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Last updateFri, 17 May 2024 12pm

Alice Laslo watches grandson's Saddledome debut

chad

    Alice Laslo had a special reason to watch last week’s Calgary Flames, Buffalo Sabres game as her grandson was on the ice.
    Alice comes from a hockey family, and jokes that she remembers listening to games on the radio.  Her son Dan also played on the Drumheller Falcons and with the Miners.
    Last Thursday, December 10, she was at the Saddledome to watch Chad Johnson, son   of Karen Johnson (nee Laslo)  back the Sabres in net.
    “They didn’t win, but he played his first game at the Saddledome, that’s where he grew up,” said Alice.
    Chad has been on a journey to the NHL that nearly brought him to Drumheller. Alice explains that he tried out for the Junior A Drumheller Dragons at the beginning of his junior carrer. He always played his hockey with his twin brother Curtis, and both were able to find a place on the Brooks Bandits Roster. His brother finished his junior career in Lloydminster and Chad earned a scholarship to the University of Alaska Fairbanks.
    As a Nanook, he was named the Central Collegiate Hockey Association Player of the Year and was drafted to the Pittsburgh Penguins. Upon graduation, he was traded to the New York Rangers and began playing for their affiliate in the AHL. He made his NHL debut backing up Henrik Lundqvist versus the Philadelphia Flyers on December 30, 2009. He bounced around until he signed a one-year contract with the Boston Bruins in 2013. The next year he signed with the New York Islanders and in March of this year was traded to the Sabres.
    This year he has played in 19 games with a 7-9-1 record and a 2.54 goals against average.
     Alice enjoyed the game and also spent time with Chad and her daughter Karen in Calgary.


Golden Hills picks new name for new school

East Wheatland

 

The Board of Trustees is pleased to announce the name for the new school currently under construction in East Wheatland.
A naming committee was established consisting of parents and community members to gather input from students, parents and the broader community and discuss possible names for the new school in East Wheatland.
After careful consideration in an inclusive process during this school year the committee selected their 1st choice and an alternate for suggested names which were presented to the board today. The board unanimously agreed with the committee’s first choice and we are pleased to announce that the name of the new school is Wheatland Crossing.
Wheatland - represents the county, the wheat fields and the land in the area.
Crossing - an intersection where everyone comes together (all the communities) and then students continue on their own paths.
The Board would like to extend their appreciation and thanks to the naming committee and to all those who participated in the school naming project.

Bill 6 passes, concerns remain

strsank

    About 250 citizens came out to a Town Hall meeting to discuss the concerns and implications of Bill 6.
    MLA Rick Strankman hosted the evening last Friday, December 11 in Hanna, just a day after the third and final reading of Bill 6, the contentious Farm Safety Bill.
    “Everybody was quietly respectful,” said Strankman. “They were there to be informed and to listen.”
    He adds this was surprising after witnessing the energetic demonstrations on the steps of the legislature over the last couple of weeks.
    Strankman said he spoke for about two hours, and then stuck around for a while afterwards to talk to attendees.  This caps off one of the most active sessions of the legislature in recent memory.
     “I can’t encapsulate it in just a few words,” he said.
    He feels the biggest barrier to progress was communications.
    "I spoke in the Legislature on Thursday and I said, ‘why can’t we communicate?’ We're not speaking a foreign language here,” he said. “There are thousands of people and stacks of petitions but we were still not able to communicate.”
    The Wildrose was on message throughout the debate and while the bill still passed, the opposition was strong.
    "We effectively represented our constituents to the best of our ability,” said Strankman. “We were getting hundreds of calls from outside our constituency. 11-15 NDP constituencies have farmers there and they felt marginalized.
    Strankman said they also held a “Tele Town Hall meeting” and they received calls from areas all over the province, and from this he says it may not be a simple rural/urban split.
    “It is starting to resonate” he said.
    At times, he too felt the debate was not respectful.
    “I commented on that. The house leader on the government side, and people on our side had to make public apologies, it is an embarrassment to the quality of the characters involved,” he said. "We are supposed to be the representatives of the citizenry and we are expected to set a higher and better standard than that.”
    The uproar about Bill 6 has been manifested in demonstrations across the province, and Strankman says people are still concerned.
    “People are still going about trying to petition the Lieutenant Governor not to sign the bill when presented,’ said Strankman.
    While this is not a party endeavour, he does say it demonstrates a level of concern. On Saturday the two petitions; one on Bill 6 and one repealing the carbon tax, which were at the Drumheller Co-op and both filled up quickly.


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