ShiloBrats Guestbook

Submitted by
Name: Tom Larkin
From: Winnipeg
E-mail: tom_larkin_man@yahoo.ca

Comments:
My wife and I spoke with the front desk agent at the Best Western in Swift Current Sask. recently on our re-patriation travel back to Manitoba after a 20 year absence in the lower mainland of BC. He informed me of this site. My father, Sgt/Mjr. Tom Larkin was the BSM in Shilo during the mid to latter 60's. We actually lived in Shilo twice, once on Frontenac Crst and then again on Ubique Crst. My father retired from the 3 RCHA in the early 70's. During my 32 year career in the RCMP, I have run into many of his colleagues including his previous C.O. "Bill Chevers". We are living north/east of Winnipeg near Birds Hill Provincial Park.
Tom Larkin
Rm of Springfield, Manitoba

Added: July 30, 2008

Submitted by
Name: Ida (Oake) Rabideau
From: Bowmanville, Ontario
E-mail: rabideau@rogers.com

Comments:
Hello all....Liz Chafe, I tried to e-mail you but the address you have listed here did not work....could you e-mail me direct? Thanks, Ida

Added: July 29, 2008

Submitted by
Name: lLiz(Chafe)Protasiewich
From: Edmonton
E-mail: liz-pro@hotmail.com

Comments:
Hi to the class of 75

Just wanted to let you know that I am still around and kicking. I tryed to reach some of you on class mate BUT noway.Love to hear from you.

Yours Liz

Added: July 28, 2008

Submitted by
Name: Faye Helgason
E-mail: fayeh51@yahoo.com

Comments:
OH OH. I've been telling everyone I'm "39 plus shipping and handling".

Added: July 25, 2008

Submitted by
Name: Princess Elizabeth School

Comments:
Hey all;

I hope everyone wished Faye Helgason a HAPPY 57TH BIRTHDAY TODAY!!!!

Added: July 25, 2008

Submitted by
Name: Robert
From: Alberta
E-mail: rembury@shaw.ca

Comments:

Added: July 20, 2008

Submitted by
Name: ShiloBrats web team
From: ShiloBrats

Comments:
A year ago, Lynn (Davis) posted the idea to create the Remembering page for ShiloBrats in our web team forum. Discussions and ideas about how it should look, what should be included, how complex, how simple all followed to form the page being presented today. As this page will always be evolving, the information included can only be as accurate and complete as to what is provided to ShiloBrats. There has to be a starting point and this is where it begins.

Some names did not have a photo that could be used from the yearbooks, dates of life and names of brothers and sisters are still wanted to complete the memory plates. If you see any inaccuracies, or are able to provide photos and more complete information for the memory plates, please contact Lynn (email is in What�s New) or use the Contact form in the side menu.

The Remembering page is a continuing work in progress and will be updated periodically as new and more complete information comes forward.

This may be a sensitive area for some, please tell us your thoughts on this new addition to ShiloBrats.

PS, if you follow the post numbers in InterActive and notice a big drop soon, it is all those discussions in the web team forum being removed now that the Remembering page has been added.

Added: July 19, 2008

Submitted by
Name: Doc. J
From: ShiloBrats

Comments:
The article on skinks and Errol Bredin was available for everyone to read when the link was first posted in InterActive! Now it seems even newspapers have pay per view. This was the part of the article about Errol.

LOCAL CHAMPION
Much of what is known about skinks is thanks largely to one man who has been chasing them for 47 years.
As a typical boy growing up on the Shilo military base, Errol Bredin spent his summers pocketing frogs, scrutinizing rocks for fossils and mastering the art of catching the small lizards darting around the sand hills. It's a tricky skill: A skink can drop its tail and regrow it later, so it's best to lay an open, gentle slap over the lizard's body and scoop it up, lest you are left with just a twitching tail.
For decades, Mr. Bredin, 58, felt like the only one interested in skinks. Even today, lifelong locals can be surprised to discover that they have a lizard in their midst.
But as the years passed, the field naturalist became increasingly concerned at what he was seeing. Sandy, open sites where he used to study skinks as a teen now lie deep in aspen forest. The march of the trees happened before his eyes.
"In a lot of ways, it's a natural succession, or they say it is. I don't necessarily agree with that," Mr. Bredin says from his home near the Carberry Sandhills, south of Austin. "They [skinks] are threatened, and it's going to go beyond that relatively quickly if we let things go the way they are."
Though he has no formal science training, Mr. Bredin has written numerous scientific papers on the northern prairie skink and has become the
go-to man for everything skink-related.
He penned the report that prompted the Canadian government to list the northern prairie skink as threatened in 1989 and it was his fieldwork that helped to raise their federal status to endangered in 2004. (In Manitoba, the species is listed as threatened and its status is under review by the Endangered Species Advisory Committee.)
"For a long time, I was like a voice in the wilderness, and when that paper came out 'endangered,' that kicked in the federal guidelines. ... It was like passing on the torch. I knew they would be protected," Mr. Bredin says of his "little skink friends."
Now, he hopes to see others champion the cause to implement serious management measures. "If they're very tardy on that," he acknowledges sadly, "then I don't hold a lot of hope. Thirty, 40, 50 years from now, they could be gone."
It's not the end of days yet. The skinks emerged late this year because of a spring cold snap, but they did emerge, and skink supporters believe that there is still time to turn things around.
If they succeed, their efforts will reach beyond these native lizards and into the sandy hills they call home.
"The mixed-grass prairie ecosystem, there are some very, very serious threats to it," Dr. Rutherford says. "I don't want to call them an indicator species. I don't think that's the right language." But their habitat is disappearing, she says.
"Saving a skink isn't going to cure cancer, but they're an important part of an ecosystem that is declining and I think that has some important consequences."

Added: July 19, 2008

Submitted by
Name: Rob Howitt
From: Guelph, Ontario
E-mail: r.howitt@sympatico.ca

Comments:
So this morning my wife Dolores and I are having our Saturday morning coffee and reading the Globe & Mail (as usual) and she asks me "Do you know what a Skink is?". Wow, there's a word I haven't thought of in 40 years ... yes it's a small salamander or a lizard. We used to catch them when I was a kid in Shilo. They were really neat looking critters, and the interesting thing about them is that they would drop their tails when you grabbed them (to be grown back later). My memory was better than I thought. There is a great article in today's Globe all about them, and referring to them as "Canada's Rarest Reptile" ... found on the ranges of Shilo, Manitoba. The article features our own Errol Bredin (complete with a picture of him). Check it out, it's a great read and for any of you fellow "skink chasers" it will bring back some great memories. I've posted the link to the article in the Globe's on-line edition of today's paper in the ShiloBrats Interactive section under the "ShiloBrat Memories" section ... (Ken informed me that I can't put a website link into the Guestbook because of spam concerns ... which makes sense).

Have a great weekend fellow Brats!!

Added: July 12, 2008

Submitted by
Name: ShiloBrats web team
From: ShiloBrats

Comments:
Check out some new photos added to the ShiloBrats Gallery Album sent in by Joe Schiller, with some awesome snow scenes, action on the Jump Tower, and other Shilo memories from Joe. Hope there are more photos and memories like these out there, keep them coming...Thanks Joe.

Added: July 12, 2008