The K to 9 article in last week’s Leader and South Peace News was based on a discussion at the Northland School Division meeting. Pearl Lorentzen misunderstood the conversation as it pertained to Kindergarten to Grade 9 students moving up a grade. She apologizes for not asking for clarification to make sure she understood the proceedure correctly before publishing.
Please see the clarification from Curtis Walty, Northland media relations manager on Northland’s policy.
“The article states that ‘provincial rules’ require students to move up to the next grade until Grade 9. This is not accurate. There is no provincial rule requiring this. At Northland School Division, we follow an administrative procedure. This procedure is based on current research and best practices. Like many provincial school divisions, we promote or place students in Grades Kindergarten to 9 based on their achievement in English language arts and math, with supports provided when needed.”
The other day some people were planning on hiking the Lily Lake Trail. Unfortunately, they happened to be meeting at the trailhead at the exact moment a rainstorm started. We haven’t heard if they chanced it or not, but given the trails reputation for muddy patches, we hope they took a rain check. It is a lovely hike if the ground isn’t too wet or you wear waterproof hiking boots. Also, there are some upgrades to the bridges and boardwalks.
Boardwalk has two meanings. A walk made out of planks or a walk along a beach. In The Leader office, one native English speaker only had the walk by the beach in their mental lexicon and the other had the other, who knew both were an option.
On Friday, July 18 from 1 to 2 p.m., the Rotary Club of Slave Lake Public Library has a free water colour painting event for all ages. For more details, call 780-849-5250.
People have been noticing the billboard ads along Highway 88 through the Sawridge First Nation have disappeared lately. We were kind of hoping it was because highway reconstruction was imminent. But no such luck; Somebody at the Sawridge tells us they just decided to stop doing it, because it’s not a lucrative business, and they need their workers focusing on other things. The signs were difficult to maintain, etc….
Leafing through old Lakeside Leaders from back in the early 1990s can be interesting for all sorts of reasons. One of them is seeing little kids who now have their own kids.
Another is the big supermarket ads we used to get. In 1990 they were mostly from Food Fare, the store that is now No Frills. Back then, ‘top sirloin’ steak was going for $3.49 per pound. Black Forest cakes were $6.99. Red ‘Chileau’ grapes were $1.49/lb. Google, by the way, has never heard the term ‘chileau,’ so it was probably a typo. Chilean, maybe.
Front page news on Jan. 2, 1991, by the way was as follows: Alberta’s Health Minister, Nancy Betkowski, had visited Slave Lake, but made no hard promises about when the new hospital would be built. Health priorities and not political pressure would be the determining factor, she said. A woman and her young child died in a car crash in the city, was another story. The third one was a feature on Slave Laker Craig Woodard, who was serving in the Persian Gulf on a Canadian destroyer during the so-called Gulf War.
Page 9 isn’t necessarily into the symbolism thing, but Slave Lake’s ‘Tree of Hope,’ planted by the Ministerial Association after the 2011 wildfire disaster, has seen better days and probably should be removed. Same goes for the plaque that was installed when the tree was planted. Either that or a new tree should be planted. Otherwise there’s not much point in having the plaque. They are in the ‘dry pond’ area in the southeast, on the right just after you cross the Sawridge Creek bridge, going east on 6th Ave.
Last week, we had a typo on the front page of Leader. The date said July 29, 2025, but should have been July 9.
The article on Cree language pilot, had the name of Sept. 30 incorrectly. It is National Day of Truth and Reconciliation, also called Orange Shirt Day.
