As a tradition and sign of the Northern Health Region's appreciation, each Christmas season, a luncheon recognizing the service and spirit of the Snow Lake Hospital Auxiliary, volunteers, and Snow Lake Health Centre personnel and residents is held in the Health Centre. This year, due to budget constraints, the event was to be cancelled. That is until one of Snow Lake’s newest residents stepped in and took on the role of Santa, so to speak.
Dr. Michael Haldorson said that rather than see it falter, he would pick up the costs of the celebration … and so the on-again/off-again gathering was on again! It appeared some staff members were so impressed, they dressed to honour the occasion … wearing co-ordinated Christmas-themed scrubs!
With adorned tables situated throughout the building’s corridors and waiting room, decorations on walls as well as the waiting room tree … and with all of the aforementioned folks mingling to and fro, the smell of the afternoon meal was enough to set a mouth to watering. If that didn’t do it, the sight of the sumptuous buffet surely would. Close to 50 people took part in the annual event and the meal was prepared by staff in the Health Centre kitchen.
Asked for his thoughts after the event, Dr. Haldorson stated that the meal was amazing. He added that he is enjoying Snow Lake and his position here. Noting that he just couldn’t let the year go by without the perennial gathering being held, he said he was happy to pick up the cost for the meal.
In other news, Snow Lake Resources (SLR), a company in the process of floating a January 2019 initial public offering, held an information session in the Snow Lake Motor Inn on the evening of Friday Dec. 21.
The gathering served to introduce their chief operating officer Dale Schultz to residents and give folks an overview of himself, the company, as well as the mineral they are exploring for… lithium.
Schultz began by giving a synopsis of the company, which included a bit of its history, prior to explaining the importance of lithium on the world stage. Noting that lithium brine deposits were once seen as the more gainful way of exploiting the resource; the view is slowly changing towards hard rock deposits, due mainly to problems with costs and the method of processing lithium from brine.
Schultz explained the favorable geology of Manitoba and the Snow Lake area in respect to spodumene (the host rock of lithium crystals), prior to getting into the resource that his company has on the east side of nearby Wekusko Lake.
He summarized the drilling and other types of exploration done on the claims SLR holds in the area, noting that they currently have a 6.3 million tonnes at 1.38 per cent Li2O resource mapped out.
With plans to diamond drill 12,000 more metres in the New Year, they hope to expand those numbers and eventually bring the property into production. In this respect, he outlined several conceptual ways of mining the deposit and getting the product to market.
After a brief question-and-answer session, the audience showed appreciation for the presentation and the possibility of a new employer in the area with a loud round of applause. Schultz thanked attendees and talked one-on-one with people afterwards, prior to resetting his visual aids for a reprise presentation to a new audience later that evening.
