At a council meeting on November 4, Niverville mayor Myron Dyck shared a number of opportunities he’s had in recent days to catch the attention of the province’s movers and shakers.
On October 31, Dyck attended the Manitoba Chamber of Commerce’s (MCC) innovation and prosperity event. Keynote speakers were Premier Wab Kinew, Jim Balsillie (co-CEO of Research in Motion, better known as the company behind BlackBerry), and Mike Moroz (Minister of Innovation and New Technology).
After that event, he says, he was able to rub shoulders with top officials and plant a few seeds.
“They’ve been talking about needing skilled trades workers and I know that their focus is on colleges and universities,” Dyck says. “But I believe it has to start at the high school level, so I would like to do some lobbying for that. Our students need to be exposed to this sooner than when they get to postsecondary.”
Conversations have already been in the works between the mayor, Niverville High School principal Paul Grosskopf, Juliette Hagopian of Jette Studios, and Bev Stuart, who serves as vice-president of business development and community initiatives at the Manitoba Institute of Trades and Technology (MITT).
According to Dyck, their brainstorming sessions have been focused on the development of trades courses at the local high school.
It’s a model that’s successful in the Pembina Trails School Division, in collaboration with MITT. There, Pembina Trails Early College allows students to train in highly technical areas such as software development, coding, networking, and cybersecurity.
“I believe there’s opportunities [here],” Dyck says. “How do we get our young people to the jobs of today and take the courses of today?”
To be clear, he says, he’s not looking to bring another Steinbach Regional Secondary School to Niverville. Rather, there may be opportunities to spread out the vocational instruction between high schools within the division, in the end offering more at a lower cost.
Taking it a step further, Dyck can imagine collaborating with local tradespeople to bring career symposiums to the Niverville High School.
Dyck is also interested in planting seeds with the province to encourage more innovators to come to Niverville.
“When it comes to innovation, Niverville has had experience with what I call pilot projects, whether it was our wetlands or now with our mechanized wastewater facility,” Dyck says. “We’re available if the [innovators] need to do a pilot project. Maybe that’s something we could do here.”
Dyck believes that these kind of ideas can take flight at events like this one.
“I’m an ideas guy,” Dyck says. “I need someone to catch the vision and then see what we can do to build it.”
On Remembrance Day
Tuesday’s council meeting also gave Dyck an opportunity to encourage the community to attend this year’s Remembrance Day service.
The program this year will move to the CRRC. It begins at 10:00 a.m. and will feature a live interview with Scott Stroh, a Niverville resident and retired master sailor.
Over the years, Dyck says that the community has taken great pride in its annual service, brought about by a small group of passionate and dedicated locals.
For the mayor, Remembrance Day is a day of reflection that cannot be forgotten. Growing up with parents and uncles who lived through the Second World War, Dyck says their stories had a powerful influence on him.
His mother talked about food stamps and shortages. She recollected watching war reels in the classroom as an exercise in developing national pride amongst young citizens. Other stories involved young men, barely adults, heading off to war to liberate foreign families.
“Our kids and youth today, they hear the stories but they don’t know the stories,” Dyck says. “We have to continue to tell the stories of why the country we have is the country we have. It’s because of the price that’s been paid.”