Today (April 2) is Good Friday, an oddly named holiday. Perhaps the most oddly named holiday known to the English language. Why would anyone call a day “good” when it marks the death of the leader and founder of Christianity. How can a Friday be good when its purpose is to mark the death of Jesus Christ?
Christmas is good, that marks when Jesus was born. New Year’s is good, the actual day shifts depending on which calendar one uses but it should be a happy day as it marks the beginning of a new year, a fresh start, even if only symbolically. Easter is good, as it marks the rising or resurrection of Christ from the tomb. That should catch peoples’ attention and for many it does. For many others, Easter is hidden behind the folklore of Easter bunnies and easter eggs and chocolate, chocolate, chocolate!
How can Good Friday be good? It’s a tough sell. It comes just five days after Palm Sunday. That was a day when Jesus came into Jerusalem, riding on a donkey, feted by huge crowds who shouted “Hosanna.” They laid cloaks on the road in his path and palm branches. He was a hero. Problem was, the Jews were expecting a different kind of hero, a worldy king with the charisma and leadership to overthrow the Roman domination of their lives and land. They expected a king to come triumphant into Jerusalem, not on a donkey, but possibly on a large horse. Maybe even a white horse and ready to lead an uprising against the Romans. Didn’t happen!
Instead, the adoring hundreds (or perhaps thousands) faded away as Jesus was put on trial and executed on a cross. That’s some way to treat a king. It wasn’t a “good Friday.” It was a disastrous Friday and all of Jesus’ terribly disheartened followers knew it and grieved together about his death.
So Saturday followed Friday and still no relief from grief. Jesus was dead. Their friend, their leader, their hope, dead in a cold rocky tomb; a borrowed tomb at that. The Romans even put guards at the entrance of the tomb to make sure he stayed put, stayed dead.
So Christianity seemingly died that day, even before it was born. Jesus was dead, just as today we can say Buddha is dead, the 13 previous Dalai Lamas have all died, Mohammed is dead, all the titular heads of Japanese Shintoism are dead. Moving on down the line into lesser mortals, Mao is dead, Trotsky is dead, Lenin is dead, Marx is dead.
Even further down the line, Lennon is dead, Elvis is dead; the list goes on.
But it is indeed a Good Friday because Jesus is alive. Jesus rose on Easter Sunday, conquered death and walked the earth again and then returned to Heaven from where He had come. Jesus is alive, it is indeed a Good Friday.
“To God be the glory, great things He has done;
So loved He the world that He gave us His Son,
Who yielded His life an atonement for sin,
And opened the life gate that all may go in.”
Fanny Crosby 1820 – 1915

“Up from the grave he arose;
with a mighty triumph o’er his foes;
he arose a victor from the dark domain,
and he lives forever, with his saints to reign.
He arose! He arose! Hallelujah! Christ arose!”

Robert Lowry 1826-1899

The Town of Rivers and its neighbouring municipality, the RM of Daly, is facing a problem that is common to many towns and RMs. The difference is that Rivers is more than facing their problem, they are actually doing something about it. Rivers needs a new skating rink. Riverdale Community Gardens and the curling rink are 60 years old. The largest hall in town, the Legion, seats about 225 to 240. It’s capacity appeared to be stretched to 400 as Rivers residents gathered to hear the Town of Rivers council’s approach to a new facility. Judging by the line-up at the door (a block long) and judging by the tension in the room, the council could have been in for a very rough ride. As the meeting unfolded, it was apparent that most people in the area recognize the need for a new rec facility. Most want to see one built. Some don’t like the proposed downtown location. Some don’t like the fact that council has decided to partially fund the construction with a $345 per property levy. Many speakers voiced those concerns. A few simply said they can’t afford to pay the levy, although ironically, one opposing speaker inadvertently admitted that his hard-to-hear speaking voice was a result of being a heavy smoker. At a cost of over $3,000 a year for a pack-a-day smoker, $345 for a rec. facility seems a paltry amount.
The debate was orderly, long and vigorous with many good suggestions coming forward. The rink is 62 years old. A “plan” to build a new one has been in the works, in one form or another, for 10 years. Since the last “plan” was brought forward, the cost has doubled to $6.5 million dollars. As one speaker said, “Procrastination has cost us over $3 million dollars.”
The council did their job, they did what they were elected to do. They made a decision. To their credit they have several reserve funds to cushion some of the needed expenses. Nobody wants to pay more taxes. There may in fact be people who can’t afford to pay the levy, it will be a hardship for some.
As Monday night’s meeting wore on (it was over three hours of intense exchanging of ideas) it became evident that the majority of those in attendance wanted to go ahead. A few speakers actually congratulated council on their work. The mayor and council of the Town of Rivers have recognized a problem, turned it into an opportunity and are suggesting the town go forward. One speaker pointed out the alternative by reminding the audience that Moline, Harding and Bradwardine all used to be service centres with rec. facilities. Now, those communities are without services and are almost non-existent.
There really is no option. Rivers must move ahead. It’s a growing town, young families are choosing Rivers as the place to raise their families.
What can other councils learn from the Rivers experience? There are several lessons. Rec. facilities have a life span of about 40 years but get stretched to 50 or 60. Newer facilities might last longer as they tend to be steel, not wood, and are better engineered. A town has to have rec. facilities and in western Canada that usually means hockey, figure skating, curling and some other ice sports.
The Rivers council, in hindsight, could have communicated more information and communicated this project’s details more clearly. For example, the new facility will contain an “NHL size” ice surface. That irked some folks and was seen as excessive. Truth be known, most skating ice surfaces are “NHL size”, or very close to it, and the extra few feet doesn’t make much difference to the cost. Another example was the new facility contains a “Smart Room”. One speaker asked the obvious question, “What the heck is a Smart Room?” It’s simply a small meeting room where, as a councillor explained, you “can hook up your computer”. Even that wasn’t a real good explanation as a Smart Room should be a space you can connect your computer to the internet and do video conferencing and thereby have a face-to-face meeting with people anywhere in the world in real time and without the cost of traveling. A Smart Room somewhere in a community is really good idea but it was wasn’t well communicated.
The Town of Rivers council, and at least two previous councils, need to be commended for taking action. Council has done a good job. If any criticism can be leveled, it might be that they could have said more and acted faster. The citizens are, for the most part, behind council.
Editor’s note: In the interests of full disclosure, Rivers Banner owners, Ken and Christine Waddell are property owners in the Town of Rivers as they own the Rivers Banner building.

Taking part in a Canadian Community Newspapers seminar a couple of weeks ago set me to re-thinking some things. The seminar was by conference call, not even a video conference. Certainly conference calls have been around for a long time. They save a lot of time and  jet fuel (money). We had participants from all across Canada and we discussed a topic that has become near and dear to newspaper publishers. The topic– “How to stretch newsroom resources”.
Newspapers have evolved. There’s no question that changes have been huge in the last 10 years especially but it’s actually just change speeding up. It used to be that even a small community newspaper had two or three reporters. Slightly larger papers would have several with each one specializing in a field, politics, sports, community news.
But time and technology, combined with the competitive edge, have changed all that. Competition comes to the newspapers from other newspapers but also from many other sources. The classified pages get competition from the community bulletin board. Bulletin boards are free, newspaper classifieds aren’t. Internet classified sites are often free. Then there’s radio classifieds programs. Newspapers compete with radio, TV and of course with the ever-present internet. 
No other institution can gather news, edit news and distribute news quiet like a newspaper can. It’s a complete package, news, photos, advertising. It stays around, you can always find it on the coffee table or the kitchen table. A newspaper has many advantages over internet, radio, TV and even bulletin boards.
How does a newspaper stretch it’s newsroom resources? Basically the same way community newspapers have always stretched. We accept submissions. While we are often flooded with submissions, many of them aren’t local. We need, and we invite, local input.
So what format do we need? It used to be that any old way would do. Handwritten, no matter how poorly, might be accepted. Now we prefer it typed up and emailed. A newspaper can still type up submitted news material but it has a much better chance of being used if it’s well written and submitted by email. Similarly, pictures can be submitted and we welcome them. They can be emailed or brought in on disc, either CD or a camera disc. We can usually download right off a camera if the camera cord comes with it.
The secret of stretching a newsroom’s resources is for  a newspaper to invite the community to be the newsroom. A newspaper will still go out and cover stories but many times the community can do a great job. Many times when we show up with a camera at an event we have to get in line with the private citizens who are also snapping photos. Nowadays many private citizens have way better digital cameras than we can afford.
In today’s business climate everybody has to do more with less so there won’t be as many news reporters and  photographers around as there used to be, but that doesn’t mean newspapers can’t have as much or more news content as they have had in the past. 
The internet, rather than being the enemy of newspapers, has become our best friend. That’s how we view it.
This newspaper long ago learned the buggy maker’s lesson. The buggy makers that realized they weren’t buggy makers but transportation providers survived and became car makers. The ones who insisted on being buggy makers disappeared. The newspapers that realize that they aren’t just newspapers but are news providers will survive and thrive. They’ll use every tool available. That’s why the Neepawa Banner and the Rivers Banner have web sites that are hooked into our myWestman.ca site, which is also owned by my wife and myself.
Unlike the buggy making industry of a 100 years ago, the public can take a strong role. Ordinary people couldn’t help build cars but ordinary people can and do help build newspapers by contributing parts to the assembly line. Those submitted parts are greatly appreciated. So send in your stories and photos. Oh, and by the way, send in those ads too. They are greatly appreciated too.

When we are unsure about the future consequences of a certain action or inaction we resort to the old saying, “Time will tell.” Actually time doesn’t tell much, it’s pretty much a passive thing. A truer statement might be that “time marches on”. Another adage is, “Time stands still for no man.” While that’s true, it doesn’t speed up for anyone either.
Yet another saying, “Time heals all wounds”, isn’t true, but it pacifies some people. Physical wounds indeed usually take time to heal but while man may provide the cure, it’s God who provides the healing.
So too with emotional healing, time simply measures the passage of days, months and years but without man providing the cure and God providing the healing, emotional wounds can fester forever.
That’s why the current approach by many people to the wounding of First Nations people over the past century and a half is totally unproductive. On the First Nations activist side, re-opening the residential school debate and finding new ways of attaching blame to successive generations of former Europeans isn’t very productive. Similarly, people, regardless of background, who want to forget it all aren’t solving a lot of problems either. On the “white” side of the question, the continued and ongoing agonizing and soul searching and blame attaching isn’t helpful. Let’s get a couple of things straight. I didn’t put anybody in residential schools. Neither did my father or grandfathers. They were all born in Scotland and had absolutely nothing to do with Canadian governance back in those days.
The second thing we need to get straightened out is that, given conditions for many First Nations people in the mid to late 1800s, the government of the day felt they had to do something to help First Nations people. And further understand, that sending children off to boarding school was a well accepted and somewhat successful practice in England. For us to second guess the governments of the day is unfair and unproductive. To study the policies and learn from them is a good thing.
The simple passage of time will never solve the emotional hurts of the past unless man provides the cure and God provides the healing.
First Nations need to stop blaming the “whites” and everyone, First Nations and whites, need to learn from the mistakes of the past and move on with better policies and programs. There have been enough apologies already. Another adage comes into play here, “Actions speak louder than words.” So, given that everybody is sorry that bad things happened, and given that we know things need to change, what needs to happen before too much more time slips away?
We all need to understand that the reserve system is unfixable. If in fact FN people want to have self- government as individual “nations” across the country known as Canada then they have to become much more municipal in governance, generating taxes and setting by laws. Individuals need to get title to their homes. Home ownership is a very important step towards beating back poverty. Our home is often our biggest investment and our most important possession from a physical and emotional point of view.
Economic opportunity for many FN communities could revolve around local food production. We now have the technology to grow many kinds of vegetable based foods within a community, regardless of how remote the community may be. Greenhouse technology is a must for remote communities to be enabled to grow their own food. Domestic animal based food production isn’t practical in many remote communities because hay and grain can’t be grown there, but vegetables will grow anywhere you have a greenhouse, water and sunshine. The wild animal harvest is still an option in many remote communities.
Getting back to time, it was proposed back in the 1960s by Prime Minister Trudeau and Indian Affairs minister Jean Chretien that the so-called Indian Act be dissolved. The FN leaders objected. If they had agreed, it would be interesting to see how that “cure” might have succeeded to bring about positive change and healing. Instead, a law that was brought in in the 1800s and was to be abolished in the 1970s, but wasn’t, is still inflicting fresh wounds today.
Until man provides the cure, God may not be able to do the healing.