Minding the store: Affable Wally Itson at the helm of Thompson Gas Bar Co-op Ltd.

Someone apparently forgot to tell Wally Itson that retirement can be a tad longer than the two-month long summer annual vacations he was accustomed to (well, sort of) as a long-time teacher and principal. We say sort of because anyone who knows Wally knows he didn’t really take the whole summer off. Come August, you might well find him back in his office at R.D. Parker Collegiate, or one year at a cabin with Ryan Land and Grant Kreuger, getting ready for another academic year in September. So we knew Wally wasn’t kidding when he said before his retirement as principal of R.D. Parker in June he planned to stick around town and find something to keep himself busy in due course.

And so he has, replacing Irene Fortin, who served for a short time, and Sue Colli, who served for a long time, as general manager of  Thompson Gas Bar Co-op Ltd. Sue, along with her husband, provincial court, Judge Brian Colli, recently retired to Cape Forchu, Nova Scotia, near Yarmouth.

“I’m really enjoying the gig and work with a great board and outstanding employees,” Itson, a musician and former music teacher, told  soundingsjohnbarker (https://soundingsjohnbarker.wordpress.com/) Sept. 28.  “And I’m proud to still be living in Thompson because of the great people that live here.”

An American citizen, originally from National City in San Diego County, California, Itson, 63, moved to Canada – and Thompson – in 2002. He became a permanent resident of Canada on July 1, 2013. His teaching career began in 1973. Before coming to Thompson, Itson also taught or was a vice-principal in Sierra Vista High School and Baldwin Park High School in Baldwin Park, California, in Los Angeles County, Sequoia Junior High School and A. B. Miller High School in Fontana, California,  and Montrose High School in Montrose in the high desert of the Uncompahgre Valley of western Colorado.

Itson is part of the Class of 1968 at Montclair High School in San Bernardino County, California, and the Class of 1972 at California State University, Fullerton, which had originally been Orange County State College.

Itson was selected as the 2011 Manitoba Band Association Outstanding Administrator Award recipient by the Winnipeg-based Manitoba Band Association, founded in 1977 as a non-profit charitable organization to promote the growth and development of band in Manitoba through regional and provincial programs and activities.

As its conductor, Itson was also one of the driving forces behind the resurgent Thompson Community Band, now conducted by his protégé Kevin Lewis, a music teacher at R.D. Parker Collegiate, who Itson has mentored since his arrival in September 2009.

While acting as the Thompson Community Band’s conductor, Itson would sometimes sit in and play the clarinet in band.  Happily he has returned this fall, playing clarinet again.

Itson, of course, has been a familiar face around town – even for those not musically inclined – for the last dozen years.

He  often works together with his friend, Donna Wilson, former general manager of the Thompson Citizen and Nickel Belt News, who is now the general manager of Thompson’s Quality Inn & Suites on Moak Crescent, on scores of volunteer endeavours, including Relay for Life, the former Thompson General Hospital Foundation, now part of the Our Foundation Thompson, the Old Fashioned Christmas Concert and Thompson Playhouse, to name just a few, as well as emceeing with her annually for Shaw Cable TV’s coverage of the Nickel Days Parade in June and Santa Claus Parade in November.

Reporting to an elected board of directors, Itson is responsible for all aspects of the co-op’s operation, including marketing, merchandising, financial management, human resources and member and board relations, while overseeing a staff of 20-plus employees.

Thompson Gas Bar Co-op Ltd., a 16-pump, eight-lane gas bar and convenience store at Thompson Drive South and Cree Road, opened in their current location May 12, 2007, and have similar plans for 179 Thompson Dr., now they’ve purchased the former Advent Lutheran Church.

They have a long history in Thompson. The Thompson Co-op was formed in August 1969, according to  an article in The Thompson Times on Oct. 6, 1971, a short-lived newspaper, which competed with the Thompson Citizen and Nickel Belt News. The Times article was posted in Pioneers of Thompson Manitoba 1950’s and 1960’s, a closed Facebook group, administered by Betty Snuggs, which is a superb ongoing source of local history found at  https://www.facebook.com/groups/PioneersofThompson/ last Dec. 18 by  Kevin Jesmer, of DeKalb, Illinois, who mother, Della Jesmer, managed the co-op back then. The Jesmer family lived at 56 Hemlock Cres.  Della was originally from Dauphin, and her husband, Ted, who moved to Thompson in 1960, was from Wadena, Saskatchewan, and worked in the mill at Inco.

Originally, the Thompson Co-op Store operated out of a basement until May 1970 when it moved into a double trailer in the Burntwood Trailer Court. The president was Wilf Hudson. Membership originally cost $100 – for 10 shares at $10 per share. Its next home, with a grocery store operation, was at 32 Nelson Rd., where Light of the North Covenant Church is now. Aside from changing tenants, renaming it, and some fresh coats of paint over the years, the exterior of the 2,400-foot building looks remarkably similar today to how it looked 40 years ago when the  Thompson Co-op Store was housed there, along with Thompson Credit Union.

You can also follow me on Twitter at: https://twitter.com/jwbarker22

Alain Huberdeau, senior partner with Law North LLP in Thompson, appointed a provincial court judge

Alain Huberdeau, left, senior partner with Law North LLP in Thompson, has been appointed pursuant to an order-in-council as a provincial court judge for Thompson by Manitoba NDP Attorney General Andrew Swan.

At right is Mario LeClerc, grand knight of Knights of Columbus Thompson Council #5961, presenting Huberdeau with a plaque last Dec. 7 from local Knights at the council’s annual awards banquet at St. Lawrence Parish Hall, honoring him, and his wife, Andree Catellier, with the 2013 “Family of the Year Award” for having “served as an inspiration to our parish, community and council by supporting and strengthening Christian family life.”

As well, last Jan. 24, the Manitoba Bar Association (MBA), gave Huberdeau its annual Community Involvement Award at its MBA Recognition Awards luncheon in Winnipeg.

Huberdeau, the second provincial court judicial appointment for Thompson in 2½ months, replaces Judge Murray Thompson, who has relocated to Winnipeg. Thompson, appointed a judge of the provincial court on March 26, 2003, served as associate chief judge of the provincial court for seven years, from Aug. 2, 2006 until Aug. 1, 2013.

On July 16, Swan appointed Catherine Louise Hembroff, who had served as supervising senior Crown attorney in The Pas, to the provincial court bench here to replace Judge Brian Colli, who retired at the end of May to relocate to  Cape Forchu, Nova Scotia, near Yarmouth. Colli graduated from Dalhousie University law school in Halifax and was admitted to the bar in 1979 and came to Thompson as a Crown attorney himself that same year. He was appointed a judge of the provincial court by order-in-council on Sept. 21, 1994.

Huberdeau and Hembroff are tentatively set to be officially sworn-in here Oct. 31. They join Judge Doreen Redhead, who also sits on the provincial court judge bench in Thompson. She was appointed to the provincial court on April 4, 2007. Redhead, from Fox Lake Cree Nation, was born in Churchill and is the first aboriginal woman appointed to the provincial court bench in Manitoba. She graduated from the University of Manitoba law school in 1996.

Huberdeau, who was called to the Manitoba bar in 1997, received his law degree from the French language Université de Moncton Faculty of Law,  one of only two law schools in Canada offering a common law legal education taught entirely in French, with the other law school being the University of Ottawa Faculty of Law. Huberdeau grew up in St. Lazare is in western Manitoba, close to the Saskatchewan provincial boundary, at the forks of the Assiniboine River and Qu’Appelle River.

Law North LLP, and its predecessor law firms here named after various partners here over the last 50 years since its establishment in 1964, has a distinguished history in having seven of its lawyers go onto serve on the bench as judges, including just in recent years, Colli, Thompson, and Malcolm McDonald, senior partner in the law firm, then known as McDonald Huberdeau, who was appointed as provincial court judge for The Pas by Swan on Feb. 3, 2010.

Manitoba Court of Appeal Justice Holly Beard, also a former city councillor, however, was appointed to the bench from the law firm then known as  Bancroft, Whidden, Mayer and Buzza, known now as Mayer, Dearman and Pellizzaro.   Beard initially received a federal order-in-council appointment as justice of the Court of Queen’s Bench for Manitoba on Nov. 27, 1992, and was elevated to the Manitoba Court of  Appeal on Sept. 9, 2009.  A 1970 graduate of R.D. Parker Collegiate, Beard graduated from law school at the University of Manitoba in 1977 and was called to the bar in 1978.

Her father, Gordon Beard, whom the arena is named after here, was elected as Progressive Conservative  MLA for the constituency of Churchill, which then included Thompson, in 1963. He was re-elected in 1966 but resigned from the Progressive Conservative Party and stepped down as an MLA in 1968, complaining that the government was neglecting Northern affairs. He ran as an independent in the 1969 provincial election, defeating three other candidates, to regain the Churchill seat in the legislature. Gordon Beard suffered a heart attack and died in office at the age of 51 on Nov. 12, 1972.

More recently as well,  Judge Ken Champagne, who became chief judge of the provincial court on July 9, 2009, and was appointed to the provincial bench in 2005, began his legal career by articling in the Crown attorney’s office here in 1993. For many years he worked in Thompson, and was for a time supervising senior Crown attorney.

Huberdeau has been active in the community, including through his work with Our Foundation Thompson, formerly known as the Thompson Community Foundation, which was formed in 1995. With the establishment of the Moffat Family Fund in Winnipeg in December 2001 and the decision the following year to make its grant money more widely available elsewhere in Manitoba, Our Foundation Thompson benefited from that and its resources have grown substantially since then. The Moffat family made their fortune in the cable television business. The foundation describes itself as a “savings account” created by gifts from current and former citizens, businesses and community organizations. The money in the foundation’s endowment is never spent, but managed to produce an annual return that can be invested in local projects and organizations.

Our Foundation Thompson will be holding its annual fall gala Sept. 27  – tomorrow night  – at St. Joseph’s Ukrainian Catholic Hall on Juniper Drive.

Huberdeau has also been an active member of Knights of Columbus Thompson Council #5961, chartered with 59 members on May 6, 1967.  The Knights of Columbus is a Catholic fraternal benefit organization headquartered in New Haven, Connecticut. Its origins date back to an Oct. 2, 1881 meeting organized by Father Michael J. McGivney, the assistant pastor at St. Mary’s Church in New Haven. The Knights of Columbus, made up of Father McGivney, Matthew C. O’Connor, Cornelius T. Driscoll, James T. Mullen, John T. Kerrigan, Daniel Colwell and William M. Geary, were officially chartered by the general assembly of the State of Connecticut on March 29, 1882, as a fraternal benefit society.

Huberdeau, a long-time member of the Knights of Columbus,  who was the incumbent  financial secretary for the local council, which largely serves the two parishes of St. Lawrence Roman Catholic Church on Cree Road and St. Joseph’s Ukrainian Catholic Church on Juniper Drive, is  tendering his resignation from that post because of his judicial appointment. He has also served previously as grand knight for Knights of Columbus Thompson Council #5961 and district deputy for District 5,  made up of councils in The Pas, Flin Flon and Thompson.

Manitoba provincial court judges earn an annual base salary of $230,155.

Huberdeau was selected from a list of candidates recommended by an independent judicial nominating committee, chaired by Champagne. The committee also included three community representatives, representatives of the Law Society of Manitoba, the Manitoba branch of the Canadian Bar Association and a provincial court judge in addition to Champagne.

Unlike superior court justices, such as Beard, judges from the Manitoba Court of Appeal and Court of Queen’s Bench, who are federally appointed, provincial court judges are provincially appointed by Swan upon the recommendation of the judicial nominating committee.

It was the responsibility of the judicial nominating committee to recommend to Swan a list of not fewer than three and not more than six names of individuals for the position to fill the vacancy created by Thompson’s departure.

Applicants must have practiced for not less than five years as a barrister and solicitor in Manitoba, be a member in good standing of The Law Society of Manitoba, and be entitled to practice as a barrister and solicitor in this province, or have other equivalent experience.

They hold office “during good behaviour” and must reside in the province.

Applicants must be willing to reside in Thompson, and be capable of and willing to travel by automobile and small aircraft to circuit courts throughout the province.

Judicial responsibilities include a caseload of criminal cases and child protection matters.

The Provincial Court Act establishes the provincial court of Manitoba. It is a court of record and has primarily a criminal jurisdiction, as well as limited concurrent jurisdiction with the Court of Queen’s Bench in family law matters that originate outside of Winnipeg. More than 95 per cent of all criminal cases in Manitoba commence in the provincial court.

After an individual is charged, the provincial court hears applications for judicial interim release, more commonly known as bail hearings, presides over first appearances for the accused, and holds preliminary hearings to determine whether there is sufficient evidence to order an accused to stand trial. The provincial court also hears all youth court cases in Manitoba.

In addition to cases under the Criminal Code and the Youth Criminal Justice Act, the provincial court hears cases under a variety of other federal statutes, such as: the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act, and hears all provincial statute cases, such as those under The Highway Traffic Act and The Liquor Control Act. The court also presides over inquests under The Fatality Inquiries Act, and reviews alleged police misconduct under The Law Enforcement Review Act.

You can also follow me on Twitter at: https://twitter.com/jwbarker22