GRASSLAND – It can be difficult to recognize the people that make our communities great as there’s an army of men and women who devote their spare time to causes that matter to them.
Jack Dowhaluk, who received a Queen Elizabeth II’s Platinum Jubilee Medal Feb. 4 from the office of Lakeland MP Shannon Stubbs, is one of those people.
Over the course of his life, he served 13 years representing Division 6 on Athabasca County council and was a founding member of the Road to Hope, an organization that helps cancer patients with transportation to and from medical treatments, as well as numerous other community organizations and functions.
During an April 12 interview, Dowhaluk indicated that he wasn’t overly sure what the award had been for, saying that it was for contributing to community activities, but he did put forward two major successes that he was proud of during his term as municipal politician.
The fires
The first was the Fort McMurray fires in 2016; Wandering River saw a flood of refugees that nearly quadrupled the population of the hamlet, and the community rallied around them. At the time, Dowhaluk had said that he was proud of the community for their work, telling Global News, “The people of Wandering River have just opened up to these people, it’s just astonishing how hard they’ve worked and how they accepted these people.”
He also spoke highly of the fire departments in Wandering River and Grassland during the fires saying he was “very impressed with the way they (Wandering River Fire Department) handled the situation, providing them (the refugees) food, water and shelter.”
“They were a very busy group, and they should be recognized for it. Same with Grassland, they did their part as well. I just tried to coordinate both areas and do the best I could to make a difference,” said Dowhaluk. “I was really impressed by the volunteers; without them things just wouldn’t have been the same.”
Wandering River Pipeline
Dowhaluk also pointed to his work on the Wandering River water pipeline project, which was completed in the early 2010s. The project won multiple awards, including the 2013 Project of the Year from the Alberta Public Works Association. The pipeline was an alternative solution to a new water treatment plant, after the land that the previous plant was on was set to be used in the twinning of Highway 63.
“It was a really important project,” said Dowhaluk. “We needed to make sure that the people of Wandering River had clean, safe water. Without it, we would have needed to construct a new water treatment plant, which would have been very expensive.”
The majority of Dowhaluk’s time on the project was spent developing the route, trying to maximize the number of houses that could hook up to the pipeline, which runs for 88 kilometres from Wandering River, through Grassland, and into Boyle.
While he was excited for the award, Dowhaluk also noted that it wasn’t really something that he himself had received, but instead something that the community had. “This award that I got, I wouldn’t have gotten it if it wasn’t for the people that I worked with in our communities, they deserve it as much as I do. This is as much their award as it is mine,”
The medal
The Queen Elizabeth II Platinum Jubilee Medal is a commemorative medal, designed to celebrate the Queen’s 70th anniversary of her accession to the throne in 1952. The program continued as intended despite the Queen’s passing on Sept. 8, 2022, and 7,000 Albertans have received one as part of the program and were chosen to recognize “significant contributions to the province”, according to the website for the program.
