Borden Anglican and United Church held a successful Shrove Tuesday Pancake Supper in the Friendship Club Room on March 5 with everyone enjoying pancakes, sausages and fruit with whipped cream or maple syrup from Quebec. Following the supper, Rev. Sheldon Carr held a brief ceremony outside the Community Centre for the burning of the palm leaves from last year and taking the ashes for the Ash Wednesday service held in St. John’s Anglican Church the next morning. If you wished, at the end of the service, Rev. Carr used the ashes to make a cross on your forehead.
Borden United Church members will be holding services in St. John’s Anglican Church at 1:30 p.m. beginning March 10 on a trial basis until June 30. This move was necessary due to furnace and frozen water problems. The board hopes this will not inconvenience anyone for the next few months.
On March 8, St. John’s Anglican Church, with the help of the United Church members, held a luncheon of soup, chili, muffins and cookies in the lower hall of the church, with proceeds going to help the Anglican Diocese of Saskatoon and area bring a family to Saskatoon from Persia. This is a family of six who were persecuted in their own country for being Christians and had to leave or face imprisonment. The diocese has to raise $40,000 to provide for them for the first year and they have raised over $22,000 and have a house ready for them that needs to be furnished. Rev. Jan Bigland-Pritchard, who was the preacher in Borden for a few years, is in charge of the refugee project and she spoke about the project and had art work for sale painted by one of the family. The siblings of this refugee family are in their 20s and are all educated and speak English fairly fluently so they wish to find work when they arrive here and get settled in.
Borden School and Community Council held a pulled pork supper March 7 in the Borden Community Centre, with a silent auction of many items such as art work, paintings and crafts done by the students. A 50/50 of $113.50 was won by Lorraine Lajoie of Borden. Borden School’s Got Talent No. 3 was held with many students participating, and MC was Danika Pidwerbesky. Piano solos were performed by Silas and Hope Gough, Esther and Allison Harkness and Abbey Braun and Isabella Walker. Vocal solos were by Kody Munkholm, May Harkness and Anton Urbina. Dance solos were performed by Brielle Urbina and Justin and Katelyn Worona, and a dance duet was performed by Kasey Saunders and Nikko Chabot. Tayvin Werezak had a comedy act telling jokes and Jacob Parker did balloon animals/shapes that he threw to the children. Affinity Credit Union employees are able to give a donation of $200 each from the Community Spirit Fund and Kim Worona and Lynette Schmidt gave their donations to Borden School.
Cole Sutherland, who is enrolled in Lakeland College at Lloydminister, taking business administration: real estate appraisal and assessment, and also playing volleyball, has been awarded two scholarships – one is the Rawlake Men’s Volleyball Leadership Scholarship and the other is Saskatchewan Innovation and Opportunity Scholarship. Cole, son of Scott and Sonia Sutherland of Borden, will be receiving these awards at a banquet on March 19 at the college. Congratulations, Cole.
The Borden Museum held their annual supper in the Borden Community Centre on March 9 with the theme of Celebrating 90 Years of East Borden Grazing Co-op, serving what riders may have eaten at the pasture – stew, wieners and beans, coleslaw, biscuits and cupcakes for dessert. The walls were decorated with pictures related to the pasture and three sets of rough boards with everybody’s brand that the 4-H had done in 1980. On the tables were red and blue paisley neckerchiefs, a patch of green carpet on which were set toy cattle, horses and mini bags of grain, wooden name boards with the farmer’s name on one side and their brand on the other side, used to call up who could go to get their food. A slideshow ran through the meal depicting scenes from the pasture. All along the south wall were tables laden with silent auction items and 50/50 tickets were sold with Ruby Wall winning the $130. Peggy Walker was MC for the program and she related items of interest going back to 1928 when the pasture was first started. Slides were shown of the pasture, corrals, riders, etc., and sitting around the campfire eating lunch and telling stories were former managers Lew and Ruby Wall, Ruben Rempel, present manager Barry Thiessen and rider Roy Saunders. Peggy explained what a community pasture is. The first managers were Harry and Bob Hinde. Their pay was $1 a head and, in the dry ‘30s, they received shares in place of cash, which were later used to get land. In 1928 they had 31 quarters of land, which has increased to 88 quarters or 14,000 acres. They talked about how they watered the animals, first with dugouts, then in 1998 they dug wells, got the power in and piped water from two wells through miles of pipes to troughs. Also discussed was fencing – pounding posts by hand in the rocky ground in early days to now using post pounders. Fees in early days were $3.75 a cow. There were three fields – dry, breeding and steers. Riders were paid $.30 an hour, whereas now it is $150 per animal. In 1931, the pasture was incorporated under the Co-op Act, members are all shareholders and in 1936 RM taxes were $14.99. Through the years they added more land – Orchard lease in 1942, 1968 from Reimers when new corrals were built. The managers over the years were the Hindes, Alvin Wall, Eric and Daisy Lund, Douglas Orchard, Ruben and Martha Rempel, Lew and Ruby Wall and for last 18 years Barry and Mona Thiessen. Some heroes mentioned were Clarence Williams, who was the secretary/treasurer for over 40 years, John Thiessen and Abe Rempel who spent many years working in the pasture. The campfire stories ended with Barry reading some cowboy poetry about running the pasture and incidents that happened. The present board consists of Glenn Sutherland, Gary Nickel, Colin Elliot, Kelly Wall, Barry Saunders and Jason Rempel. Problems the managers and board are facing now is the presence of more than 100 elk along with some bison and moose, which are eating much of the grass.
