CARILLON SPORTS SECOND SHOTS: Nighthawks championship edition

Featuring photos from the Niverville Nighthawks Turnbull Cup championship win in Virden April 23 and game six of the MMJHL championships in Winnipeg April 26.

Artista Academy closes off second season

When Gabriela Gallo, president of Artista Academy, gauges success of her recent production of Aladdin Jr., it’s not the numbers that first comes to mind, it’s the cast of children.

“They were thrilled with so much pride when audiences were cheering for them and laughing with them,” she said. “When they said a line and they got the feedback they wanted from the audience I could see them physically getting taller and that was just the cutest thing.”

The numbers are impressive as well.

Aladdin Jr. played six sold-out shows, with a total audience approaching 2,000 people.

Roseau River Anishinabe First Nation calls on province to remove gas line

A southeastern Manitoba First Nation is asking the province to remove a natural gas pipeline it says presents “significant and tangible” safety risks for residents.

Roseau River Anishinabe First Nation, located roughly 60 kilometres south of Steinbach, sent a March 30 letter, addressed to both Premier Wab Kinew and Manitoba Hydro president and chief executive officer Allan Danroth, outlining it would take legal action and prevent entry from unapproved workers if the existing roughly 1.5 km of pipeline isn’t removed and the planned pipeline isn’t rerouted.

The letter, penned by Coun. Evan Roberts, said the pipeline has disrupted drainage and hampered flood mitigation because it blocks gates and pumps near the community dike. It also mentions the risk of pipeline ruptures and explosions, citing the the 2014 Otterburne explosion as an example.

“There’s no guarantees that something could happen to this line. There’s been other situations and in the past where these lines have ruptured, and I think with those are risks we don’t want to take with our community,” Roberts told The Carillon.

Nephew donates uncle’s peatland to national conservancy organization

The nephew of an Elma man has donated land he received as an inheritance to the Nature Conservancy of Canada in memory of his late uncle.

“My Uncle Bill spent his entire life caring for Manitoba’s forests and wetlands, whether he was working as a fire ranger, out on the trapline, or simply watching the birds at his cabin. He had a deep respect for the land and believed strongly in protecting these places for the people who would come after us. Donating this land in his memory felt like the most meaningful way to honour that belief. Knowing the Monk Creek peatlands will be protected forever is exactly what he would have wanted,” said Vince Proceviat, North’s nephew in a press release.

William North owned the 636 acres (257 hectares) of property known as the Monk Creek peatlands, located 10 kilometres southeast of Elma, for decades.

The peatlands are the convergence of the boreal coniferous forest, eastern Superior mixed forest, and extensive peatland.

COLUMN: Village News – A community celebration

I was drawn to Mennonite Heritage Village because of my own family history. Raised a Mennonite in jantsied, I grew up eating forma vorscht and schmauntfat. I also grew up knowing the importance of community, and of celebrating together. That’s what we are inviting you to at our annual Spring Gala Fundraiser on May 22.

This elegant evening will feature fine dining from our very own Livery Barn Restaurant, drinks by Manitoba’s own Blumstein Brewing, and music from three-time Juno nominee Don Amero. It is also an opportunity for you to invest in the legacy and future growth of MHV; it’s why we are the premier interpretive centre for the Russian Mennonite story, a vital community hub for events in southeast Manitoba, and Steinbach’s official tourist information centre.

To top it all off, we will be officially launching the new Gerhard Ens Gallery exhibit, Mennonite Medicine: Cures + Curiosities – 1800-1950. This exhibit will look at life before modern medicine and how faith shaped the health and healing of Mennonites. During the sneak peek, you can test your Plautdietsch medical vocabulary, learn more about the practice of bloodletting, and discover one Mennonite man’s cure for cataracts. Spoiler: it involves smacking your head on a post.

This isn’t just a fancy evening with good food. It truly is an opportunity to connect with the community and be a part of this incredible legacy. I look forward to meeting every one of you, whether it’s at our gala, or out on the grounds this summer.

Steinbach Family Resource Centre cuts program after Manitoba denies funding ask

Steinbach Family Resource Centre is facing cuts to its nutritional and chronic disease programming, citing rising wages and operating costs, after the Manitoba government rejected its request for funding.

The non-profit, located on 101 North Front Dr., previously offered the only free registered dietitian service for young families in the Southeast. Now, the centre will cut its registered dietitian position, ending its chronic disease referrals and stopping all pediatric and prenatal dietitian consults because it can’t afford to maintain the programming.

When executive director Jo-Anne Dalton received the funding denial letter on April 2, she re-read the email at least 18 times, certain the province made a mistake.

“It was like air was let out of our balloon,” she told The Carillon.

Open Health Niverville opens expansion to the public

Open Health Niverville cut the red ribbon on its new 970 square-foot expansion inside the Niverville Heritage Centre compex on Tuesday.

Four new exam rooms were opened bringing the number of rooms to 15, including a minor procedures room where invasive procedures, such as sutures, mole removals, and skin biopsies, can be performed under local anesthetics.

“We’re really, really excited to see an expansion for our community,” said Deputy Mayor Nathan Dueck, who is also a director with Open Health Niverville and president of Niverville Health Care Services Inc. (NHCSI), a non-profit created by the Town of Niverville when it took ownership of then Open Health Clinic in 2020.

Dueck said the town will grow steadily from its current number of 7,500 residents to 12,000 people in the next decade and that the clinic needs to keep up. On average, the clinic’s 15 doctors see about 200 people a day, with requests for prescriptions that number increases to about 300.

Steinbach Pistons raised $25K for minor hockey this season

It isn’t just the Steinbach Pistons reaping the benefits of the increased attendance and revenue at the Southeast Event Centre.

All season, the Pistons have been raising money for Steinbach’s minor hockey through their 50/50 draws.

“Our partnership with the Pistons has been fantastic,” Steinbach Minor Hockey President Josh Plett said in a Pistons news release.

“The money we get from the 50/50 proceeds goes directly into lowering costs for families to register their kids as costs continue to increase.”

McAllister wins Springfield-Ritchot PC nomination

St Adolphe’s Adam McAllister will be the next PC candidate for Springfield-Ritchot, replacing the retiring Ron Schuler who has been the elected PC MLA for the constituency for 27 years.

McAllister won the PC nomination on Tuesday, beating the only other contender, Niverville’s Craig Tomlinson.

The nomination meeting held in Grande Pointe had a festive atmosphere as the line to vote stretched into the parking lot. Eager PC members donned blue hats being given out and packed the hall for opening speeches from the candidates.

Both candidates focused on sharing their values which included faith, family and integrity. They talked about the importance of education, health care, creating economic growth and the need for the constituency to have strong representation.

COLUMN: The Carillon Flashback December 1, 1993 – Retired builder needs one more licence plate for his collection

Simon Reimer will probably rest a little easier once he has added just one more licence plate to his considerable collection.

It’s not as if he doesn’t have enough to fill an entire wall of his garage. He has plenty to do that, and many more duplicate plates are stored away to use as traders with others who collect automobile licence plates as a hobby.

In nearly a quarter of a century, the retired Steinbach home builder spent some of his spare time collecting plates from all over North America, the only state or province to elude him was the tiny commonwealth of Massachusetts on the Atlantic coast.

Collecting license plates was a natural extension of Reimer’s travels all over the continent, which he enjoyed during his long career, first as a home builder and then a further 27 years in home and material sales for C.T. Loewen and Sons.

1946 to 2026 Watching Steinbach Grow: Steinbach Hatchery celebrates 90 years

There is an old saying, “When the going gets tough, the tough get going”, but the opposite was true for the feed mill staff in the early days of Steinbach Hatchery. Few men were tough enough to keep going for years on a job that required heaving 100-pound bags of feed onto the back of a farmer’s truck, day-after-day.

But that was then, and now modern equipment to go along with modern technology has made the job much easier than it was when Roy Bartel was a young man, just out of high school.

Actually, Bartel who worked his way up the ranks to become general manager, was working for the company even before he finished high school. And the same holds true for Steinbach Hatchery CEO Joel Friesen, whose father Jake was one of four partners until his death in 2017.

Bartel started working at Maple Grove Farms in August of 1970, when he was living with his grandparents, Peter and Anne Bartel, in Kleefeld. Peter Bartel worked on the Maple Grove farm on Loewen Boulevard and he asked Elvin Reimer whether he had a job for his grandson.