Blitzed in a good way

As you may notice, I've been tardy on writing in the past week and a half. After all was said and done, it turned into a long long long stretch of highway that got me from Calgary out to Whitecourt and around the region. After I got back, I still feel like cat-napping in the summer sun after work is done.

A long weekend let me hang out with my Sharon for an extra couple days. However, I sure felt a squeeze of compressing the five day week in four though. Telephone tag for interviews and getting all my articles written? Barely... It worked out in the end though and I learned lots from it. Admitting I need more sleep too. Here's a link to a few articles from Drayton Valley:

Fallen soldiers honoured in mural - Drayton Valley Western Review
Keeping the hampers full at area food banks - Drayton Valley Western Review
Coach, board look forward to season ahead - Drayton Valley Western Review

Very busy town and I hated to go as they were just welcoming as the previous towns and it's been a real pleasant experience on my road-trip to cover other reporters' holidays. So I'm back in Whitecourt and sleeping in my own bed, cooking meals and cleaning my room up after returning home.

Total odometer reading from town to town? just shy of 800km in 25 days logged for work and about 1500 to see my Sharon in Camrose. Totally worth it for catching up on peace & quiet / quality time.

More on long haul driving in a little while -- and I admit, I'm not as speedy on 'to be continued' at times so just like everything else, make a task list and get'ter done when I can as ideas come up while I'm writing and I need to catch up on them on occasion.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, a few of my stories were posted on the home newspaper that I had written before I left on the road:

Oilmen open clubhouse doors to the community - Whitecourt Star
Neighbours become friends at original block party - Whitecourt Star

So there you are with it being a bit compressed. As I originally started this blog to share stuff with my parents, friends and family and it's gotten a bit bigger than that now ^_^ I know I already posted that block party story. It's one of my favourites so far and it's a tiny bit exciting to see my articles on the Whitecourt Star website, a legit newspaper online ^_^

So you might notice a shift to less actual articles as I post them on the company website and would feel like I was doing it twice over. However, it'll be more of a journal of the journey taken to get those articles come together. I hope I don't bore people, but really there's all kinds of neat stuff and small miracles that happen when getting things done by deadline.

Still bound by FOIP and respecting privacy of people I interview. Yet some of the little stuff that happens can be really nifty and some of the theory put into practice would be good reflections as well. Thanks for bearing with me as I change the tempo. With journal writing, but for a journalist that's a paradox. It's both play on words and sometimes reality as I have so much happening, it'd be nice to be able to figure out what happened the past week a few weeks from now. Especially when I'm journal-ing other people's lives 98% of the time. Such is news-worthiness -- an eternal struggle of what to print since newspapers were born.

Much as I hate to say, oh read my blog if you want to know what I been up to lately. Much the same as my camera serves as a photo journal at times. It won't be overload of TMI and I still plan to have fun links, stories and opinion pieces -- Stuff I don't have enough space in my pages in the newspaper.

And there's so much paradox between natural beauty and reality of the economy up here so tons to write about. It's been an eye-opener of a road-trip.

Good times still to come but for now? Sleep time.

-- PLR -- 

Non-selfish seven year old fundraises for Slave Lake RCMP

Philip Rushton

Whitecourt Star Reporter

A grinning Asher Melnychuk answers the door.

In June, he decided to collect donations at his family's door to help children in Slave Lake, without knowing which people needed it.

“If I was someone who lost their home, I wouldn't be happy if nobody helped,” said Asher.

His mother, Stacy Crossland showed him YouTubes of the devastating fires. When she told him RMCP members had lost their houses helping people leave, Asher knew right away where his donations would go.

“The police are really nice and they protect the city from bad guys,” Asher said.

For three weeks, Asher asked everyone he knew and wrote a letter for his teacher to hand out around school.

“He came up with the idea to write a letter,” said his mother showing Asher's neatly hand-printed request. “It was very much all him, I just drove him around.”

Through Crossland's Facebook account, Asher asked his grandparents, uncles and aunts, and friends who all donated generously.

“It was hard when I had to wait for people to decide to give money,” said Asher, “but some friends came to the house.”

Helping his Mom count donations every day, Asher kept asking everyone who visited the house and around the community.

“We're very proud of him,” Crossland said. “He always tries to help when someone is sick.”

When Const. Kurtis Milbrant received the Zip-loc bag full of cash from Asher, he and the other RCMP were completely caught off guard by the gesture.

“I'm impressed someone at such a young age to do such a non-selfish act,” said Milbrandt. “It's amazing.”

After Milbrandt posted a Facebook request for donations, a mutual friend of his reposted the link and Crossland noticed it.

“It's not often that people show appreciation for police officers,” said Milbrandt, “so this came out of nowhere.”

When the fundraiser started on Facebook, RCMP members from across the province gave $2,800 in gift cards, the high school raised $1,400. Asher's contributions alone were $1,300.

“Most of it went to guys who lost homes so they could put clothes in closets,” said Milbrandt. “It was encouraging after seeing on the news around the world with aid for disasters, when this is much closer to home.”

Milbrandt thinks that kind of attitude will help Asher go far in life.

“I hope he keeps that attitude up because he has a bright future ahead,” said Milbrandt.

Asher's eyes lit up when he heard the total of $5,500 had been donated and he said he hopes that people continue to donate.

“Hopefully the city will be built up quick so people can move back in,” said Asher.

With hockey, golf and baseball practices, as well as artwork, at seven years old, Asher keeps busy and already knows what he wants to do.

“I want to work with my dad and be a mechanic,” said Asher, “but my older brother wants to be in the RCMP.”

Asked if he could go the park for a photo, he was out the door immediately. 

Geese of a feather stick together and so should neighbours' block parties

By Philip Rushton

Whitecourt Star Reporter

Driving down to Arizona for the winter in a Greyhound Bus converted into a camper, Canada Geese still painted on the sides, Darlene and her husband Gary Pearce, known by their CB radio call signs, Nana and Poppa Goose, have always been meeting new people.

“I've always been a real people person,” said Darlene Pearce.

When they moved to Whitecourt in 1970, the Pearce couple didn't know anyone on windfall Drive, so they launched a block party the next summer.

“The town dropped off some barricades and we rolled out the barbecue,” said Pearce.

Having planned parties and get-togethers since the couple moved away from their hometown of Sundre Pearce led by example.

“Guess what, I’m your new neighbour and I want to come over for a cup of coffee,” Pearce told people next door.

When they moved in 1961, the couple first came up with the idea of block parties. The neighbourhood made its own barricades out of sawhorses.

When the couple moved to Whitecourt years later, everyone loved the idea as well and more than 50 people gathered on Windfall Drive.

“We even played a baseball game in the street,” said Pearce. “It was close, but none of us were very good so we didn't break windows.”

There was a potluck, and as people chatted around the barbeque, friendship formed.

Someone pulled out a fiddle during the evening and after the children went to bed at 10 p.m., the dancing continued with vinyl records.

Those three years of these block parties built bonds that endure as people were transferred and moved away.

Pearce decided to have a reunion 25 years later and made some phone calls to meet in a local restaurant in the autumn.

“It's really neat at the restaurant because waiters asked if we were all neighbours or what? They said, Really? People don't do that anymore.”

In the 1970s in a small town where everybody knew everybody, stay-at-home moms could watch over each others' goslings running through the backyards.

“We never worried about our children being out,” said Pearce. “It was a lot different world from nowadays, a very special time in our lives.”

Having celebrated their 50^th anniversary this May, Gary and Darlene Pearce naturally had a huge flock gathering for an entire week.

“People came from B.C. and up from the States where we follow the Canadian geese.”

Throughout the years others have kept up the tradition of block parties in Whitecourt with in the '80s on the Athabasca and in the '90s in a park square.

“It's a great way to meet your neighbours.”

Nana Goose out.

Photograph: Lake County Museum