Nine-time Canadian barrel racing champion and trick rider Jerri Duce Phillips has been named for induction this year into the Alberta Sports Hall of Fame.
Phillips won her first Canadian championship when she was just 12 years old in 1964. She was also the first Canadian to qualify for the National Finals Rodeo in 1973, and competed at the event again in 1976 and 1977.
Beginning her trick riding career at age nine, Phillips and her sister, Joy, travelled the world as The Flying Duces.
They performed at the 1967 Expo in Montreal and at the 1988 Olympics in Calgary.
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She was the first woman to be honoured with induction into the Canadian Pro Rodeo Hall of Fame in 1997.
Today, Phillips runs a trick riding school near Carseland, Alta., which she established in 2003. She also trains barrel horses and occasionally works as a stunt performer in the film industry.
Phillips is expected to be inducted at the Alberta Sports Hall of Fame’s annual ceremony this spring.
Canadian canola farmers elected their representatives to the Canadian Canola Growers Association board of directors during the organization’s annual general meeting in Winnipeg on March 4.
New to the board are Jody Klassen and Colin Felstad, Alberta Canola Producers Commission; and Brett Halstead, Saskatchewan Canola Development Commission. Continuing their current terms are Barry Follensbee, B.C. Grain Producers Association; Todd Hames, Alberta Canola Producers Commission; Stan Jeeves and Ed Schafer, Saskatchewan Canola Growers Association; Brian Chorney and Dale Gryba, Manitoba Canola Growers Association; and Jeff Kobe, Ontario Canola Growers Association.
The board elected Ed Schafer from Makwa, Sask., to serve as president and Todd Hames from Marwayne, Alta., to serve as vice-president.
The Canadian Canola Growers Association represents more than 52,000 canola farmers.
Canadians are passionate about their bacon. Lately there has been quite a lot of news about how Canadians, in a national survey, responded to questions about their preference of having bacon or having sex.
Very informative, but there is more. There are news articles telling us that pork is actually a turn on for sex and I expect the pork industry will be using this to encourage their sales.
What a breakthrough that eating pork could be the final answer to conjure up those desires of our youth.
Is this the new cure-all for those with waning libidos? Is this the aphrodisiac the world has been waiting for?
I can see it all now: the advertisements proclaiming this wonder food, (and Manitoba Pork has certainly qualified as being an expert at billboard displays in the past); the butcher shops scrambling to keep their shelves stocked as throngs of adults are filling their baskets and shopping carts with oink products.
The male enhancement commercials, where a couple arrives very late for a concert, and the waiting taxi scenario, will advertise pork.
One very important question remains, however. Is this free range or factory raised pork? I’m sure it makes a difference. …
It’s been a long, cold winter, much colder than average. There are rumours that the Liberals and the NDP, along with other proponents of global warming, have formed a steady stream of shoppers at Canadian Tire.
The two main items they seek are new thermometers and new notebooks.
I don’t know why so many people have difficulty understanding that there are certain things on this planet that we don’t have control over.
One of them is what goes on inside the sun. The sun is a giant nuclear reactor. The amount of heat it generates is largely what determines our climate, and life on earth.
One thing we can be reassured of is that a liberal pounding on a podium or an aging 1960s hippie walking around with a placard does not affect the sun’s nuclear reaction.
No pun intended, but God help us if we ever try and control climate.
There’s nothing wrong with reducing harmful emissions. There is something terribly wrong, however, when the public believes that we have the intelligence and the ability to control the average temperature of the globe – especially when three people can’t agree on where to set the thermostat at the office or in house.
Sometimes we just have to accept that what is happening today is happening the way it was meant to.
I don’t pretend to know more than the next person but I do know this: having survived this winter, I’ll never complain about heat again.
Numerous citizens are fast losing faith in our elected officials in Saskatchewan.
Various citizens in the southwestern part of the province have taken the time and energy to write the premier and the minister of health concerning the problems with the Cypress Health Region. These citizens, many of them seniors, wrote in good faith to their elected officials and most have not had any response, especially from the minister of health.
For the majority of people, writing their elected officials is not an easy task and not one undertaken lightly. I would presume our elected officials would be prompt in their response to their citizens, but alas this does not seem to be the case.
A number of people have been waiting over three weeks for any response and the minority that did receive a reply from the premier were extremely disappointed. The response was not well considered and proceeded to blame things on the previous government.
This might have been the case when they took office and for the first year, but now they own the problems and should do something to fix them. The responses are nothing more than political platitudes and rhetoric, reminiscent of a party in opposition, not a government with concrete plans or solutions.
As a governing party, they can only attribute problems on the past government for a maximum of 18 months. …
Moreover, it is astounding the lack of obvious interest shown by these elected officials to the concerns of the citizens of the southwest. They have a duty and obligation to respond to these concerns.
Maybe they expect the problems will go away if they ignore them, or perhaps they really do not care about rural citizens. I surely hope it is not the latter but as one continues to hear nothing from the minister of health and only platitudes from the premier, it looks as if they do not care.
Do they not remember we pay their high salaries and for their wonderful perks? They work for us, not the other way around. Perchance these same ignored citizens will disregard these politicians at the ballot box.
I find it very hard to believe that those producers who hate the CWB still deal with it. If I hated something that bad, I would grow something that I can sell without going through the CWB.
I am sure that hatred didn’t start only in June 2009 after they had seeded. I am sure they could have decided beforehand to plant something else.
If they hate it so much and still keep coming back to the CWB, it means to me the CWB isn’t doing so bad a job after all. Please, you complainers, make up your minds.
Glenn Sawyer’s letter, (“Simple request,” Open Forum, Feb. 4), is a perfect example of the ignorance that some farmers still have when it comes to the Canadian Wheat Board.
I refer Mr. Sawyer to the CWB annual report, where he will see that the CWB is the largest exporter of durum wheat in the world and the second largest exporter of hard red spring wheat.
His request to “simply sell his wheat and malt barley to the open market” is further evidence of his naivete of the reality of the world grain trade.
There is no such thing as a simple, open market. The world grain trade is managed and tightly controlled by a very few multinational grain traders.
His misconception that the CWB has a monopoly on buying his grain is not true.
If he is not happy with the many options available to him through the CWB, he is not forced to sell to the CWB. He can sell his wheat and malt barley to a number of domestic feed mills or feedlots or through the Canadian open market system.
It is sad that Mr. Sawyer does not appreciate the obvious benefits of a single-desk selling system that protects Canadian farmers in this highly manipulated export market.
His view that the world grain trade is a simple and open arena is a fairy tale, at best.
Once again, the reality is that the CWB’s monopoly position in the export grain business consistently puts more money into the pockets of Canadian farmers.
Art Mainil, in his letter Feb. 4, refers to the “world price” of grain. He mentions the “world price” of only the grains that the CWB handles, and condemns the board for not getting or beating the “world price” for him.
He does not mention the “world price” of open market grains like flax, canola, peas, lentils and oats.
Can we assume that he somehow received the “world price” for these grains?
I have inquired of many people as to just what world price means, and no one seems to know.
Could Mr. Mainil explain just what it is, how it is determined, who determines it, where it is determined and most importantly, who receives that price for their grain?
If the world price is up to three times that which the CWB is able to get, and is the price which farmers in Canada should receive, as Mr. Mainil implies, then that would be a good case for a “world wheat board.” It would be world price or no grain. The world would have to pay or go without.
The thought of all that power is frightening.
Imagine the acronym WWB being used around the world. If that sounds too much like something associated with wrestling, maybe International Wheat Board would suffice, the IWB.
If the words board or marketing agency are too repulsive, perhaps the words corporation or company would be much more comforting to those that currently dislike the CWB so much.
Or it could be called the WWI. I’ll let you figure that one out.
As long at it was not called a board, I’m sure that Mr. Mainil and others who dislike the CWB would be happy to let it buy/sell their grain, as long as they thought it was getting them the “world price”.
Of course, this body could not be headquartered on the Prairies of Canada, as no one there knows how to obtain the “world price.”
It would have to be located in New York, London or Zurich, where no one knows what grain looks like.
However, the way things are going in the world these days, it might have to be in Beijing.
Sounds like a fantasy? Yup, another grain fairy tale.
In addition to thoughts and comments by Alfred Fleming (“Continual calamities,” Open Forum, Jan. 7) with regard to global warming, congratulations go out to Mr. Fleming for his achievement in the art of mastering common sense. Regarding global warming, the truth has been brought forward in many disguised forms by the scientific community, media and fear mongers.
Those of us who entered planet Earth in the early part of the 20th century have witnessed and understood climate change throughout every decade. Drought, floods, temperature variation, excess snow, rain and the lack of it will continue as long as there is life on Earth.
It can never be disputed that climatic conditions have not occurred in nature’s regular cycles and will continue its identical pattern far into the future. Did anyone expect anything significant from the Copenhagen climate free-for-all? …
A lot of the world’s odious leaders were there demanding trillions of dollars to assist their green development which, if foreign aid is the contributor, money would simply vanish down some untraceable trail of squandering and embezzlement.
Among the few voices of sanity and reason at the Copenhagen summit were Canada’s Stephen Harper and America’s Barack Obama.
With all the whoop-la, they found no justification in Copenhagen to squander money on a climatic alteration attempt ….
