The mainstage at this year’s Niverville Olde Tyme Country Fair is going to be bigger and better than ever, with a constellation of country music stars touching down to put on a show that won’t soon be forgotten.

On Friday, March 28, the new 25,000-square-foot film soundstage located on the corner of Highway 311 and Wallace Road was alight with activity.

The event? None other than the studio’s much anticipated grand opening of Jette Studios.

Jen Normand of New Bothwell is a country girl at heart, and nowhere is this more in evidence than her passion for nature photography. She may not pursue this passion full-time—after all, she has only been doing this for the past few years and it doesn’t quite manage to pay the bills—but that doesn’t stop her from scrounging for every spare minute to spend outdoors. That’s where all the wildlife is, and it’s where her passion finds its truest expression.

For the second year in a row, the Niverville Heritage Centre will play host to a New Year’s Eve party for the community. The event will take place in the full ballroom, which can hold up to 400 people. All that space will likely be needed, since last year’s inaugural party had 359 attendees.

It’s been exactly 150 years since the first wave of Mennonites arrived in Manitoba back in 1874. Over the course of the next few years, around 7,000 of these people of faith left imperial Russia on the promise of religious freedom and military exemption overseas.

Around 60 film crew descended on the town of Niverville this week to shoot the made-for-Hallmark movie Hanukkah on the Rocks.