She is the very first recipient of the award in the association’s history.

As she stood in front of a crowd of friends, family, and media, she talked a bit about some of the things she has done, but spent most of the time having fun being the centre of attention and making a few jokes to lighten the mood.

The manager of the Pemmican Lodge, Roger Hacior, said she is fully of “ideas and vitality”, as he handed her the award.

As she held up the award, which looked like a glass star on a pedestal, she almost appeared to tear up a little and she looked at the crowd.

“I really appreciate the fact you think I’m worthy of it all,” said Ewing as she accepted the award from the ASCHA, and a certificate from the City of Lethbridge, which was presented by Mayor Bob Tarleck.

This is not the first award she’s won for her volunteering efforts. She was awarded by the City of Lethbridge in 2001, and the Government of Canada during the international Year of Volunteers.

Many would think that a woman of her age should be relaxing, drinking tea, and either napping or knitting. Ewing prefers to spend her time volunteering, helping in the kitchen, playing Bingo, and she loves playing horseshoes.

She volunteers once a month at a local elementary school, leads a seniors exercise class twice a week, and is an avid 10-pin bowler.

“I’m keeping busy, and those dolls for Africa keep me busy,” said Ewing. “I’ve done almost 300 now in the two years (since) I started doing the dolls.”
She has lived a full life, living in different places, having a family, taking care of a farm, and having jobs she enjoyed. She speaks very highly of everything she’s been able to experience.

“I was born in Vulcan,” said Ewing. “I did all my schooling in High River, right to Grade 12, after that I was a telephone operator.”

She has a very large family that she is incredibly proud of. She has 4 children, 19 grandchildren, and 21 great grand children.

“I got married a couple of times,” Ewing said, “ I had all these kids, all these grandkids.”

For work, she was a mom, but she was also a receptionist for a few years, then and her family ran a farm for 25 years.

“I worked in the Galt Museum, I was a receptionist there, when it was the hospital,” she said. “I was there a couple of years, and I worked in another place as a receptionist.”

“Then I got married and went to the farm at Carmangay,” she said. “I was there 25 years, I guess, it was a mixed farm, we had lots of pigs, lots of cattle, and grain.”

She then moved into a house in Lethbridge because her husband became ill. She then decided to move into the Pemican Lodge, which she loves.

“We lived in a condo and sold that,” she said. “They were just building this, and I thought this is kind of a nice place, so I think I’ll move here.”

“I really like living in a seniors place like this because it’s very nice. They treat you so well here, and the meals are excellent, I think it’s a wonderful place for seniors.”

Ewing can’t say enough good things about Alberta, and especially about Lethbridge.

“It’s the best place in the world to live, so is Alberta,” she said. “If you stay here long enough, (and) if you ever go away, you will come back.”

She says with enthusiasm that she will continue doing all these different things for years to come.

Originally posted 2009-05-06 23:05:52. Republished by Blog Post Promoter

There are many events taking place this summer, but here is a glimpse at what’s coming up this Spring in Lethbridge.

The Lethbridge Philatelic Society (stamp society) has created stamps to commemorate the centennial.

“The first stamps we’ve done is based on the logo that the Allied Arts has developed,” said Jonathan Dean, a member of the Lethbridge Stamp Society. “We are also developing two other stamps of the bridge, one of the bridge under construction, and then a modern day stamp, which is the one we’ll be printing.”

The Lethbridge Symphony Orchestra will hold a concert, and the Galt Museum and will have bridge-related exhibits. They will be putting on their final concert of the season, titled ‘Bridge to Fini’ on May 4 at the Southminster United Church at 8 p.m.. They will be joined by a very special guest, 13-year old piano prodigy Jan Lisieski.

“Our entire symphony this year has been on the building bridges theme, metaphorically,” said Dawn Leite, general manager of the Lethbridge Symphony Association. “We’re actually performing a piece by Villa-Lobos called “The Little Train of the Brazilian Countryman”. It depicts the sounds a steam locomotive makes when it’s on the tracks.”

For more information, contact Dawn Leite at the Lethbridge Symphony Orchestra at 403-328-6808.

The Galt Museum has a few events taking place to celebrate the bridge’s centennial.

The Galt will start off their celebrations for the High Level Bridge centennial with their ‘Feast By the Bridge’ spring fundraiser on May 8 at 6:30 p.m., followed by the grand opening of their newest exhibit, ‘The Mighty Bridge’, open from May 9 to Sept 20. It will feature an immersive experience that will allow visitors to learn a great deal about the High Level Bridge, how it was built, what it would have been like to live in Lethbridge at the time of construction, and what the bridge means to the city of Lethbridge.

“People will be given a train ticket when they come (to) the admissions desk, and that ticket will guide them through the viewing gallery, and the permanent gallery, where they’ll stop along the way to look at elements of influence that the CPR had on Lethbridge and Southern Alberta,” said Wendy Aitkins, curator at the Galt Museum. “They will go into the main exhibit, (but) to access that, they’re going to have to cross a mural on the floor and it (will) actually give people the impression of walking across the bridge and looking down between their feet and between ties and tracks into the valley below.”

There will also be a slideshow that will display historic photographs of the construction of the bridge, and a map that will show how the railway line changed changed when the bridge was built.

The Galt will also be holding a photo exhibition from May 9 to May 20 to showcase local artwork depicting the bridge through the years.

“We have done a competition, and we have chosen 31 photographs, and they will be shown on our main floor and in our meeting room,” said Aitkins. “The other is the Lethbridge Artists Club, and we have 14 paintings that the members have produced on the lower floor gallery.“

For more information, contact the Galt Museum at 403-320-3898.

The Lethbridge Community Gold Band will be presenting ‘Bridging the Arts’ on May 9 at 7 p.m. at the Yates Theatre. There will be performance with drums, music, and dancing. Tickets are $15, and are available at the Yates.

They will also be joined by the University of Lethbridge Gold Drums and dancers from the Irish Dance Academy.

For further information about the Community Gold Band, contact the Allied Arts Council at 403-320-0555.

Originally posted 2009-05-06 22:52:08. Republished by Blog Post Promoter

It started with upgrading a couple of exhibits, and once the funds were approved and partners got involved and donations started coming in, the process simply continued.

“Relating to the firearms side alone, we ended up receiving a provincial grant for $125,000 for the overall exhibit,” said Doran Degenstein, executive director at Fort Whoop Up. “We received an additional $71,000 from the City of Lethbridge from the community capital project. As a society, we raised another $55-60,000 to finish the project, and in addition to that, that’s where the in-kind donations started. It would be in the neighborhoods of $250-$350,000.”

Degenstein was quick to mention the contributors that have helped make the new exhibits possible, despite the costs.

“It’s expensive for us, we don’t enjoy near the funding that our counterparts in the city (Calgary) do,” said Degenstein. “By having these new exhibits and doing the upgrades, it just makes it easier to do the job, and it increases visitation. In addition to the reconstruction process, redoing exhibits, it’s allowed us to better interpret what we do have.”

“We’ve taken on more donations in terms of goods and materials in the past five years then we’ve enjoyed in a long time. So, here, we’re now sitting with 12 period rooms that are brimming with artifacts. We went from 10-12.”

Some new exhibits have also been added, including two new galleries, and Fort Whoop Up hopes to have everything completed by this summer.

“The Blackfoot Gallery has been added. The Crowshoe Gallery has been overhauled. We’ve redone the armory, the Northwest Mountain Police room, the Indian room, so there are some big changes.

“We had hoped to have everything wrapped up by May 18, and it’ll probably be done by July 1. If we don’t finish what we want to do by July 1, we will wait and pick up again after the Fur Trade Symposium (runs from Sept 9 to Sept 13).”

He says the majority of the construction is done, and a new security system has been added as well.

As part of the renovations Fort Whoop Up is in the process of doing, they have put together the largest historic gun collection in Canada, a project that has taken the last 12 years to create.

Currently, 200 guns are on display, and 400 more will be added by the end of the summer, and eventually, 800 guns will fill the secure cabinets. Most of the guns are from two museums, and some are from private donors, though the Fort did have to purchase some guns.

“When we started this project out, it had some major components to reconstruct the original fur wear house,” said Degenstein. “We needed to reconstruct the stable, We had recently  acquired the firearms collection from the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto. It was just the right fit, trying to do a bit of a rejuvenation.”

They have had to purchase some, but most were donated.

The two largest contributors to the new collection are from museums in Calgary and Toronto, though there have been several private donations.

“The majority actually come from the Glenbow Museum, and the Royal Ontario,” said Degenstein. “We had 50-60 pieces of our own, then we had we had a collection of about 70-80 pieces come in, then we started to receive private donations.”

There are some very old firearms in the collection.

“Our oldest firearm dates back to approximately 1540,” he said. “The majority of the collection focuses on the fur trade, from the 1840s to the 1870s.”

One visitor to Fort Whoop Up, who just happened to be walking through at the time, commented on how impressed the gun collection is.

“Not so much the volume, but the different types of rifles, (and) shotguns,” said Roger Johnson, a retired weapons instructor for the recruits at Corrections Canada.
“I’ve seen a lot of big collections, but they were mostly the same type, from the Civil War, here, it’s much more diverse. I thought it was very impressive.”

Fort Whoop Up is welcoming visitors and tourists, though many of the exhibits are still being organized and upgraded. Each exhibit is kept clean and tidy, and in no way does on-going improvements impede the enjoyment of Fort.

Originally posted 2009-05-06 22:36:39. Republished by Blog Post Promoter

It will reopen Wednesday in the new location on the corner of 4 Avenue and 8 Street South.

“It’s something I’ve wrestled with for probably over two years. The final decision was made in September of last year, when we made an agreement in principle with the developer for the Paramount,” said studio owner Mark Orenstein.

The company has been in business at 105 8 St. S. since 1921. The building is the former rectory of the St. Patrick’s Catholic Church, built in 1883.

“To be current in this facility, a massive amount of work needed to be done to bring the building up to a level where we could function in the environment we wanted to function in,” Orenstein said. “That’s what it came down to for us; what’s the best thing for us as a business? We didn’t feel like we could give our best service in this existing place over the long term.”

The new facility has modern amenities not possible in their historic building.

“It’s not wheelchair accessible, and with the aging population that we have, it’s becoming more of an issue,” he said. “Maintenance of the building was getting worse. We wanted to stay in the downtown core. We feel very strongly attached to downtown Lethbridge. The Paramount, the way they’ve renovated it. . . we’re getting the benefit of getting new construction and full accessibility.”.

The new location allowed Orenstein to design studios from scratch in a more open environment, and the atmosphere in which clients will be photographed is far superior to the current location.

“It’s not 1921 anymore. Things change and we need to be willing to change, and not for the sake of change, but because we want to stay current,” Orenstein said.

The de Jourdan’s business was managed by three generations of the de Jourdan family.

The original de Jourdan photographer, Pierre de Jourdan, purchased the 8 Street property from the Catholic Church in 1921, both to live in and work out of.
Pierre handed the business down to his son, John, and his son, Patrick, inherited the company. Orenstein purchased the company from Patrick in 2004.

The new location provides the space to be more creative and photograph larger groups than the studio typically had in the past.

“We’ve added a second room for when we’re photographing for things like graduation and business portraits. It streamlines the functionality and we can multitask better.”
As part of the move, de Jourdan’s is taking the opportunity to create a modern image of the company.

“We’ve rebranded visually with a new logo and visual brand, new website, all launched to coincide with the move, (but) it’s still the same visual service that people have been coming to us for years for,” he said.

Originally posted 2009-05-06 22:10:58. Republished by Blog Post Promoter

18 singers, drummers, and dancers from Soweto, South Africa are bringing their unique performance, titled ‘Memeza Africa’ to Lethbridge. The show features African and Canadian music combined with traditional African rhythms and dance.

They will perform at the Immanuel Lutheran Church (on the westside) on Tuesday, May 5.

The group was put together by Alberta singer and songwriter Holly Wright, and provides a wonderful cultural experience with fascinating stories.

Memeza Africa was created by Wright’s determination to re-record her song “The World Shall Love Again” while she was living in South Africa.  She collaborated with Jimmy Mulovhedzi and together, through their mutual passion for the song, decided to bring their cultures together through music. This ultimately led to the Memeza Africa, according to www.memezaafrica.org.

Memeza Africa has toured Western Canada before with sold-out shows, and has had a terrific response from audiences, including thunderous applause and people weeping with emotion.

The ensemble features singing and incredible dancing with traditional African drums and acoustic guitar in a very unique blend of style and sound.

The resilience and spirit of the people helped them overcome difficulties in their lives, and brought them together, making Soweto the home of South African freedom music, the website says.

They have shared stages with Oprah Winfrey, Nelson Mandela, KD Lang, Quincy Jones, and Ladysmith Black Mambazo, and performed at the FIFA confederation Cup in Johannesburg, South Africa.

The performances are not simply for entertainment sake, as they convey important messages on what life is like in Soweto, such as post-apartheid experiences, and the huge impact of HIV-AIDS in South Africa.

By supporting and enjoying the show, audiences are providing income to the performers, and as a result, their families back home in South Africa. The website also makes a point to mention that the the income that the show provides for each performer directly is shared among all family and extended family members.

For more information, call Carlene Shaw at 780-940-9043.

Originally posted 2009-05-06 23:13:04. Republished by Blog Post Promoter