The Cochrane Rotary Youth Talent Festival was simply amazing.
The talent these kids have is so impressive, and they’re just kids.
Soren Lorentzen is a 10-year-old violin player with incredible talent.
Sydney Mae Schweitzer is 11 and sounds like a young KD Lang.
Then there was Emily Rigaux, whose voice filled the hall. She’s 17 and was given the Rotary of Cochrane Award of Excellence.
There were 28 performers in the finale and everyone was impressive.
The evening opened with a couple of selections by the Cochrane Children’s Choir, and there’s no shortage of talent in that group either.
But a couple of things bothered me.
One was the hall wasn’t full and should have been.
With all that talent the hall should be jammed. yet it wasn’t.
So one of our challenges is we have to get on that bandwagon and make sure next year these kids have the community support they so richly deserve.
Another thing that struck me was while the Rock Pointe Church is a comfortable facility for such events, it’s not in Cochrane.
We have no community-gathering place in our town and I know that void will be filled sometime in the future, it can’t be soon enough.
And a tip of the toque to the Cochrane Rotary Club who provide so much support for this festival.
It actually runs five days with the finale on the Friday night.
And another tip of the toque to Cyndie Baum and her enthusiastic crew of volunteers who make it all happen and a special thanks to the Rumpel family for their steadfast and generous support.
Check out page 55 for more on the festival.
Speaking of good things in our community here’s another award winner from the Cochrane Art Club’s show and sale May 4-5.
Unless you’ve been dead or in Edmonton, you’ll remember Glen Boles and his piece “Mt. Assiniboine and Magog Lake” was the people’s choice award and the winner of the Cochrane Historical Society Heritage Award was Lorri Pullman-MacDonald for her acrylic landscape “Reflections and Shadows”.
And now more good news.
Unless you’ve been dead or really in Edmonton you’ll remember that great “Best of Cochrane” promotion we had at the mighty Cochrane Eagle.
We had a bit of a bash at Killarney’s at the Cochrane Golf Club and it was great fun.
We also had draws for the folks who submitted their opinions on our survey and we had a gift certificate draw for them.
Sandy Moortgat won the $300 gift certificate; Alison Bell won a $200 one and Jessalyn McPhail won the $100 job.
And that ain’t all.
At last weekend’s Cochrane Trade Show we raffled off a photo cleverly embellished by my friend Janet Armstrong and the winner of that was Harley Topolnisky.
So congratulations to him, and I wonder if he’s related to Craig Topolnisky who played junior hockey for the Kamloops Chiefs?
And a final word of farewell to my friend Peter Worthington, who died earlier this week at 86 years.
He was one of the founders of the Toronto Sun, but was also very instrumental in that gang coming to Calgary and starting the Calgary Sun in 1980.
He’s the reason I wrote five columns a week for more than 17 years at the Calgary Sun.
In 1980, I’d purchased the Airdrie Echo because I just knew the old Calgary Albertan wasn’t going to last.
Then the Sun arrived with Doug Creighton, Peter Worthington and a cast of characters who would all have fit with Damon Runyon.
Much to do of course, but I was leaving to run my Airdrie weekly when Peter approached Creighton and I and said, “You two go for lunch and don’t come back until you have a deal that you’ll write a column for us”.
So Doug and I did, and when we returned I was a Calgary Sun columnist.
Another experience with Peter was in Hyde Park in London.
We were there for a Sun media annual meeting and speaker’s corner at Hyde Park always enthralled me.
So when I was that close I had to do it.
So one Sunday morning with a small wooden box and wearing my cowboy hat with Peter Worthington in tow we ventured to Hyde Park.
I mounted my wee box and began my spiel.
I spoke of immigration. This was back in about 1981 and I talked of how we love to have Brits immigrate to Canada but we didn’t need anymore union leaders.
Now the only person I know for miles around was Peter Worthington.
We’re total strangers to everyone in that crowd but I know I was making headway when I saw Peter slinking off to the sideline.
Peter was a journalist who covered wars and mayhem all over the globe yet I had him on the run.
It was one of the many great experiences I enjoyed with Peter Worthington and those experiences remind me of that great Dr. Seuss line, “Don’t cry because it’s over, smile because it happened.”
