Volunteers

Keeping the spirit of conservation alive in a small community

Dawn Alger named Ducks Unlimited Canada’s Saskatchewan Volunteer of the Year

By Keagan Perlette April 23, 2025

Dawn Alger, Saskatchewan Volunteer of the Year

Dawn Alger is the kind of person you can rely on to get things done. As president of the Ducks Unlimited Canada (DUC) Ladies Committee in Meadow Lake, Sask., Alger has been a driving force behind the annual ladies night dinner — one of the social highlights of the year for the women in her community. Fellow volunteers say that Alger and her team make it all look easy: from booking the local hall and rounding up enticing raffle prizes from local sponsors to ensuring that the caterer serves chicken cordon bleu, which has become an unexpected tradition at the event. Alger has a humble perspective on her own contributions, “We have a very strong group, it’s just a well-oiled machine,” she says. “Working with Ducks has been so easy. The reps come to us with ideas and they provide great guidelines.”

Thanks to Alger’s can-do attitude, she and her chapter were able to weather the challenges Ducks Unlimited Canada faced during the COVID-19 pandemic, maintaining the committee and hosting the ladies night even after the main Meadow Lake chapter sadly closed. Despite the loss of the Meadow Lake event, Alger and her committee found a way to keep Ducks Unlimited Canada’s presence in town and continued to offer something fun for the community in lieu of the big banquet. “This is a small town, and we wanted to make sure we had a nice event for the ladies,” says Alger. In recognition of Alger’s commitment, team spirit and hard work, we’re honoured to name her Saskatchewan Volunteer of the Year.

Alger first got involved with Ducks Unlimited Canada in the late 1980s. At the time, she worked at a bank and her boss was a member of the organization. “He always had Ducks merchandise on his desk,” she says.

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I started going to dinners every year and then I was asked to join the ladies committee. That was 23 years ago.

Dawn Alger

Alger’s passion for conservation is rooted in her experience running her family ranch on the banks of the Beaver River, which is prone to flooding. “Ducks had a huge dike project that’s protected us from flooding,” she says. “In 1997, we had a destructive 20-year flood that came through our land and we’ve had several floods since. When my husband was a kid, his family had to evacuate on a float plane, the water came all the way up to the house. I can’t imagine what we would do today if those dikes weren’t there.”

Alger’s commitment to Ducks Unlimited Canada has rippled out into the entire community, inspiring everyone to lend a hand in putting the annual ladies night together to raise funds and bring in new volunteers. “All our husbands are hugely involved, they probably put in as many hours as we do,” Alger laughs. “Children and friends come to help us, even my co-workers have come out to help with the event. A lot of people at the dinners will say, ‘I’d like to volunteer,’ and they’ll stay to help us clean up afterwards.”

Alger is optimistic about the future of the Meadow Lake Ladies Committee and is looking forward to their next event this autumn. “We definitely want to keep this going. We don’t ask for much, we just need support once a year,” she says. “If you have one month and 10 people, that’s all you need.”

There are approximately 530 Ducks Unlimited Canada volunteers in Saskatchewan and 3,030 across Canada. Ducks Unlimited Canada is proud to recognize each of them — including leaders like Dawn Alger — as volunteer champions and conservationists who make waves and together, create ripples of change by serving with generosity, passion and dedication.

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