In several blogs over the years, I have talked about what I am reading and in return many of you have been generous in sharing books you have found inspiring and entertaining. I always get more reading done this time of year because in warmer weather it is hard to golf or run and read! I realized that four of my most recent books were all by medical authors, and all very relevant to our times, our profession and our role as medical educators. I suppose it is a bit of a busman’s holiday, but so be it. I highly recommend all these books.

Many of you will already have read Dr. Jillian Horton’s book: We Are All Perfectly Fine: A Memoir of Love, Medicine and Healing. Horton is an internist on faculty at the Max Rady College of Medicine at the University of Manitoba and recipient of the 2020 Association of Faculties of Medicine of Canada Gold Humanism Award.

No less than Alan Alda states, “Her writing is brilliant. And the story of her burnout as a medical doctor is just heartbreaking enough to keep you longing for the resolution you know is coming.”

Two themes are common to all these four books (you’ll find the other three titles below). The first are the challenges of the culture of medicine that include the competitive and hierarchical nature of the profession, as well as the sexism and racism experienced by its members—and how all of this harms both us and our patients. The second theme is hope! It comes through in all four books and in the case of Horton’s book, in the form of authenticity and humor.

I was in Nashville, Tennessee for the American Association of Medical Colleges (AAMC) annual meeting, Learn, Serve, Lead, in November and while there picked up Every Deep-Drawn Breath: A Critical Care Doctor on Healing, Recovery, and Transforming Medicine in the ICU by Dr. Wes Ely. He’s a pulmonologist and critical care physician in Nashville, holds an endowed chair in medicine, and is a physician-scientist at Vanderbilt University Medical Center.

I found this an inspiring story of a physician who used passion for the people he cared for every day, research and evidence, perseverance and a remarkable ability to challenge orthodoxy to ultimately change ICU care around the world. While he and his story were new to me, I quickly learned he is legendary among ICU doctors, and I highly recommend his story.

The third book is Black Man in a White Coat, by Dr. Damon Tweedy. Tweedy is graduate of Duke University and a psychiatrist at Duke University Medical Center. The first chapter starts with how early in his first year of medicine he was asked by a professor who noticed him between lectures, “Are you here to fix the lights?”

I read this book as part of the CoM Division of Social Accountability’s Journal Club; it was their choice for Black History Month. I learned about the dual challenges of being black in a largely white profession and the disproportionate health burdens faced by black people. I learned even more in the book club discussion, and highly recommend the book club to everyone at the CoM.

Oprah said about this book, “In this fascinating, heartbreaking memoir, Tweedy documents his experiences as an African American doctor in a medical system that can be ‘just as sick as its patients.’”

The last book is Long Walk Out of the Woods: A Physician’s Story of Addiction, Depression, Hope, and Recovery, by Dr. Adam B. Hill, a pediatric palliative care physician (I’ve always thought this must be the toughest job in medicine). He works at Indiana University’s Riley Hospital for Children.

Dr. Christine Moutier, Chief Medical Officer for the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, says of the book, “Exposing the stigmatizing and illogical aspects of the culture of medicine when it comes to caring for our own, this book has the power to transform an already shifting culture and should be required reading for all the professionals in the medical field.”

I like the “already shifting culture” in this last quote because it points to the second theme I identified: hope. Despite the weighty nature of all these books and the challenges in medicine that they expose, I finished every book with a sense of hope and more ideas of ways in which I can contribute to change for our profession and our patients. All four authors clearly love their profession and are passionate about patient care.

As I said, I recommend all four books and look forward to your thoughts on these as well as your suggestions for others. As always, my door is open and I am always happy to talk with faculty, staff and learners about our College of Medicine (or running, golf, the Raptors, Blue Jays, or even the Leafs)!

Guest blog by Dr. Meredith McKague, associate dean, Undergraduate Medical Education

The team in Undergraduate Medical Education (UGME) and Student Services in the CoM is doing a lot of amazing work. Often, this work is taking place behind the scenes, as is true of so much that happens at our medical school. With this blog, I’d like to highlight an important area of work, curriculum renewal, and where we are at with various aspects of it.

For pre-clerkship (Years 1 and 2 of the program), curriculum renewal is in full swing. These incredibly important, foundational first two years of our program have been revamped to further integrate biomedical sciences into the Foundations in Clinical Medicine blocks focused on each of the major body systems, and to increase opportunities for students to develop clinical reasoning and evidence-based medicine skills through case-based learning.  We have run the first term of the Year 1 renewed curriculum successfully and will introduce a renewed Year 2 in 2023-24.

Our clerkship (Years 3 and 4 of the program) team and curriculum committee are busy planning for renewal of the clerkship curriculum, with a curriculum retreat that just took place just over a week ago that was focused on that topic.

In other areas, the UGME strategic plan was completed last summer. It identifies five priority areas:

• Embed structural and systemic supports to achieve equity
• Indigenous health
• Support wellness for students, staff and faculty
• Teaching and learning excellence
• Community engagement and distributed medical education

Working groups focused on those five strategic priorities meet regularly to track progress in each priority.

In teaching and learning, as we have moved out of the pandemic, the program has developed a hybrid model for delivery of curriculum that builds on innovations developed in our pandemic response. Faculty deliver the curriculum in a variety of ways: in-person sessions, pre-recorded presentations, and remotely delivered presentations. We are working to support further active learning approaches in all sessions to optimize learning. In addition, our Academic Support team, made up of faculty, a staff specialist and members of the Office of Student Affairs, are continuing to develop new strategies to better support learners in achieving academic success.

Students’ performance on the Medical Council of Canada Qualifying Exam Part 1 (MCCQE-1) 2022 exam reflects the hard work of students and faculty. Our students taking the MCCQE-1 for the first time had a pass rate of 96%, higher than the Canadian Medical Graduate (CMG) pass rate of 93%, achieving a mean score of 260 compared to the national CMG mean of 258.

One of our exceptional teachers in the UGME program is Dr. Kelsey Brose, an assistant professor in the Division of Oncology. He just received the College of Medicine Excellence in Teaching Award. The annual award recognizes exceptional teaching practices and significant contributions to the teaching mission of the college. Congratulations, Kelsey!

The college recently announced more good news related to accreditation of our UGME program. Following the most recent January 2023 report, we have now earned the satisfaction of the accrediting body across all 96 elements they review, up from 93 in a 2020 update. No more reports to the accrediting body are required now until our next full site visit in 2026. This is great news, enabling us to focus fully on ensuring we are well placed for all elements for the 2026 visit—work that is well underway already.

The Student Services Career Advising and Mentorship team in UGME have been actively supporting students with elective planning—especially important with the resumption of visiting electives for our students in the Class of 2024. This team is also supporting students with the CaRMS residency application process, another highly significant aspect of medical school. And the team has provided increased support for students in all areas of training. Additional elective planning meetings, residency application review meetings, and residency application mock interviews were some of the expanded supports provided to students this year.

We are making great progress in UGME, and of course there is always a lot more to do. I thank all of the staff, faculty and students in our program for your excellent work and exceptional commitment.

Guest blog by Dr. Teresa Paslawski, associate dean, School of Rehabilitation Science

The commitment to an additional 550 student seats across 18 healthcare training programs made by the Saskatchewan government on January 31 is a significant investment in the future of healthcare for the province. The announcement included funding for an additional 15 seats in the Master of Physical Therapy (MPT) program in the School of Rehabilitation Science (SRS) in the USask College of Medicine, taking the cohort from 40 to 55 students beginning with this fall’s incoming class.

Congratulations and thanks are owed to many people who were involved in this major step in the growth of rehabilitation training in our province—most notably the director of the MPT program, Dr. Cathy Arnold. Her leadership, attention to detail, and enthusiasm for this undertaking were instrumental in its success. Congratulations and thanks are also owed to the members of the school, college and central administration of the university for supporting the development and planning to allow this to happen. The timeline to welcome a 40 per cent increase in new students in the fall means there is much to be done before the start of the new academic year, but the positive impact on our province is well-worth the effort. We will work with our stakeholders to ensure that we maintain the same high MPT educational program standards.

The announcement also referenced expanding opportunities for Saskatchewan students in out-of-province programs, including speech language pathology (SLP) and occupational therapy (OT). SLP and OT services continue to be among the highest health and human resource needs in Saskatchewan, not just in healthcare, but also in education, justice and other areas. These long-standing workforce deficits in our province need to be addressed for the health and well-being of Saskatchewan.

Providing training opportunities for Saskatchewan students out of province is a welcome step in addressing these gaps in service. But there are many compelling reasons to develop our own training programs here in our province for these disciplines, including the enhanced value to all disciplines that occurs with training together to strengthen collaborative practice for more effective care. Data from the Canadian Institute of Health Information also tells us that students are most likely to seek employment where they have done their training. Ultimately, we will need Saskatchewan-based training for SLP and OT students to more effectively increase recruitment and retention of these clinicians in our province.

I am excited to be able to share with you that the University of Saskatchewan is actively working with the provincial government to refine proposals for Saskatchewan-based SLP and OT programs to expand rehabilitation programming here.

I want to thank the Government of Saskatchewan for responding to the needs of the province and initiating these steps that will help strengthen and stabilize Saskatchewan’s healthcare workforce. I look forward to working with the government and university on these exciting endeavours to address critical healthcare shortages in our province and to strengthen the important investments already made by the government in rehabilitation.

Guest blog by Dr. Janet Tootoosis, interim vice-dean Indigenous health

On January 25, CoM Faculty Council approved the proposal to establish a new Department of Indigenous Health and Wellness (DIHW). The proposal received strong support, endorsing the direction proposed to best support Indigenous health and wellness and validating the efforts of so many people involved in the consultation for and development of the proposal. Most importantly, it demonstrates a high level of support for improving Indigenous health and wellness with increased structures and resources in our college.

Our faculty have said they agree that we need to be a bigger, more effective part of real change for Indigenous people.

As noted in the Faculty Council decision request, “The creation of the Department of Indigenous Health and Wellness directly supports the vision and mission articulated in the College of Medicine’s Strategic Plan 2017-2022 and Renewal 2025. The proposed Indigenous-led department has an exceptionally high degree of linkages to institutional plans and strategies including: the University Plan 2025; ohpahotân I oohpaahotaan – The Indigenous Strategy; the USask Strategic Research Plan and the USask Learning, Teaching and Student Experience Plan.”

With this strongly supported mandate from our college to move forward with the proposal, our planned next steps and timeline for full approval of the proposal are for it to go to the Academic Priorities Committee in February, the Planning and Priorities Committee at the start of March, then to University Council as a notice of motion in March. We hope to have it before the Board of Governors followed by requests for decision at each of University Council and University Senate in April. As these approval stages progress, we will provide updates to the college through the weekly CoM E-News, this blog, and other channels.

I am grateful for the many messages of support during this process and since I started in the vice-dean role last June, and the congratulations and expressions of happiness received following the CoM Faculty Council vote last week. It means a great deal to have our colleagues look at what we hope to achieve and provide such overwhelming support!

As outlined in the proposal, “through the academic, scholarly, and administrative work of the department, along with a foundational and enduring commitment to authentic community engagement, the goals of this Indigenous-led department will be to meaningfully address:

• existing health inequities
• the scarcity of strength-based Indigenous health research
• knowledge translation in community; and
• systemic racism in the health system and health education system.”

The DIHW proposal is available on our CoM Faculty Council website.

Now we focus on these next approval stages and getting to a place where we are moving forward on infrastructure and resources to deliver on our commitment to Indigenous people in Saskatchewan and to our stated vision and mission and social accountability mandate as Saskatchewan’s only medical school.

As was recently shared in E-News, we have the results of the 2022 employee engagement pulse survey. It and previous employee engagement surveys  provide us with a sense of where we are at and where we can make improvements. While things don’t change overnight in an organization as big as the CoM (nor the university and the healthcare system!), these surveys do provide a valuable internal communication tool from which we can all benefit through participation in the survey and our response to the survey results.

With this blog, I want to share some general information about the results of the pulse survey, and provide a heads up to you of a bigger survey coming up in 2023.

The 2022 pulse survey showed that College of Medicine employees’ overall engagement and that of employees across USask both came in at 58%. What wasn’t shared in E-News was the varying degrees of engagement employees identified beyond that figure. A further 22% identified as ‘almost engaged,’ which tells us with a little work, this group could move to ‘engaged’ and we would be reporting 80% in the engaged in their work category! Importantly, we learned that 8% of CoM employees identified as ‘indifferent’ and 11% are ‘disengaged’—concerning numbers because we aim to have a workplace where all employees are engaged in what they do. So of course we know that we can do more to get all employees more full involved in positive ways that inspire engagement.

Among the 20 survey questions, one was open ended, allowing for more individual thoughts and responses and capturing important themes for our college. For instance, faculty and staff have a general appreciation for the college with a high regard for people leaders and coworkers. Employees also feel a high sense of pride in the work that they do.

The 19 closed questions rolled up into the following 9 engagement drivers, with the resulting scores:

As well, there were many valuable comments related to areas that the college can improve upon. For example: there were several mentions of disrespectful behaviour not being addressed; there are concerns around equity, diversity, and inclusion; and there were also a number of comments related to workload issues. College leadership is committed to both leveraging our areas of strength related to employee engagement, and more importantly, focusing on ways to improve the areas of concern. Thank you to those who took the time to provide us with this valuable feedback. We continue to work on ways to improve the CoM for all employees.

A larger, more comprehensive employee engagement survey will be taking place in late winter or early spring 2023—be sure to participate! More detailed information on the 2022 survey results and the upcoming survey will be provided in the dean’s blog next week.

Guest blog by Dr. Kent Stobart, vice-dean, Education

A lot has happened in recent years in medical education in our province. Saskatchewan is more present on the Canadian medical education scene than ever. We’ve grown and achieved so much here, and have built an excellent team and executive that have provided exceptional leadership for our CoM medical education programs. We are making important contributions—often leading them—to improvements that have national and international reach.

In short, we are seeing in so many ways and so often that we can and do have success at the highest level right here in Saskatchewan.

Some examples of what I mean: our dean is on the national education committee for the Association of Faculties of Medicine of Canada (AFMC), and I am a member of the AFMC’s senior education deans group. At those tables—and others—we bring ideas and solutions generated and tested at our own medical school and here in our own province.

We are also involved nationally with the work of the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada, providing input and learning about what others are doing and dealing with across the nation in these specialty areas. Our enhanced skills programs in surgery and anesthesiology support family medicine practitioners and improve care and services in rural areas; they are among few across the country and are nation leading.

So many medical education leaders in our province, with their teams, are doing cutting edge work, across areas that include program expansions in Regina and southeast Saskatchewan, curriculum and admissions reform, Indigenous health, postgrad accreditation, rural medicine and rural training programs, continuing medical education, enhanced ties with our provincial medical partner organizations, leadership education, medical scholarship, student affairs and wellness. In so many ways we are making a difference for Saskatchewan and its people, and serving as a model of excellence well beyond our provincial borders.

With all of the above in mind, this blog marks the first in a series of guest blogs from members of the medical education leadership team that will appear on Preston’s Page over the coming weeks and months. Each blog will delve into more detail in focused areas of work—most mentioned above—as a means of showcasing to you the excellent work, achievements and plans of medical education arising from within our very own CoM.

Stay tuned!

Winter has certainly set in here in Saskatchewan, with some very cold days and plenty of snow before we had even reached December. I hope as we approach the holiday season you are looking forward to the warmth and comfort of holiday traditions and time with loved ones, as well as some rest and peaceful moments to reflect on the accomplishments of 2022.

For our college, many of the challenges we have navigated in recent years related to the pandemic have eased or at least become more habitual. With current concerns regarding respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), the flu and COVID-19 variants, we do need to continue to be careful about our health and exposures.

At the CoM, we have enjoyed a good fall term, and I think I can speak for most learners, teachers, researchers and academic leaders when I say we are appreciating a smoother day-to-day approach to teaching, learning and discovery, with more time on campus and, while still with challenges, overall improved circumstances in clinical learning.

Work in preparation of the fall 2023 Postgraduate Medical Education accreditation review will kick into even higher gear in the New Year. The efforts of 2022 to establish the new Office of the Vice-Dean Indigenous Health and Wellness, and Department of Indigenous Health and Wellness, will more fully take off. Those will be key areas of focus, but as always, they are just the tip of the iceberg when talking about all we deliver for Saskatchewan and beyond as a successful medical school! But for now, we can focus on some well-earned rest and relaxation over the upcoming holidays.

As usual, Jane and I will be doing some travelling to see family. Ahead of Christmas, we will be in Humboldt visiting Jane’s brother and his family and then in Kananaskis with our daughter and her family. We’ll be at home in Saskatoon for Christmas, and then off to the Maritimes for more family time. I am looking forward to plenty of time with my grandchildren!

I wish all at the CoM, as well as your loved ones, a safe holiday enjoyed in good health.

The inauguration of the new Surgical Skills Lab earlier this month and today’s farewell celebration for Dr. Ivar Mendez, hosted by the Department of Surgery, both serve to underline Ivar’s exceptional work for our college, our university, our health system and our province over the last 10 years.

His retirement as Provincial Head of Surgery is effective December 31, 2022, after two consecutive terms in this leadership position. During his time leading the department, and with the incredibly busy schedule that goes with that role, he still found time for important research successes and humanitarian work. Thus, it is no surprise that in the New Year he will turn his time and attention to virtual care global initiatives to support underserved populations nationally and internationally in low resourced countries. He will also continue much of his research at our college as professor emeritus.

On behalf of the CoM, I thank Ivar for his extraordinary leadership over the past decade to grow the Department of Surgery for Saskatchewan. The department has more than doubled in size in these years, greatly increasing surgical care in the province. The academic productivity of the department has also grown exponentially. Ivar has led work to shift to a more integrated academic and clinical surgery presence for the entire province, with the advent of the Saskatchewan Health Authority. His work has positioned the department to better respond to surgical backlogs in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The new Surgical Skills Lab shifts into operation in the New Year, and will showcase how surgery in Saskatchewan has grown in sophistication and excellence in the past decade. The quality and size of the team in the Department of Surgery today is in large measure due to Ivar’s outstanding strengths as a researcher, teacher and surgeon. The department is well positioned for its new leader to further solidify and improve excellent surgical care in our province.

As I touched on above, while leading a decade of growth in the department, Ivar also carried out significant innovative research in remote care and robotics. Additionally, his humanitarian work—for remote Saskatchewan and other communities, including for people in Bolivia where he was born—has been impressive. I have no doubt that we will be witnessing more great achievements in research and in his new areas of focus in the coming months and years!

We have been working closely with Ivar and the team in the department on transition plans, including a provincial department head search that is just wrapping up now. I anticipate we will announce a new head very shortly.

I know I can speak for all at the CoM in extending our great appreciation to Ivar for his many years of service to our college, university and patient care in our province, and for the research he will continue as professor emeritus, and in offering our best wishes to him on his exciting new endeavors.

After three years, it was incredibly great to be back in-person for the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) annual meeting, themed Learn Serve Lead, this past week.

Held November 11-15 in Nashville, the conference struck an impressive balance of relevant and important content and entertainment and engagement. The four plenary sessions all opened with 15 minutes of music with some definite Nashville country flavor, including one that opened with a country singer who also happened to be a neurosurgeon, and another featuring a medical student and resident duo playing the violin and cello.

It’s the first major conference I’ve been to in-person since the pandemic struck and it brought home how valuable it is to find ways to be in the same space with our counterparts and experts. There are about 6,000 in attendance for this conference and is the biggest in North America for both American and Canadian medical schools. And it is always so well-orchestrated and successful in bringing the most important topics of the day for us together with Pulitzer prize winning speakers, celebrated authors, extraordinary historians and other top experts.

The big plenaries are always focused on social issues and advocacy, reminding us of the fundamental things we must never forget in delivering healthcare that is compassionate, safe and inclusive. Equity, diversity and anti-racism continue to be a significant focus. This year, climate change and health was a major addition. The AAMC and the Medical Council of Canada are just beginning to take steps to have this critical area reflected in medical school curricular programing.

We can be proud of our college in this area, as we are ahead of the curve already thanks to some amazing student advocates who lobbied for climate change content in our curriculum: Sehjal Bhargava, now in residency in Ottawa; Nathan Fortin, in Year 4 and Brooklyn Rawlyk, in Year 3 of our medical doctor (MD) program. And thanks to our excellent undergraduate program leaders, Regina Gjevre and Meredith McKague, who listened and responded to offer this cutting edge curriculum in the USask undergraduate medical education program.

Our curriculum currently includes content on environmental health and climate change in each of the four years of the MD program. For example, Year 1 students learn about changing climate and respiratory diseases including the impact of smoke and forest fires (very relevant here in Saskatchewan and Canada!), heat exposure, as well as health in the context of food production and climate change—to name only a few of the areas covered. Year 2 students are involved in further learning across climate change, environmental health, and water security and health. In Year 3, our students learn about environmental health in relation to occupational hazards and environmental toxins, and Year 4 students can take a complete elective on environmental health and participate in a review session on environmental/occupational health in preparation for residency.

The plenary session on November 14 was titled Why Climate Action Is the Future of Medicine and How Health Care Professionals Can Make a Difference Today. Climate change is actively affecting our health as many know, and medical professionals need to be aware of causes of potential harm to human health, their prevention and treatment. As is so true in all areas of care, people who are already vulnerable due to current health issues and ability to access care are impacted the most. The session showed us why academic medicine needs to play an active role in combatting climate change—and thus  its negative impact on health.

One fascinating example shared was the impact of healthcare on climate change, and the estimate that hospitals in the United States are responsible for 8% of the country’s greenhouse gas emissions. If American hospitals were a country they would be the seventh-greatest emitter in the world! We heard of initiatives from reducing food waste to “greening” the operating room. (Some good information on this can be found in this British Medical Journal article.)

Care providers, learners and academic healthcare leaders have an important role to play and we learned about how the big picture of climate change connects to the practice of medicine, how climate action can improve health and positively impact health equity, climate interventions at the bedside, and our role in leading societal change as trusted voices.

The other plenaries were equally excellent. One focused on civil discourse and the need to listen to one another regardless of our own ideology, politics and background rather than shouting over one another and remaining entrenched (and more ignorant) in our own beliefs. Another focused on the racial divide that continues to do so much harm in the United States and that as Canadians we can certainly learn from and apply to our own challenges with equity, diversity and inclusion here.

These sessions—and the whole conference—truly provoked thought and inspired!

I hope as this message reaches you that you are finding time to enjoy another wonderful Saskatchewan summer! And I encourage everyone to step back over the coming weeks when possible to get some well-deserved rest and relaxation.

I am looking forward to this weekend’s trip to Calgary to see my grandson, golf with my son-in-law and run the Stampede Half-Marathon with my daughter; beyond that, many hours in my garden with Jane and golfing with friends until mid-August, when I go to the Maritimes for two weeks—and more golf as well as lobster rolls and a family reunion with my siblings and their families.

I do want to take a moment first, though, to reflect briefly on some of the many accomplishments of the past year at our college.

I will start by offering my congratulations to the incoming first-year class of USask medical doctor students and to our MD 2022 graduating class. To the latter, I wish you all the best in your medical residency! Welcome and congratulations also to all new licensed physicians. I know many join me in thanking all medical learners for your remarkable resilience and valued contributions through a long second year of the pandemic.

In other areas, we have made significant steps in establishing a new Division of Indigenous Health. Most recently that included the hiring of Dr. Janet Tootoosis as interim vice-dean of Indigenous Health. Prior to that, a great deal of work and discussion was led by Dr. Veronica McKinney, Val Arnault-Pelletier and members of our Indigenous Health Committee.

I am thrilled to have two other key leaders on our team join us: Dr. Adekunle Garba (AG) Ahmed, Provincial Head of Psychiatry, started June 1, 2022, in a five-year term, and Dr. Erique Lukong, Assistant Dean Graduate Studies, started July 1, 2022, also in a five-year term.

We developed, launched and gave out new staff awards to improve recognition of administrative staff in the college—such a key and often unsung group of individuals on our team who are so critical in all areas of our mission.

Researchers in our college made important strides, achieving funding and improving knowledge leading to better human health across areas including Indigenous health, COVID-19, mental health, cystic fibrosis, multiple sclerosis, cancer, and many more—too many to list here!

The Division of Continuing Medical Education did not slow down from all its work supporting professional education needs for the pandemic, recently announcing new programming supporting HIV and HCV, mentorship for new physicians, and enhanced support for internationally trained physicians—who play a critical role in supporting rural and remote care in our province.

Significant work over more than the past year resulted in the announcement a few months ago of our renewed admissions process for the medical doctor program. Our post-graduate program is well into work preparing for its next full accreditation.

As always, the year was busy and flew by. Another academic year with all its promise and excitement is ahead. But for now, let us take a moment to catch our breath and appreciate the enjoyments of another beautiful Saskatchewan summer!