A hometown newspaper with a local office, local owners & lots of local news
A hometown newspaper with a local office, local owners & lots of local news
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Cloquet rebounded from a fairly disastrous July Fourth by making the most of July Fifth: holding a last-minute stand-still parade Tuesday evening before the movie and fireworks to make up for the canceled parade on Monday. Cloquet Fourth festival co-coordinator Ivan Hohnstadt said the idea for the stand-still parade came to him late, after a cold and wet July Fourth that saw the parade canceled and the movie and fireworks postponed to Tuesday. He emailed committee members at 1 a.m. and called...
The County Seat Theater is full of life this summer as nearly 150 young actors put on their best act. The summer youth theater camp program is nearing the end of its four-week session on musical theater. Each week of theater camp ends with a show, "Off Their Rockers," which takes place in a senior center where all is quiet and calm until the center director decides to use music and dance to bring fun and excitement into the lives of the seniors. Each week, 30 new students dance and sing to the...
Fifteen future peace officers finished skills training on Friday morning, then celebrated graduation that afternoon at Fond du Lac Tribal and Community College. The class of 2022 was the 22nd group of students to participate in the Law Enforcement Skills Training program at FDLTCC. During the ceremony, graduates Alexis Houle of Duluth, Katie LaTourelle of Saginaw, and Duluth's Key Powless provided commentary on their experience in the program. Former graduate Ian Johnson, of the Duluth Police...
Fond du Lac Tribal and Community College was set to kick off its Hot Summer Nights concerts Thursday with a show by the acoustic duo PK Mayo and John Wright. The concert series is free, and shows are 7-9 p.m. the first three Thursdays in July in the FDLTCC amphitheater. Next up, enjoy groove trio New Salty Dog on July 14, followed by Rock-a-Billy Revue, a band with a history of bringing fun to every show, on July 21. Each exciting evening will feature music great for the entire family. All...
The Minnesota Wilderness junior hockey team held its main training camp last week. Roughly 135 players were expected to attend the three-day event, which concluded Thursday with an all-star game at Northwoods Credit Union Arena in Cloquet. According to a Wilderness news release, coaches said they would use the all-star game to determine who will be invited to the season-opening training camp later this summer. All NAHL teams must have rosters reduced to 25 players by Sept. 1. The team is...
A Holyoke man was found guilty last month of sexually assaulting his 9-year-old daughter in a case that began 11 months ago. Following a trial June 21-23, a jury found Calvin Bartz, 35, guilty of multiple acts of second-degree criminal conduct in Sixth District Carlton County Court on June 23. The charges stemmed from a report made in August 2021 to the Two Harbors police department. According to the criminal complaint, Lake View Memorial Hospital called the police to report the sexual assault of a juvenile girl. The girl’s mother told police t...
It was by no means your typical Fourth of July in Cloquet this year. And, really, why should it have been, after all we’ve gone through in the past three years? We went from no events in 2020 due to the threat of the pandemic to a limited event in 2021. This year, the weather was the menace, but it created a rarity: two days of events. This was the first year of Fourth organizing by us here at the Pine Knot News, under contract with the city. Call us biased, and certainly exhausted, but we are proud of how things went despite a wet chilly Monda...
The Carlton County forecast for Monday includes a military flyover and parades in the morning, followed by family-friendly fun all afternoon and a movie and fireworks at night. As of Wednesday morning, it also included a 40-percent chance of rain, but Cloquet July Fourth organizers are optimistic ... and determined. "We haven't had to cancel in the past 10 years, maybe ever, so we are hopeful Mother Nature will work around our activities," said co-coordinator Jana Peterson. Both the communities...
Many years ago, I was in the audience when the Rev. Jesse Jackson, the legendary civil rights activist and election mobilizer, gave a speech. He often used the catchphrase, “Keep hope alive!” when he spoke, and he did so that time. The audience picked it up as a chant. “Keep hope alive!” they called. “Keep hope alive!” It was a memorable bit of political showmanship. A few years later, I gave a speech at a small college in Iowa. I used it to analyze all the challenges our country faced, domestic and foreign, and finished thinking I’d done a pre...
One of the top scorers in the Saskatchewan Junior Hockey League was the top pick for the Minnesota Wilderness in the June 15 NAHL draft. The Wilderness selected Elliot Dutil from the Notre Dame Hounds as the 30th overall pick in the draft. Dutil, a native of Montreal, had an impressive rookie season, piling up 37 goals, 30 assists and 67 points in 58 games for the Hounds. His totals were good enough for second in the SJHL in goals and fourth in the league in points. The Wilderness selections also included former Grand Rapids High School...
Police shut down Pinehurst Park Saturday night, after shots were fired in the central Cloquet park. According to a news release issued by the Cloquet Police Department, approximately 11:15 p.m. Saturday, July 2, a Cloquet Police officer was flagged down by two juvenile males and a woman in a car, who reported that someone had shot at them. The officer observed that the car had damage consistent with gunfire. They told the officer that minutes before, the boys had flagged down the uninvolved...
Hot weather and high winds made play at last week's Class AA Minnesota state golf tournament especially challenging for the Cloquet boys golf team, along with a little less experience on the team than in previous years. The Cloquet boys, the defending state champions, made their fifth consecutive trip to the state golf meet held at Ridges at Sand Creek in Jordan last Tuesday and Wednesday, June 14-15. It followed a dominant win at the Section 7AA tournament, where the Lumberjacks won by a remark...
If the movies weren’t enough, next week’s Free Range Film Festival in Wrenshall will have a twist: live music. The Denfeld Honors Quartet will provide music at intermission Friday, June 24 and guitarist Darin Bergsven will provide entertainment Saturday, June 25. Annie Dugan, one of the festival founders who lives down the road from the former milk barn-turned-theater, announced the festival lineup of independent films last week. There will be a food truck onsite and a “giant century-old barn...
It's baaaack. After the Covid-19 pandemic led to a full-scale cancellation of Cloquet July Fourth events in 2020 and no activities at Veterans Memorial Park in 2021, organizers are planning for a return to normal in 2022. Like last year, there will be a parade and fireworks, plus the Sawdust 5K and 1-mile race in the morning, a car show at the Northeastern Hotel and Saloon and a 3-on-3 basketball tournament at Pinehurst Park. For the first time since 2019, there will also be activities in...
Who doesn't want to play a round of croquet in the city of Cloquet, especially if it's for a good cause? The Fond du Lac Tribal & Community College Foundation will host the 12th annual Cloquet Croquet Invitational Tuesday, July 12, at the Cloquet Country Club. Proceeds from the fun event go toward the FDLTCC student scholarship fund. The invitational kicks off at 1 p.m. The 20 teams of four will play one-on-one in a round robin followed by single-elimination playoffs for the top eight teams....
Things are moving quickly at the County Seat Theater these days. Opening today in person and with view-on-demand is the comedy "Jerry Finnegan's Sister." It's been a busy few weeks for the community theater, said general manager Joel Soukkala. "Due to Covid-19 cases in the previous production pushing back its opening date, the actors and crew in 'Jerry Finnegan's Sister' have had a shortened time span to get ready for their opening night," Soukkala said. Less than two weeks after County Seat's...
There has been a spate of vandalism and car prowls and thefts in the Cloquet area the past month, and the police department has asked for help from the community. In a social media post from May 27, the department said there had been an “uptick in suspicious activity” that included damage to two portable toilets, one pushed into the St. Louis River and another lit on fire. “We've also seen a rash of vehicle prowls and thefts,” the post stated. The department continues to investigate the recent activities and reported no leads this week. D...
The filing period for state and local offices — only those that could require primary elections in August — ended Tuesday, May 31. While a number of incumbent candidates will face no challengers, the Cloquet mayor’s race will feature incumbent Roger Maki and former Cloquet city councilor David Bjerkness. Another former city councilor and retired police officer, Erik Blesener, is challenging Bun Carlson for the Ward 1 seat. Sheriff Kelly Lake is also facing a challenger: Jason Syrett filed to run for sheriff. It appears only one race in Carlt...
An important mission of Rotary International is to promote literacy. In April the Cloquet Rotary Club distributed 337 dictionary/reference books to third-graders from Churchill, Washington, Winterquist elementary schools in Cloquet, South Terrace in Carlton, and the school in Wrenshall. In addition, 324 kindergarten students from the same schools each received a personal storybook with the characters and the settings selected by each student and woven into a story. The kindergarteners are proudl...
The second-grade classes at Carlton's South Terrace Elementary hosted a "Wax Museum" on May 19. Students chose a famous person they wanted to research, learned how to take notes and then used research to answer five questions about their person. They used their notes to write a speech in the first person, memorized it, and worked on presentation skills. Pictured above are students in Wendy Greer's class. "Students and parents came up with awesome costumes and presented their speeches to our gues...
And suddenly, it’s Memorial Day. The unofficial start to summer. A weekend of remembering those who are gone. Observed on the last Monday of May, Memorial Day was originally set aside to honor the men and women who died while serving in the U.S. military. Many Americans observe Memorial Day by visiting cemeteries and decorating graves, holding family gatherings and participating in parades and other ceremonies. Local honor guard members and other veterans groups treat Memorial Day — and the...
The local graduation season kicked off over a week ago with Fond du Lac Tribal and Community College holding its first in-person graduation since 2019, and the celebrations and honors continue with high school graduations this week and next. Of note, the weather looks good this weekend for Cloquet High School, which will hold its graduation ceremonies outside on the football field at 6 p.m. Friday, after getting positive feedback from last year’s outdoor event, held there in response to the C...
Carlton County residents turned out in force Monday for the grand opening of the new Essentia Health-Cloquet Clinic at 1413 Highway 33 S across from Walmart. The two-hour event included a ribbon cutting (pictured below), comments by Essentia chief operating officer Brad Beard, an open house and free brats and hamburgers from local favorite B&B Market. Pictured above, B&B owner Jake Richardson was busy at the grill serving customers Monday, when the line for food stretched from the far side of...
A new warden was installed Tuesday at the Minnesota Correctional Facility in Moose Lake. Brian Collins began his duties earlier this spring. “Correctional facilities are aptly named — they exist to facilitate transformational change within the people we serve,” Collins said. “Because 95 percent of incarcerated people are eventually released from prison, we have an obligation to ensure people return to the community as productive, contributing members.” Collins began his state career in 2006 w...
The Northland Foundation recently awarded seven Maada’ookiing grants. The Maada’ookiing board met in March to review and approve awards. Maada’ookiing (“the distribution” in Ojibwe) is a Northland Foundation program to strengthen relationships with Indigenous community, build partnerships with Native nations, and offer support for community members to expand capacity in northeastern Minnesota. A grant opportunity is offered three times per year for Tribal citizens, descendants, or those who have kinship ties or affiliation to Indigenous communi...
