Vote for Rivers to be Manitobaville!
- Details
- Published on Wednesday, July 19, 2017
By Sheila Runions
Rivers Banner
For at least the past six years, a host of partners have provided $25,000 to one Manitoba community which is ultimately voted Manitobaville. This year’s votes will be collected by text between 6:45 a.m. Monday, July 24 and Friday, Aug. 4 at noon. By 1 p.m. that day (Aug. 4), votes will be tabulated and a winner announced. Because of press deadlines, it is unknown if the video submission by Riverdale Community Centre will make it to the Top 10/12-day voting period. Finalists are announced sometime Wednesday, July 19; Banner deadline is Tuesday at 5 p.m. Manitobaville judges will select finalists based on needs and fulfillment of a community project, which is defined as something which “supports and enriches the life of community members residing in a town, village, hamlet or city.” Finalists will also be selected on creativity and overall effort in the submission, description of their project and impact/benefit the prize will have on the project. Videos which have the highest score in these categories will advance to the finalist stage.
Grant Gill says, “Rivers Curling Club is raising money to put a sound system throughout the whole building. We’ve got about $25,000 that we’ve found; now we’re trying to raise another $25,000 to do the whole building. I asked Laura [Gillingham, building manager] if there was any interest in entering so Laura, myself and Bill [Mehan, caretaker] put something together so we’ve got an entry in. Now they have to pick the top 10. It’s just a shot in the dark, but if you don’t have an entry, you don’t have an entry; somebody’s going to get this money. Our video is totally unique. It’s not like any of the others where people just sit there talking; you’ll get a laugh when you watch it.”
To view the entertaining seven-minute video, visit youtube.com/watch?v=qgI6mqnPyxk or facebook.com/rccrecreation/. Please note these links are not the official voting website and in fact, this year voting will not be collected online but rather, through text messages. Grant did not discuss video contents during the first portion of the interview for this story but in a follow-up call, he admitted to being the genius behind the entire production.
“Well, you know, GPS is great! I’d take my note pad out to the tractor and think of things so I’d write them down and then rehearse my lines.”
And his lines include poetry, rapping, commandant orders and more (each with its own costume); he also recruited Laura and Bill to join him in the video as a reporter and scientist. He makes reference to the trouble in Riverdale (instead of Trouble in River City from the musical The Music Man), how politicians can’t pontificate and asked CTV (one Manitobaville sponsor) to consider what their job as anchor, weatherman or sports desk would be like without sound. In the mind of this reporter, his production meets the criteria and should easily be selected as finalist.
According to online rules regarding the competition, “public may place their vote for their favourite finalist by texting the appropriate keyword associated with the finalist’s entry to 54321.” Unfortunately, there is no further information Rivers Banner can provide at this time regarding how or where to find that keyword. Keep an eye on social media and if applicable, do your part to help Riverdale Community Centre win Manitobaville!
“Rivers Curling Club held onto $14,000 from when we did the provincial junior curling in January 2016. We’ve socked that away and saved it specifically for a sound system. We applied and got a $10,000 grant from Manitoba Community Services Council so we’ve been working at it, but we still need $25,000. If you could get that to show up in your community at once from this, any other monies that are fundraised could go to another group or project.”
