The tourism department in Minot, N.D. is reporting a roughly 20 per cent decrease in Canadian tourism at the end of the year that was branded by “elbows up” messaging and anti-United States rhetoric.

Minot definitely saw impacts to tourism compared to a normal year, said Visit Minot executive director Stephanie Schoenrock. The impacts are seen through a variety of data, including border crossings, web traffic, visitation, hotel data and some cellphone metrics that the team tracks.

“It’s probably about what I would have expected,” Schoenrock told the Sun recently. “I would have expected somewhere between a 20 and 30 per cent reduction.”

The tourism director said there is a major reason that Minot was expected to be resilient this year. The city, which is southwest of Brandon, has decades of relationships built with Canadians in the area, and that seems to have played a role in keeping things level, she said.

KILLARNEY

Piles of sand and gravel are rising rapidly on nearby farmland — and raising eyebrows – as a future highway paving project begins to take shape.

This spring, the province will repair 25 kilometres of Highway 3, between Killareney and Cartwright; a good deal for a local farmer who was asked by the contractor to store gravel and sand on his property.

Kevin Archibald, who lives on Highway 3 near to the junction of Highway 18, said he was surprised when contractors asked to rent 10 acres of his land, describing the arrangement as “very lucrative, compared to crop land.”

The days are frozen and life feels a little uninspiring at the end of January. To perk things up and give yourself something to look forward to, why not start planning your annual holiday? Or maybe a dream trip? Or both? Since Jan. 27 is National Plan for Vacation Day, this is the ideal time to look ahead a season or two, or even a year or two.

Start with determining what vacation days you are entitled to and when. See where statutory holidays fall and decide if you can use them to extend your break. Have an easily accessible system to track and store research, notes and checklists.

If you’re planning a vacation close to home, get a budget in order that includes both fun and contingencies, and see that you have the right type of insurance. Arrange for someone to keep an eye on the house, and make sure you are tracking your packing.

For adventure that’s further afield, all of the above still applies. Travel abroad is an investment, both financially and personally. It can be a grand deposit into your lifelong memory bank.

A police officer and a military member who were involved in the rescue of three stranded fishers on Lake Manitoba earlier this month detailed the night as a collaboration that involved some help from the missing fishers.

RCAF member Capt. Zach Hotte was on the rescue plane, a CC-130H Hercules, on the morning of Jan. 10, flying 1,000 feet over Lake Manitoba when a flashing light caught the attention of his spotter. He said the light was cast by the stranded fishers who were signalling for help.

“The search and rescue technician who was sitting in the left window was able to spot them right away,” Hotte said in a recent interview with the Sun. “The second we got close, we had a light shining directly at the plane.”

Hotte said the fishers’ action of shining a blinking light at the plane made a real difference. The rescue team was dealing with reduced visibility due to snowfall, as well as darkness inherent to the overnight search.