Diane Rogers

A task as big as Canada is being taken on by Heather Jager of Delia, Alta. Jager is one of 36 cyclists planning to cover 6,800 kilometres collectively on a 12-day trip from Vancouver to Halifax June 13-24. She is one of four Alberta riders among the group of 36 national riders on the second […] Read more

Uncertainty over federal funding for the 12-year-old Prairie Women’s Health Centre of Excellence has forced the end of a rural women’s project. The Rural Women’s Issues Committee of Saskatchewan (RWICS) will stop its work next month, said Lil Sabiston. Sabiston, a farmer from Kelliher, Sask., and chair of the board of the Prairie Women’s Health […] Read more

Rural women don’t see themselves as leaders, even when they head the rink committee or lead a fundraising project. They downplay their achievements and say with a shrug, “well, someone had to do it,” according to Jeanne Martinson, a consultant for Martrain Corporate and Personal Development in Regina. Martinson, who was scheduled to speak at […] Read more

Federated Women’s Institutes of Canada celebrates its 90th anniversary this month. But it’s not as old as some of the groups that came together in Winnipeg in 1919 to form it. Manitoba Women’s Institutes is 99 years old this year, Saskatchewan’s WI is 97 and the Alberta and British Columbia WIs are 100. They will […] Read more

Rural residents no longer have to do the detective work to get information about weddings, says Trevor Chilton, marketing director of a marriage website. “It takes the stress out,” said Chilton of Saskweddings.com. Among the site’s information is the statistic that 5,000 weddings a year are held in Saskatchewan and that the average age at […] Read more

Greg Marchildon may not know yet whether his idea works, but he figures it’s got to be better than what he called the “buffalo dung” now used to analyze the cost effectiveness of the public health system. Marchildon of the University of Regina’s Graduate School of Public Policy outlined his new framework to evaluate Canada’s […] Read more

Jennifer Willems is a chef who believes in taking risks with her New Ground Café in Birch Hills, Sask. This winter she stopped buying imported lettuce for salads and began offering customers a raw root vegetable slaw made from beets, cabbage or whatever Saskatchewan-grown produce she can buy. She told delegates at the recent Saskatchewan […] Read more

People frighten themselves when they hear conflicting scientific results because they don’t understand when research is taken out of context. That’s the belief of Dr. Joe Schwarcz, director of McGill University’s Office for Science and Society. His job is to debunk food and other science myths, he told the Saskatchewan Fruit Growers Association at its […] Read more

The British Columbia Women’s Institute branches have received the Helen Hughes outstanding philanthropic award. Twenty B.C. branches have raised funds for the Queen Alexandra children’s hospital in Victoria for 86 years. Ruth Fenner, publicity chair for the South Vancouver Island District WI, said the United Way of Victoria presented the honour to the WI branches […] Read more

Small fairs offer economic benefits to their communities but their social and educational impacts are just as important, according to a survey done at 20 fairs in 2008. The main purpose of the federally funded $500,000 survey was to quantify the benefits that fairs bring, said Kim Chadsey, associate executive director of the Canadian Association […] Read more