By Sarah Wallace

Proposed holistic healing ranch sparks heated debate

May 29, 2013 | 12:16 PM

A crowd of about 50 RM of Garden River residents gathered in the gymnasium of Meath Park School on Tuesday night to discuss a proposed holistic healing ranch, and the debate was contentious.

Cathy Crane is behind the proposal and she said the ranch would be for families dealing with issues surrounding the death of a family member through suicide or murder and the issues that these situations can cause in families, like addictions.

The ranch would house eight cabins big enough for a small family, along with a kitchen and recreation cabin where all could come together.

“It’s not just about addictions, drugs and criminals and stuff like that, it’s about helping people with suicide issues, with grieving issues,” Crane said.

“They have to heal as a family because if one person’s hurting in that family and another person doesn’t even know why they’re hurting, how is that going to help them?” she asked.

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Crane has already sent out grant applications to several organizations that could help in funding this non-profit ranch, including the Prince Albert Parkland Health Region.

There were misconceptions at the forum about who exactly the ranch is geared towards. Many community members were concerned about people with addictions coming to the ranch.

Crane said they would be gearing the ranch towards people who are already detoxed and are done with that part of their journey.

“These are the people who want to heal and who want to work together to get back into society and give back, people that want to work within themselves to make better people of themselves, to make their families whole again and to work with their families to understand that this was a problem. Everybody has problems in their life and people don’t understand or know how to deal with certain things,” said Crane.

She said not many people know how to deal with a suicide or death in the family, which is why she wants to create the ranch.

Trent Henry, a neighbour of Crane’s, isn’t happy with the proposal.

“I’ve worked within the system for 15 years, I just feel there’s no transparency with this proposal because I just heard about it … I don’t think she’s being forth coming with all the issues,” Henry said.

The proximity of the ranch is also a problem for Henry.

“For me, I guess it’s just the fact that I deal with this element for the past 15 years and before that I owned a security company in PA for 10 years … so for me she couldn’t give me a guaranteed defiantly that they wouldn’t be dealing with the same element that I deal with every day,” Henry said.

He said he moved out to Garden River to get away from that.

“This community is one of the best communities I’ve been in … for me I have three kids, I’m concerned about the criminal element that could be attached,” said Henry.

Kent Buckler, the Reeve of Garden River, said the whole point of the meeting was transparency because he knows that’s been an issue for residents in the past.

“I have to maintain nonpartisan, what I’m trying to get through to the residents of the RM is, yes they run the RM. It is up to them as taxpayers to use their council and their council will do what needs to be done but part of our oath, when we took office, was that we are doing things that are in the benefit of our residents and I think that was lost in the past,” Buckler said.

He said the whole idea of the meeting was to hopefully bring some of the residents together and have both sides heard equally.

“I just feel like an uneducated decision is a poor decision and I think going forward from this more people have heard what [Crane] said, [Crane] knows there’s a lot more work to do,” said Buckler.

Kelly Lee Tavson is from Duck Lake and heard about the meeting from her cousin’s husband.

Tavson has been in the holistic realm of healing for 24 years and said she supports the ranch.

“In all my years of doing my work, which is over 24 years, I have had children that have committed suicide, I see the families where they break down, I’ve seen people who’ve lost a child where the marriages break down. It doesn’t have to be that the parents have an addiction, or their the criminal, it’s just the family unit being broken down by a tragedy,” Tavson said.

“I look at it as if we can look at building the family units, because the family units have been so dismissed or broken down, if we can build right from the core of the family units again then there’s healing within the family,” Tavson continued.

“Our awareness and our fears are things that we, in my language, we make up in our own realities. So we start to put all these projections … if we look at we’re all connected and I say community, 'common unity', then we can move forward,” she finished.

Tavson said she would help Crane in whatever capacity should could.

Buckler said there will be other meetings in the future and that council isn’t going to make a decision at this point.

“We will have another meeting once more residents of the RM become informed, probably after the seedings all done and then at that point we’ll know what our residents want and then we can feel assured as council that we’re making the right decision,” Buckler said.

He said council right now is busy finishing budget and taxes and can’t foresee the meeting happening in the near future.

“I want them to phone their councillors and be heard. This is the start of them realizing council is elected by them, council is their voice,” Buckler said.

swallace@panow.com

On Twitter: @sarahthesquid