CHEERS: To Alberton Elementary School Principal Shanna Perry who was recognized last week as one of Canada’s outstanding principals. She was chosen to receive the award by The Learning Partnership, which is a collaboration between government, education, and business dedicated to enhancing publicly-funded education in Canada. Alberton Elementary has shown tremendous dedication to literacy in the community and to transforming the lives of students by inspiring a love of reading. The school recently received a $10,000 grant to buy e-readers and books and create an electronic reading station in the library, in addition to a $1,500 grant it received last year, and another $3,000 raised by the Home and School Association for new books.
JEERS: To Curling Canada for scheduling the Scott Tournament of Hearts championship game directly opposite the Super Bowl on Sunday night. The game to decide Canada’s top women’s curling team started at 8 p.m. (AST), while the kickoff for the Super Bowl was 7:30 p.m. (AST). Did no one think there was going to be a serious conflict? It’s a shocker that TSN agreed to the schedule, and that Curling Canada and the host committee in Penticton, B.C. went along with it. Only the most die-hard curling fans would stick with the Scotties, which is a shame because the tournament’s new format was a success and the games were close and exciting.
CHEERS: To T3 Transit, which in partnership with the City of Charlottetown, Town of Stratford and Town of Cornwall, has completed upgrades that will improve the rider experience and make it easier for passengers to use the bus service. Free Wi-Fi has been installed on the entire transit fleet in the three municipalities. T3 Transit’s website has been updated to make it fully mobile friendly, while ReadyPass, a smart bus technology that provides data to operators for optimizing routes and schedules, is also in the final stages and should be ready to roll out over the coming months.
CHEERS: To the Summerside Airport in Slemon Park which will again host - for the fourth time in eight years - Air Show Atlantic this summer, August 25 and 26 with all aircraft flying out of its recently refurbished runway. Air Show Atlantic yields an economic impact of roughly $2 million for host communities. In 2012 and 2015 the Air Force jets flew out of Charlottetown, 60 km away. The recent resurfacing of the runway will allow the Snowbirds as well as other Royal Canadian Air Force jets to use the airport as their base to perform over the now familiar show site.
CHEERS: To UPEI, which has been selected to host back-to-back U Sports national women's hockey championships in 2019 and 2020. While 2019 will mark the first time the national women’s hockey tournament will be in Charlottetown, UPEI has successfully host three U SPORTS national championships: men’s soccer in 2005 and 2014, and women’s soccer in 2010. The local organizing committee will be led by co-chairs Kathleen Casey, Della Sweet and Lorna O’Donald who have a long-standing history of involvement in hockey and community events in the province and with UPEI.
CHEERS: To former CBC Charlottetown news broadcaster Bruce Rainnie who will host a new series on Eastlink TV, called Legends of the Hall, where he will talk with local world-class athletes about their stories. Legends of the Hall airs new shows on Sundays at 7:30 p.m. Rainnie is president and CEO of the Nova Scotia Sport Hall of Fame in Halifax. Before that, he had a 23-year career as a broadcaster with the CBC, leaving the Compass in Charlottetown last summer. Rainnie continues to occasionally work for the CBC and will be at the Winter Olympics in South Korea this week to host curling broadcasts.
CHEERS: To Mother Nature for offering up a rare celestial lunar trifecta on Wednesday with a ‘super blue blood moon.’ The pre-dawn hours of January 31 played host to a lunar triple whammy. The super moon is when a full moon occurs at the same time as its perigee, the closest point of the moon's orbit with Earth and appeared 14 per cent brighter than usual. The phrase, "once in a blue moon" refers to the rare instance when there is a second full moon in a calendar month. There was also a full moon on Jan. 1, described as the biggest and brightest one expected for the entire year. The blood moon element occurs during a lunar eclipse when faint red sunbeams peek out around the edges of the Earth, giving it a reddish, copper color.
JEERS: To CBS broadcaster Jim Nantz who complained on air that his description of play was only streaming online because the start of Saturday’s PGA golf broadcast from Phoenix was delayed more than half an hour by a protracted U.S. college basketball game. In effect, he was wasting his valuable time. Apparently Nantz was unaware the CBS feed and his petulant commentary was being shown live on TSN in Canada – as scheduled. His relief when the interminable college game finally ended was obvious. Apparently, his Canadian golf audience is unimportant.
