New stage curtain and acoustic panels for Saskatoon Lake Community Hall

The hall is one of five recipients this year of the Creating Shared Value Fund.

Saskatoon Lake Community Hall in the County of Grande Prairie is a place that holds memories. The man who helped build it saw his daughter married in the main room, and this past summer her son was married there too. Heather Hammonds, president of the Saskatoon Lake Agricultural Society, wanted that kind of place for her own kids because she had one growing up.

“I’m not a big city person,” says Hammonds, who leads the volunteer board that runs the hall. “I grew up on a farm, and I learned to dance at the local hall and fall asleep under the table, so I wanted that for my children as well.”

The hall has been open since 1981 and does whatever the area needs it to do.

Weddings are booked into 2029 on one of the better dance floors around. The 4-H club and the Girl Guides meet there, a weavers group works downstairs, and the county runs a program for mothers and toddlers. Elections and funerals happen in the hall, and when there is an emergency in the oil patch it becomes the response location for the area.

Saskatoon Lake Community Hall was named one of five recipients of the Creating Shared Value Fund for 2026.

The society applied for funding to replace a 40-year-old stage curtain, reinforce the structure behind it that carries the sound system, and install acoustic panels around a room that echoes badly enough to spoil a speech or a band performance.

“Every year we pick a major project to replace in the hall or to update just to keep it viable in the community and welcoming,” Hammonds says. “So this year, our project was the sound system and the acoustic panels.”

The Creating Shared Value Fund is financed by CSV Midstream Solutions out of its Albright gas plant west of Grande Prairie through a portion of the plant’s revenue rather than profit. Where sponsorships and corporate giving can sometimes get cut, this Fund was established to be permanent, paying out to community initiatives for as long as the plant is running.

The decision-making was set up the same way.

Rather than choosing where the money goes, CSV handed that to a guiding committee of local community members with ties to the region who review the applications and select the recipients, on the reasoning that people living in the area know what the area needs and that the money should work as a hand up rather than a hand out.

A guiding committee of local community members reviews applications and selects which projects receive funding. The Northwestern Alberta Foundation administers the Fund, managing the application and granting process to provide independent, accountable stewardship.

Creating Shared Value is the idea that a company should run so the community around it gains from the same work that makes the company money, and it’s what the letters in CSV stand for.

At Saskatoon Lake, what that adds up to is a curtain, and the curtain is the part Hammonds laughs about.

“I don’t want to touch it because I’m not sure if it will disintegrate and is full of dust,” she says, laughing.

Hammonds was new to the area when she went looking for something to join, and she has been at it ever since.

“I joined the playgroup that was held here with my son. He was a year old. And once you’re in, they don’t let you go. So I’ve been here 16 years,” she says.

She is now president of the society, president of her school council and vice president of her local water association, where she has served 14 years on and off, and one more she cannot name off the top of her head. Five in total, by her own tally.

The society works through the building one piece at a time, so the landscaping, the siding and the roofing are done, most floors have been replaced, and the kitchen has new appliances. Projects on that scale normally come from grant applications the administrator writes through the year, two major fundraisers, and occasional donations.

Asked what the region would look like if more companies ran this way, Hammonds called it doing good business and doing good for the community, then went to how it would impact the people around her.

“Everyone from the kids to the parents to the volunteers are all exhausted and tired because there’s always fundraising going on,” she says. “If we just had the money to keep the doors open, families could come and enjoy themselves instead of having to worry about ticket prices or babysitters.”

Hammonds says she is excited the hall acoustics will be modernized, and the goal is to continue to invest to make the hall beautiful, functional, and welcoming for community members.

The curtain and the panels go in this fall, before the winter clubs come back and the weddings start again in the spring. After that a speech from the stage will carry to the back of the room.