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Conservatives bring down federal budget today in Ottawa Page A4
THURSDAY
Tuesday, February 11, 2014 X Volume 27 No. 16
THIS WEEK
By Adam Williams STAFF REPORTER
adam@kamloopsthisweek.com
By Andrea Klassen STAFF REPORTER
andrea@kamloopsthisweek.com
Kamloops United Church pre-school teacher Patti Pernitsky has been educating young minds in Kamloops for a long time. The school marks its 60th anniversary this year and will host an open house on Saturday, Feb. 15, when past students are urged to return and reminisce. Dave Eagles/KTW
UNITED THEY LEARN By Dale Bass
STAFF REPORTER
dale@kamloopsthisweek.com
It was just another one-block walk from Kamloops United Church to Stuart Wood elementary, one the church’s preschool teacher, Patti Pernitsky, made every weekday, taking her charges in the before- and afterschool program to class. Outside the then-empty Coast Canadian Hotel building, workers were smashing entertainment centres with sledgehammers. “I stopped and asked them what they were doing and they said they had given a lot away, but nobody wanted these, so they were breaking them up to get rid of them,” Pernitsky said. “So, I smiled and said, ‘Could I have three?’’ When she showed up a few days later, pushing her little
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dolly cart, the same workmen laughed and said she’d need something bigger. “Those things are solid wood,” Pernitsky said. Long story short — one of the workers delivered them to the church, got them down to the new nursery-school location in the basement and helped her set them up. That’s been the story of the KUC pre-school since the day it began, Pernitsky said — people helping out, all to ensure the youngsters who go there have a positive, fun, educational experience. It’s a story that marks its sixth decade this year and Pernitsky has planned an open house on Saturday, Feb. 15, from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m., for people to come back, reminisce, and check out the larger and improved area the school occu-
pies. She knows plenty of grads will come back — and, in its 60 years of operation, the school has a lot of graduates in the city — and is hopeful one in particular, Mayor Peter Milobar, will be there to help cut the ceremonial ribbon at 11:15 a.m. When the pre-school started, there was no kindergarten in B.C. and the school had upward of 600 students tending. “We filled the building from the ground floor all the way up,” Pernitsky said, noting the original structure was later replaced as the church went through renovations. Once the half-day kindergarten was added to the publiceducation system, the school switched to accommodate preschoolers and kindergarten kids when they were not at school. X See PERNITSKY A14
Kamloops city councillors saw the insides of plenty of airports and hotels in 2013. Three of the city’s elected officials exceeded their individual $5,000 allotment for travel expenses, with two spending almost double the amount to attend meetings and conferences. Council has a global $50,000 budget for travel expenses, which Mayor Peter Milobar said has not come close to being exceeded in his time at city hall. Of the big spenders, Coun. Nancy Bepple, went the farthest in her travels, attending a Federation of Canadian Municipalities Convention in St. John’s in September. Bepple attends three extra FCM meetings each year as a member of the organization’s standing committees on environmental issues and sustainable development, increasing women’s participation in municipal politics and northern and remote communities. Those extra meetings added $5,743 to Bepple’s expense claims for 2013. Her other trips came in at $3,517, for a total
2013 COUNCIL EXPENSES PETER MILOBAR: $9,808.92 NANCY BEPPLE: $9,260.92 MARG SPINA: $5,519.15 KEN CHRISTIAN: $4,020.86 ARJUN SINGH $3,803.15 DONOVAN CAVERS: $2,982.56 NELLY DEVER: $2,982.56 TINA LANGE: $865.18 PAT WALLACE: $792.62 COUNCIL TOTAL: $38,833 of $9,260. Only Mayor Peter Milobar spent more, with a final total of $9,808 in expenses for the year. Among the mayor’s out-of-town destinations were a Vancouver pipeline conference, a B.C. mayors’ caucus in Prince George and this year’s national Communities in Bloom symposium in Ottawa. X See TOTAL A11
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Milobar, Bepple top expense list
TRU warns of ‘game’ A new social-media drinking game has prompted Thompson Rivers University to issue warning letters and online alerts to its students. “Neknomination” is a drinking game that involves challenging friends to drink alcohol, generally in large amounts, in increasingly dangerous ways. Participants take videos of themselves drinking alcohol, sometimes while performing some sort of stunt or other risky behaviour, before posting it to social media and challenging others to out-do the feat. TRU became aware the game was occurring on campus on Thursday, Feb. 6, and sent warning letters to its residences that night and early the next morning. The university also issued a warning to students on the school’s website in an effort to reach those living offcampus. “It moved really quickly across the country,” TRU dean of students Christine Adam said. “When we saw that it had happened here, and because it has a sort of multiplier effect to it, we really wanted to get a message out to students quickly.”
Jim Cotter is coming home to Kamloops for the 2014 Brier Page A15
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