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Around Town: Congratulations to Elk Valley from Mary Guiliano

Congratulations to the Elkview Mine Rescue participants for coming first in the surface competition at the Mine Rescue Competition recently held here. Nineteen teams from western North America were on hand to show off their knowledge and skills and as usual our local groups excelled. At the last council meeting Mayor Corrigan praised Free Press Publisher Dave Hamilton for the excellent mining supplement he produced that provided information on all the teams.

 

 

Congratulations to the Elkview Mine Rescue participants for coming first in the surface competition at the Mine Rescue Competition recently held here. Nineteen teams from western North America were on hand to show off their knowledge and skills and as usual our local groups excelled. At the last council meeting Mayor Corrigan praised Free Press Publisher Dave Hamilton for the excellent mining supplement he produced that provided information on all the teams.  Mayor Corrigan said the supplement proved very popular with all competitors and was snapped up quickly by all.

“Gratitude and appreciation for outstanding response from your department and in particular, fire department members Tom Hopkins, Kim Sedrovic and Bruce Nelson for their assistance in providing enhanced safety to the responding members of Elk Valley Detachment,” was expressed in a letter from Staff Sergeant Lorne Craig, Elk Valley Detachment Commander to Chief Ivany of Fernie Fire Department.  This was regarding a volatile situation that recently happened in Fernie.  Staff Sergeant Craig went on to say that “all RCMP member in attendance were impressed by your members’ actions and appreciated their assistance in bringing this situation to a successful and safe conclusion.” Yeah, Fire Department!  You make us proud. Congratulations!

Kudos also goes to Fernie Heritage Cemetery Restoration Society for the work they have been doing the past years cleaning, repairing and straightening over 300 headstones and monuments. Recently the society sent a letter to the City of Fernie praising public works employees especially Gino Guzzi and two summer students for the “excellent work in cutting grass and trimming around the graves.”

Did you know that “Right to Know Week” is September 26 to the 30 across Canada? The office of Information and Privacy Commissioner states that this is to “promote awareness of the right of BC citizens to access documents held by public bodies.” BC’s Freedom of information and Protection of Privacy Act is described as being “a pioneering piece of legislation.” It goes on to say that this should be emphasized to “affirm the importance of the access right of its citizens.”  Something that most people don’t think about in their daily lives until a situation arises requiring this service. Locally this bill will give “first responders the right to find out if they have been exposed to a communicable disease in the course of rescuing or rendering emergency medical care to a patient.”

Council has been sent information from BC Hydro regarding the implementation of “smart meters” that they say will “pay for itself and deliver positive benefits, savings and efficiencies from faster outage restoration, reduced wasted  electricity and theft detection, create new economic opportunities, be more accurate while remaining secure and private at all times.”

Opponents to the smart meters state that these meters cause “spiking, resulting in fire coming out of outlets, radiation, loss of privacy as well as doubled or even tripled or quadrupled cost rates.” A call to “halt installation until an active discussion and ongoing research into the possible health and environmental effects related to radio frequency signals has been called for by at least one council of BC. The group “Citizens Against Unsafe Emissions” is requesting all communities to write appealing for a moratorium to delay action by BC Hydro until the issues can be discussed.  This is a hot topic right now; it would be worth becoming informed so as to understand the issue well. September 25 will have a power outage from 7 to 9:30 a.m. all over town so be prepared for that.

For three years I have been part of a group of enthusiastic and wonderful young professionals that came together in 2008 with the goal of starting a “Boys and Girls Club” that could offer drop in after school care for kids. It has been a learning experience for all of us and along the way we lost a lot of interested members. It takes a lot of money and an even greater amount of work before a group can be part of this Canada-wide club. In the meantime Kerri Wall, Camille Munroe, Kari Olson, Vanessa Oleksow, Pam Murray, Karen Walker, Sara Stiles-Burch and myself have formed a society called the Fernie Kids’ Club and secured enough funding to provide subsidy to already established and licensed after-school programming. Contact ferniekidsclub@gmail.com for information on acquiring application forms.