When I was younger, I really loved winter. I loved sledding, snowball fights and building snowmen. One of my favourite pastimes was visiting a little outdoor ice rink a few blocks from my house. Every winter my friends and I would climb over the walls of the rink and goof around on the ice. When we weren't falling over our feet, we'd play hockey with whatever snow chunks we could find. As these events became more frequent, we often talked about playing real hockey on the rink. Eventually, we would end up playing hockey, but we'd settle for the street in front of our houses instead.

Beyond childhood, the only other time I went skating was in high school. Everybody else's ice skating skills had improved with age, but mine were still that of a fourth grader. I remember standing in the rink, struggling to shoot while holding my balance, only to have a classmate swoop in and steal my puck! Ever since then, I've stuck to floor hockey.

As I got older, my love for winter dwindled. Now I find it cold, icy, dark and sometimes miserable. My blog usually slows down in the winter for this very reason. I've been trying to get out and enjoy our longest season of the year, but it's hard. Most days I just want to stay inside.

Kristine Ens started with a simple black rectangle. When asked, she said the black helped brighter colours pop, and the base allowed for a smoother chalking surface. As I knew nothing about chalking, I nodded my head and let her work. In just over sixty minutes, Ens transformed that black box into a blue-eyed crow and surrounded it with an earthly green light.

I was very impressed, to say the least.

Ens has been chalking for three years and debuted in the first ever Medicine Hat Sunshine Chalk Art Festival in 2014. Since it began, 100 artists from across North America have made their annual pilgrimage to the festival which runs this year from August 11th – 13th.

"What is this regiment of which we are so proud? It was born in bastardy. Legitimized, lived a brief exciting life, and was laid to rest in 1945.
But its spirit lives on in this association."
— Lt. Col. C.D. Williams, CD, QC.
Victoria, B.C., 1985

Situated in room 112 of the Regina Armories is a museum of unprecedented value. Packed with hundreds of uniforms, thousands of war medals, a plethora of guns, swords, grenades and inactive military shells, the Saskatchewan Military Museum covers Canadian conflicts as early as the South African Boer War.

Officially opened on March 1st, 1984, the Saskatchewan Military Museum was the private collection of retired Major C. Keith Inches. Having exponentially grown in the years leading up to its foundation, Major Inches decided it was time to find a permanent place for his collection and was granted room 112 in the Regina Armories in 1991. Once the museum was founded however, the growth only hastened. Today, the collection includes things such as World War I wooden crosses, assault boats, paintings, personal letters, horse saddles, memorial plaques, build-your-own bomb-shelter booklets and even radioactive material. The collection is so large, in fact, room 112 doesn't even hold a quarter of it -- probably not even an eighth. The museum has storage in a half dozen rooms spanning the entire armory, from the depths of the basement to its highest towers.