NATIONAL FIRE PREVENTION WEEK
A6, B6 &B7
$1.30
OCTOBER 8, 2015
ST
Includes G
Working together to build a healthy community
Two Sections, 36 pages
100milefreepress.net
KEEPING THE DREAM ALIVE
Barbara Roden Free Press
WRANGLERS ROLL ROCKETS, HOSTING EAGLES A19
MAPSON RELEASES FIRST ALBUM A18
INSIDE
opinion A8 letters A9 entertainment A18 sports A19 community B1 classifieds B8
The voice of the South Cariboo since 1960 How to reach us: Ph: 250-395-2219 Fax: 250-395-3939 www.100milefreepress.net mail@100milefreepress.net
A Healthy Communities Workshop taking place in 100 Mile House on Oct. 15 aims to bring members from numerous local organizations together, in order to look at what it takes to do collaborative work at a community level today. “Silos to Systems: Building Collaborative Capacity to Tackle Community Issues that Matter in the South Cariboo” is a free, allday event presented by the South Cariboo Community Planning Council (SCCPC), Interior Health, and BC Healthy Communities. It provides an opportunity for local groups to meet each other and find out what’s going on at different agencies, and explore the strengths and challenges they’re facing. “Conditions have changed in recent years,” says SCCPC executive co-ordinator Lea Smirfitt. “When the economy changes, the funding to agencies also change. When you have less funding, you stick tighter to your mandate, organizations have a more specific direction, and things that improve how we work together get less attention.” When all resources are focused on providing a service, there are no resources to look at other groups and partners to make stronger initiatives, she says, Continued on A7
Ken ALexander photo
Grade 5 students Ryan Scorse, left, and Devon Wisdom had a great time during 100 Mile House Elementary School’s Terry Fox Run in Centennial Park on Oct. 5. Some 350 students, 35 staff members and 15 parents participated in the 35th Annual Terry Fox Run for cancer research. The run had been scheduled for Oct. 2, but was postponed because of the inclement weather.
Orange shirts, black hearts
Carole Rooney Free Press
A large group of local students were respectfully, if uncommonly, quiet when gathered at the Orange Shirt Day event in Lumberman’s Park in 100 Mile House on Sept. 30. The emotional stories shared by Phyllis Webstad and Canim Lake Band health director Sheila Dick, the keynote speaker, had the attention of everyone who attended – some of them wiping away tears. Phyllis, whose story led to the title of the local day of recognition that has since been picked up around the world, appeared at the park shortly after a similar event held in her own community of Williams Lake.
She explained how all the little children at the residential school she attended were trying to fight for their rights, but to no avail, such as when her beloved orange shirt was taken away on her first day. “Those are our clothes. My granny bought that for me, give it back to me,” she recalled saying. “We felt like we didn’t matter; nobody cared that we were crying like that. We just cried through it all, and we were assigned our beds.” Phyllis said she learned then that her life was up to her, no one would take care of her emotional needs anymore, or for that matter, many of her basic needs. “[I had to] just learn how to survive and learn how get
through it,” she told the children present at the park. “I had to stay there for 300 sleeps. Can you imagine being there for 300 sleeps, and not being able to go home?” Sheila is an Indian Residential School Survivors Society counsellor, and a survivor herself. Her own heartfelt and sorrowful tale of being taken to residential school maintained the rapt attention of the large crowd, while she used a blank silhouette of a small child and drawings depicting a black and broken heart, and sad and happy emotions as visual demonstrations for the younger children. Sheila told them how she was torn from her family and incarcerated at the school just
before her seventh birthday. “That’s the day my whole life changed. I wasn’t always happy at home with my family, but I knew I was loved. “Life was safe, I was secure, I was warm, and I was cared for. There were warm fires and good, familiar food; our food ... I knew where I belonged.” The shock of arriving at St. Joseph’s Residential School near Williams Lake at six years old with “a lot of strange kids” in a completely alien environment was “hollow and lonely,” she said, with emotion. “My parents were gone; they had disappeared. They didn’t tell me what was happening and they didn’t come back for me. I waited. It got dark. At Continued on A5