A Drumheller man who spent time in the cardiology unit of the Foothills Hospital in Calgary found a way to give back, and received some help from skilled sewing fingers at the Pioneer Trail Centre.
    Leroy Graham spent time at the ward to get a double bypass operation. He was talking to one of the nurses and he asked what they needed, and she told him huggy pillows.
    Huggy pillows are just that. These are pillows for recovering patients to hug, not only for comfort, but to keep the breastbone immobilized after surgery.
    He told the nurse he would see what he could do. Knowing he was from Drumheller, she requested the pillows have dinosaurs on them.
    There is a mighty contingent of sewers at the Pioneer Trail Centre who are pretty handy with a needle and thread. They have also been very generous  in making items for those in need over the years.
    They snapped up the last of the dinosaur flannel material from Bits and Pieces in downtown Drumheller and began making pillows.
    Last week, they delivered 22 hand-crafted huggy pillows to the Cardiac Ward at the Foothills Hospital.

(l-r) Daisy Smith, Leroy Graham and Barb Barker show off the pillows made by sewers at the Pioneer Trail Centre. Missing is Barbara Tedrick.

    On December 19 the Morrin School Students Against Drinking & Driving (SADD) Chapter held their second annual White Out Day event.
    A White Out Day is an event that is meant to provide a visual of just how many people are lost to drinking and driving throughout the course of a day. In North America, one life is lost every 23 minutes due to impaired driving (roughly 3 per hour).
    Students in Grades 7-12 (and a few staff members) volunteered to have their names put into a random draw to be selected to represent actual victims of impaired driving from all over North America.
    Throughout the course of the day, students were randomly selected every 23 minutes and their faces were painted white. As the event drew to a close, there were 16 teachers and students who represented lives lost to impaired driving.
    At the end of the day, students and staff were called into the gym to listen to the stories of the victims whom the randomly chosen “victims” were representing.
    16 lives were lost, and they each had a different story to tell.