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Last updateSun, 06 Oct 2024 1pm

Coal Mining centennial: detectives needed to help tell Drumheller’s story

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    Drumheller has a big story to tell, and the Coal Mining Centennial committee, formed to plan a centennial celebration of the birth of the first coal mine next year, has lots of ideas to tell it.
    “Plenty of great ideas came out from the public forums,” said Atlas Coal Mine Historical Society executive director Linda Digby, adding a lot of their realization will depend on the level of interest in the community for people to see them through.
    One of the biggest tasks ahead is to compile a list of the miners to be included on a memorial dedicated to those who lost their lives working in the mines.
    A list was compiled some years ago, however Digby explained to The Weekender they want to try to substantiate those names to ensure nobody gets left out.
    Some volunteers have offered to research the Glenbow Archives in Calgary and others the Provincial Archives in Edmonton.
    There is also another source right here in Drumheller, where volunteers from the community could lend a hand in this detective work by going through The Drumheller Mail archives at the public library
    “Every time I go to the library and scan old editions of The Drumheller Mail, I am fascinated. I  learn stuff about the city that I have never known before, it is a lot of fun,” said Digby, adding that if volunteers could take one year each, then the task becomes a more manageable one.
    “We are going to learn some amazing stories, some heroic ones, some tragic ones. It is something that as a society, we feel really moved by. Our only frustration is we don’t have the capacity to do it all ourselves, we would love to just invest all the man hours ourselves in doing this because we love to learn about all this, but we just don’t have man power to do it, so we will definitely need help from the community.”
    Volunteers who would like to help researching The Drumheller Mail archives should contact Linda Digby at 403-822-2220 to register their interest.

Junior high program at Hussar discontinued

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    This coming school year Hussar School will no longer be offering a junior high program.
    In 2007, due to declining enrolment, Hussar School lost its high school, and last year, Grade 9 students from Hussar were consolidated into the Standard School program. This year because of the low numbers, the Grade 7 and 8 programs have now been discontinued.
    Board chair Ron Kenworthy says there were only a handful of students coming up the ranks to Grade 7 and 8.
    “There wasn’t that large of group… So the only option would have been a Grade 5-6 and 8 split,” said Kenworthy. “We directed the students to Standard School and parents chose to send their children elsewhere.”
    Many students from Hussar School are now enrolled in Bassano, Drumheller and Strathmore.
    Kenworthy explains the consolidation of programs to Standard is an interim fix as the school division planned on constructing a stand-alone Wheatland East School to serve the area students.
    “People are starting to feel the new school is more distant in time than we thought,” said Kenworthy.
    Earlier this spring, Wheatland County Council voted down redesignating a parcel of land Golden Hills selected for a centralized school.
    “We don’t have the land, the county has chosen not to grant that redesignation, and we haven’t heard from the minister in so far as if we had anything for a new school, so we are in limbo,” said Kenworthy.
    He said the Golden Hills School Board has sent a letter to the Minister of Education Dave Hancock asking for his advice, adding that parents from Hussar School have also written letters about the decision.

Durnie focuses on G-20 Summit

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    Drumheller’s Darwin Durnie has been charged with the monumental task of helping to bring 20 of the world’s Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors together in Toronto this weekend.
    Durnie, who worked for the City of Drumheller and the Town of Drumheller for 18 years is the associate director of facilities and preparation for the G-20 Conference in Toronto on June 26 and 27. The G-20 represents 85 per cent of the world’s gross national product and 80 per cent of world trade.
                                 “My main role is to set up the G-20 in Toronto; however, I am involved in the construction contracts at G-8 in Deerhurst,” Durnie told The Mail.
    The G-8 Summit is an annual meeting of world leaders from Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States. The European Union is also represented. The 36th meeting of the group is at Deerhurst Resort in Huntsville, Ontario.
    Mr. Durnie was also involved in the last Canadian-hosted G-8 Summit, held in  Kananaskis in 2002. He was manager of remote sites  and responsible for set-up.
    Durnie is employed by the Summit Management Office, which is a secretariat established by the Prime Minister.
    Durnie was director of Engineering in Drumheller previous to his appointment for the Kananaskis Summit. Currently he is working as a registered engineering technologist at Stantec in Red Deer.

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