Organization: Pincher Creek Municipal Library

A woman with blonde hair and glasses smiles as she holds up a children's picture book

Around the world in six weeks at the Pincher Creek library

Written on July 21, 2026. Posted in Education.

This summer, a missing animal is waiting to be found in Prince Edward Island, then Hawaii, Australia, Bali and the Caribbean, and Pincher Creek children are travelling the world, one week at a time, to bring each one home.

It’s Pincher Creek Municipal Library’s own globetrotting spin on the 2026 TD Summer Reading Club, and outreach co-ordinator Samantha Bonwick builds a fresh adventure around the national theme every year.

Running July 7 to Aug. 12, the six-week program embraces this year’s national Dive In theme, which encourages children to explore waterways and aquatic life.

The TD program supplies libraries across Canada with activity books and resources, but Bonwick creates her own story around the national theme.

“We are going to a different location in the world to find that a certain species has disappeared,” she says.

“We learn about that animal and learn about what happens to that environment without that animal, and how important that animal was to the environment.”

Each week, participants travel to a different destination, beginning in Prince Edward Island and ending back home in Pincher Creek to learn about rainbow trout.

Along the way, children complete themed crafts and activities and search for the week’s missing animal. Once it’s found, they place a sticker on a habitat display, symbolically returning the species to its natural environment.

Steve Poltz in concert Sept. 15 at Fort Macleod Empress Theatre

The library offers three age-based sessions:

—Ages zero to four: Wednesdays, 10:30 to 11:30 a.m.

—Ages five to seven (kindergarten to Grade 2): Tuesdays, 10:30 a.m. to noon.

—Ages eight to 11 (grades 3 to 5): Wednesdays, 1:30 to 3 p.m.

Weekly Funday Fridays are also held on the library lawn and are open to families on a drop-in basis.

Bonwick enjoys taking the annual theme and turning it into an imaginative adventure that makes learning feel less like schoolwork.

Among past adventures was chasing Bigfoot across Canada during the country’s 150th anniversary celebrations.

“There was a learning aspect and a reading aspect to it, but we do it in an adventure,” she says. “It’s in a fun way because I want them to still get it somewhere and not have to come here and do worksheets and school.”

Participants receive TD Summer Reading Club activity books to record everything they read throughout the summer, whether it’s a chapter from a novel, a recipe or anything else.

Children earn weekly prizes for tracking their reading and every completed title helps build an aquatic-themed mural on the library’s program-room window.

During each session, Bonwick also reads a picture book connected to that week’s featured destination or animal.

She hopes the club introduces new families to the library and helps children develop a lifelong appreciation for reading.

“I really love that I’ve seen kids who I’ve never met before come for the Summer Reading Club, and then I get to see them continue using the library that following year,” she says.

“I really love meeting new faces and trying to help foster that love for the library and for reading.”

The main goal is simply to keep children reading through the summer, and that doesn’t need to mean “sitting down and reading a long chapter book,” Bonwick says.

“Reading can be reading a magazine. Reading can be following a recipe. Reading can be pointing out traffic signs as you’re driving. Reading doesn’t have to be ‘Sit down, be quiet and read.’ Reading can be fun.”

Children’s Literacy, Environmental Education, Library Programs, Summer Activities, TD Summer Reading Club

A bee gathers nectar from a pink Morden Centennial rose as an ant stands nearby.

The small workers behind Alberta’s 40 million pounds of honey

Written on July 4, 2026. Posted in Agriculture & Rural Life, Environment.

One-third of the global food supply is pollinated by non-native honeybees, a fact that becomes easy to appreciate once you understand how much these small workers carry.

That was among lessons Calgary gardener Sheryl Normandeau shared May 28 in the gardening speaker series hosted by Pincher Creek Municipal Library.

While honeybees are kept in hives, registered to either commercial or hobby beekeepers, native bees nest on their own. Together, they are the workhorses that ensure flowering plants turn into seeds, grains, berries, fruits and many vegetables.

Without a strong bee population, animal and human life would be severely disrupted. Ants, beetles, butterflies, hummingbirds and other lesser-known pollinators would not be able to keep up.

Among native bees, Normandeau said, it is the females that build the nests in the ground or in decaying trees and gather the pollen that feeds the larvae when they hatch. This begins when the willow trees bloom — their shimmering green and yellow catkins are often the only food source for native bees in early spring, until other plants start blooming.

As bees fly from flower to flower to gather pollen, they spread small amounts of pollen caught on tiny hairs on their bodies. Plants as diverse as canola, cranberries, apples and broccoli all require cross-pollination for successful production.

Normandeau referenced the Alberta Native Bee Council and its mission to promote conservation and enhancement of native pollinators and their habitats. The council has noted that of the 903 species of native bees across Canada, 375 can be found in Alberta.

The council works with the Agroforestry and Woodlot Extension Society to build capacity and expand knowledge about native plants that are particularly appealing to pollinators.

Andrew Collins Trio at the Empress Theatre in Fort Macleod Sept. 18

The Alberta Beekeepers Commission notes Alberta is home to more than 150 commercial beekeepers, including the Liquid Gold Honey Co. of Cayley.

Collectively, they manage more than 315,000 honeybee colonies and produce more than 40 million pounds of honey each year. That makes Alberta the largest honey-producing province in Canada and the third-largest in North America.

Small-scale local hobby beekeepers may set up only one or two hives, simply out of fascination with these creatures that carry out so many different tasks. They make the wax that builds the combs that hold the honey and hunt for flower nectar, swallowing it into their special honey stomachs and taking it back to the hive, where other specialized bees remove the moisture so that it can be better preserved.

A hobby beekeeper holds up a frame taken from the centre of a hive. The yellow sections near the left are honeycomb cells already filled with honey and sealed with wax. | Photo by Jan Frith

One tactic is to have hundreds of bees fan their wings in unison to help remove moisture from the nectar. The resulting honey is then stored in the honeycombs and keeps the bees alive until the next season’s blossoms appear.

The fewer flowers and the less nectar, the farther bees must fly to hunt for food, and the more plant fertilization and food production are threatened. At these times, beekeepers may provide sugar-water mixes to help keep the bees fed.

Motorists may notice, at times, that hives in fields alongside the highway are set only two boxes high, while later in the season they appear taller. Beekeepers wait until the bees have filled the lower two boxes with honey. The bees use these for their own needs over the winter. Honey deposited in the third and higher boxes is considered surplus and can be harvested.

For those whose curiosity is piqued, there’s a chance to learn more on July 4, when Heritage Acres Farm Museum hosts a hands-on honeybee demonstration.

Kathryn Knowles, a master’s student at the University of Lethbridge, will speak at 10 a.m., followed by a live demonstration of hives located on the museum grounds.

A color-coded map shows areas in red, orange, and yellow, with several location markers and warning icons near Lethbridge. The left side features terrain detail and a label for Fernie.

Preregistration and proper footwear are required. More information can be found at bit.ly/3SCUUh9.

Beekeeping, bees, Honeybees, Native Bees, pollinators