As we barrel towards the end of another year, The Citizen is presenting a series of articles looking back at the year that was, including its ups and down. These are the big stories that have impacted our corner of southeastern Manitoba.
This is the second article in the series.
Water/Sewer Debacle
One of the most notable stories to resonate with homeowners in 2023 was that of Sarah Gatey and Bryan Claeys. For this unfortunate couple, the year was marked by unexpected and compounding costs which no one wanted to take responsibility for.
The fiasco began in August when they suddenly found themselves without water. A shared well collapsed, but instead of replacing it at an estimated cost of $10,000 to $15,000, Gatey and Claeys discovered that a local bylaw would force them to install a water service line.
The reason? A municipal water main had been installed in front of their property four years prior by a land developer.
The couple spent weeks without running water as they waited for agreements to be processed at the town office and for a directional drilling company to take the job.
In the end, the entire cost the couple about $24,000. But their troubles didn’t end there.
Weeks later, Gatey and Claeys experienced a sewer backup in their basement. A plumber determined that the sewer service line had been damaged. Although the damage likely occurred at the time of the water service line installation, the directional driller would not take responsibility.
Once again, Gatey and Claeys were shocked to discover that they could be held financially responsible for the cost of the entire line, including the portion that ran across town property if it had deteriorated due to age. As well, they could have to cover any damages to the asphalt street resulting from the repair.
This could have resulted in another $11,000 bill. In the end, the sewer line was repairable. Since the break occurred just beyond the couple’s property line, however, their homeowner’s insurance wouldn’t kick in. Then council turned down their request for extended payment terms.
“Council is sympathetic to your situation, however, the circumstances surrounding your well failure and sewer connection issue were beyond the town’s control, and in the interest of being consistent with established policy, council has determined that no exception will be made, and no reimbursement for your water installation will be provided,” stayed a letter from the town office.
In the end, in just a few short weeks, Gatey and Claeys faced $30,000 worth of unexpected homeowner costs, putting an unprecedented strain on their already tight budget.
Battle Over Public Libraries
Public libraries across the southeast, and their patrons, hit some turbulence this spring. In Winkler, the public library was pulled into a fight for its very existence amidst bitter allegations that they were promoting pornography.
On offence was a passionate group of parents demanding that city council defund the South Central Regional Library (SCRL), which oversees branches in Altona, Manitou, Miami, Morden, and Winkler. They also sought the removal of three sexual education books.
Representing the parent group at a city council meeting was Winkler resident Karin Banman.
“To keep books such as these in the library is to create an unsafe environment for children and to place them at undue risk,” Banman told council.
She presented a petition with over 1,700 signatures from residents who concurred.
The books in question included titles written for young children: What Makes a Baby and Sex Is a Funny Word, both written by an award-winning Canadian author, and It’s Perfectly Normal, was an updated version of a book originally published 25 years ago and written with teens and preteens in mind.
Under much pressure and following much debate, council opted not to defund the library. Instead they voted 6–1 in favour of assigning city councillor Don Fehr to the SCRL board. Fehr had been a vocal ally of the defunding group.
Cathy Ching, Director of Library Services for SCRL, told The Citizen that council’s decision was an overreach of power.
“There’s been clamouring for something to be done and the resolution makes it look like they’re taking a harder line with us,” Ching said. “But as a municipal council, that is not their job. Their job is to fund us and leave the running of the library to the appointed representatives.”
Chrystie Kroeker Boggs, director for the Jake Epp Library in Steinbach, was watching this news with keen interest.
“I haven’t personally seen or read the books that are being challenged in Winkler, so I won’t make a statement on those three specifically,” Boggs told The Citizen. “However, I wholeheartedly support the Canadian Library Association’s statement on intellectual freedom and believe it to be imperative that public libraries make information of all legal forms available to patrons. I support SCRL’s similar stance and the effort they’re putting in to ensuring the members of their community have pertinent resources available to them. Freedom and access for one group means freedom and access for all groups.”
Living with Autism
Last spring, readers of The Citizen were given an inside glimpse into what life is like for parents with children awaiting a diagnosis of autism. Unfortunately, it’s not an easy road. Supports from the local health authority, SHSS, are virtually nonexistent without an official diagnosis. But getting an official diagnosis is also virtually impossible.
According to SHSS spokesperson Jessica Deckert, every family physician can call upon a service called Rapid Access to Consultative Expertise to access advice and assistance from psychiatric specialists.
Even so, she admits, many physicians are out of their comfort zone in providing diagnoses, even with outside guidance. Alternatively, physicians in the SHHS can make referrals to publicly funded autism specialists in the Winnipeg Regional Health Authority (WRHA).
But parents of children with cognitive challenges say that getting an appointment at one of these clinics is an impossibility once it’s discovered that they don’t live in Winnipeg, even with a referral.
“I can’t count the number of times that I’ve heard about a service and looked into it,” one mom told The Citizen. “And they say, ‘Oh yes, we do this and we do that.’ And then they ask where I live and say, ‘Oh, sorry, it only applies if you live in Winnipeg.’”
In many of these homes, one parent has to quit their job in order to advocate for their child. Some resort to hiring a private specialist to assess their child, at the cost of thousands of dollars. This option just isn’t feasible for many.
One St. Adolphe mom felt lucky to find an advocacy group willing to help her get into the Manitoba Adolescent Treatment Centre (MATC) in Winnipeg for an assessment.
“He did say it may not happen because of so much bureaucratic red tape,” the mom concluded. “If they won’t see [our daughter], we don’t know what the next steps would be. There’s really no one else [in the public system]. It will likely cost us a fortune through the private system.”
Local Artists Win Big
Despite many personal challenges, Niverville-raised singer-songwriter Jordan St. Cyr rose to a new level of fame in 2023, winning a Juno Award for Best Contemporary Christian/Gospel Album of the Year.
“It was still the middle of the pandemic, but I felt the call to keep writing songs,” St. Cyr said. “Then one of my songs caught on in U.S. radio in 2020 and that got us started thinking about a move.”
Moving their young family of six to Nashville in the middle of the pandemic was anything but easy, he says. And just as the family began to settle in, St. Cyr’s three-year-old daughter Emery began to suffer seizures. She was eventually diagnosed with a rare neurological condition called Sturge-Weber syndrome.
“I was on the road when [my wife] Heather called me and told me about Emery’s seizures,” he says. “So we got a crash course in the U.S. healthcare system, which lasted from March to April 2022, until Emery was stable. It really was a challenging time.”
Even so, St. Cyr went on to become a two-time GMA Dove Awards nominee in August 2022, followed by six GMA Canada Covenant Awards wins, adding to the five he already had. He’s been recognized for his accomplishments as Artist of the Year, Album and Male Vocalist of the Year, Best Pop Song, Live Music Artist, and AC Artist of the Year.
His dream come true moment came in 2023 with the Juno win.
A couple of months later, another Niverville native, K.R. Byggdin received the Thomas Raddall Atlantic Fiction Award for their debut novel, Wonder World.
Byggdin, who lives and studies in Halifax and identifies both as queer and nonbinary, calls the book “a complicated, queer love story to the prairies.”
Byggdin delivered a powerful acceptance speech at the awards ceremony.
“Now more than ever we need more stories of queer and trans joy in the face of ignorance and oppression that seeks to erase us from history and the present moment,” they said. “We will not be silent and we will never disappear. For those in the audience who do not identify as two-spirit, lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, queer: we need you too. We need you to be loud and firm in denouncing the division and oppression that’s on the rise.”
Wonder World’s main character, Isaac, grew up on the prairies and moved to the east coast when he entered adulthood. A death in the family sees him return to his hometown in Manitoba, which brings back all the joys and complications of what small-town prairie life can mean when you’re queer.
