An important and well-loved recreation activity for youth has returned to the Boissevain schedule after a lengthy absence.
This past week, the fall session for gymnastics began in the Arts Hall. According to Parks and Recreation Director Wendy Giesbrecht, they will be running afternoons and early evenings two days a week, Mondays and Wednesdays.
Ahead of an important public meeting, questions are arising about a plan to redraw the wards in the Municipality of Two Borders. The public will be invited to give their views on October 16 about the proposed changes.
What happens when you bring together a group of old Centennials, Royals, Orioles, Rockets and more to a Reston golf course?
You have a lot of diamond memories, of course. This exact event happened on August 17 as former players from around the southwest region gathered for some best-ball golf, a steak supper and a lot of stories.
“It went really, really well,” said Clayton Jago, one of the organizers. “It was great to see some people who have not got together for years. I think everybody thoroughly enjoyed it.”
Jago said there were 48 golfers and ten more who joined for the supper.
The idea started with a couple of former players from Waskada. They wanted to see a reunion, but there was nowhere to hold it in their town. They called over to Reston and a few of the former players like Jago picked up the ball and ran with it. Jago said they put it together fairly quickly and tried to contact at least one person from each town, who could spread the word. They were able to host quite a fine event.
Jago said they played 18 holes of golf, but the main point was for players from different towns and teams to get together again, in a different circumstance from the old days.
“It was really about getting back in touch with people we competed against years ago. We didn’t necessarily see eye to eye on the field then. We were all competitive. Now we’re older, and we can come and laugh about it.”
He said some of the players brought pictures and there was a jersey or two. Players came from Boissevain, Deloraine, Lyleton, Waskada and Melita. Only Tilston and Souris were not represented in the area.
Jago said they concentrated on players from the late 1970’s and ‘80’s. Before that, he said, there was not a team in Reston for a while and if you go too far back, numbers start to thin. Even now, he said, there are players who have passed on.
Jago himself said he started as a 15 year old with the brand new Reston Rockets in the late 1970’s. The team, which is in the Manitoba Baseball Hall of Fame, played for a time in the Manitoba Senior Baseball League. He said he played well into his forties, and event played four innings in a match at the age of 53. Competition on the diamond is something, but for all players it goes a little deeper.
“We had people who played from all over the place,” he explained. “The thing about baseball is that it makes the world so small. There are lifelong friendships you make there on a team.”
Not only did they have a good reunion, they were able to raise a bit of money. Half of it went to refurbish the diamonds in town and the other to the golf club to help with an irrigation project.
There are hopes another reunion can be held in two or three years down the line. Jago said they would like to see another town pick it up, so the players can come over and help out that community. He added there was some talk of a couple of communities being interested, and if not, Reston might do it again.
“It would be nice to move it around.”
If another one is held, and there is more time to put it on, they might even be able to increase their numbers. At any rate, sharing stories, memories and laughs is important. As they were able to pull back a former Rocket who lives in Kelowna for the reunion, it obviously had a value to those participating.
“We met a lot of people along the way in baseball,” Jago stated. “It brings you back to what is really important about ball. It is not the trophies you win, it’s the people you meet and the friendships you make.”
by PAUL RAYNER, Recorder staff
With its latest success story working in the community, the Boissevain Health Care Recruitment Committee is looking to move forward into the future.
Taylor Robertson has begun her career at Turtle Mountain Physio, the latest student to receive sponsorship from the committee. In the community for a couple of decades now, the group can look back to playing a massive role in keeping local health care positions in the community filled, an important contribution.
Rob Adams and Ken Pringle have been a part of the committee from the beginning. Adams remembered getting the idea from a neighbouring community, and passing it on to then-Mayor Ed Anderson. In Boissevain, it started with a mandate to recruit physicians only, but later moved into other health care positions.
The main contribution of the committee is through education sponsorship. Normally, the candidate will take care of the first year of their schooling, and then the sponsorship will come into play for another year or two depending on the circumstance. The premise is a “return of service agreement”, which means the candidate would owe a year of service in a local health centre for each year of sponsorship. If things do not work out, they can pay the committee back. Mostly this has worked well for everyone involved. Adams added they also would help with relocation to Boissevain. Money for this comes from donations, including those from the Donor’s Choice campaign.
Nurses have been a big success story for the committee. Adams and Pringle began naming off people in the community they have helped in their nursing education, and most of them are still practicing in one of the health care centres in Boissevain. There have been occasional hiccups, but as Pringle said, when you looked at the number of shifts they have received over the years from these nurses, it has paid for itself over and over again.
“When we look at it,” Adams said, “we’ve helped a lot of people.”
They later moved on to sponsoring health care aides and other professionals in the field.
The newest addition is Taylor Robertson, a native of Boissevain. Merle Neufeld, owner of Turtle Mountain Physio, said the process started many years ago, when Robertson was in high school and observing at the clinic. They started talking and both realized by the time she was done school, Neufeld would be looking to slow down a little bit. She attended the University of Manitoba, and the Health Recruitment Committee helped her with $5,000 a year for two years during her Masters’ program. A member of the committee for about 10 years, he was willing to step away from the group’s decision in regards to Robertson as it would benefit his operation. Neufeld said it worked out well as he is looking for somewhat of a succession plan.
“Absolutely,” Neufeld stated. “I’ve been clear with that. This is the first step moving to retirement. It will be a number of years yet, but I think the decision was I either end my career and this shuts down or we recruit someone and it lives on.”
He said a key was that Robertson comes from the community, which makes it more likely she would come back. The new physiotherapist has been in the clinic since September 3, is completing her process in a supervised environment and Neufeld said there has been a good response to her from the community.
Pringle said expanding the parameters of the positions the committee will recruit has really worked out well for them.
“I think from a town standpoint, especially since we have expanded the spectrum of what we sponsor, there’s nobody living in the area that can say they’re not concerned about health care,” Pringle explained “Ultimately anything we can do to stabilize health care makes it harder to take portions of it away.”
Despite all the effort everyone puts in, not everything works. They did have a doctor in the pipeline, sponsored by the committee and others, who was attending university overseas. Everyone involved was happy with how events were unfolding, but it was impossible for the candidate to do his residency in Manitoba, so he ended up practicing overseas. There are challenges with nursing as they are often overworked with too many shifts, even though they cannot get full time positions. Agency nurses who travel from community to community can be helpful, but also expensive. It can be frustrating to see foreign-born health professionals having to change careers when it is too difficult to qualify in the province.
Currently, there are no students being sponsored by the recruitment committee, although there are possibilities being looked at. The facilities have a full complement of nurses for now, but one or two more would be helpful. They do need to look forward however, Pringle stated, and meet again to see what needs are.
“When this committee was created, we probably knew the challenges rural health care was facing,” Pringle said. “It’s like a car, as long as your car is running good, you don’t look at how your car is running. Our community needs to get more active again. Once the nurse situation got sorted out, and they weren’t coming to us and with Ed passing away, our committee has kind of gone to sleep a bit.”
He said they needed to look at nurses retiring, and think of the future. The committee needs to get together, reorganize, and talk to the people at the health centre to see what the needs are.
“We need to roll up our sleeves and make it the best hospital it can be.”
Neufeld agrees the committee needs to look over the horizon, particularly with changes to health care. Overall, they have done good work and can continue onward.
“I think it is quite worthwhile,” he said. “It creates that environment where we can help our health care. It is great to actually do it, to have people trained and come out the other end and work in the community.”
by PAUL RAYNER
Recorder staff
More improvements and refurbishments may be on the way for Deloraine-Winchester, this time at the municipal airport.
According to Deloraine-Winchester Airport Commission Chairman Lorne Bolduc, the group is looking into upgrading the asphalt on the runway, because it has not had any work done on it since it was installed in the early 1980’s, besides a few small repairs to particularly large dips. The 4,000-foot-long runway is starting to show its age, said Bolduc, and is full of cracks and dips, making it less than ideal for small planes taking off. On top of that, jagged edges make it difficult to clean in the winter.
In what could be described as a potential “game changer” the Municipality of Boissevain-Morton feels a recent purchase might solve their rural road issues for a long time to come.
As of September 15, the municipality is the owner of a quarter section of land in the southwest corner within its borders. Bought from Al Hammond, the property is right up against the eastern edge of Deloraine-Winchester. According to Head of Council Judy Swanson and CAO Leo Poulin, the area has been earmarked as a major gravel source, as shown by tests from Glacial Aggregates of Birds Hill, outside of Winnipeg.
Despite a questionable forecast, Mother Nature held for most of Boissevain’s Street Fest, producing another successful community event.
The fifth annual festival was held on Saturday, September 13. Boissevain-Morton Executive Assistant Melissa Perkins said she and other organizers were very happy with the numbers coming out, especially since they had to do some interesting planning.
In August, construction began on a rehabilitation project for the Turtlehead Creek Dam at the Deloraine Golf Course that, when all said and done, will cost $16.8 million and take the better part of three years to complete, according to a provincial spokesperson.
Amid proposed changes in the Municipality of Two Borders, the community of Pierson is waiting to see what their LUD petition will also bring.
Residents of the village passed around a petition this summer to see if they could dissolve their Local Urban District, a committee within the municipality. The goal was to have two-thirds of Pierson sign it and get it into the municipal office by the end of August. Last week, Two Borders Reeve Sandra Clark confirmed the petition was in.
“I haven’t seen it yet,” she said at the time, “but they handed it in. The CAO (Grace Carr) is looking at it now. We’re looking at either a special meeting or using a regular meeting in September to deal with it.”
With the success of Cherry Creek Place now demonstrated, Boissevain is now making first steps into phase two.
The active living facility on the south side of town is now full with residents, and a space next door has been secured and cleared. As Boissevain-Morton Head of Council Judy Swanson explained, there were always plans to move forward on different aspects of senior housing and care in the community, and this was discussed at a meeting at the end of July.
According to Souris-Glenwood Council, the abuse of municipal employees ends now.
At their June 24 meeting, Mayor Duane Davison made a passionate speech about the way the people working for Souris-Glenwood were being treated and how they were no longer going to put up with it. After this part of the meeting was released on social media, Davison said they were dealing with a long-standing issue.
“It’s been going on for years,” Davison explained, “but it kind of came to a head a while ago.”
On Saturday, August 23, a group of five women on their motorcycles left Melita for the third annual Southwest Ladies Ride. They were joined by six more riders at Virden and Brandon and rode together to Killarney for an ice cream break at The Beach Hut before continuing their trek down Highway #3 back to Melita.
The Ride is organized by two business owners and motorcycle enthusiasts out of Melita, Rhonda Dickson and Stacy Downey, who have been riding for 25 and five years respectively. Dickson said that she had been riding with men for most of her life, so she wanted to get a group of like-minded women together, too.
A project that began in 2023 is in its final stages of completion. After two years of grant writing, fundraising, and designing, the new middle years’ playground at Boissevain School is ready to greet the upcoming school year and incoming middle schoolers. Not only is it brand new, it is bigger and better too, ending up with a 270-foot perimeter with 3,921 square feet of fun made specifically for older kids.
The idea, which was spear-headed by Heather Janssens and Susan Jackson, began as a seed planted by Janssens’ daughter, who had just entered middle school.
“She came home after just a couple days and said she missed having swings to play on because you don’t need a friend to play on the swings, you can just swing by yourself and you don’t feel lonely,” said Janssens. “So, I went to the first parent advisory council meeting in September and inquired about if it would be possible to add some swings to the middle school, then it blew up into all of this.”
The Scottish Heavy Games, or the Highland Games, have been practiced, in some form or another, since the 11th century, but it is only the second year they have been held in Deloraine. Traditionally, the participants would gather wearing kilts in the tartan colours of their clan to determine bragging rights for the strongest men in Scotland, or in some cases to choose the next clan chief. The games were revived in the 1800’s, both in Scotland and abroad, as a way to bring back the old ways after the Dress Act of 1746, which outlawed typical Highland dress in an effort to disband the clan system and assimilate the Scots. The earliest noted Highland Heavy Games in Canada were held in Nova Scotia in 1863.
These days, kilts are still strongly encouraged, however the games have changed slightly and now modern women are getting in on it, too.
Judy Wells has been known as Deloraine’s reporter for a long time – 33 years, in fact, for three different local newspapers.
Wells grew up in Holland and Treherne, MB and ended up in Melita after marrying her husband Kelly in 1980. She had just graduated from a Social Services program at Assiniboine Community College, and Kelly was hired as manager at the UGG elevator. Wells was working as an Educational Assistant at Melita School, but by 1992 she was looking for something part-time. There were not many jobs in her field so she expanded her search.
“I had young kids and I didn’t want anything full-time, but then a part-time typing job came up at the Melita New Era and I thought ‘I can do that’, so that’s how it started,” she said.
A recent reunion of Boissevain’s senior baseball team founders and players was a testament to a tradition that goes on.
The Centennials held a get-together on June 27-28. According to organizer Ken Pringle, the idea to hold a reunion came from the Southwest Baseball League reunion in 2024 for 1970’s and 80’s players. On the van ride home, the Cents who travelled together discussed holding something for their own team while the majority of the players were still around. One of their players, Dean Jago, passed away right after that.
“That was our trigger to go ‘let’s not blow this off,’” Pringle said.
“The future is brimming with possibilities and the future is entirely yours to shape.”
So said Turtle Mountain School Division Superintendent Grant Wiesner. Speaking to the Boissevain School Class of 2025, he was saying a special farewell at the graduation ceremony held on June 25. With the family and friends of the 27 graduates in attendance, they too were able to say goodbye in what was a poignant day as another group of the community’s young people moved on to their next phase.
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A recent award is another part of Alex Moody’s return home, which includes running a business he loves in a town that nurtured him.
Boissevain Bakeshop won Small Business of the Year from Tourism Westman at their gala in Brandon on June 11. Moody said it was a big moment.
“This one was extremely important, winning small business of the year,” he explained. “It’s a big one as people keep telling me and I tend to agree. I’ll keep the trophy on the wall over there. I think it’s a big deal.”
The 89th annual 4-H Rally day was held June 6, 2025 in Boissevain, Manitoba. Seven clubs including the Boissevain Boots n’ Bits, Boissevain Beef Club, Boissevain Home and Hobby Club, Deloraine Community 4-H Club, the Goodlands Variety 4-H Club, Archie Light Horse and Pony Club from the Hamiota area, and the Southwest Saddle & Spurs Club (from Hartney, Reston, Pipestone and Pierson) came out to show off their horses, cattle, and other projects.
The day started off in the Boissevain Curling Rink with the multi-purpose projects and workshops for those who were not involved with livestock. Deloraine Community 4-H Club hosted a few activities and workshops like a bubble-blowing contest and making fidget toys out of cornstarch.
On the morning of Wednesday, June 4, Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) held a mock car accident at Boissevain School. The purpose of this display was to bring awareness to the issue of impaired driving, particularly in rural areas.
The scene was set where “victim” Grey Stewart had been struck while riding a bike by “driver” Daniel Godin, with passengers Jane Anderson and Amanda Gervais. Graham Neufeld served as the witness via phone who called in the accident.
Within moments, police, EMS, and Fire Department crews were on scene. Constable Katherine Muir of the Turtle Mountain RCMP spoke to Godin and passengers while EMS tended to the “injured” passengers and victim.
University of Manitoba first year medical students Michael Movshovich and Jammie Lee were grateful for their Rural Week experience at Deloraine Health Centre, May 25-30.
Rural Week is a mandatory part of the medical course and the experience enhances the student’s understanding of the rewards and challenges of rural practice. Perhaps, most importantly it is a recruitment tool in encouraging them to consider a career in rural medicine.
Lee said he was very excited for Rural Week. He immigrated to Canada from South Korea as a child and has lived in Winnipeg, Brandon and Minnedosa.
“I was looking forward to Rural Week as I enjoyed living in Minnedosa. Rural life is more laid back, everyone knows each other and they are so friendly. I was telling my former piano teacher Dr. Lawrence Jones (former dean at Brandon University) that I was going to Deloraine and he said it was a nice place.”
Jones was a participant in the Deloraine Border Festival when he lived in Ninga years ago.