School

The first monarch butterflies arrived this week. The orange beauties will keep passing through until late October on their way to Mexico for the winter. Some hummingbirds have already left, heading south of the border. We are still enjoying what everyone is calling The Green Summer when it rained on West Texas for three months. The native lantana are in full bloom along with purple sage. The wild yellow snapdragons on my place have bloomed three times instead of the usual once in May. The pastures and roadsides are unseasonably green and we are still getting showers and thunderstorms out of season. Days and nights have been unseasonably cool. It’s been sublime.

Last Saturday, Abi Black (CHS Class of 2021) played trumpet for the Purdue All-American Band in the Boilermakers’ football season opener against Oregon State. Abi has already earned distinction as a freshman in the nearly 400-member band as the only female member of the elite, prestigious Section One trumpet players. In addition to marching with the All- American Band, Abi has also played trumpet for the volleyball team’s Boiler Box Band and pursued her interests in aerospace engineering with the Purdue Space Program. Abi is proud to continue representing the black and gold of both Canadian and Purdue. PHOTO PROVIDED

The Canadian Community Center was excited to welcome the newest member of the Canadian community this week, Cody Johnson. Cody hails from Livingston, Scotland, and is a foreign exchange student at Canadian High School, being hosted by David and Dusty Witcher. A youth membership was presented to her by the CCC staff as a welcome to Canadian. “We wish her the best of luck on her Texas adventure this year,” said CCC Director Ike Julian, who also took the opportunity to remind the public that the center has funding set aside for memberships for any youth in need. Applications for financial assistance in both English and Spanish are available at the front desk. Anyone wishing to contribute to this fund is welcome to give Julian a call at 806.323.5254.

CHS Class of 2018 graduate Caroline Cook was recently awarded a $4,000 Tracey Waterfield Neilson Memorial Endowed Scholarship through Oklahoma State University’s College of Education and Human Sciences. Cook is a senior at OSU in Stillwater, majoring in nutritional science, with the goal of attending a physician assistant program following her graduation in the spring of 2022. She is the daughter of Molly and Michael Kerrigan of Canadian.

AUSTIN—The Texas Commission on the Arts (TCA) and the Texas Cultural Trust are accepting applications for the 2022 class of Young Masters, a joint initiative that provides exemplary Texas-based arts students in grades 8-11 with the financial help they need to pursue advanced study in the areas of visual arts, literary arts, music, theatre, dance, musical theatre, folk arts, and media arts.

CHS Sophomore Xander Gasparlin has already made a little Wildcat history this year by being the first Willie the Wildcat to be named All-American Mascot at the National Cheerleaders Association cheer camp in Abilene’s Hardin Simmons University this summer.

On Aug. 1, Buffalo Wallow Young Marines of Canadian graduated eight recruits who have now earned the right to be called Young Marines. The graduation was led by Unit Cmdr. Max Monty and Unit Executive Officer Justin Dial with staff. In attendance were family members, friends, and representatives from the American Legion, Zybach-Owens Post #56.

Rural Texas counties got a shock from the 2020 U.S. Census data. It may have felt like the pandemic was to blame for fewer customers and a decline in the number of school kids this year. The cold hard fact is that people in Texas are still leaving rural counties and moving to cities.

A free Back-To-School Haircut Day was held at the Canadian Community Center on Saturday, Aug. 14. Haircuts were generously donated by David Strickland, aka Uncle Dave the Barber. The two young men above were each beneficiaries of Uncle Dave’s pop-up barber shop as they prepared to head back for the Opening Day of grade school on Monday. In a report to school trustees last Tuesday evening, Superintendent Lynn Pulliam said the early enrollment numbers showed a drop of 22 students from last year. “It is a number we are comfortable with,” he said, “though we hope it’s fewer.” Those numbers, he said, would probably be more accurate after the first week of school.