Dave Price has been one of Flin Flon’s foremost volunteers for years - and he’s just received a pair of major awards for his time and effort.
Price is the recipient of this year’s Nordiq Canada Volunteer of the Year award, as well as a Manitoba Lieutenant Governor’s Volunteer Award. Price received word of the first honour in June, while the second came in earlier this month.
Most notably, Price has been one of the driving forces behind the Green Project and Flinty’s Boardwalk committee, along with the Flin Flon Ski Club, with which he has volunteered for almost half a century, organizing races and events, expanding trails and amenities for skiers and promoting the sport through the community.
“I’m an outdoor guy, I like to be out there and I like to be doing stuff. That’s what it was all about,” said Price.
“As a retired geologist, I’ve been to all sorts of interesting and beautiful places in the bush that most people would never get to know. It’s been kind of fun for me to be designing trails so that people can get to these interesting places that they otherwise would never find.”
Price was quick to point out the work of Dean Grove and Duane Davis, long-time ski club volunteers who put together information packages about Price’s life and work and sent them out for award consideration.
“My main feeling is that I have got these good friends at the ski club who found it worth their while to put in a lot of time and effort to round up all this ancient history about my past,” Price said.
“They have made contact with people I haven’t seen or heard from for 30, 40 years. I’m just amazed that they’ve taken the trouble to do that.”
Being an active part of community organizations and holding events has always been its own reward for Price - while the praise and the awards are nice, they are far from being the main reason he does his work.
“It involves a lot of work and aggravation at times, but mostly, it is fun,” he joked.
In the meantime, Price said while the awards are good, the true reward for him is seeing people in the area enjoying the great outdoors.
“The awards are very nice, but I get just as much satisfaction from being out on the trails and having skiers go by and they have a big smile - often they stop for a chat and say ‘this is great, we’re having a wonderful time, thank you very much,’ and I think that means more to me than the awards, though they are very nice.”
