The Page

Beware the psycho beaver of Slave Lake! A fellow tells us he was riding his bike along the paved trail next to the creek in town recently when he encountered a beaver, right on the trail. Instead of scuttling off, like you expect any normal beaver to do, the animal stood up on his tail and hind legs, bared its teeth and made threatening noises! It wouldn’t back down or move off the trail, so the guy says he backtracked and found his way home by another route.
You have to wonder about the sanity of a beaver that would behave that way when it’s not backed into a corner. Maybe it means there’s a cold winter coming.
* * * * *
Boy, they sure do make a fuss in Viking when a new RCMP commander arrives. Splashed over four columns of the front page in the that community’s ‘Weekly Review’ is a picture of Cpl. Scott Buchanan and his cruiser. Scott was posted here in Slave Lake the past couple of years, and a member of the Rotary Club. He took over as detachment commander in Viking on Sept. 28. We wish him and wife Tammy all the best.
* * * * *
Speaking of former Slave Lakers, we ran into Hughie McEvoy and Derek Kubicki last week. Hugh’s waist deep in the oilfield camp business up in Seal Lake, and Derek recently purchased a restaurant at the Riverside Inn in Wabasca, to go along with his Southgate establishment in Milk River. It’s quite a commute between Milk River and Wabasca, to say the least, but Derek says the opportunities up north here are just too good to pass up.
Hugh gave us $#@! about The Leader’s malfunctioning website. Seems he relies on it for news about the Wolves. He’s not the only one who’s mentioned it. What happens is the folks who run the server up in High Prairie have some fixing to do and they aren’t getting it done.
* * * * *
There’s no Page 9 fuel price report this week, we’re sorry to say, on account of Doug Beattie had the week off last week to spend some quality time with his new daughter Emily. He’s back now though, nose to the grindstone, shoulder to the wheel, churning out the kind of news you need to get through the week.
* * * * *
This just in from the Rexall people. In fact it came in late enough on Friday that this is the only space we had for it. You’ve probably noticed the renovations going on at Slave Lake’s Rexall pharmacy over the past few weeks. They ripped everything out, moved it around and set it up again.
Why’d they do it? We don’t know, except that there’s now a nice post office section in the store. Anyhoo, Rexall is planning to celebrate the new-look store with a ribbon-cutting ceremony this Friday, Oct. 27 at 10:30 a.m. Also marking the occasion are gift bags for the first 50 customers and a couple of free health clinics. One is a cholesterol clinic, on Saturday Nov. 28 and another is a breast cancer awareness clinic on Saturday, Nov. 4.
* * * * *
Wow! What a great Small Business Week breakfast presentation at the Sawridge Inn and Conference Centre last Wednesday. Kudos to the organizers and speakers (and let’s not forget the cooks!), for a job well done.
The promotional film ‘Give them a pickle’ was absolutely the best, extremely funny – and it drove home many common-sense messages...like ‘Smile’..that some people in the business world and service industry seem to have forgotten.
Maybe they think they don’t care, but the film also showed how quickly boom can go bust if we quit paying attention to the little things.
Terry Kurucz from the Community Futures office says the film was on loan, but we think it’d be worth every nickel for someone to purchase it...even if they rented it to businesses and donated the funds to the Chamber..or maybe the new library.
Just a thought.