#swift current

[spirit-of-koryushka]

Toshirō Mifune in Swift Current (1952) I dir. Senkichi Taniguchi

[moonshot5]

Waldeck Saskatchewan

[aleksiann]

2023 No. 4 “Pit Stop #3: Safari Motel”

Acrylic on canvas, 8X8 inches

[20th-century-railroading]

Canadian Pacific G3 4-6-2 No. 2439. Westbound between Moose Jaw and Swift Current, Sask., December 1956. Robert Hale photo

[allthecanadianpolitics]

SaskPower to build first utility-scale solar power project

The facility is expected to be operational by the end of 2019.

SaskPower announced plans Tuesday for the province's first utility-scale solar power project.

A company called Saturn Power (based in Ontario) signed a 20-year agreement with SaskPower to build and maintain the facility. It will be located in the RM of Coulee, near Swift Current, and will provide 10 megawatts of power, which is enough to power roughly 2,000 homes.

Doug Opseth with SaskPower said 10 megawatts is small compared to the amount of electricity the province actually uses, but that it's a step in the right direction.

Continue Reading.

[aryburn-trains]

Swift Current, Saskatchewan, 14 MAR'80

My first ride on this magnificent train, and my first exposure to western Canada, was from Winnipeg to Vancouver. As I boarded at "Winterpeg" late in the evening, the carman were knocking the ice that had accumulated underneath the steam heated train. During our stop at Portage la Prairie about 55 miles west of Winnipeg, where the train returned from CNR rails to its traditional CPR routing, I was treated to a view from my roomette bed that I will never forget. An eastbound "grain box" from the west - probably off the former CNoR line via Dauphin - curved in over the snowclad prairie that reflected an incredibly star studded indigo dome of midnight sky. The lead unit was a GP40 wide cab, with twinkling green lights to indicate that "another section follows." Those images will always have to rely on memory as there aren't any pictures. Breakfast came after the stop at Moose Jaw, and after that was the stop at Swift Current, Saskatchewan, where the CPR/VIA westbound #1, "The Canadian", made another station stop and I was able to get this shot. A friend who worked for CPR in Revelstoke told me that this place was known among his fellow employees as "Speedy Creek", but I'm sure that the creek was well frozen this morning!

[garden-of-succulents]

Hey so the documentary Swift Current is now available on iTunes. It’s a really good documentary about the after-effects of abuse and psychological trauma, and a profile of a man who’s up there with Carrie Fisher in my personal pantheon of mental health heroes. I super recommend it, though it’s not necessarily a safe watch for everybody.

(trigger warnings: child sexual abuse, ptsd, toxic hockey culture)

Swift Current follows former NHL player Sheldon Kennedy, who was sexually abused by his Major Junior hockey coach. In 1996, as an adult, he went to the police and had charges pressed against his abuser. His abuser went to jail; Sheldon bravely told the world about his abuse.

Then, he thought, he was going to be all better now! And he was going to be a crusader for other victims of abuse! and life was going to be great! and he was definitely not going to have to deal with any long-term psychological consequences! After all, they’d made a Lifetime movie about him with a very inspiring ending!

In reality, it’s so much more complicated than that.

Swift Current isn’t so much about the abuse (it is, but it isn’t); it’s about how you live after. It’s about how Kennedy and two other abuse survivors who come forward because of his advocacy deal with their abuse, about the symptoms they have, and about the danger that ignorance and willful blindness to the realities of PTSD cause. 

I saw the movie last summer at a conference where Mr. Kennedy spoke. During his talk he said that when his allegations came forward, he has a conversation with the head of Hockey Canada, an absolutely massive organization that runs multiple semi-professional hockey leagues. He’d just revealed that he’d been abused, and knew other people who had been abused, on a massive scale by one of their coaches while playing for one of their teams. He could have sued their pants off.

And instead he said: “I want you to fix it so this doesn’t happen to anybody else again.”

And he’s been working with them ever since to make that happen all across Canada. (As well as being director of the Child Advocacy Centre through which all child abuse cases in the city of Calgary are handled, and all the PR work he does, not to mention talking about his abuse all the time. This guy is a mensch.) 

Today, the training they developed is used to educate coaches, teachers, parents, and community leaders across Canada about preventing bullying, abuse, harrassment, and discrimination in the youth they work with--it’s training that you have to get before you’re allowed to register your child in a lot of common sports programs, or work as a coach or a youth leader.

[moonshot5]

Swift Current, Sask