Homebodies - Going to Portage for parts
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- Published on Sunday, June 28, 2015
By Rita Friesen
I deliberately chose to travel down highway 16. I wanted to note the progress on the construction and I had all the time in my world. Three pilot vehicles later. The first smile came when I started counting the blue or tan portable toilets dotted the roadside. As many as there used to be grain elevators! Not nearly as impressive but just as necessary.
Faithfully Yours - We've taken step one - now what?
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- Published on Saturday, June 27, 2015
By Neil Strohschein
As I write these words, the media frenzy concerning the brutal murder of nine members of a Charleston, South Carolina church is beginning to subside. But the question remains: “How could a 21 year old man become so filled with hate that he would do what he now stands accused of, and has allegedly confessed to doing?”
Read more: Faithfully Yours - We've taken step one - now what?
Realizing rural greatness
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- Published on Saturday, June 27, 2015
By Vern May
Minnedosa & Area Community Development Corporation
It felt like it was just beyond my reach. Arm outstretched, straining with all my might, I fumbled to grasp it, nudging it with a fingertip but unable to snatch it and declare a decisive and triumphant victory. No, if I was going to get this I needed a better vantage point and that meant a big move. I was convinced that success required one to be known, and to be known you had to be seen. To be seen you had to go where the action was because nobody would seek you out in a small town, but it was more than that. Not only was it not feasible to be successful in a small town, one’s credibility required that their name was attached to a map dot with a reputation for progress and growth. For most of my 20-year wrestling career, I identified my hometown as Brandon. I felt that no matter where I appeared in Canada, it was a city most could find on a map, and that attachment to a recognized regional urban hub somehow created legitimacy in my field, but still unique. I wasn’t just a naïve farm boy from the sticks.But the longer I worked and lived in that environment of professional sport, I grew to see the flaw in my logic. Everybody was creating an aura based on something they were not. Wrestlers from rural Alberta attached themselves to Calgary, Winnipeggers were billed from Toronto, born and bred Newfoundlanders cast themselves from any city they could that created an image that they were from “away.”
An old idea about to be re-visited
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- Published on Thursday, June 25, 2015
Ken Waddell
Right in the Centre
There has been some very preliminary discussion about Social Impact Bonds. The PC party of Manitoba, under the leadership of Brian Pallister, is stating that socially progressive projects should be financed by way of private money through Social Impact Bonds. Social Impact Bonds (SIBs)are an idea that has started to emerge in Great Britain and apparently one project has developed in Saskatchewan. It’s a way of allowing private money to flow into projects and programs that meet a social need within the province.
Where do we grow from here?
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- Published on Monday, June 22, 2015
By Vern May
Minnedosa & Area Community Development Corporation
The mission itself is simple and clear: Create growth, encourage residents, business and industry to relocate to town, expanding our tax base and creating more jobs and opportunities for future generations. Seems straight forward enough, right?But before we can commit pen to paper on a marketing plan, we first need to identify the inventory of what we’re physically selling. If there’s no opportunity, how do we sell that?
