It was a big job for one kid.
Tyler Richards, who is in Grade 4 at Pre-Cam Community School in La Ronge, spent the summer collecting cans and bottles for the school's new playground, somewhere between 9,000 and 23,000 of them. He was aiming at a thousand dollars and handed over 2,300, and on Tuesday the whole school stood up for him.
10 September 2026
La Ronge sits on the west shore of the lake it is named for, a long way north of Prince Albert and past the last of the farmland, and Pre-Cam Community School there needs 150,000 dollars for a new playground, of which it has about 120,000. The playground goes in next month.
Tyler Richards is in Grade 4, and in May he decided that his share of the 150,000 would be cans and bottles.
In Saskatchewan that is real money, because the deposit comes back at ten cents on a can or a small bottle and twenty-five on anything a litre or over, paid in cash at the SARCAN depot as long as the lids are off and the bags are sorted, which makes a thousand dollars at ten cents the same thing as ten thousand cans. He started collecting.
By August he had 700 dollars and was still short of his thousand, so his mother, Allyson, posted in town to ask whether anyone had empties going spare, and neighbours brought bags round, and then so did people the family had never met. By the time school started he had about 2,300 dollars. Nobody counted the containers, but at ten cents a can and a quarter for the big bottles that is somewhere between 9,000 and 23,000 of them depending on the mix, and he handled every one.
Tuesday
At the welcome-back assembly the principal, Ryan Kuppenbender, called Tyler up and told the school what he had done, and the room stood up. Derek Cornet of larongeNOW was there and wrote that you could not miss it.
I saw some of the facial expressions of some of the students and their eyes were just wide open. They were just amazed, and it truly brought a tear to the eye.Allyson Richards, his mother
She said she could not be prouder, and that the money might get the fund the last 30,000 dollars it still needs.
Tyler said he could not wait to use the playground, and thanked everyone who had helped.
It was a big job for one kid.Tyler Richards, Grade 4
The playground goes in in October, before the first snow, and he will still be in Grade 4.
Carry this story in five words
We run a game called Long Story Short: one real news sentence a day, and you keep the five words that carry it. This article is the puzzle. Do play.
How to play
One real news sentence. The job is to keep the five words that carry the story and let the rest go, then guess. Blue means the right word in the right place, orange means it is one of the five but sitting somewhere else, and grey means it is not one of them. Five tries.
Yesterday: Weldon Bowen, a Marine veteran who turned a hundred on Saturday in Tyler, received over 4000 birthday cards after the state of Texas requested 100. The five: Bowen received 4000 birthday cards. Not Marine, not Saturday, not Tyler: who he is, when, and where, and none of them is what happened.