Niverville musician Evan St. Cyr is a finalist in the Cue Tube “Score Relief” contest for creating an original musical score for short film.

As we mark another new year, The Citizen is taking the opportunity to look back at 2019 and the stories that kept us informed. Seniors Spotlight was a new feature to our 2019 lineup, and through it we discovered that every senior has a relevant story to tell, and every story, no matter the era, has timeless attributes that can teach something important to every one of us.

Niverville’s town council met briefly for the first time in 2020 on Tuesday, January 6. Councillors Chris Wiebe, John Funk, Kevin Stott, and Nathan Dueck were all in attendance, along with Mayor Myron Dyck and CAO Eric King.

For many, the shoebox gift campaign called Operation Christmas Child is what the charitable organization Samaritan’s Purse is known for. Few realize that this organization, founded in 1973, has long been providing disaster relief around the globe.

On December 19, Southern Health-Santé Sud released its Community Health Assessment (CHA) which showed that our region enjoys overall health that is above the provincial average in many ways, despite low vaccination rates, long personal care home admission wait times, and some financial and social supports falling short.

Niverville Middle School (NMS) was a beneficiary late last year of a unique gift—a bench made almost entirely of recycled single-use plastics. Students have participated since September in a program called Bag Up Manitoba, an initiative promoting the collection of plastic bags to be repurposed into something altogether different.

Few things get people’s tongues wagging more than the announcement of new businesses, or perhaps changes to long-standing local institutions. The year, franchises came to our communities, popular businesses made big upgrades, and the local Chambers of Commerce gave out awards honouring the very best companies our region has to offer. 

The Commentary section in our paper, although the smallest, has the distinction of tackling some of the biggest issues on our collective minds. These editorials are designed to spur discussion and get people talking, and in the process hopefully see difficult subjects from new points of view. Here are our top ten commentaries from 2019.

The new year may have arrived, but we still have a few highlights to share from the past year. The best part of working for a local newspaper is that we get to turn a spotlight on the extraordinary things people who live right here in our communities are doing, both at home and around the globe, to make the world a better place. Here is a selection of our top ten profiles from 2019.

As we come to the end of another decade, it’s helpful to observe through the rear-view mirror how far we’ve come as a community. The one thing we know is that change is a certainty.