VIRDEN – The head librarian at Border Regional Library plans to add movie nights, a 3-D printer, and club space to the facility following renovations this summer.

Librarian Laranda Bailey said she is focused on adding new programming to go along with a new floor plan at the library at 312 Seventh Avenue South. The facility has been redesigned after it received several grants and donations this year.

“We’re feeling very excited,” Bailey told the Sun. “It is just a whole world of difference in here. It feels more welcome. It feels more modernized.”

New windows allow a lot more natural light to pour in, and the old lights have been replaced, Bailey said. Construction crews also replaced the carpets and redesigned the floor plan with added rooms, and installed a new water fountain. The kids’ space has been relocated into its own enclosed room.

The mayor of Carberry says a community safety officer will not be added to the community by the end of year, as previously hoped.

The plan to hire a community safety officer has been halted by some recent changes, including the loss of the town manager, Mayor Ray Muirhead told the Sun. The manager left for another job in Dauphin, and the town has had to prioritize and take a step back as it adjusts.

“We didn’t have the man or woman power to do all the stuff we need to do,” Muirhead said. “We, as a council, just said something has to be put on hold. And CSO, unfortunately, was it.”

The plan will pick up sometime nearer to 2027, Muirhead estimated. Other projects are expected to be completed by that time, freeing up staff to go through the long process of recruiting CSOs, he said.

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.