If you got a gift certificate from your sweetheart, or you got one for your best guy or gal, then according to our South Peace News poll you made this year’s most popular choice for gifting.
Our polls are not very scientific, and have a few glitches that we are working on, but over 20 per cent of the folks having their votes calculated went the gift certificate route.
Next most popular was a “pizza, beer, wine, TV and maybe a movie” choice with 16.7 per cent. Chocolates and flowers came in at 11 per cent.
If you didn’t do anything at all for Valentine’s Day, it’s never too late to tell your bestest you love them. Never, ever too late.
There are other polls at the southpeacenews.com website, at the top right of the page under “Local and Non-Local Polls.”

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Speaking of southpeacenews.com, views on stories on the website are tracked.
One of the most read stories the past several weeks was the Driftpile band council decision to voluntarily test itself for drugs.
Total views of the story were almost 4,000 to date. The next closest story over the past two weeks is the Tolko re-opening, which brought in just under 1,600 views.
Our very own southpeacenews.com website is now approaching 30,000 page views per month.

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The amount of interest in the Driftpile decision is doubly interesting, given Big Lakes County council is reviewing if staff drug testing is a good idea, but testing councillors was, well, sort of not.
Readers will recall, the reason the county council is thinking about not testing councillors was because, “it is better to deal with councillors under a code of conduct.”
That’s what the county lawyer says.
Which sort of sounds like Mike Duffy and our Canadian Senate. You know, weren’t we told all our senators are adults and responsible citizens, so of course would never abuse the expense accounts?
As reported Feb. 8, another issue with drug testing of anybody is, it might reveal somebody who has a drug problem. So, the legal advisor says, then the employer might be responsible for rehab for the abuser.
If it wasn’t for very serious people, making very serious comments, for probably very serious paycheques, The Page would find this all really quite hilarious. As in, what’s next? Police will still take breathalyzer samples, but only if there is an “incident.”
And then, if the test is positive, taxpayers might have to pay for rehab for drivers? Possibly in a nice retreat in Jasper? Heck, why not Hawaii?
Good grief, where is stuff like this going?

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Anybody driving on ice should of course, always be careful. Best to follow someone else’s tracks if possible. If not possible, drive slow.
Here’s a photo from Ron Meshen who was riding in a Ranger tracked vehicle heading out to an ice hut on Lesser Slave Lake. The Ranger dropped into open water caused by gas bubbles coming up from the botton. The open water, not a very big hole, was covered by drifting snow and, as luck would have it, the Ranger found it.
The photo above is what’s left of one of the treads.