Golden Hills School Division passed a major milestone in realizing its goal for a new Wheatland East School.  
    On August 29, Wheatland County held a public meeting into the re-designation of a parcel of land selected to be a new regional school in the area to serve surrounding communities.
    In the end, Wheatland Council voted almost unanimously in favour to re-designate the land on second reading.
    “That means we're into subdivision now,” said Golden Hills Superintendent Bevan Daverne.
    “The public hearing was obviously a significant and major step forward. We still have work to do with subdivision, but certainly the re-designation hearing was a big a step in the right direction.”
    This is not the first time Golden Hills has requested Wheatland County re-designate a site for a school in the eastern part of the county.
    “There certainly were some differences between this hearing and the one we had almost three years ago. There are an awful lot of parents who have come out in support of the new consolidated school. That was pretty clear in the public hearing,” said Daverne. “I think parents have had enough time to work through the information, look at options.”
     The school division has been working on a solution to the schooling situation in this part of Wheatland for a number of years. Through 2012 the division made a concerted effort to collect as much information on the wants, needs and opinions of families in the area, and what options could serve the students best.
    “We have taken a ton of time, we went through a whole bunch of pre-work in a whole bunch of areas to make sure we were able to answer questions and able to do a good job providing people with the information they needed in order to make a decision, if this was something they wanted to support,” said Daverne.
    With the re-designation complete, the division and communities are ready to move on to the next step.
    “The message we heard from parents is we really need to get going on this and the county’s support was music to their ears,” he said. “It was what we wanted to hear, now we are in a school design process and a subdivision process and we’re anxious to get going ahead."

    The Atlas Coal Mine may have to reimagine a small part of their tour now that a mystery that has endured since the 1970's has been solved, or rather, cracked.
    And the most compelling part, is it all happened on television.

A safe that was sealed in Omer Patrick’s office at the Atlas Coal Mine since the 1970's was cracked after staff discovered a combination written on a wall and then verified in a notebook. To make things even more exciting, the opening of the safe was caught on television.

    Last week a television crew from CTV was at the Atlas Coal Mine. Jay Russell explains the reporter, David Ewasuk, was at the mine this summer with his family and enjoyed it enough to come back through.
    One popular part of the Atlas Coal Mine guided tour is the trip into the mine manager’s office. This was Omer Patrick’s office, and has remained virtually untouched since the 1970's when the Atlas shut down. One fun detail which guides weave a tale around is the old safe. The gigantic safe has remained sealed since those very last days of operation.
    “Our guide Emily told him the mystery of the safe story as we knew it and it intrigued him,” said Russell. “He wanted to come down and find out more about the mystery of the safe, and if there was a chance to open it.”
    Recently however, a staff member at the Atlas discovered a combination written on the wall of another building.  When they first tried the combination it appeared not to work, however as the television crew filmed the segment, Russell began snooping around the office.
    “If the owner was like me, I can never remember my password for the computer, I have to have it written down somewhere. So I started fumbling through the desk,” said Russell. “There was a black book in the same spot I keep my notebook.”
    Moments later he discovered a note on the back of the notebook in the desk. It was the very same combination.
    This time with a little more care, the handle turned and the mystery of what was in the safe was solved.
    "If I wasn’t there, I would think this was a little theatrical.”
    “It was a surprise the safe opened, I was under the impression she would never open again, “ said Russell. "So I was pretty confident it wasn’t going to open.”
    While daydreams of stuffed cash boxes and other treasures didn’t materialize, there were a few artifacts, notably keys to other buildings and a company seal. Also in the safe were paper records such as payroll from the final days of mining in the valley. While they may not be valuable for the casual observer, for those who study the history at the mine these are important documents.
    Russell says they have not fully studied and digested what they discovered, but when they do, the find will make it back to its familiar home.
    “We will take a museum approach and do our cataloguing, but then it will go back in for safekeeping.”