Right in the centre - A clear but flawed choice

By Ken Waddell

The Neepawa Banner

Canada is at a crossroads with the upcoming federal election. At this point, there are only really two choices for government and for prime minister. The NDP and Thomas Mulcair and the Conservative Party of Canada and Stephen Harper.

Is there really a choice?

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Work together or fight

By Vern May

Minnedosa & Area Community Development Corporation

What if we both want the same customers? Is it better to go to war to compete for those dollars or to collaborate in areas which best serve our clientele? It’s probably easier and more productive to work together — or we could fight.

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Homebodies - Going to Portage for parts

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. 

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Faithfully Yours - We've taken step one - now what?

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?”

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Realizing rural greatness

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.”

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