Verna Thompson

Don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater. This was the message a few weeks ago from Joe Garcea, chair of the Taskforce on Municipal Legislative Renewal, speaking to the Saskatchewan Association of Rural Municipalities convention. Municipal councilors last week suggested that Garcea heed the same advice. The report and its authors received a thorough […] Read more

I have been lucky in my life in that I have been able to spend it working at various facets of my chosen profession, a profession I unabashedly admit that I love. I confess to a certain amount of cynicism from time to time, and of course there is the every day drudgery, but the […] Read more

Spring nears, but with snow on the ground and below-zero temperatures, the only thing growing at our house is my collection of auction posters. Auction sales are one of my passions, born and nurtured in the Ottawa Valley and honed in rural Saskatchewan. It’s not just the buying, it’s the thrill of the chase for […] Read more

Remember the old parlor game, button, button, who’s got the button? Someone would hide said button and someone else would search for it, getting cold or warm depending on the closeness of the search to its object. We played the game at our house the other night when I went into a rant. Was it […] Read more

Cultural diversity is something we often talk about on the Prairies but, having just returned from Toronto, it is something I am convinced we know little about. I was in Toronto for a summit about the future of weekly newspapers. The meetings ended Friday at suppertime but I would have had to pay an additional […] Read more

We’ve had a local theatre group in our town for five years. In that time, I’ve played a not very nice rich lady, a French maid complete with black uniform and fishnet stockings, something which to this day my daughters shudder about (“no child should have to see their mother in fishnet stockings,” they tell […] Read more

Life is most depressing in rural Saskatchewan these days. With the announcement this week that grain prices are probably not going to turn around for 10 or 20 years, next year country has become next decade or bust. For 2000, when farmers are making their cropping decisions, they’re not deciding what crop will make them […] Read more

This has been another interesting week in next year country. Farmers last week were sitting-in at the Saskatchewan legislature, disrupting politician’s schedules to the extent that a tea for retiring lieutenant-governor Jack Wiebe was cancelled. A farmer himself in another life, one can only wonder what His Honor privately thought of the cancelling of his […] Read more

Ah, such times we live in. A federal budget on Feb. 28, provincial premiers screaming for more health-care money, common people calling for tax relief, farmers hoping for federal aid. Six more weeks of winter because the groundhog saw its shadow last week. In Saskatchewan, threats against the life of the premier applauded. And still […] Read more

MA AND Pa did it again. They went to the city, that is. They stayed in a fancy hotel with two phones in the room, a coffee maker and an ironing board. Ma wished she’d brought along her overflowing laundry basket. One night they were asked to go out on the town with Number One […] Read more