.
Two items, one serious and one less so, caught The Page correspondent’s eye this time around.
An article in the Jan. 11, 2022 issue says that 37.6 per cent of Alberta teachers in a survey likely won’t be teaching in Alberta next year. The breakdown was (16.4 per cent retired, 14.3 per cent left teaching, and 6.9 left Alberta to teach elsewhere).
Concerns included well-being (stress, fatigue, anxiety, and depression) and class size and composition.
The last page was a about healthy eating as a form of self-care and included two recipes – one for banana muffins and the other for molten chocolate cake. Both looked pretty tasty.
A reader pointed out that the Alberta COVID-19 restriction exemption program (REP) includes the option of a negative privately-paid COVID-19 test that is 72-hours old or less.
This applies to bingo and curling in Kinuso and other events and facilities using the REP.
The full rules for REP are on alberta.ca.
It’s always fun to wake up on a Monday morning, look out the window and see snow streaming horizontally across the scene. Among other things, it means there will be big drifts in need of shoveling, before you can get out of your driveway.
‘I got stuck three times on the way to work!’ said one person, arriving 20 minutes late to the office.
This was after one of the nicest weekends of the whole winter – mild, sunny and calm.
Boom! Welcome to the work week. Happy shoveling.
Your Page 9 writer is the furthest thing from being an expert on shopping, but we are at least aware that the cost of many grocery items has gone up significantly in the past year or so, and in the past few weeks in particular. That’s why we were surprised to find out how inexpensive a 925g container of ‘no name’ coffee still is. No supply chain issues there, apparently.
We keep seeing and hearing about ‘polar bear’ swims in various northern locations. But never Slave Lake. Nobody seems interested in taking the polar bear plunge here, but others are certainly flirting with frostbite. Just the other morning we saw a kid on his way to school wearing shorts at -23C with a brisk wind out of the northwest.
We tried to get some info last week on the level of oil drilling activity in the region this winter. Somebody must know something about it, but government statistics available online are a year or so old, and nobody returned phone calls or emails. They’re probably too busy drilling wells or something along those lines.
The price of lumber fluctuates like a yo-yo. If you’re in the business of manufacturing and selling it, that must mean never a dull moment, although you might wish for more stability. Online graphs of the price show a wild ride the past year or so. From a high in May of last year of around $1,600 USD per 1,000 board feet, the price plummeted in August to $454. It went mostly up after that to a peak of $1,278 (on Jan. 18) and was off again to $979 on Jan. 31, which was the day we checked. How to make any sense of this we’ll leave to Mr. Vanderwell out at the lumber mill, and wish him luck!
Here’s another thing. A fellow called the other day asking for our help in getting in touch with his MLA and MP. He’s having no luck getting anybody from Alberta Health Services to call him back, when all he needs to do is inform them about a change of his address. He said he’d been trying for a week and was getting fed up. So now his elected representatives are hearing about it. Unless they aren’t answering their phones also.
Former Slave Laker Dan Lucyk recently popped up in the news, thanks to a story in Town and Country on his retirement from the Westlock Fire Department. He was the deputy chief there, having joined the force in 2003, says the story by George Blais. Before that he served on the Lesser Slave Lake Regional Fire Service. Lucyk joked at a special town council ceremony on Jan. 24 that he’s looking forward to growing “a luscious beard” now that he’s off the force.
A truckdriver friend of The Leader called last week about that car in the ditch that was pictured in a recent edition of The Leader. It’s been there at least for a month, he said. It seems to be one of those situations where the owner isn’t in a hurry to rescue the vehicle, and nobody else wants to have to pay to have it done. Apparently there’s no protocol for such situations, and as long as the vehicle doesn’t present a safety hazard, the authorities are content to wait for somebody else to make the first move.
Interested in finding events in Slave Lake? The calendar on www.lakesideleader.com has been updated with all of the Frost Fest and All-In Winter Slave Lake events. Other events which come to The Leader’s attention are also on there.
Kinuso is holding a Ladies’ Bonspiel February 25 to 26. The theme is ‘Tight and Bright’ and the registration deadline is February 18. Call Roberta Hunt (780-805-9076) to register. REP applies.
The Slave Lake Minor Baseball Super Bowl Pool sold out last week, we heard. Stay tuned….
Does anybody remember a Monopoly-like board game called Canukeena Caper that had Slave Lake businesses on it? Apparently it was a project of the Kinsmen and Kinette Clubs, years ago. Somebody found one in a pawn shop in High Prairie recently.
