The late Pat Monaghan, past-president of the Highlands Buckslide Blues Society, always wanted to bring a celebration of his favorite music to Haliburton.

Now, Haliburton Forest will welcome blues lovers to the inaugural Haliburton Highlands Blues Festival Aug. 26, thanks also to the Haliburton Folk Society, supported by Haliburton Forest and CanoeFM.

Jenie Thai, a celebrated Canadian blues artist, kicks off the weekend Friday night as the final artist in the Women of the Forest series of concerts. Then, from noon until 10 p.m. on Saturday, various artists with a vast repertoire of Blues music will take to the stage.

Walter Tose, chairman for the folk society, said when Monaghan approached them about possibly making the festival happen, it didn’t take long for things to fall into place.

“Back in about May, we got talking about the possibility of something like this. Pat got a bit teary-eyed when it came together because it had always been a dream for him. I also see it as a celebration of his contribution to the Canadian blues scene with more than 40 years of promoting and educating people about the Blues.”

With Monaghan’s contacts, from many years spent around blues artists, it didn’t take long to get the musicians together for the festival.

“Such amazing support from everyone,” Monaghan told The Highlander prior to his passing. “This could be my legacy, something people will remember me for.”

A total of eight acts have been confirmed for Saturday: Sean Cotton & Tamica Herod, Alone Together, Chuckee Zehr & Cheryl Lescom, The Swingin’ Blackjacks, Rosie’s Smokehouse Deluxe, Jim Dan Dee and The Smokewagon Blues Band.

The folk society already had things in place for ticket sales and promoting their own shows, so it was easy to use that platform for the Blues festival.

Accommodation for the artists performing on Saturday was set up, and the other tasks associated with an event such as this were divvied up amongst organizers and volunteers.

Dave Harland and Rusty Rustenburg, both of the Buckslide Blues Society, will be sharing the emcee duties for the festival.

Tickets for the two events are being sold separately. Information and tickets for Jenie Thai on Friday night are being sold through the Haliburton Forest website; haliburtonforest.com .

Information and tickets for Saturday’s Haliburton Highlands Blues Festival can be found on the Haliburton County Folk Society’s website haliburtonfolk.com.

“Our community NOSE how to support the Minden Rotary,” is a tag line popping up all around the town these days.

It’s in reference to the Minden Rotary celebrity clown’s initiative, an idea that started with Sally Moore, a Rotarian for more than six years.

“We have been working on the project since January and introduced some of our clowns at the Canada Day celebrations,” Moore said.

The Rotary Club in Minden is asking people to think about becoming a celebrity clown.

“Anyone can be a celebrity clown,” Moore said. “We have the costumes ready to go, summer and winter.” She added there is no fee but it’s hoped those interested would make a donation to the club.

The volunteers are dressed as clowns for community events. They mingle, take selfies with the public, and have a good time. “You get to infiltrate the fun, mix with the crowd and hand out red noses,” Moore said.

For more than 70 years, the Rotary Club has been raising money and putting it back into the community in various ways. President Dave Woodcroft said there are numerous things the club does.

“We built the community vegetable garden for the food bank; we sponsor a lot of youth programs, including sports. Wherever we see a need in the community, whenever we can help boost things up, that’s what we do.”

Moore said the club is made up of people of action.

“Whether it is financial or manpower help that is needed, we are ready to jump in.”

Every year, the club supports the food and heat banks and in past years has gotten behind putting washrooms in Rotary Park, purchasing equipment, and supporting recreational, hospital and nursing home facilities. An upcoming project is a shed for the community gardens and an automated external defibrillator (AED).

Rotary Fest Aug. 12

The clowns will next be out and about at Rotary Fest, Aug. 12, at the Minden fairgrounds.

Rotary Fest is a celebration of all thing’s community, according to Woodcroft.

“It is building community within the community. An event that shares everything people are doing; artisans and music, games, a car boot sale, and, of course, our BBQ featuring the famous Rotary peameal on a bun.”

Clowns will also be at road tolls on Labour Day weekend, the community Halloween event, and the Santa Claus parade.

If anyone wants to become part of the fun for Rotary Fest, or future events, make yourself known to a Rotarian, or call Moore at 705-286-4922.

The Royal Canadian Legion is wellknown as a place for veterans to socialize, but legions provide much more to the communities they are part of, says Wendy Bolt, president of Branch 636 in Minden.

Bolt said their main priority is to support veterans and their families but “we are supportive of the community as well. That is what the veterans wanted to do.”

The legion in Minden, named after Mabel D. Brannigan, a Second World War veteran, is open to veterans and non-veterans to join.

We encourage veterans and their families to reach out to their local legions for any kind of support or assistance and you don’t have to belong to the legion to get support. We have a Veteran Services officer that can help with any kind of support needed from Veterans Affairs. We support individuals with assistive devices like wheelchairs, or other equipment,” said Bolt. “We also helped a lady, whose husband was a veteran and had passed away, to put a partial new roof on her house.”

The Minden legion offers a variety of opportunities for seniors to socialize, such as playing cards. There are also other groups that use the facility such as a rug-hooking group. They serve lunch Monday to Friday from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m., and on Saturdays a brunch from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. On Fridays, they also have a fish supper.

Bolt added the community supports the poppy campaign every year and, “we do very well because of the local community.”

The legion supports youth sport programs, breakfast programs, the YWCA women’s shelter, the Minden Community Food Centre and cadets. “We also provide about 10-15 backpacks with school supplies in September to the elementary school,” Bolt said.

Other ways the legion works with the community is by renting out spaces for special events such as celebrations of life for veterans and non-veterans. They also host birthdays, mostly for seniors. “We provide a place for people to come,” said Bolt. “We are a charity, so whatever money we make, over and above our costs, we give back through donations.”

One of the current initiatives is upgrading bathrooms, so they are running a 50/50 draw.

Ongoing work includes talking to people about how the legion could assist them and making sure the community knows what the legion does.

“We have had several students do their community hours here. The ones we have right now did their hours last year and wanted to come back to volunteer this year,” Bolt said. “We do need people that will come in and be back-up if someone gets sick or something, but we have a great group of people here.”

Canada’s best whitewater paddlers will be gathering at the Minden Whitewater Preserve on the Gull River from Aug. 21 to 27 to compete for national titles in canoe and kayak slalom, freestyle, down river, and kayak cross.

Eric Betteridge, co-chair for the 2023 Whitewater Nationals organizing committee, said international athletes will also be present to compete for International Canoe Federation ranking points at the Minden Open Race, which will run at the same time.

More than 100 athletes will be competing in multiple disciplines over the course of the week, keeping competition fierce as the provinces battle for points towards the Brian Greer Cup, the provincial team title.

And with International Canoe Federation ranking points also up for grabs, athletes from other nations are expected to attend, further deepening the field and adding to the excitement.

Betteridge invited the public to watch the event for free. He said it includes the thrilling new whitewater discipline of kayak cross. “Pitting four athletes head-to-head, kayak cross is a must see as it is set to make its Olympic Games debut next year in Paris,” he said.

Betteridge added, “we are excited to welcome athletes from across the country and around the world to Minden. This world class venue has been the site of many national championships, as well as the 2015 Pan Am Games, and three World Cup events. This will be a great opportunity for our younger athletes to gain valuable experience competing against national and international athletes, as it is an international ranking race.”

He added he was “beyond excited” to see Nationals in Minden after a four-year hiatus due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Olympian Florence Maheu of the National Whitewater Slalom Team said she can’t wait.“It is such a great venue with a challenging whitewater course. I have many memories from Minden, either from attending team selection or Nationals, and it is always a lot of fun competing there.”

Quick facts:

Location: Minden Whitewater Preserve, 1020 Bethel Rd, Minden.

Schedule: Aug 23: a.m. kayak cross time trial; p.m. kayak cross elimination

Aug 24: a.m. freestyle; p.m. development race

Aug 25: a.m. down river classic; p.m. down river sprint

Aug 26: slalom age group races (heats 1 and 2)

Aug 27: slalom open races (semi-finals and finals).

For updates and more information follow Whitewater Ontario on Instagram and Facebook or visit the event’s 2023 Whitewater Nationals website.

Patrick Saini will lead a new-look Haliburton County Huskies into the 2023/24 OJHL season after head coach, Ryan Ramsay, said he was the standout choice to become the third captain in franchise history.

The 20-year-old has high hopes as he returns to the Highlands for his final year of junior hockey. He’ll do so with a white ‘C’ stitched to his chest, a just reward for his years of unrivalled work and commitment to the Huskies’ cause, Ramsay said.

“I really didn’t have to think too much about this, it was an easy decision… everyone sees Patty’s work ethic. On and off the ice, he’s probably the best I’ve seen in my coaching career. He has always led by example,” Ramsay told The Highlander.

In 98 games with the Huskies, across the regular season and playoffs, Saini has contributed 48 goals and 81 assists for 129 points.

He said he always envisioned ending his junior hockey career in his adopted home, saying having the opportunity to do so while following in the footsteps of Nathan Porter and Christian Stevens, the organization’s two previous team captains, was a dream come true.

“It’s a huge honour… I’ve played here a long time and I absolutely love this team. I love the town and the community,” Saini said. “I learned a lot from Nate (Porter) and Stevens – seeing how they were as captains; I couldn’t have had two better guys to learn from.”

While Saini has long been revered for his buzzsaw approach on the ice, he cuts more of a reserved character in the locker room. He said he’s excited, and ready to take on the challenge of leading this team into the new season.

Returning alongside Saini are forwards Lucas Stevenson and Lucas Marshall and blueliners Jack Staniland and Zack Morissette. Ramsay confirmed July 31 Staniland will serve as one of the team’s assistant captains.

Ramsay has been busy bringing in some extra OJHL experience to round out the team’s opening day roster, trading for Jaden Reyers and Nolan Ling of the Toronto Patriots, blueliner Raine Nadeau from the Stouffville Spirit, goaltender Vlad Visan from the Georgetown Raiders, and Ethan Wright from the St. Michael’s Buzzers. The Huskies have also added defenceman Ian Phillips, who played in the OHL last season with the Saginaw Spirit, and forward Luke Hill, who played in the NOJHL with the Kirkland Lake Gold Miners.

After back-to-back second round playoff exits in recent seasons, Saini said he’s got an eye on ending his junior hockey career as an OJHL champion.

“We’re trying to win it all this year. Knowing it’s my final season and I’ll have the ‘C’ on my chest, it definitely means a little bit extra. I’m all in,” he said.

Players are due to report Aug. 17, with the Huskies first exhibition game away against the Stouffville Spirit Aug. 24. They will welcome the Renfrew Wolves to S.G. Nesbitt Memorial Arena for a home exhibition Aug. 27, before the Spirit visit Sept. 2.

The Huskies will kick off the regular season Sept. 8 with a road tilt with the Lindsay Muskies, in the ‘Battle of Hwy. 35’. The team’s home opener is Sept. 9 against the Pickering Panthers. Puck drop in Minden is 4 p.m.

The Haliburton Red Wolves have been active, playing shuffleboard at the Minden Curling Club every other Friday over the summer.

In previous years, the Red Wolves didn’t have the luxury of an indoor court and would have to cancel their events due to poor weather.

Now, thanks to the curling club, they are able to play indoors. Volunteer Tracey Pratt said, “we can’t thank the curling club enough for this opportunity, since shuffleboard is a very short season. The shuffleboard program would not be possible without the support of our amazing volunteers from the Minden seniors shuffleboard league.”

The Red Wolves are in the middle of their summer sports program, playing bocce on Wednesdays, golf on Thursdays and shuffleboard every other Friday.

This September, their bowling program will return Wednesdays at Fast Lane bowling in Minden, and their curling program will resume on Mondays in October at the Minden Curling Club.

They will also be hosting a fall fundraiser bowl-a-thon in October which is open to anyone who is interested.

“New athletes are always welcome, whether you are a summer resident or live here year-round. No previous experience required. There’s always lots of volunteers to help.

Feel free to come out and try one of our sports to see if you might like it,” Pratt added.

For more information about the Haliburton Red Wolves and their fall fundraiser, go to haliburton@specialolympicsontario.ca or their Facebook page Haliburton Red Wolves.

It’s a summer weekday morning and Robinson’s General Store co-owner, Ravi Maddipati, is running around – trying to get point of sale machines back up after a storm, and selling lottery tickets to a customer at one of the check-outs.

There have been long days since his brother-in-law, Venkata Kommina, and he took over the iconic Dorset store about 3.5 months ago.

“It’s going good,” says Maddipati, while seated outside at a table and chairs. He added all of the full-time employees are friendly and eager to help. They do have summer students but not as many as they would like since they took the store over at a time when students had already committed to summer jobs elsewhere.

However, he said many have responded they would consider joining the Robinson’s team next summer.

Maddipati said they are short of staff but “somehow we’re managing” as he and his wife, and Kommina and his wife, are putting in long hours. He said they are working until 9 or 10 p.m. most nights.

“Even this morning, I woke up at 6 a.m. and submitted all the orders before 8 a.m. and then went to the bank,” he says. Only then did he start his shift at the store itself.

“It’s busy now…”

However, he said one good thing is Robinson’s patriarch, Brad Robinson, has been helping out. “He’s a great asset for us… he’s helping a lot.”

Maddipati said Robinson puts in three to four hours every day at the store, and is the first point of contact when issues arise. “We’ll say, ‘Brad, this is the situation’. Then he guides us about who to contact and solve it. If Brad were not here, it would not be easy to run the store this year.”

Maddipati is from the United States and Kommina from Thunder Bay. They also own a gas station in Baysville they purchased last year. Maddipati and his wife are living upstairs at the store. They also have stores in New Brunswick and Thunder Bay-Atikokan. Maddipati is looking after the store, and Kommina the gas station. Kommina is also helping at Robinson’s.

He said once they get through the busyness of summer, they are looking to organize the store this winter. “Right now, we don’t want to disturb any daily operations… And we are short of staff this year. But hopefully next year it’s not going to be like this.”

They are planning on making some internal organizational changes with the layout of aisles, for example. They are also intending to have a big garden centre next year. This year, they simply have not had the time and were too late to order stock. Maddipati said orders have to be placed late January or early February. They do have some garden materials, which they purchased from a third-party, and have found that aspect of the business going well.

They are also working with Home Hardware to give that part of the operation a boost.

They have introduced a new slushie machine, new coffee machine, and have ice cream in the store. They are working towards getting a food truck.

Maddipati has asked customers for patience with things that are out of their control, whether it is staff shortages or the internet being down and knocking out point of sale machines. He said reviews can be misleading. He promised next summer will be better than this summer.

He added most of the returning customers “are very happy” the store has reopened after being shuttered for many months. “Those (comments) give me some boost and energy to work hard.”

See more at loc8nearme.com/ontario/dorset/robinsons-general-store/6836735/

Tuesday nights will never be the same for blues aficionados after Patrick Monaghan, long-time host of the Buckslide Blues Cruise radio show on CanoeFM, signed off one final time July 25.

The popular DJ was revered across the continent for his love, and knowledge, of the blues industry. He spent eight years as an on-air personality for Haliburton County’s community radio station, recording 371 live shows for hundreds of avid listeners across the Highlands and beyond.

Monaghan passed away peacefully at his home July 25 following a four-year battle with pancreatic and lung cancer. Tributes have poured in over the past week for a man who lived his life with a smile permanently stretched across his face.

“Just a wonderful man. Anyone that knew him knows the trademark grin and thumbs up – he was a real people person,” close friend, Rusty Rustenburg, told The Highlander. “I was with him when he passed, and he was himself right up until the very end. An Irish warrior, and fierce lover of everything Blues.”

The pair met in 2018 after helping to organize a blues concert fundraiser for the Haliburton Highlands Outdoors Association. Monaghan invited Rustenburg onto his show, where they discovered they had more than just a love for music in common.

“So we’re sitting in the booth and he goes ‘what’s your hometown’ so I say, ‘Grimsby, Ontario’. He immediately said he was a Grimsby boy too. He’s two years older than me, we knew all the same people but had never crossed paths. So he went right on air and said ‘OK, listeners out there, if you’re looking for work, there’s two village jester openings down in Grimsby’. It was great,” Rustenburg said.

Ron Murphy, station engineer at Canoe, spent as much time with Monaghan as anyone over the past eight years.

“You couldn’t find a more dedicated guy. He gave everything he had to Buckslide Blues, it was his baby. His passion and his excitement would just resonate with people. You mentioned CanoeFM or the blues and he just lit up. Then you could never get him to shut up.”

Station manager Roxanne Casey said even after receiving his cancer diagnosis in 2019, Monaghan didn’t miss a beat. He would regularly schedule chemo treatments around his radio show commitments and was loath to miss a Tuesday session. Even towards the end, when the sickness was taking over, he pushed through – coming into Canoe July 18, a week before his passing, to go live.

“His partner, Christine, called earlier that day to say Patrick wouldn’t be in, he was in palliative care. He wasn’t responding well to treatment and was very weak. So, we started making other arrangements, then, come 4:30 p.m. there he was in the front lobby,” Casey said.

Rustenburg said the weekly show helped keep Monaghan going.

The awards came in thick and fast in recent years – in 2020 Buckslide Blues Cruise, and Monaghan, received the award for Best Jazz and Blues Programming from the National Campus and Community Radio Association. In 2022, he won Best in Music Programming in Blues or similar Music from the same organization, while also being named Blues Booster of the Year by the Toronto Blues Society

More recently, Monaghan had been working alongside Rustenburg and the Haliburton County Folk Society to organize the Haliburton Highlands Blues Festival, Aug. 25-26 at Haliburton Forest. Now, the event is being hosted in Monaghan’s honour.

“It’s going to be a wonderful tribute. We’ve got a couple of nice surprises planned that people who knew Pat will appreciate,” Rustenburg said. “It’s going to be a party to remember a great man. Patrick really was the Wolfman Jack of the Blues. Experts of the genre would tune in weekly because they always learned so much. And it did just as much for Pat, he came alive when that red light flashed on. It was as if the sickness was gone.”

Haliburton Highlands Health Services (HHHS) interim CEO and president Veronica Nelson said the organization has recently hired five new nurses and 11 PSWs and HSWs as it seeks to reduce its reliance on agency staff.

At a town hall meeting held at the Haliburton Legion July 27, Nelson said HHHS spent over $4 million on agency nurses in its 2022/23 fiscal year. That was a drastic increase from the previous year, where the organization spent approximately $1 million on temporary staff.

Nelson said reducing that number was one of her first priorities after assuming her position in June.

“That drastic of an increase is not sustainable… our goal this year is to reduce agency staffing to 10 per cent [of that total]. That’s a hefty goal, but we hope to [achieve it] by engaging and hiring more staff,” Nelson said.

She reiterated the decision to close the Minden emergency department was due to staff and physician shortages. When questioned later in the meeting about why Minden, which had a full rotation of physicians through September, was closed ahead of Haliburton, Nelson said the determining factor was the 15 inpatient beds available at the Haliburton site.

If we had kept Minden emerg open, we couldn’t have kept Haliburton inpatient open. The reason the Haliburton site was chosen was to make sure the emergency department was beside the inpatient unit so that any patient that needed to be admitted could be admitted to an inpatient bed,” she said. “It works as a system, they can’t work separately.”

HHHS is working on a new partnership with SE Health and Paramed through the Home and Community Care Support Services to open a new community nursing clinic in Minden. This is slated to open at the old Minden emergency department site and will run in tandem with the urgent care clinic service provided by the Kawartha North Family Health Team.

Nelson said this will provide additional “high quality” nursing care to residents for issues such as wound care, IV therapy and catheter care, helping to avoid unnecessary ER visits or hospital admissions. Providing patients grant consent, she said nurses will be able to share information with primary care physicians. While she didn’t provide an opening date, it’s proposed to be open seven days a week, 11 hours per day.

At the previous town hall, held in Minden last month, Nelson said she was quizzed about “ballooning” ER wait times in Haliburton since services were consolidated June 1. She noted that, in June, the ER saw 1,495 patients, who were seen, on average, within 48 minutes of their arrival. Class one, two and three patients, deemed emergency or high urgency, were treated and released within 3.4 hours, while less urgent patients were in and out within 1.6 hours.

Nelson said across the whole month 87 per cent of patients from levels one to three finished their emergency visit within the hospital’s target time of eight hours, while 91 per cent of level four and five patients were finished within four hours.

“So far, we’re handling the numbers we’re seeing,” Nelson said.

HHHS will host a third town hall at the Stanhope Firefighters’ Community Hall in Algonquin Highlands Aug. 22 from noon to 1 p.m., with a fourth scheduled Aug. 26 from 10 to 11 a.m. at the Lloyd Watson Memorial Centre in Highlands East.

Ontario NDP Leader Marit Stiles said if her government is elected in 2026, it will reopen the Minden emergency room.

Stiles’ comment, over Zoom, solicited the applause of about 30 people who gathered July 21 at the Village Green gazebo in Minden. They came to hear from NDP member for Spadina-Fort York, Chris Glover, more than seven weeks after the Minden ER was closed and consolidated at the Haliburton site.

Glover spoke before a weekend in which he said eight rural hospital ERs were scheduled to be temporarily closed over the July 22-23 weekend.

“This town has been fighting tooth and nail to save that Minden ER, and now to get the Minden Hospital reopened and we’re going to keep that fight going,” Glover said.

He added the NDP looked at Minden as “ground zero” for the bigger fight for health care across the province, particularly for rural hospitals.

He conceded the province has a healthcare staffing shortage – which was cited in the ER consolidation in Haliburton County – but said the Ford government contributed to that shortage with Bill 124. It caps public sector wage increases at one per cent a year. Glover said courts have said it is a violation. The Liberals are taking the fight to the Supreme Court.

Glover said it points to the government plan to privatize the public health care system. “They usually talk about innovation, but innovation is code for privatization. They want to turn our public health care system, our public hospitals, over to private, for-profit corporations. This is absolutely unconscionable.” He added people are paying extra fees to get to the front of the line for surgeries.

“This (Minden ER) closure is also about privatization. The way we are going to fight back, and are continuing to fight back, is by organizing communities like this one.” He noted the NDP were holding press conferences in four communities last Friday.

“We’re putting pressure on the government to reopen the Minden ER, to stop the appeal of Bill 124. We’re asking them to fund our public hospital system, to stop privatizing the system, to stop diverting our tax dollars over to the private hospitals…,” Glover said.

Rob Loucks was involved in an accident on Hwy. 35 outside of Tim Hortons in Minden July 14. His wife, Sharon, said with the Minden ER just five minutes away but now closed, Rob was taken nearly 30 minutes to Haliburton Hospital. He was eventually taken to Lindsay for a CT scan, and then driven back to Haliburton. She did not see him until 9:30 p.m. She said if the Minden ER were open, there would have been a huge difference in the timeline.

Glover said in May, only 28 per cent of people going to ERs were admitted within eight hours, which he said was “appalling.”

The Save Minden Ontario Emergency Room group is organizing a rally for it and other communities facing the same situation on Aug. 26.

When the NDP, led by Bob Rae, won the provincial election in 1990, a recession was beginning. His government developed community care access centres in lieu of expensive hospital services. But as the economy sputtered, the Rae government turned to spending constraints including ‘Rae days’, or 12 unpaid work days for provincial employees. Nurses and other health care providers were affected, and doctors found their billing options capped.