The Granite Newsletter
published August 3, 1999
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The Granite Newsletterpublished August 3, 1999 |
The dog days of August have arrived! This is Manitoba's month for weather. Granite will be in training mode this month, offering our popular Web Design Course on August 21st. Check out the details in this months article. John Scott is back again with his regular article for us. John is sharing his bear perspective with us this month. A new member web site, North Star Studio, is featured this month. Finally, check out Haystack Productions from Beausejour.
By popular request, Granite will be conducting a one day Web Site Design
course on August 21, 1999 in Empower School in Pine Falls. If you have ever wanted
to create your own personal or business web site, or maintain an existing site, this
course is for you.This one day, six hour course is intended for those familiar with the Internet, but with no knowledge of HTML. This is a beginners HTML course covering the following topics:
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Simple (morning)
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Advanced (afternoon)
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Bring along your creativity and any graphics you may want to use in your web page. Your final product will be loaded onto the Granite web server if you choose. Enrollment is limited. As of publishing date, only five spots were available. For more information, or to register, visit http://www.granite.mb.ca/general/webdesign.html
One hot and sunny day in July, this web designer got up from her desk,
picked up the digital camera, bathing suit and kids, and decided it was
time to finish the Grand Beach Website.
With a little help from the great Natural Resource office in Grand Beach, and
with many, many years experience enjoying the beach myself, the site has now been
completed.I always thought my youth spent on the beach with friends was the heyday of Grand Beach. The 35,000 people on the beach on a Sunday afternoon was what we lived for. I was wrong! There's a great history walk set up along the board walk at the west beach that details the amazing history of Grand Beach. I missed the heyday by a good 35 years! Check out the history page for some great information and some wonderful old pictures of Grand Beach at its prime.
Basic information about the region is split into two parts. The beach page features, you guessed it, the beaches - both East and West. It was a tough day, but this web designer visited as much of both beaches at Grand and has attempted to portray all the available amenities. My digital camera was just eating up the batteries as photo opportunities wandered past me all day. The Park page features information about Grand Beach Provincial Park in general. There are several hiking trails in the park, a protected area for the nesting Piping Plovers, camping information and much more.
One of the more useful pages on the site is the Events Calendar. This site is an excellent opportunity for anyone to post an event in the Grand Beach region. Do you have a bingo, fund raiser or other event coming up? Surf on over to the events calender and post it there - for free! Natural Resources will be keeping us up to date on their activity schedule. If you're wondering what there is to do while visiting Grand Beach, this page is a must see for you.
The services area of the Grand Beach site is a listing of all the services available in Grand Beach and Grand Marais. A listing of contact telephone numbers has also been posted.
Whatever you do, when you visit the Grand Beach site make sure and sign in to the guestbook. We value your comments and use them to improve the site.
The Grand Beach site is supported by site sponsors. Site sponsors receive a listing in the Business Directory as well as a hot link to their site on every page of the site. The Grand Beach site will be extensively marketed in the search engines as well as through Travel Manitoba. Its expected to receive between 3,000 and 5,000 hits per month. Our popular Whiteshell Provincial Park site sees that sort of traffic. Site sponsorship is available for only $100.00 per year. If you're interested in sponsorship, send email to the webmistress@granite.mb.ca.
by John Scott
Bears are interesting creatures. Of course in North America when we talk about bears, we're talking about the polar, grizzly and black bear varieties. It is the black bear that I want to talk about this time.
The name black bear is a bit misleading since they come in many colours ranging from white to bluish to cinnamon to black. There are 10 subspecies of black bear in Canada – 8 in British Columbia and the Yukon, 1 in the rest of mainland Canada and 1 in Newfoundland. These include the famous white “spirit” bear found on a few isolated islands off B.C.’s coast and the unusually large black bears found in Riding Mountain National Park. Although their North American habitat has decreased in the past 150 years, they are still found in large numbers in most of the wooded areas of Canada. In fact, well over half of North America’s estimated 500,000 black bears live in Canada (the numbers in Manitoba are difficult to determine as we are one of the only provinces that doesn't keep track of the population numbers).
We have long had a fascination with bears. There’s Gummi bears, Teddy bears (apparently named after Teddy Roosevelt, Yogi bear (who came first? – the cartoon character or the baseball player – and who in their right mind would name their newborn Yogi?), the three bears, the Chicago Bears, and Winnie the Pooh (named after Winnipeg). We generally think of them as cute and cuddly and therein lies the problem.
Bears are not true hibernators (the woodchuck is the largest true hibernator in the land). During their winter sleep period their body temperature and metabolism drop only a little. When they awaken they start their tireless search for food. In eastern Manitoba it is not uncommon to see bears wandering around. When their food supply is low bears turn to garbage cans, dumps, campgrounds and picnic baskets. Black bears have tremendous appetites. This is because they only search for food for about half the year – and an ideal food supply is only available for about half of that. This means that for only about two or three months they try to fatten up enough to keep them happy for the entire year.
The female bears her young usually every other year and normally has only two offspring, but may have as many as five. Old cranky males are one of the cubs chief enemies but this helps them learn to run fast and climb trees – probably an indication of why there are few bears on the prairies. The cubs are quite safe as long as they don't wander too far from mama bear. This is why you have to be extremely careful if you come across a couple of cute baby bears (the mother is probably close by and you'd better hope that you are not between them). The cubs stay with their mother for about a year and a half until she asks them to leave so she can start the whole routine all over again.
I've always been a little wary of bears. We all have bear stories to tell……When I was young, a bear strolled into our campsite late at night and helped himself to all the food we had conveniently left out. As I lay there wondering what to do next with a hungry bear just inches away, my cousin woke up and started yelling and banging pots to try and scare the bear away. Yogi was unfazed - he just kept on eating until he was finished. I was not impressed.
While camping at Rushing River a few years back a friend was talking all afternoon about the beautiful steaks he was going to have for supper. They were marinating back at the campsite. I'll always remember driving back to my site later and seeing the back end of a bear sticking out of his camper as I drove by….I think he ate at Pizza Hut in Kenora that night.
A friend who grew up in B.C. tells me they would throw rocks at bears to scare them away -–when the stone would hit their hide a big puff of dust would appear - hmmm. Then there’s the guy at a local dump who walks in and literally feeds the bears - much to the delight of onlookers who snap photos quickly. These are all examples of what we shouldn't do of course. Bears need to be respected and are as unpredictable as any wild animal. They can do a lot of damage as they constantly search for food.
If you come across a bear in your travels, the best thing to do is retreat – slowly. Black bears make some strange low moans and blowing sounds when they become agitated. They may swat at the ground with their paws and sometimes even charge towards whoever startled them .But an attack causing serious injury is VERY rare. This contrasts with Grizzly attacks which often end up seriously injuring the person. Therefore the first order of business is to be able to identify the differences between the two types of bears. That way you can quickly calculate your odds as the bear charges towards you.
We don't need to be afraid of bears. They just need to be shown a lot of R-E-S-P-E-C-T. This way you can enjoy the great outdoors along the hiking trails and wonderful lake country of Eastern Manitoba.
Haystack Productions is Beausejour, Manitoba's amateur theatre group, and is an
active member of A.C.T. (Association of Community Theatres of Manitoba Inc.)
Our objective is to promote theatrical arts for the entertainment and enrichment
of the Beausejour area community. This is achieved through the production and
performance of plays, musicals, improvisational theatre, etc. Two Major Productions a Year: Each spring and fall since 1994, scores of volunteers have come together for the purpose of mounting Beausejour's next popular stage production. This spring's Dinner Theatre, "Cake Walk" was another resounding, sold-out success. Last fall's production of "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" included a cast of thirty-six and a production crew of over eighty. Over seven hundred tickets were sold for the four performances.
Other Projects: Haystack also mounts smaller productions. In March, part of
the troupe staged "Showdown at Sand Valley" for the Lac du Bonnet Lions' Club.
Haystack currently is preparing for a Dinner Theatre production at the
Beausejour Legion. The dates are Friday, September 24 and Saturday,
September 25, 1999.
Fall Registration: Individuals twelve and older, interested in becoming
involved with Haystack, on or off stage, will be able to sign up at the mass
Community Fall Registration event, Friday, August 27 and Saturday,
August 28, 1999. From this registration, people will be selected to audition
for various parts in our major fall production. Auditions for the extravagant
fall production will be in September. As soon as the dates are set, they will
be publicized on-line and in local newspapers.
Logo Contest: Design a new logo for Haystack Productions and win 2 tickets to our Spring 2000 Dinner Theatre production, if your design is chosen. Go to Haystack's web site, Upcoming Events page, for more information.
Haystack Sponsors: Every fall friends and supporters in the business and professional community lend us a financial hand. All collected donations are used for production expenses. Thank you to our loyal supporters. For a full listing of Haystack sponsors, go to the Haystack website, Haystack Sponsors page.
Nancy's web site features a gallery of prints complete with pricing.
by David Hnatiw
Network Manager Report
July 1999The Network Manager has been busy covering vacation time this month. Check back next month for a better than ever report.
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