The Battlefords and area made the news in a big way in 2013.
Not only were the crime severity numbers a major focus of news media from across the province and across Canada, but so were other happenings during the year.
Perhaps the most shocking incident of 2013 happened on June 13, 2013, when a small Piper PA-14 floatplane bound for Calling Lake, Alta. crashed shortly after it took off from a nearby body of water at the Cameron McIntosh Airport.
The RCMP on the scene reported that the plane had lifted off, was in the air for about 600 feet and then crashed and burst into flames. The crash scene was near the runway of the airport.
Both the pilot, Shane Buchanan, and his father Charles Buchanan, both of Whitehorse, Yukon were killed in the crash. Shane was co-owner of Moon Lake Outfitters, Ltd., of Whitehorse.
Transportation Safety Board officials arrived on the scene and ultimately determined there had been no mechanical failure with the aircraft. It was since revealed by the TSB that the floatplane had stalled in the air after making a sharp turn at low altitude. The plane was also over weight.
Also making the national news was the death in September of a young North Battleford Comprehensive High School student, Todd Loik. Family members had identified social media bullying as the reason the 15-year-old took his own life.
The case brought attention to the bullying issue from the highest levels of government. In late September, federal Justice minister Peter MacKay referred specifically to Loik in September as he pledged action on the issue of cyber bullying.
The federal legislation introduced in November included provisions that took aim at distributing intimate images without consent.
Treaty land entitlement fraud and theft made their way to court in 2013. Eight individuals were sentenced in the wide-ranging TLE case involving officials at Poundmaker First Nation in March.
Chief Duane Antoine and former chief Teddy Antoine were among those sentenced, with suspended sentences of 20 months each imposed on both, but the judge stopped short of making any order that would have forced Chief Antoine from office.
And 2013 marked an end to what had been a long line of court proceedings in the Mosquito First Nation Treaty Land Entitlement fraud case.
Five officials, including former Chief Clarence Stone, were charged. They were alleged to have taken money set aside specifically for land purchases for the reserve and used them for other purposes, with the activity taking place over a number of years in the early 2000s. Three convictions had already been entered.
The final case involved the reserve's former treaty land entitlement trustee Gerald Bird, who went to trial in Saskatoon during the summer. Bird was found guilty of criminal breach of trust, fraud and theft.
He received the toughest sentence of all of those accused in the case: three years in jail, with an order to pay $20,000 in restitution.
The focus of attention in the fall shifted to Queen's Bench court in Battleford, as Paul Leroux went to trial for 14 counts of indecent assault and three of gross indecency in connection to incidents on students at the Beauval Indian Residential School in the 1960s.
Leroux had been dormitory supervisor at the school. The case was notable in that Leroux acted as his own defence lawyer throughout the trial.
In the end Leroux was convicted of eight counts of indecent assault and two counts of gross indecency.
However, the overall sentence imposed by Justice Murray Acton - three years - surprised and disappointed the many residential school victims on hand for sentencing on Dec. 12, and had the Crown talking of launching an appeal.
